notes app; where sky meets water
on the central coast, lifestyle trajectories, and uh... basketball?
Ni hao.
Sav here.
It’s been a long, tiresome week.
(This is very much sarcasm. Australia has had several public holidays in quick session and there’s nothing to complain about unless you’ve got a dire deadline that’s reliant on a colleague currently drinking a cocktail in Bali.)
((Random fun fact: Easter tends to be a period where travel/tourism companies see a minor spike in bookings, mainly driven by people rottmaxxing on their couches or sitting in their offices regretting that they did not take extra leave. I think that’s a hilarious phenomenon.))
I don’t have much to write about this time around, but I’ve got a couple of pictures, so here be it:
Where sky meets water 🟦
Last week, I found myself at New South Wales’s very own Central Coast for a long weekend getaway — a moment’s reprieve from gentrified high-rises and stock market movements, the mechanical whir that comes with electrical units and train stations, the soullessness of commuting with well-dressed strangers in a large metal tubes.
It had me thinking, again and again, on whether it’s really worth spending literally $1 million for a two-bedroom shoebox in the city when you could get a wide, sprawling space only ten minutes to the beach and mountains. It would be a dramatic lifestyle change — I had lived in the big cities and apartments all my life — and I don’t know if my twenty-four-year-old heart is built for it.
(Though perhaps it’s exactly what my thirty-five-year-old heart needs.)
There were a few points of interest, but my favourite took place on our very first day at the Long Jetty Wharf; a gorgeous wooden stretch that spanned into the massive Tuggerah Lake. We marched along the water, as sunset turned to nightfall, across a natural mirror of nature where blue meets blue, sky meets water, like one universe clipping into another.
I may do a more complete out of office style post like how I’ve covered the Blue Mountains and Argentina and Uruguay, but until then, a picture is a thousand words:
My own spin 💫
Every two months, I endeavour to do a check-in on how my writing journey here had went. The first took place here, where I recapped satisfaction towards January and February with the intention for more delusionally positive content into March and April.
I’ve decided that instead of a full post (which honestly acts as filler), it’s better to attest to them lightly here and let my work speak for itself.
There is a clear trend of what posts do better than others and fortunately, they’re often the ones that are more engaging to write, albeit a lot more time-consuming.
To put it loosely, I’m going to continue focusing on those topics, exploring the rather generic themes of lifestyle, career and mindset via my own original spin, and in a way that is more value-added and actionable to your typical reader.
To engage, entertain, educate and empower — I hope!
Top 1% Salary 📈
My partner and I like to have an easily accessible K-drama on location and right now, it’s The Divorce Insurance on Prime Video, a workplace rom-com where six insurance experts with shaky relationship histories try to make divorce insurance a thing.
Early on, there is a scene where the main characters are stuck in an elevator and the protagonist (an actuary) is prodded by the fact that despite having a top 1% salary, he was still so broke due to being divorced thrice.
It’s a throwaway line said in jest, but in a flash, it had gotten me reconsidering whether I made the right decision a month ago where I had transitioned out of an actuarial role.
Actuarial is meant to be:
A highly regarded field with roles to be found across any industry, though mainly financial services.
A perfect balance of qualitative and quantitative decision-making that combines the best of technology and finance.
A well-paying field that, selfishly speaking, is considered ‘higher’ than the more standard commerce/business degrees.
I held it for eight months before the disillusionment settled in. All I did was work through data plumbing, draw pretty charts, and told people what the data said (without suggesting solutions). I didn’t feel like what I had on my screen contributed anything to revenue or profitability. And while my actions did have some impact, I couldn’t see nor feel it.
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but that little line in the elevator made me think about whether transitioning out of actuarial had shot me in the foot for the long run. Those three bullet points appeal greatly to me and is very representative of the role I’d like to play; the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-all, Red Mage equivalent of the financial services world. A sizable number of people I know had given me a hard time for this decision and at the back of my head, I wonder if I had unknowingly given up a fast-track pipeline to the top 1% salary that Lee Dong-wook’s character is apparently paid (which is funny because Lee Dong-wook himself probably makes more than his character).
I choose not to think much about it. After all, a decision is not good/bad on its own but becomes good/bad based on how much effort you put into it. Bit by bit, it seems I’m carving out a personal niche as a pricing & distribution specialist in the insurance space, a decidedly unique combination that will serve me well.
Lakers vs Timberwolves 🏀
In my post about watching the absolute reckoning of Australia vs Indonesia at the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers, I mentioned that I really enjoyed the camaraderie of supporting your favourite team and that I’d be interested in watching an NBA game.
Alas, I went off to a friend’s place to watch the third Lakers vs Timberwolves game of this playoff season while catching up on the long-running lore of basketball. It was a good game for me because I was happy to be there. It was a terrible game for my friend who came with a Lakers t-shirt.
Here are some mental notes I had taken about the basketball which may or may not be accurate:
LeBron is the GOAT over Jordan due to his supreme consistency, all-roundness and legacy that is still developing to this day. It may be a piece of contention now, but a few years after LeBron’s retirement, it would be indisputable.
The current in-play metagame of basketball lives and dies by the three-pointer line, because the number three is 50% bigger than the number two.
As a result, a ton of teams have a general strategy of having 2-3 players populate the three-pointer line, 1 really tall guy standing beneath the hoop, and 1 relatively short player to do any maneuvering necessary.
The current out-of-play metagame of basketball, which has existed pretty much forever, is via buying and selling players like a tower defence game.
There was a salary cap introduced recently to prevent overcentralisation — and there is a grand history of most questionable purchasing decisions like hiring a podcaster to be coach of the Los Angeles Lakers (which turned out to be pretty decent) or selling a top 5 player of current time for no particular reason (abysmal play).
There are one-pointer shots. They occur when someone fouls you. You get to shoot the ball twice for one point each.
Lakers are the most popular team in the NBA, but saying they’re your favourite team is akin to saying your favourite character is Naruto, Harry Potter or Hello Kitty.
Celtics are the antagonist of the NBA with the stereotype being that all their fans are racist white guys in their 60s.
There’s a guy named Jokic who plays for the Denver Diggers who is, on paper, the strongest player in present day. His primary weakness is that he literally does not enjoy playing basketball.
Over the last year of spectating NBA, my friend has never made a winning bet and everyone he had chosen to subsequently win either did not perform well or got injured. While past performance is not indicative of future results, I think I’ll have a pretty good track record of betting against him.
I said that if Timberwolves won, I would identify as a Timberwolves fan. I guess I’m a Timberwolves fan now 🐺🐺🐺
What I’ve been reading recently:
When ‘healing your inner child’ sabotages your outer adult by
🧸People care more about you than you think. by
🫂- 💔
a guide to unconventional careers by
♠️- 🧥
Thank you for the mention <3! The Divorce Insurance sounds so fun I might have to watch it hehe