Jake got back home today with a news bomb. He will be fired next Friday. He knows this today because his boss is a good family friend so that he share the news with him ahead of time. This must be very tough for him. I can feel the pain because I was looking for job so hard for the past two years when I was in business school. It seems that the only thing to do during a MBA is job hunting.

I hope I can help Jake in finding a job. He is a smart guy. Hopefully everything will be fine.

I have been taking bus to work in the past week. It is a good way to relax comparing driving to work. At the same time, just to save some gas money and protect the environment. I can also save some time and read on the bus ride. There is no reason that I should not take a bus, except that it made me sick.

It is actually my fault. It was raining pretty heavy recently (come on, it is Seattle, should not be surprised…). I did not have a unbrella. Catching cold is a for sure thing.

My stocks are not doing well in the past week. Actually, it is the worst since I start investing months ago. But I think this is a great chance to reflect what I did right and what I did wrong. There are lots of things that I can improve and I just need to figure those out. I should spend a great amount of time this week to study that and do some reflection.

Stay tuned.

I bought this book from Amazon.com before Thanksgiving break. Thinking that I had traveled to Bay Area for lots of time, I planned to use “Open” to fill the emptiness in case I need something for fun.

It turned out that my whole trip is around “Open” and Andre Agassi and I simply can not live without it. In the first day, except riding bike again acrs Golden Gate birdge, I spent all the time reading. In my second day, I put it into extreme – the only thing I did was traveling from cafe to cafe to read “Open” only because I needed a break from time to time for my eye. The rest of my time with friends was also surrounded by the topic of Agassi’s life.

I read this book as reading Bible, putting lots of notes and highlights. Here are some  great things from the book.

My father says that if I t 2,500 balls each day, I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls. He believes in math. Numbers, he says, don’t lie. A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.

Thinkin, my father believes, is the source of all bad things, because thinking is the opposite of doing. When my father catches me thinking, daydreaming, on the tennis court, he reacts as if he caught me taking money from his wallet.

The backyard, however, was inches too short. Doesn’t fit! Let’s go!

I loved the concept of hard work leading to sweet rewards – except when hard work meant hitting tennis balls.

Tarango must have a father like mine, because he’s playing the same way.

I no longer need my father to torture me. From this day on, I can do it all by myself.

When you know that you just took the other guy’s best punch, and you’re still standing, and the other guy knows it, you will rip the heart right out of him.

The whole place looks a lot better from a distance. What doesn’t?

How lovely it is to dream while you are awake. Dream while you’re awake, Andre. Anybody can dream while they’re asleeep, but you need to dream all the time, and say your dreams out loud, and believe in them.

I can’t promise you that you won’t be tired, he says. But please know this. There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.

“I can’t believe how many matches Andre lost!!!” – Nick He

I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winnin changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feeel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.

Above all, I told her that it would be dangerous to surrender to fear. Fears are like gateway drugs, I said. You give in to a small one, and soon you’re giving in to bigger ones.

He says, You have to suffer. You have to lose a shitload of close matches. And then one day you’re going to win a close one and the skies are going to part and you’re going to break through. You just need that one breakthrough, that one opening, and after that nothing will stop you from being the best in the world.

We have long rallies off my serve, until he realizes I’m committed, I’m willing to hit with him all day. I catch sight of him grabbing his side, winded. I start picturing how the trophy will look in the bachelor pad back in Vegas.

I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can’t help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself. My father is what he is, and always will be, and though he can’t help himself, though he can’t tell the difference between loving me and loving tennis, it’s love all the same. Few of us are granted the grace to know ourselves, and until we do, maybe the best we can do is be consistent. My father is nothing if not consistent.

If I’m going to have a family, if I’m going to be happy, I’ve got to break this cycel, which means pushing myself past the two-year mark, forcing myself to commit.

This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others.

Above all, he’s going to keep me on a strict schedule. Eat, execrise, lift, hit, at precise times of day.

He’s reenergized, rededicated, and I love him for it. He’s excited for this challenger, coaching me as if we’re at Wimbledon. He doesn’t doubt that this is step one on the road all the way back to number one.

Unless I can accpet that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’ll never belong there again.

I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

We feel the landscape speaking to us: All these animals, beginning their day in dangerous world, exude tremendous calm and acceptance – why can’t you?

