On deep background

It has never been easy to get Graham to cut his hair. Almost always it is a process. A few days before I am thinking of taking him to the barber, perhaps even a week, I start seeding the idea: "Graham, do you think you might like to get your hair cut sometime soon?" Most often he will respond something like: "I'll consider it." And then we'll repeat the discussion a few days later, and eventually I'll take him.

Over the last year or so, for my own hair cutting needs, I have upgraded my service provider from a barber, since the election the team at Menscutz, who have always done a perfectly decent job and have offered me the opportunity to talk to people from different parts of the world and walks of life without leaving the rarefied domain of Chapel Hill. I've been using Ashlyn Davis Hayes, an old Tiger like myself, who has set herself up on Rosemary Street with a nice little jernt. So a month or so back I offered to take Graham there to get a little bit better treatment, but was unable to make an appointment before he started tripping over his bangs. Surprisingly, he agreed.

I have an appointment this evening, and simultaneously Graham's hair has started to get a little long, if not really all that unruly. This weekend I asked him if he'd like to go an get a bit of an upgrade for a haircut, and he quickly agreed.

Now, I'm not saying that he definitely has specific ulterior or strategic goals in mind, but puberty is definitely going on there, and I think that he is not altogether disinterested in the charms of the fairer sex. We shall see...

But this is all, I should be very clear, on deepest background, and no comments should be made to the young man on pain of death or banishment from the ranks of the Grouse's readership.

More observations on Mexico while it's fresh

Before we left Mexico City we did -- with the help of the hotel staff -- discover the sections of the burg that have earned it a reputation for culinary currency in recent years, and we ate some very good food and saw some lovely and hip neighborhoods. But most of the voices we heard in those places spoke English and it was hard to escape the feeling that we might as well have been in some place named Portland. Not that I begrudge the town the tourist dollars in any way.

The Monday we were in Mexico City we learned that, unfortunately, all the museums were closed. The ever helpful staff at the hotel suggested we hire a car and driver -- through them, naturally, at a non-trivial rate -- to take us out to Teotihuacan -- a site with some truly impressive pyramids about 20 miles out of town. So we pulled the trigger while biting the bullet and rolled with it, and a nice fellow named Victor in suit and tie rolls up in a black SUV to take us out there. Thankfully, he took off his tie as soon as the hotel was in the rearview. He suggested that we visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the way out. Having not done my reading to prep for the trip, I wasn't aware that it was so close by.

Our Lady of Guadalupe was an appearance of the Virgin Mary to a peasant back in the early 16th Century, not long after the Spanish got there. It was really considerate of her to visit so early. She visited not once, but four times, and she impressed herself on a cloth in a way that is really reminiscent of other images of the virgin in Europe.

OK. I see I am running on here and should hang it up for today. I was glad Victor took us out there and really glad we rode with him, because he was a super nice guy and we had great conversations with him about Mexico and learned a lot. Really it was one of the best days of our trip.

I'm back

So I thought I would write more from Mexico but apparently I didn't. Partially it's a function of not world-class internet in the hotels, and by the time I was done wrestling with Google Maps planning dinner and the next day, I was pretty much done. Plus I was reading a good book (Amor Towles's A Gentleman in Moscow). I even watched a little TV to broaden and refresh my vocabulary.

Where to start. Driving in Mexico was not as bad as I thought as it was going to be. Even the web sites that were very pro driving in Mexico were more negative than they actually needed to be. Though I saw a little rule-bending in town in Mexico City when we were in cabs and Ubers, it wasn't really bad, and I drove straight out of town after we picked up our car at the airport. If anything, Mexican drivers are more norm-bound than are Americans. They really wanted to pass on the left, not on the right. If I was in the left hand lane and somebody didn't think I was going fast enough, they were much more likely to come up behind me and let me know their thoughts than they were to go by on the right.

