Piggy’s Blog - Journey of Success

As a part of my frugality, I feel that I have always drive my car quite fuel-efficiently. Even driving both locals and highways, I am able to get around 28 MPG each time out of my Scion tC, which is measured at 23/30 MPG. I’ve always tried not to have to brake and timed the street lights to avoid full stops. I thought that was pretty good!

But alas, check out this dude named Wayne Gerdes - the Hypermiler from Wisconsin, who takes it to the next level.

But it was driving his wife’s Acura mdx that moved Wayne up to the next rung of hypermiler driving. That’s because the suv came with a fuel consumption display (fcd), which shows mpg in real time. As he drove, he began to see how little things—slight movements of his foot, accelerations up hills, even a cold day—influenced his fuel efficiency. He learned to wring as many as 638 miles from a single 19-gallon tank in the mdx; he rarely gets less than 30 mpg when he drives it. “Most people get 18 in them,” he says.

But if you read, some of his techniques include going into sharp exits/turns at 50 mph! AND by turning off the engine and glide! I’m not sure if I want to do that… and I am definitely not one to drive like a dead man at 50 mph on a 65 mpg speed limit highway. Especially I’m in the Bay Area, I probably get flicked off and perhaps even tailgated and assaulted. Haha…

But there is a lesson, which is to drive fuel-efficiently as much as we can:

• Avoid complete stops without having accidents :)
• Go easy on the brakes. Note that your cars DO slow down if you take the foot off the gas pedal.
• Get to know the traffic light pattern in your local area.
• Start gliding if you see a red light ahead
• Drive at a consistent speed.

If you understand Chinese, I think the analysis is pretty accurate :P

Remember back when we’re young, when we’re so full of energy and exuberant, that we never seem to out of breath? That’s right, we never ran out of breath. We used to breath correctly. We breathed correctly with our entire body.

So what happened to our breathing? Because of outter influence, stress, pressure, bad habits, we lost our ability to breath properly. We become upper chest breathers as we grow. We no longer breath properly and only breath JUST ENOUGH for survival. But we no longer breath enough to keep ourselves in optimum shape. There are plenty of articles out on the Internet that talks about WHY breathing properly is important. So I won’t re-invent or plagerize here.

I can speak of some effects of obtaining the skill. Your body can be more easily relaxed. You will feel more energized. It’ll help you tremendously in all sorts of exercises and activities. Your mind can be more sharp. The benefits are countless.

Deep breathing involve all the major parts of the torsal and facial mask, not just the chest. First you need to keep your nasal cavity opened, which requires the relaxing of the facial muscle in that area. You will feel they are kind of “lifted” when done correctly. Then you need to learn how to breath with the diaphragm. One tip is to focus on a point that’s 2-3 inch below the belly button toward the back. Take in air deep pushing diaphragm downward, feeling the sensation and focusing at the focal point. You will notice expanding of the rib cage and the belly. And finally, the chest can expand slightly to take in more air, but no raising the shoulders. The whole process of breathing in and out should take a lot longer than only upper chest breathing (heaving). It will take discipline to make it into a habit. However, it’s a truly refreshing habit to have.

Give it a try.

So based on a goverment study, we are spending above our mean on average o.O That’s definitely not a good thing!

Based on the article Americans spend every cent - and more:

Friday morning the government will report on personal income and spending for November. For the last 19 months, the report has shown a negative savings rate. That means American consumers are spending more than they’re taking home after taxes. The savings rate was a negative 0.6 percent in October. In other words, the typical American spent $100.60 for every $100 of take home pay.

But things aren’t as grim as the article says based on Personal Saving Rate is a Misleading Indicator, which has a lot of truth in it:

To calculate the personal saving rate, government statisticians subtract taxes and spending from personal income. Income includes wages, salaries, interest, dividends, rent received, small-business profits, and some government benefits. Excluded are withdrawals from IRAs and 401ks, as well as capital gains. This is inconsistent with how most people measure their private fiscal health.

I think whether the situation is as bad as it sounded at first. We needs to go back to the most basic rule of personal finance, to keep ourselves under control :P Keep it in mind!!

For those who know me, I am a fan of punctuality and would like the same of others. I know there are situations that can keep us from being exactly on time, and that is understandable and acceptable. It just annoys the heck of of me when some people seem to “inherently” lack punctuality.

I think it speaks a lot about that person, that it is a demonstration of good manners. It shows the person’s attention and energy to form their habits. How? Here’s how. From how you plan your time to arrive at an appointment, it shows the way you manage your time, and that you will apply the same methodology to your daily schedule and organization of events. In the end, being to an appointment is equivalent to running late on other things also because of the same planning methodology applied, which is the estimating to be “right on” (”late”) out of habit.

It’s even worse when I hear people say, “oh, I’m always late, it’s just me…” It speaks clearly about the personality. If that’s the case and you even realize it, then why don’t you fix it? Why not make it a habit to be on time? It just goes to show how you are unable to correct your own mistake and improve yourself.

More over, tardiness is like stealing time from other people and time is priceless. So another way to think about this is - Having punctuality or being on time is another form of respect for others.

It is in my nature to avoid those people, once I observe who has the “nature” to be late. I’m talking about some serious tardiness here, like 15 min+ on multiple occasions. For friends, I will provide some suggestions/warnings before any act of distancing myself from them. The way I see this is, why waste my precious time for folks like that? You should consider the same.