New Year’s Eve, the last hours of this dreadful year, 1997. Brooke and I throw another New Year’s party, and the next morning I wake early. I pull the covers over my head, then remember that I scheduled a practice with a kid on the tour, Vince Spadea. I decide to cancel. No. I yell at myself. You cannot cancel. You’re not that person anymore. You’re not going to start 1998 by oversleeping and canceling a practice.

If we’re going to lose today, fine, I can live with it, but let’s lose on our terms. The last thirteen days, I’ve seen you lay it on the line. I’ve seen you rip it, under pressure, maim guys. So please stop feeling sorry for yourself, and stop tlling me he’s too good, and for the love of God stop trying to be perfect! Just see the ball, hit the ball.

Afterward, reporters ask if my concentration was broken by the arrival of President Bill Clinton. Of all the reasons I’ve ever heard, and offered, for losing a match, even I couldn’t come up with one that lame.

If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that time and practice equal achievement.

I’m hobbling through the lobby of the Four Seasons the next morning when a man steps out of the shadows. He grabs my arm.
Quit, he says.
What?
It’s my father – or a ghost of my father. He looks ashen. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in weeks.
Pops? What are you talking about?
Just quit. Go home. You did it. It’s over.
He says he prays for me to retire. He says he can’t wait for me to be done, so he won’t have to watch me suffer anymore. He won’t have to sit through my matches with his heart in his mouth. He won’t have to stay up until two in the morning to catch a match from the other side of the world, so he can scout some new wonderboy I might soon have to face. He’s sick of whole miserable thing. He sounds as if – is it possible?

The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. Over the last twenty-one years I have found loyalty: You have pulled for me on the court, and also in life. I have found inspiration: You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I have found generosity: You have given me your shoulders to stand on, to reach for my dreams -  dreams I could have never reached without you. Over the last twenty-one years I have found you, and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life.

This morning, sitting in the Cafe of building 36 in Microsoft Redmond campus, I browsed through my old website and digged out the “100 things to do” list. As I went through, I was amazed to see some “coincidents”! For some time, I don’t know why I bought a house (I am a floating person and for sure don’t want to settle down now), bought a BMW (I prefer crappy car, and I don’t care about status of the car), and got a dog (I am afriad of responsibility & commitment and having a dog is way beyond my comfort zone). Now I got it… it is in my life. I am unconsciously following the journey that I defined. I just did not realized that.

This is a funny concept. Keep a list of what you want to do in your life, put that away, refer back to it from time to time. You will be amazed to see how the two lines come across.

Last but not least, here is my list: http://nickhe.wordpress.com/100-things-before-i-am-30/

Have fun! Happy early Thanksgiving!

If I were drunk by one thing, that ONLY ONE must be the rain in Seattle. I seriously don’t remember what’s the last time I saw sunshine… wait, wait, wait… got it. TWO DAYS AGO. This is not the main point! Rain dominates the area in the past few weeks. And the sad thing is that I am all right with it. I still remember sunshine in North Carolina, but I am a push over… man, it is so released to admit that. Yep, you are right, I am such a push over, even by weather.

There are some changes of my job – I am taking some risks and to cover one more product in my basket. So what I plan to do is from Dec 09 to Mar 10, I will focus on that product and help the GPM (Group Program Manager) and GM (General Manager) to understand the market and customer situation of the product. Then, I will be back to Excel! Excel baby!

I just finished second to last chapter of Part I of “Japanese Candle Stick Techniques”. It is such a great book. I might read more tomorrow and take some notes down. Today, I also bought a new book “Open“. It is the autobiography by Andre Agassi. According to Amazon, it is an amazing book. I hope to read more during my trip to San Francisco and San Diego. Will let you guys know how the book is.

Peace out. Good night.

Apparently, I am wrong! This is THE BEST SHOW ever. I not only became addictive to the show, but I asked everybody around to watch - Young, Alan, and everybody I know…

I just finished Season 2 last night. The ending, wow, within my expectation because by the end of the day THIS IS A HOLLYWOOD SHOW. But the deep side of life the show reveals, the nuance destiny, the dramatic plot, the reality of life, the bond of a family… and the dark side of everybody’s life… is far beyond my imagination. In the last two episodes of Season 2, I could feel the hopelessness of Dexter and willing to just end everything and give it up. But after his talk with Deb (his sister), he found new reason for living – not for his dead father anymore, but for his sister who truly believes in him.

Well, I told Jake that I would never watch Season 3, guess I am wrong, because I plan to start pretty soon. If you have not tried the show before, give it a shot. Just remember my warning – you will be addictive!

