The Monday Read

Tsunami Warning Edition

Well, that was exciting. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning we got the tsunami alerts on our phones, and the sirens outside started up. The 3-11 tsunami actually reached our manshon building, but it was only a few centimeters high at that point (we are several kilometers from the coast).

Fortunately there doesn’t seem to be much damage in Japan, and we have decent windows (the sirens were on until they lifted the tsunami warning 12+ hours later).

But a reminder that things happen, and they might happen to you. Best to be prepared.

Moving currencies around for fun and profit

Recently a number of people have been telling me about how they make money by switching currencies every so often. I had a feeling that incurs taxes, but wasn’t sure how it would work. So I asked on Reddit.

It is taxable, and sounds like a pain. Don’t think I will bother.

Benign vices

I have become midly addicted to Wordle (a daily little word game) and the reality TV show Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares (you can find full episodes on YouTube). The latter is much more time-consuming!

I think I like it because it does a great job of showing how businesses needs structure, systems, and leadership, and sometimes an outsider to come in and point this out.

Or maybe I just enjoy GR shouting at people.

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (18,657 posts to date). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

No new books this week. I have pretty much finished  The Tao of Bill Murray and The Call of the Weird and have a bunch of new books ready to go.

Of the new ones, I am probably most looking forward to Finding Ultra, by Rich Roll. For some reason I really enjoy books about runners and ultramarathon athletes, even though I don’t do that kind of thing myself. Haruki Murakami’s running book, Born to Run, Can’t Hurt Me, and Ultramarathon Man brought me a lot of joy.

Maybe one of these days I will walk out of the house, just start running, and never look back.

Maybe.

This week’s links

1. I’ve seen (and maybe even posted) this video before, but it is really interesting and provides a lot of food for thought regarding safety of your home/business: I’ll Let Myself In: Tactics of Physical Pen Testers
2. Great stuff from Ramit: How to live a rich life
3. This is always eye-opening (REITs?): Updating My Favorite Performance Chart For 2021
4. I am probably not properly diversified, so this kind of thing makes me (rightly?) nervous: Diversification the Ray Dalio Way
5. I can see this in Sendai these days: How to Fight the Retail Apocalypse
6. RetireJapan blog from the past: What’s your job worth?
7. A brief economics lesson from MMM: Inflation -should we be worried?
8. Are you diversified? Any ex-US global funds out there? Soaring stocks and coffee shops
9. Oooh, colour video cassettes: History Of Sony – Retro corporate film
10. Well, when you put it like that Vitaliy: I kid you not crazy

What do you think? Anything good in there?

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