Fully vaccinated edition
I had my second Moderna vaccine on July 10th. Day one was fine, although I started feeling a bit sluggish in the evening. Day two I had a fever, headache, muscle/joint aches, and felt very tired all day. Day three I was fine.
Also managed to get an appointment for my wife next month! Sendai City has halted all new bookings through clinics, but they are still operating their big center with limited availability. Basically you need to log on at 9am on a Saturday and try to book a slot. It generally takes around 5 minutes for all slots to be booked and then you have to wait until the following Saturday.
Had two computers and a smarphone this time, and of course the smartphone got through first (you need to type in name, address, etc and it would have been much easier on a computer, but such is life. At least we got the booking.
If you are having trouble getting an appointment, it may be worth digging a little deeper. I’d initially given up as the main Sendai website says they are not taking bookings, but there is a separate one to get to this other booking site. Good luck!
Money Stuff newsletter
This Bloomberg email newsletter written by Matt Levine is a little slice of joy several days a week. It writes about really involved investing issues in an extremely readable and often laugh out loud funny way. Very much recommended.
Forum
Forum is looking good this week. Great detailed thread about Rakuten points, if you are into that kind of thing 😉
This week’s books
This week I mainly read Richer, Wiser, Happier, by William Green. It is a collection of stories and inverviews with famous investors, many of whom I had heard of and some of whom I hadn’t, but it’s extremely well-written, intrinsically interesting, and pretty inspiring. 5/5 from me and I’ll be rereading it soon I think.
This week’s links
- How to write well (Twitter thread): Good copywriting is a superpower
- RetireJapan post from the past: The Four Ls of Retirement
- Some thoughts on Roadrunner (Bourdain film)
- Enhance endurance and promote recovery? I would like some of these pills: U.S. Special Operations Command to Test Anti-Aging Pill
- The reason we have cherry blossoms along rivers? (Twitter thread)
- Not sure the treaties apply to this domestic case: French father on hunger strike awaits Macron in Tokyo
- Getting very close to all three of these: The highest forms of wealth
- Chinese real estate/economy: Ever Grande
- These everyday Olympic event pictures are pretty great 🙂
What do you think? Anything good in there? #1 and #9 for me this time.
There is a question in the Forums about retirement allowences, but I can’t post there at the moment.
I retired from a private university in 2018 after 34 years. The university is in a low cost area and salary, after barely going over ¥10,000,000 including bonuses, drifted down to ¥6, 500,00 in the last 10 years because of cuts and other new incentive systems. I received around ¥32,000,000 after tax on retirement. No idea if that is above or below average when divided by 34.
Hope this is useful for someone.
32m is pretty decent, although it will probably have been based on your base salary, which sounds like it was pretty good!
My uni changed the table (for the worse) twice while I have been there, so I’m guessing these schemes are going to continue getting less generous over time.
#3 and #9 (Thumbs up emoji) I cried a little just reading that review of Roadrunner.
My first time seeing this artist – thanks Ben. His sketches are the best, and most real, thing about these Olympics (I’m boycotting)
#7 — Rings true, resonates (or harmonizes), kindred soul, or something like that.
As well as Matt Levine there’s also John Authers at Bloomberg, and Robert Armstrong at the FT. All interesting stuff, though not as funny as Matt.