The places we went outside of Mexico City: Queretaro and Guanajuato, were lovely. Being hilly, Guanajuato was a little more picturesque, but then it was also more intensely geared towards tourists and therefore more precious. Querataro was also flat out gorgeous, but a real place. It has a huge historic center, a UNESCO world heritage site (as is Guanajuato), but so much of it that most of it is used by residents as a place to work and live normal lives. So we'd be walking down little streets and have no idea what might be in the next door. Could be a language institute. Or a chess club. Or a ramen place. Or the "Union for the Transparency of Executive Power." Or a shoe repair shop. Or a store selling quinceanera dresses. Actually, there was a whole street of those.

It was really cheap. I don't think we ever spent more than $90 on dinner, and for lunch we got by for as low as $3 for the two of us. Of course, it helped that mom didn't eat much when we were in places that cheap. So we didn't eat quite as close to the street as I might have liked, but what do you expect when your 81-year old mom with a bit of a delicate tummy is along.

I ate a lot of Mexican food.

Mexico City

When we arrived at the airport yesterday, we were a little tired, having gotten up early after not getting to bed early enough (on my side at least). Not much jet lag, but the altitude does make a difference. Mexico City is at about 7,350 feet above sea level, which is not chopped liver.

The drive from the airport was not inspiring. I was a little surprised at how junky everything looked, and assumed we were still out on the outskirts, when the driver told me that the Zocalo, the massive square at the center of everything, was maybe 100 meters to our right. It was pretty dirty looking, and I was fearing that I might have brought my mom to the wrong place. Turns out, that's just not the right side of the Zocalo.

But our hotel is quite nice, as it better be, as it's the frickin Four Seasons, and we settled in and rested and hydrated (the canonical recommendation for altitude sickness). Then in the evening we went for a stroll along the lovely, tree-lined Paseo de la Reforma, on which the hotel is located. All the big multinationals are here: Aon, Deloitte, Citibanamex, Chubb, etc. etc. The Mac store is across the street. The Central Park analog is just to our left. So we are at the heart of the First World in Mexico.

From here we branch out.

Cadence

I have grown deeply attached to the rhythm of my day, getting up early when it's quiet to meditate and read, proceeding through breakfast and the paper to my morning session with notepad and computer, slowly proceeding from topics of very long term nature to those of the day. First something spiritualish, then the paper, focusing on longer-duration stories rather than market news of the day, before checking the futures and email. Easing into the day, as it were. Generally, the exercise is one of attempting to maintain as long a horizon as possible.

Then I get in my car and listen to a book, right now, having finally polished off Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, I am returning to Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, which Mary and Graham and I had listened to some of months ago and then I let slide. Then I read more of Harari's stuff in another context and learned that the guy does silent meditation for two months a year (yes, he talks to nobody during that time, and I think consumes no media) which is just freaking crazy but intense and, clearly, fruitful.

A friend and client recently asked that I write a quarterly newsletter outlining my thinking on markets, something I am considering. But I think that the quarter is such a constraining, artificial, and misleading construct that it will warp anything I write. I also think it's too short a time period to be meaningful. (I think in principle that quarterly reporting on the part of corporations is distortive -- but that from a control and compliance perspective it's good because it provides actors within firms with an incentive to keep it tight, and it gives analysts a window into firms to spot fraud).

I'll figure something out.

On the lawsuits

Just finished reading this New Yorker article about the lawsuit against Harvard by some conservative guy and an alliance of Asian-American organizations he cultivated. First off, let's start by saying that the kid who first got very riled up about not getting into Harvard did get into Penn and ended up graduating from Williams. Fucking Williams. If not the then absolutely one of the top 3 best liberal arts colleges in the USA, and he's whining.

Overall the Asian-American beef is that all these kids get 1600s on their SATs and 4.7 or whatever elevated GPAs they had and then they don't get in at their top schools.

Here's my perspective. I got the equivalent of a 1600 (they have renormed the SAT twice since I took it and scores have gone up) and I was the only person at CHHS to be 4.0 when I graduated. And doing those two things was fucking child's play compared to the other things I did. Winning the state championship, running a reggae band, etc. Even more importantly, the other things I did were so much more important to my life. Learning to be on a team and accept a role and appreciate and celebrate my teammates, many of whom had very different profiles from me and have done different things in life, that was huge.

