#50 5 days to Christmas, 1 day to doomsday

neighbour's raindeer; night run.

room dressed up for Christmas

It's almost Christmas, wow I wonder where did this year disappear to. I'm so surprised that 2009 disappeared in a blink of an eye. Well, I've been enjoying my quiet holidays tremendously that I'm even too lazy to talk. But it's quite queer because my parents/grandma have been calling me everyday.

Anyway, I've been watching a lot of nonsense Korean drama starring Daniel Henney (a personal fave heartthrob<3). I loved him in, My Father; which caused me to bawl together with him in the movie while he was telling his father how much he loved him. I'm honestly quite numbed to the sappy break-up scenes, I can't cry over those anymore.

Other than spending (imaginary) time with Daniel Henney, I dressed my room in Christmas ribbons and tree ornaments today. Oregon's a huge exporter of Christmas trees and it's really cheap to buy a fresh tree here- US$10. But I'm so lazy and I really cannot stand cleaning up pine needles all over my living room floor, so I decided to skip it. However, I'm quite pleased about my room and I feel like I've now joined the Christmas enthusiasts gang, when really, I'm just plain bored and even border of plain ceilings. I'm so bored I'm going to make honey vanilla macroons tomorrow to pack into little Christmas gifts :)

I've also decided to cut peanut butter out of my diet forever. Goodbye my love :'(

Personal reading list for 2010 (from Carnegie Mellon):

The Well-Read Economist

Authors	Title	Press	Year of Publication
Gary Becker	Human Capital	University of Chicago Press	1993
Diane Coyle	The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why it Matters	Princeton University Press	2007
Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff	Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life	W.W. Norton & Co.	1991
Darrel Duffie	Dynamic Asset Pricing Theory	Princeton University Press	2001
William Easterly	The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics	M.I.T. Press	2002
David D. Friedman	Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life	HarperCollins	1996
Milton Friedman	Capitalism and Freedom	The University of Chicago Press	1962
Victor Fuchs	Who Should Live?	World Scientific Publishing Co.	1998
John Kenneth Galbraith	The Affluent Society	Houghton Mifflin	1998 (40th Anniversary Edition)
Friedrich A. Hayek	Road to Serfdom	The University of Chicago Press	1994 (Fiftieth Anniversary Edition)
Robert Heilbroner	The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers	Touchstone Press	1995 (7th Edition)
Albert O. Hirschman	Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States	Harvard University Press	1970
John Maynard Keynes	General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money	Prometheus Books	1936
Lawrence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns	The Coming Generational Storm	M.I.T. Press	2004
Steven Landsburg	Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Experience	Simon & Schuster	1993
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner	Freakanomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything	HarperCollins	2005
Burton Malkiel	A Random Walk Down Wall Street	W.W. Norton & Co.	2003 (8th Edition)
Joel Mokyr	The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress	Oxford University Press	1998
Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas	The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History	Cambridge University Press	1973
Mancur Olsen	The Logic of Collective Action: Public Good and the Theory of Groups	Harvard University Press	1971 (2nd Edition)
Sherwin Rosen	Markets and Diversity	Harvard University Press	2004
Thomas Schelling	Micromotives and Macrobehavior	W.W. Norton & Co.	1978
Thomas Schelling	Strategy of Conflict	Harvard University Press	1960
Robert Schiller	Irrational Exuberance	Random House	2000 (2nd Edition)
Joseph A. Schumpeter	Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy	HarperCollins	1950 (3rd Edition)
Amartya Sen	Collective Choice and Social Welfare	North Holland Press	1970
Adam Smith	An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations	Liberty Fund	1776 (1981 Edition)
Richard H. Thaler	The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life	Princeton University Press	1992
David Warsh	Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery	W.W. Norton & Co.	2006

What a long list... I better start soon. I still have a bunch of other books I haven't read yet!!! Leisure reading has now become speed reading. Just to clarify, I'm not an Economics nerd... I just want to drive a Lamborghini Gallardo early in life and not when I'm 50 and wrinkly.