So, my Thanksgiving plan is done. I am going south! Flying to San Francisco on Wednesday and travel to San Diego on Friday. Coming back on Sunday. What’s my expectation for the trip – relax, have fun, get out of my busy life in Seattle, meet old friends, know new friends, and, and, and, most importantly, enjoy sunshine!

Count down just began – three days to go. There are something that I need to do before I go:
1. Finish part I of “Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques”
2. Make sure either Jake or Justin will take care JD when I am away
3. Arrange everything ready for Dec offsite, at least have a great plan
4. Pack up my luggage

Today is a good day.

Tried to study more, I finally woke up at 6:30am this morning! Proud of myself. But what happened next is way beyound my imagination. I broke a contact lens when I was putting that into my right eye. The lens is broken into two pieces. I took one piece out of my eye, but the other one rolled to the back of my eye. Shit! It hurted!

Well, you can imagine how I spent my next 90 minutes – grabbing my eye ball, wash eyes, eye drops, grabbing again, “shit!”, grabbing again, it hurted, “mother fucker”, “shit!!!!!”, took a shower and tried to use more water to clean that out, failed, failed again, grabbing again, again, again…. I gave up…. went back to bed, thinking of canceling all the meetings today at work and go to emergency room… napping for 10 minutes, woke up, “I SAW THE OTHER PIECE!!!!”, grabbing again, again, and again, but failed… napping for another 10 minutes (Now is 7:55am!!!), woke up, tried one more time…

I GOT THE MOTHER FUCKING PIECE OUT!!!

Words can not describe how happy I was. I was willing to clean lots of JD’s poop, I was willing to eat a fried worm, I was willing to… anyway, I was happy.

Because of my endless trying, I am able to sitting in Microsfot building 36 cafe, drinking coffee, staring at the rain outsite, planning my meetings today, reading some books, and putting my experience on my blog.

Thank God it is a good day.

I reflected a little bit of what’s going on and what I can improve. Some cases study here.

CRM – Salesforce.com is such a hot topic these days. The company actually started to be popular when I was still working for SAP. Salesforce.com provides hosted CRM solutions that give low TCO to companies, which are all CIO’s dream. Last week, I read that they will release 3rd quarter earning report on 11/17/2009. I checked the fundamental of the company. It looks pretty good. Then, influenced by the recent earning impact of Apple, Microsoft, and Ctrip. I invested $3000 in CRM.

CRM did not do a good job the first two days, but after that, stock price just keep jumping up. I was so happy. Well, the excitement was shattered by the 7% decrease after the earning report. It is unbelievable! The earning beated the expectation!!! So what happened?

Apparently, there are tons of “foolish” investors thinking about the same thing like me. That’s why the stock price keeped jumping before the earning report. The earning report DID beat the market expectation, but not by far. Which means that the pre-built price fundation could not support such a high price given the not-fantastic earning. That’s why price retreated, and I lost money. So in short, the early price movement already fact in all the earning expectation.

Besides, if I look at the earning day candle chart. Apparently, there will be a huge dip. I should learn more about candle chart techniques. My book just arrived yesterday. Should do some reading today.

Well, well, Thanksgiving is coming!!!! But I don’t have a plan. This is the first time in two years that I don’t have a plan for holidays. I am such a group living animal that all my holidays are with friends. Maybe this time is a great chance for me to get quiet and clean my nosiy head. I should travel to somewhere though! Any thoughts?

Yesterday evening, I went to my first guitar lesson. I hope that I knew that it is half an hour, because I was 10 minutes late, random talked for 10 minutes, tuned my guitar for 5 minutes, and the last 5 minutes are really learning time… somehow I remembered it is 1 hour. And too bad that I told Karen it is one hour, which made her to switch to the same school as mine… When I met her today, hopefully she won’t be mad. Go back to my guitar lesson. I told my teacher Jon that my goal is “Summer of 69“, and to be that good in one year. He said that it is totally achievable. Well, I also learned that there is Bm in the chord…. which make it a little harder. So that I may start with “Good Riddance” by Green Day. That one involves most of the basic chords, such as G, C, D, Em. Let me practice this everyday first.

So I finished the little blue book and will do something with it later this month. And the same time, my roommate Young lent me another book “Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques“. I plan to starting reading it today and try to learn something good. My whole idea is that to read lots of books now, and make sure I am open-minded. At the same time, I will practice with different techniques. So after two months, I will be knowledgeable enough to make smart decision, hopefully.

Well, need to go to work now. Let me dive deep into the sunny day.