And perhaps the most important thing I did was something I didn't do all that well, which was basketball. I never got that good, but I did try, and doing so gave me some contact with a lot of other people with whom I would never have otherwise been in contact. And it taught me humility and a since of my own limitations. And I kept trying, and over time I got marginally better.

But back to the college admissions thing. I interview for Yale, and when I do so, my job is to get a sense of who these people are and convey it back to the rest of the admissions team. Whether they read it or weight it much, I don't know. I have interviewed a bunch of Asian kids who I'm sure look great on paper, and some of them are interesting and have a spark in their eye because they are warm and engaging souls, others of them don't. I try to reflect that in my comments. In that regard they are just like everybody else I interview. I talked to a kid this year from Cary, some generic white kid, and he was an asshole. That was gently reflected in my comments, mostly as the very faint praise that damns.

Overall, as has been well publicized, many Asian nations -- China, Korea, Singapore, etc. -- along with the Finns, have been kicking America's ass on standardized tests, especially in STEM fields. It is presented as a national crisis. And yet America has been stubbornly more productive then most other nations (though China, Israel, and Estonia are catching up) at entrepreneurship and economic dynamism. Why is that? I like to think that it is partly because our society is structured in such a way as to reward things other than GPAs and test scores. Creativity, grit, what theorists call "multiple intelligences". Once you graduate, the market really doesn't give a fuck where you went to school. If you have a good idea, if your empanada is tastier and you can produce, market, and distribute at scale and at an agreeable price point, you win.

Re the Asian kids themselves, mostly I feel sad for them. They are victims of the culture of GPA and SAT, of tennis, chess, and violin. They get hauled in to afterschool study sessions with intensive Chinese lessons like the ones that happen or used to happen at Seawell. They are deprived of enjoyable, goofy, foolhardy, American teenagerdom. I have seen it.

******

In all my years of education, some of the most enjoyable time I spent was on the basketball court at Columbia. There was some good ball, and an interesting and very meritocratic culture, as evolves in most gyms. Winners held the court, and the best players had a wide variety of backgrounds. In addition to students, there were guys who worked for the university of a wide variety of ethnicities, black, hispanics of many shades and ethnic mixes. I was decidedly lower-middle tier, which meant that most of the time I wasn't playing on court #1 at peek hour (5-7 pm).

There was this one Asian kid, maybe 5'11", not the most athletic player out there, but fast enough, fit enough, and with a tremendous handle and a smooth jumper, so he could create driving opportunities because they had to respect him outside. Long before Jeremy Lin, so he had no role models at the top level, just a kid who had driven himself to excel. That guy got picked up on court #1. But he was a loner, barely spoke to anyone.

And then there were a bunch of other Asian kids who flat out sucked, but they came out now and again. I remember one night, probably a Friday, there were a bunch of them out there I got involved in a game of 3 on 3 with them. They were horrible. They were throwing up ridiculous hook shots and crazy shit that would hit the backboard if they were lucky. And then they would fall on the ground laughing. I'm not sure I've ever had more fun on the basketball court.

I do hope the Asian ultraachievers of today have this much fun, More importantly, I hope their parents allow and encourage them to hang out with lots of other kids and do all sorts of things that are silly and often counterproductive. The great virtue of doing those things when you are young is that -- under the best of circumstances -- you can go home and talk to your parents about what you did and learn lessons in a safeish environment. There were definitely times when it seemed like that wasn't happening with some of Natalie's Asian friends.

On the road again, narrow wheels edition

Yesterday morning I had to drop Graham off for robotics competition, and I saw a guy I know from out in RTP whose kid is on the team. I stopped and talked to him, and he told me he was riding 65 miles that day, ramping up to a 100-mile charity ride. His wife, he told me, wouldn't let him get a motorcycle.

Later in the afternoon, after hustling with Mary down to Buies Creek to catch the tail end of the robotics (we were a little late), I decided to go out riding myself. It was either that or go running, and I was sore from a longish run on Saturday. Plus I have been nagged a little in the back of my mind by the thought of my bicycle rusting and languishing in the basement. When I bought the bike back in 2007 or so it was, after all, the most expensive thing I had ever bought for myself -- as opposed to a house or a car. It has since been passed in that category by the little laptop I am typing on, but not by much.

