Planning for next phase of life

 What would be the next phase of life?

• Travel: Start with hardest travel, climbing mount everest, hiking AT, cross country skiing in Alaska tundra
• Writing: memoir, family history (bright and dark)
• Working on a cause that will leave impact

Book Review: Family of Spies, a World War II story of Nazi espionage, betrayal, and the secret history behind Pearl Harbor by Christine Kuehn

 Every family has dark page(s) in its history. In Family of spies, the author accidentally stumbled on her grandparents being devoted Nazis and spy on US Pacific Navy fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor for Japanese Empire before World War II. Well told story of 30+ years of uncovering family's painful history and the impact of dark history on her father, her aunt, her uncles and their respective families.

Book Review: Porcelain Thief by Huan Hsu

 A memoir by an ABC. The author is born in San Francisco and grew up in Utah, his parents emigrated to USA from Taiwan as graduate students. One of his uncles on his mother side is Richard Chang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Rujing), a successful microchip entrepreneur who invested in mainland China's emerging chip manufacturing. And his maternal grandmother is a Ginling Woman College graduate in Republic China. One of his granduncle is Fang Zhen Zhi ( https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%96%B9%E6%AD%A3%E7%9F%A5/7818279),  a scientist who played important role in mainland China's atomic bomb research. 

His view of mainland China in early 21st century and his view on Taiwan in the same period provided a unique vantage point from a ABC perspective. His root tracking brought him to Jindezhen, Shanghai, Taipei, Jinan, Jiujiang, Lushan Nanjing, Beijing and Hong Kong, and along the journey we got a chance to see these places in the eyes of American born Chinese.

Book Review: Mexico, A 500-Year History by Paul Gillingham (to be completed)

 Only finished first chapter about 1521 Cortes conquest of Mexico City, then named Tenochtitlan from Mexica with aid from local tribes

Book Review: Kicking The Hornet's Nest, US Foreign Policy In The Middle East From Truman To Trump by Daniel E. Zoughbie

 

A comprehensive and critical review of US foreign policy on Middle East from both above (Truman to Trump presidency) and below (Arabic and Israli view). 

Book Review: Rope, How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of the Civilization by Tim Queeney

 An interesting book about history of rope with a lot of anecdotes, worth a weekend afternoon to flop through for some leisure fun.

Book Review: The fractured Age, How the Return of Geopolitics Will Sprinter the Global Economy by Neil Shearing

The book is the best I have read in deciphering splinting of the globalization after Donald Trump's 2nd term. It analyzed why, how and what will come after the ending of hyper globalization and gave logic prediction what lies ahead in 20240 for the world

Trilemma of monetary policy by John Fleming and Robert Mundell

 The country cannot have all three of the policies

• full and complete openness to global capital flows
• a fixed exchange rate; and
• independent monetary polices geared toward domestic objectives

This is the theoretical basis for Bretton Woods system