Day S2: A Wealth of Local Knowledge

July 13, 2024

This was the day when I would meet my local friend in San Jose. For the purposes of confidentiality I can't really say his name or what he does for a living, but he has an absolute ton of knowledge. He is very well versed in the criminal justice system, or as my uncle told me back in Vancouver, the injustice system.

In many ways, this trip is turning out to be a living breathing class in social studies. One of the greatest benefits of travel is to be able to go places and learn stuff about social and political issues. Although not even close to the subject I teach, it is a lot more interesting and it really helps to get a deeper and more expanded understanding of the world.

On my initial walk I poked my head in here, they were doing hardcore resistance training classes.

While waiting for my friend at a coffee shop we agreed to ahead of time, I bumped into a Vietnamese guy and we started talking about the homeless issue. Little did I know there was a large influx of Vietnamese immigrants after the war in 1976 who wanted to escape the communist government. They ended up having kids, and well a whole generation grew up in San Jose. It probably wasn't a good idea to tell him that my brother escaped the boredom in North America and went to communist Vietnam where he married a local in Hanoi. But I balanced this with the fact that my nephews are half Vietnamese. He seemed quite interested in that.

Anyways, I pointed out how during this trip I had seen a rampant number of homeless in Vancouver and he said, "It's even worse over here bro. I'm sure you saw it too." In fact I did. Not only were they homeless, they had serious mental health issues. Just this morning, one guy was sitting at the bus stop with no shirt on and yelling at the air. He had been at this for quite some time and was probably on drugs. During my walk I then saw about a dozen others doing the same. The Vietnamese guy said, "The police will round them up before some major political event like the G7 summit or whatever, but after that it's back to the way before."

He went on to say, "The politicians here are criminals. They only care about money and power. They don't care about the people like us, and do nothing to solve these social problems. It doesn't matter whether they are Democrat or Republican, it's the same shit, although I would prefer Biden to win over Trump. That Trump is evil."

I generally agreed with him. If asked to pick sides I would say Biden, but little did we know that Trump would face an assassination attempt at his rally that very night. No matter anyone's political views, such an attempt is to be condemned as heinous and scary.

But at the time it was just another Saturday morning. My friend arrived in his car and took me all over the city, generally showing me the places he worked and all of his old haunts growing up. It wasn't your typical city tour, but when does that ever happen on my trips anyway? The stuff he said along the way was of much interest, namely the myriad of laws and legal complexities that residents of California face on a daily basis. The gist of the conversation was that there are all kinds of grey areas and loopholes that the police may or may not get involved in. For example, he explained that gangs of minors will storm a BART train in order to rob everyone on board. If there is no violent crime and people hand over their money, there isn't much the police can do. He also said the penalties for shoplifting are light if it is under a certain amount. So then the criminals will literally take out a calculator and figure out how much they can steal.

It was all sounding eerily similar to Vancouver. The difference though is if you actually do make it to prison. A California prison would be anyone's worst nightmare. From what he said, it's a hell of a lot worse and they tend to segregate people in races. At the same time the prison population is too much and they are trying to reduce it so go figure.

On the way we happened to pass by ELV Motors which is where a Montague replacement would potentially be located. It was!

It wouldn't be Silicon Valley without Nvidia. Any trader would have some sort of position in this, myself included.

This was interesting. The same company exists in Shanghai, but due to space constraints it is all virtual golf. I was shocked to see here in the USA this was the real deal.

This was just some of what we discussed. It was all very interesting and I told him, "I really appreciate this local perspective, this is what makes travel so cool, you can learn all this stuff."

I also tried to explain, "If you want to see some seriously strict drug laws and shoplifting penalities, take a look at what China does. It is the other extreme that is for sure."

The biggest takeaway I got from the conversation is the complexity of legal issues and the nuances of what people can and cannot get away with is mind boggling. It seems I have never encountered a society with as much law as this one. Perhaps the only people who can actually get ahead and benefit from all this are the lawyers. The question then has to be asked: is there really freedom when you are navigating all these legal minefields and constantly worried about what you can and cannot say or do to which person that might potentially land you in trouble? For example, if you make a comment to a woman that *might* be perceived as harrassment, you could be fired at a moment's notice and not even know or be told why.

Sorry to say it, but if you're a successful white male you're a criminal around here especially in these so-called liberal states. I even tried to tell him, "Feminism is generally a good thing, heck I even dumped $6000 in a stock for a female-led company promoting reproductive rights and solutions, based in a conservative state no less. The problem is how all this woke shit has gotten out of hand in these liberal states and gone towards emasculating us men. Now the women have all the power."

He said, "Yep, well part of the problem is simply demographics. This is why we call this place Man Jose. There are just too many men and not enough women to go around, it is generally a pretty miserable place to be if you're a male."

This was all a massive eye-opener. For someone like myself who loves freedom and wants to succeed in the sense of finding my hopes and dreams, living an enjoyable and fulfilling life while ammassing a fortune and making a positive impact on others, I was coming to a sobering coclusion: western countries aren't the place to pursue all this. Most certainly not in liberal states. Could it be that the American Dream is to be found outside America? The answer was definitely pointing in that direction.

Then my mind went back to another conversation with my friend in Vancouver we had on a bike ride a few days ago. He said, "The government here takes everything you make if you're successful. What you might consider among many options is working part-time substitute teaching during the summer months, basically 4-5 months, just enough so you don't have to pay taxes. Then split the rest of the time between Pattaya and somewhere else"

I said, "Bro, you must have read my mind because this was exactly my retirement plan."

He said, "Why wait until retirement? You can do this now even. If you come to Vancouver for the summer months, just stay in a cheap Airbnb like you're doing now, ride bikes to get around, do this subbing. It's so easy man, it's such easy fucking work."

I then began to realize this might be an option. Especially once my stock trading gets better, I could just do the subbing in Vancouver during summer months then live on the trading income in Pattaya and/or other places the rest of the year. It got the wheels turning.There

Based on where he dropped me off after the ride, I found this little hidden gem of a spot with restaurants and coffee shops

There's a chair on the road, what to do?

There was a lot of walking home, combined with transit, but rather unfamiliar with the bus system I wasn't sure how to transfer so just took one bus. It didn't matter. I suppose I could have asked my friend to drop me off at the Airbnb but it was of greater interest to see the store with the folding bike. Plus I didn't want to treat him like an Uber driver so it was best decided that he would be the one steering the direction of this drive. In the end it all worked out.

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