I read an article in college. It is about each person has two parts – a mental you and a physical you. So often, the mental you will go crazy and push the physical you’s limit – working too hard to earn money, drinking to much to have fun, and anything you can think of. Mental you is like the little demon, who want to destory the physical you. And it will block lots of signal that physical you send and keep you blind. Anyway, what the article about is how you should give yourself one hour per day to listen to your physical body and review your mental part to make sure everything is fine and you are on the right track.

That’s what I am doing, or plan to do today.

I just finished reading “The Little Blue Book that Beats the Market“. It is an easy reading. You can finish it in 2-3 hours. The key point in the book is about fundamental analysis – getting a bargin (low P/E ratio) with a good company (high return on capital). The author is a famous and successful investor. He has done a study about using his magic formula to invest. He used the formula to come up with a list of top 30 companies. Based on his study, the magic formula gave him 30% return year over year in the past 17 years. The key of his book is that you don’t need to be professional investor to be successful in stock investment. I am thinking of trying what he is talking about with my future investment money. The down side is that it takes at least 3 years to see the result. But hey, why not give a try. Be open minded!

So, the game plan is that I will keep searching good investment strategy with the money I have right now in Scottrade account. All my future investment money from Nov 2009 to July 2010 will go to Blue Magic Formula invesment. Let’s see how it goes.

I arrived in Seattle on August 2nd. Moved into my rental place during the first day. I signed a six-month contract with the landlord for my room. It is a pretty small room. But hey, all my stuffs can fit my X3, no problem for a small room. With the help of Echo, I spent the next two days decorating my room. Holy cow, my room looks like a IKEA model room! So, what’s next?

So what’s next? I remembered Kevin said that during the Alaska trip that buying a house with my signing bonus from Microsoft might be a good idea. I should not just let the money sitting out there. Yep, why not?!

When I was in Seattle traveling back in May, I did some realtor shopping. Talked to 4 realtors and evaluating their skills, personailities, and experience. I knew the house investment is my biggest investment in my 27 years of life so far. And to make big decision like this, I always go with my gut feeling. Theresa it is. Let me pick her as my realtor. (Check out here for my reference letter for her after the house purchasing)

I checked some houses during the first week of my Seattle life. And then I made an offer for my current house. Admittedly, I bought this house, partially because the previous two owners of the house are all Microsoft related. The first owner is actually the first batch of Microsoft employee back in 1980s. But my decision comes more from my financial model to calculate my Return On Investment (ROI).

My main logic is that I want to break even every month on my mortgage payment, then I back calculated the price of the house that I can afford. As shown in the table above, the price I can take for the house is $338,602.

The house I decided to buy asked for $349,000. It is $10K more than my calculation, but the benefit is that there are four bedrooms instead of three, which means that I can possibily rent out three to increase my income every month.

Instead of wasting my energy in bargaining on the house price, I asked Theresa to handle that. She helped me to let the seller cover $7,500 closing cost. I on the other hand, start focusing on finding roommates, which are a crucial part in my house investment strategy.

It is like running a business! Marketing is the key – Craigslist, University of Washington post, Microsoft internal forum… I tried to come up with an innovative roommate wanted post and spread it to wherever I can imagine. It is very time consuming, people started calling me, but I can not show the house because I did not own the house yet. I wasted lots of potential roommates during that one month. This upset me a lot, because I thought it is all a waste of time. But actually not! I learned a lot in how to talk to potential tenants – be positive, be proactive in providing information, be honest, don’t over promise.

The second thing I did which is critical is pricing strategy. My initial plan is $650/month for two rooms in my model. This is the price I paid for my rental room. So that when I put up the ads, the master bedroom I asked for $700, while the other two that needs to share bathroom $600 each. This sounds like a perfect plan, but a total failure. The houseing market has been down, so is the rental. I also figured it out that sustainable cashflow is also the key to me now because I just start making money from work. So, I did some pricing analysis to get the average price on Craigslist and then I priced $50 lower than that price.

Supply and demand baby! I rented all three rooms on the second floor out the first day when I moved in. I was thrilled! This is better than I imagined. So I re-ran the mortgage calculation. Here it comes – I make $675 per month!!!

This sounds like a good plan, but there are still lots of things to consider and plan when i switch from a renter to a house owner. I am trying to make the most out of this transition every day. I also learned lots of things during the experience. I would share about finding roommates and house managment stuffs in future post.

Peace out. BTW, if you want to see my house investment model, email me at nickybucket@gmail.com.