Personal Blog of Carl Pei

A few days ago I made by first PayPal withdrawal. I really had to stop spending my PayPal dollars on eBay since I am saving for a trip to China and Japan this summer.

Many people probably have questions regarding an international PayPal withdrawal, I had too. Unfortunately for me I had nowhere to look for more information. Hopefully this post can at least help you relieve some stress when your important moment comes.

Ready to withdraw your hard earned dollars? Just follow these steps!

1. Login to PayPal.
2. Go to “Profile” and add a bank account if you haven’t already.
3. Go to “Withdraw”. Remember, it is free only if you are planning to withdraw more than a certain amount in your local currency. In my case the minimal amount was 500 SEK (roughly 70 USD).
4. Done! PayPal will tell you that it will take 5-7 business days until the money reaches your account.

The last part was the one I had the most problems with. 5-7 business days, that was at least a week and could potentially take up to 11 days!

It turned out much better than expected. I made the withdrawal on February 18th, a Sunday. It took only two business days for the money to arrive, so on the third day, the 23th it was already in my account. Something rather funny happened also. When I logged into my bank the day before I saw that a transfer had been made, but not an increase in actual money in my account. I became hysterical as I thought I had lost money. Then, I saw the date of the transfer (23) and realized that the bank was just pre-reporting the transfer.

It is also noteworthy that PayPal made the transfer with a Swedish bank account, which means no additional fee for me! From previous experience there would otherwise have been a fee of around $10 if it came from abroad.

The only thing that bothered me was their extremely poor currency conversion rate. Well, I guess if you want service you have to pay for it.

Overall, this has been and extremely painless, fast and pleasant experience. I can see why PayPal is the leader in online payment processing.

Today, I am a high school student, graduating this summer. I have been attending the Natural Science program. At times I have been questioning my choice since I am not interested in the natural sciences, but I’ve concluded that this was the best choice. For one, it is the most challenging program and provided me with lots of useful experience and knowledge (maybe). Secondly, studying the natural sciences you really improve in rational thinking and logic.

Today, I no longer believe in knowledge in its traditional sense. Traditional knowledge is defined by me as that found in fact books and learned in school during classes. I can’t compete with that knowledge, and I don’t need to either. I have billions of Chinese and Indians to learn that for me, they are cheap and efficient. Traditional knowledge is abundant. Instead, I believe more in general knowledge, people skills, etiquette and creative knowledge.

Today, I am not a racist. But I do believe in profound biological and cultural differences between people. I am all for equality, but strongly believe that this pretending of “we are all the same” is the wrong approach. We are not the same. Not inside nor outside.

Starting each paragraph with “Today” is getting repetitive so I’ll skip it.

I believe in equality between the sexes, but am quick to see flaws in arguments, which is why I have dismissed feminism as a viable choice to accomplish this. I am against all kinds of forced quotas.

I believe strongly in the separation of family, church and state. I despise people and governments who mixes these elements together.

I want to be fooled to follow religion, but seeing the bloodstained history and all the argumentational flaws I can’t. I have problems with attributing my success or failures to someone else.

I believe in class, but not the inheritance of it. Nowadays, it feels like something more temporary. If you achieve a high status, your kids can easily blow it away after and your grandchildren can might as well be nobodies.

I try not to blame others for my failures. I am not a victim of my ethnicity, class, geo-location, beliefs, society, time or anything else. If anything, I am a victim of myself. I know that anyone could at a certain points of their lives have become anything. I am easily inspired by movies and stories that tell me this. Examples would be The Pursuit of Happyness and American History X.

I do not believe in definitive rightness or wrongness in any given situation. Politically, I am often tested as being in the absolute center. I am not a lackey of the media. For instance, I believe that totalitarianism is more beneficial to the general population in certain situations.

Most of all, I firmly believe in myself.

You can disagree with me on any point, but please do not make it the last one.

My school career was never something special. Always above average, nothing more or less. One thing I did realize was that whether I work my ass off or slack, the grades remained the same. I didn’t conform much to groups, I could more or less be with everyone.

In 6th grade, I started learning HTML. It was a fun time, the teacher was a former employee of IBM and was great, but he soon left and the new teacher taught us even better stuff. Like how to control the cursor using a mouse, how to click the mouse buttons and how to find, locate and utilize the “Start” menu. Before the 6th grade, I dared not touch the computer fearing I would break it or infest it with virus. Some teachers sure were (and still are) incompetent.

I remember being really hyped with all the new HTML stuff and was amazed by marquee and frames. Frames were high-tech back then. Soon enough I created my first web site; Pokémon Forever. It used frames. An instance I remember particularly was once that I copied a walkthrough from another Pokémon site and posted it on my own, I then submitted it to the owner of a very popular Pokémon site - and he featured it. I learned something about competence, and the absence of a method to detect a deficiency of it.

At 6, I came to Sweden. I remembering hitting people who laughed at me, well… talked to me. Since I couldn’t understand a word, I assumed everyone has laughing at me. Once I held a big rock in my hand and swung it at someone. He went crying and told the teacher I threw the rock at him, what a liar. During a week there was a kid who didn’t go to school because he thought I knew Kung Fu.

One of my more vivid memories of that time was that once one of my friends were planning a revolution against me. A guy thought that I was taking too much control among the friends and talked to the rest of the kids about throwing pillows on me. Luckily, a loyal friend told me in advance so I could confront him. Gee, thinking about it now, I sure had some leadership skills at my age of 6.

Elementary school was nothing noteworthy. I remember trading pieces of shit like Pogs. There was a new craze every year. I didn’t buy much, but always ended up with an abundance of that garbage. Pogs, Go-Gos, marbles, Pokémon cards, you name it.

I usually hate using my real name on the internet, so why now, why register a domain with it? Below are some simple reasons.

1. If I don’t, someone else will.
   Like most things in life, if you don’t do it, someone else will. Seriously, I’d rather buy it now than wait until some third world domain collector gets it and wants a leg for it. Especially if I keep my current pace my name alone will probably be worth millions in the future.
2. Coolness.
   How cool is having your name as a domain? The future is online. Already today we are seeing the benefits of communication, commerce and entertainment online! Like it or not, but one day everything will revolve around the internet. How inconvenient will it then be to not even own one’s own name as a domain? Above all if you’re going to become someone.
3. Branding.
   Branding and brand recognition is very important. Everything from where you shop to what toilet paper you use is all branded. One’s own name is one of, if not the most important brand one will ever know. As much as I hate using my real name online, I knew that I one day had to in order to start building a durable brand. Using nicknames does not work as well. As soon as you start achieving anything under the nickname, people will start using the same name, and every time you change, you will have to start from scratch.