In any case, I went out for a bike ride, with the intention of just "reminding the biking muscles that they exist." In the end I went all the way out to Calvander and then looped back home through downtown Carrboro and Chapel Hill, just because I like to. By the end I had done more than remind the muscles they were there. I was sore and a little bit concerned that I might get some cramping.

But I didn't. I made it home and rehydrated and ate a bunch of food. It was all good. I do think that the sitting meditation and the mindfulness re stretching it is encouraging is helping me all around.

And my bike did fine. No blowouts, brakes were good. I gotta keep mixing the biking in to my exercise portfolio.

Argument, and procrastination

Mary and I just got in an argument. I am tempted to add details, but that would contravene my policy of not writing about marital strife.

Then, while paying bills, I chanced to look at Natalie's bank account, which had risen since I last looked at it. I must confess to feeling considerable pride looking at her list of transactions and the frugality that they imply. Mostly because I know it's about her being super busy doing cool things, as opposed to squandering money on beer, cheeseburgers and the like, as I did in my day. And I know that she is actually having fun, or at least faking it pretty good.

Then I paid bills, including for a couple of Aflac policies my mom started for me years ago of questionable value. I refreshed my memory of what one of them is for.

It is, in short, remarkable the range of things one can poke one's nose into while trying to procrastinate from doing taxes.

Alpha, mastery, and purpose

In recent weeks I've had a number of conversations with individuals who invest their own portfolios in individual stocks. A couple of them have done well, one of them exceptionally so.

One thing they have in common is that they each of them is somewhat underenthused about and underengaged in their primary breadwinning activity, in one case academia, in the other case law. But they each got really excited in talking about their stocks, or their practice of investing in them (in one case, we didn't talk specific stocks, just the fact that the person bought and sold them).

Then there's also the case of someone local, a woman, artist, somewhat quirky, was living at home with her parents last I heard, who wanted to get together and talk markets. She has been day trading S&P index futures, I think. I suggested we get together for coffee around 3, and she was like "no no no, that's the trading day." She said she couldn't possibly get together before 5, because she had "aftermarket activities" to engage in. She had also reached out to me sometime to see if I knew where she could rent an apartment around our neighborhood. By that time I'm trying to shut down and exercise and/or get home to my family.

Which leads me to wonder: is active engagement in the market -- trying to beat it -- often really reflective of a feeling of lack of engagement and/or success in one's primary professional activity?

And, now that I say that, I must ask it of myself. To what extent have I followed that path?

In any case, for the moment I need to get back to the business of taking care of my people.

Dinner date

We had dinner with some neighbors yesterday evening, who have a boy who is Graham's age and who shares some of his enthusiasms and quirks. The two of them were very animated at dinner, to the point of loudly monopolizing the dinner table conversation, such that Graham wasn't hardly even eating. I tried to lightly steer the conversation by, for example, looping in the boy's less quirky younger sister, to open things up.

Afterwards, our neighbor suggested we all go in the back yard to watch the sunset, apparently something they do regularly. When we were out there I was, I fear, slightly too negative about some of the things the boy was doing (pursuing ultra-accelerated math, thinking about entrepreneurialism as a path [my gut was he didn't have the people-skill inclination that would make him good at going out and pitching endlessly]). I wasn't overbearing, but the mom did pick up on it a little.

I hope not too much. I think I was ultimately coming from a place of fear about Graham's own social ticks and how they might mess him up and, of course, my own experience -- mom not letting them skip one grade and doing lots of things (getting braces on my teeth early, buying me Izod shirts, etc) to help me assimilate towards the middle socially, which ultimately has given me a bigger pack of people with whom I can associate and more social practice, in a sense, so maybe somewhat less bad social skills, in aggregate.

But last night I was not at my best. My own insecurities got tapped, and I acted out a little. But the kid is truly an excellent kid and we want Graham and him to hang out as much as humanly possible.

There's clearly only one thing to do: write an effusive thank you note and promise to have them over soon.