Posts Tagged ‘rain’

Well it’s been a couple of weeks since Eri and I got back from our trip to Miyakojima. And some of the photos I took inspired me to add a photo gallery to the site. I installed Zenphoto today and am starting to put in photos slowly. You can find the full photo gallery here: simplistic thoughts photo gallery. Please leave some comments and let me know what you think. I have also made a few other changes to the site, including a new contact form in the side bar.

Miyakojima is a small island about an hour south of Okinawa. You can drive across the island in less than an hour. We flew out of Tokyo airport and arrived at Miyakojima at about 10:00am on Thursday morning. We had our rental car in about 30 minutes and were headed off towards our hotel.

We set the coordinates into the GPS and after practically driving in a circle, realized that it didn’t really work that well. We decided to use the map we had grabbed at the airport and use the GPS for a location reference. After a bunch of confusion we finally arrived at our hotel. Had lunch at the restaurant across the street, and enjoyed the warm clean air (don’t get too much of that in Tokyo).

We were able to check into the hotel a little earlier than we had thought and so put our stuff in our room and went for a swim in the ocean. The water was absolutely gorgeous and there was a lot of life. We even saw Nemo (an anemone containing one large clown fish and one very small one).

After coming back from our swim we decided to do some site seeing and drove a little ways down the coast.The weather was mostly cloudy as we were expecting thunderstorms, but still very beautiful. The entire island was a mixture of green and blue. Later in the evening we went for dinner, and then a massage. On the way back, the thunderstorm hit and the rain fell. There was so much rain that the rain pipe was literally shooting out pressurized water. We had some difficulty sleeping that night due to the thunder that lasted well into the early morning.

For the last night (or so we thought) we were comped a stay at a new hotel that had just opened. It was very nice, with a separate bedroom, private sauna, day beds, and dinning room. I found out later the normal cost is $350 per person per night. From there we continued our travels around the island and then received a phone call from the travel agency telling us we would need to leave earlier (after we had paid extra to leave later) due to a strike of the airline. They wanted us to catch an earlier flight to Okinawa and then hope on of the completely booked flights would open up to Tokyo. If not we would have to pay hotel.

I was having too much fun to be bothered by bad news and after a few phone calls. We had arranged to leave the day after on a guaranteed flight, had our additional night at the hotel paid for, and our seats from Okinawa to Tokyo upgraded to business class. Cost to us, 0$. Great job Eri!

We spent our last day walking around the beach and through the city enjoying the various shops. My personal favorite was the snow salt ice cream. I had already consumed 2 ice creams that day, but couldn’t pass it up, and I was glad that I didn’t. It was great.

Could the ability to restrain yourself from eating one marshmallow make a difference between struggling through life and the ability to retire wealthy and early? Yes it can, according to a study done in the the 1960′s by Stanford University psychology researcher, Michael Mischel. The study tested 4-year old children’s ability to delay gratification. The researcher then placed a marshmallow in front of the child and gave him/her two options. The child could eat the marshmallow, or he/she could wait until the doctor came back from an errand and the child would receive two marshmallows. Only 1/3 of the children were able to wait until the researcher returned. I read the story in the book Influencer: The power to Change Anything (a book I would highly recommend by the way), but you can also find more details on the story here.

I know, it doesn’t really seem like a big deal right. Well, they followed these kids into their adulthood and it turned out that the children who were able to delay gratification and wait for the second marshmallow were more successful, had high paying jobs, and tended to be more happy people than the ones who choose to eat the marshmallow. Think about it. The ability to delay gratification means you can save and invest when others are spending money on various things they don’t really need, you can control what you eat, make yourself exercise, push yourself through school when others are partying. This one small behavior has the ability to completely change your life. I know, it is much harder than I make it sound. Luckily, according to the book, Influencer, this behavior can be learned. Since the two books have a lot of similar ideas, I would also encourage you to read Made to Stick.

However, in some cases it really is simple. Most people give up on investing and even saving because they feel it is too difficult. But put in the context of the marshmallow story, finance and investing is really not eating one marshmallow so you can have two. You don’t spend your money, put it in some type of investment, and then it becomes more. The behavior that has to change is the “not spending” part. But, as i mentioned in an earlier post, it gets much easier once you get used to it.

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