student loans: my trick on how to pay them off faster

regarding my loans, i saved roughly $250 within a 12-month span. you can too.

short version:

i wrote a little java program that uses simulated annealing to find the near-optimal solution of how to distribute your monthly loan payment amongst your various loans every month, while minimizing the amount of accrued interest.

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

long version:

if you have many loans which total a lot of money, you may be waisting 100s of dollars merely by incorrectly paying the wrong amounts towards each loan. the point of this writing is to help you save money.

obviously, one can save/waste a lot of money depending on when and how much they pay off their loans. this isn't about that. say you have 6 loans and $1,000 you wish to pay towards them. this writing is about how to apply your $1,000 towards the 6 individual loans in the best possible way so that you aren't wasting money. interest is a killer. below, i mention my approaches towards minimizing the interest, and i provide my actual student loans as an example:

upon graduating from ucla last year, my student loans totaled roughly $78,000. it's been 13 months since i've graduated, and i've gotten them down to $27,000. here are my 6 outstanding loans:

loan name, balance, APR, minimum monthly payment

-------------------------

sallie mae 1, $13472.75, 2.58%, $201.03

sallie mae 2, $1544.54, 7.25%, $214.74

sallie mae 3, $5032.22, 6.8%, $221.29

doe 1, $521.06, 8.5%, $52.61

doe 2, $2378.14, 6.8%, $59.50

ecsi, $4495.36, 5.0%, $60.46

for the rest of this article, let's be consistent and say that i pay $2,000 each month.

idea #1 - naive approach based on distribution of annual interest:

this is what i had been doing the whole time. when i had to start paying back my school loans, i didn't give it much thought as to how i would determine how much to spend towards each. i just quickly thought, 'i'll just pay some amount that is proportional to how damaging the interest is.' i now regret not thinking about it more.

the amount i was paying towards each loan was merely determined by its contribution towards my total annual interest across all loans:

loan i's payment := $2,000 * (loan i's yearly interest / total yearly interest across all loans)

idea #2 - brainstorming + linear/non-linear programming:

after filing my taxes, i noticed i paid a lot towards loan interest this past year. so, while brushing my teeth in the morning, i thought to myself that my current method (idea #1) is probably much worse than what i imagined. how can i find the optimal solution? first thing that popped into my mind was to search the solution space by using a genetic algorithm, but by the time i finished brushing my teeth, i had convinced myself that the sheer thought of such was complete overkill, laughable, and non-optimal, and clearly not the best approach.

throughout the day, i thought about other approaches:

linear/non-linear programming:

the idea of using linear programming came to mind. the format would be:

minimize C^T * x || sum(x) = b, where

• C is a vector of known coefficients that represent the interest for each loan
• x is a vector we are solving for, which represents how much to spend on each loan
• b represents how much we are willing to spend in a given month (i.e., $2,000)

in other words, we want an equation for our total interest across a given time period (1 month), and we want to minimize it. but unfortunately, we can't really form a linear equation for it. for example, the interest for one loan would be:

loan i's interest = (loan_i's_original_balance - how_much_to_pay_towards_loan_i) * (1 + APR/365.25)^30

we are minimizing the sum of this value across all loans.

that exponent makes it non-linear. moreover, i'm not sure how to solve it using non-linear programming either, as we no longer have a clean coefficient. we don't have an Ax = b; we have f(x) = b

maybe there's some way to use the simplex algorithm for this, but i wasn't interested in finding out. seems messy.

idea #3 - simulated annealing:

well, when all else fails, use simulated annealing, right? haha. simulated annealing is a pretty simple, common AI approach that seeks to find an optimal solution within a large search space.

i implemented it in a little java program.

basically, it:

• initially assigns random payment amounts towards each loan, while meeting the constraints of the minimum and maximum payment for each loan.
• it then calculates the total monthly interest across all loans.
• then, for however many epochs i care to run my algorithm, it will:
  
  
  
  • randomly decide to increase or decrease a to-be-selected loan,
  • then the loan it chooses to adjust is probabilistically chosen, based on each loan's contribution towards the total amount of interest across all loans.
  • the amount that it perturbs the loans is randomly chosen, too.
  • if the new payment amounts yield a lower interest, let's save these payments as the current state and continue
  • if the new payment amounts yield a higher interest, let's probabilistically save these payments as the current state and continue (this is to help avoid local minimums)
  • saves the best payment distribution that we encounter

the only tricky part was ensuring that the perturbing of the payment amounts still satisfied all of the constraints across every loan. a lot of error-checking tedium.

the program will display how much to pay towards each loan for every month, and it'll produce a summary that tells you how much you paid total, and how much went towards interest.

you can also experiment with choosing different monthly payment amounts and see how much it affects your lifetime interest amount. for example, my program showed me that:

• paying $2k/mo will take 13 months; i'll accrue ~$500 of interest.

OR

• paying only $1k/mo will take 26 months; i'll accrue ~$1,000 of interest

so, if i take a bullet of paying a measly extra $500 in lifetime interest, i'll gain the

freedom of having $1k extra of non-loan money each month for the next 26 months! it's definitely worth it.

solution:

click here to download my program, InterestOptimizer.zip

the above .zip file contains 3

files:

• InterestOptimizer.java -- the code
• InterestOptimizerTest.java -- runs the code
• input.txt -- you can edit this with your loan information and name the file whatever you want, just pass it into the InterestOptimizerTest program

for example, run it from a command prompt:

>> java InterestOptimizerTest input.txt

future work:

my current solution attempts to minimize the accrued interest, but it only does so over each upcoming month. basically, it works in a month-to-month basis until all loans are gone, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal, global solution, since it's not looking at the bigger picture across the lifetime of all the loans. the optimal solution would need to apply random amounts to all loans across every month of its lifetime, then make shifts both (1) between the various loans and (2) from month-to-month. this would give it a global picture to search within.

i suspect the improvement would be relatively negligible. in my case, i'm guessing that it would save me no more than $20. so, i don't plan to add this improvement. it's not worth it, but yea, i recognize it as an area of improvement.

ideas?

if anyone has any ideas for a faster or more optimal solution, please let me know. i'm curious to hear suggestions.

how i lost my hearing

for the short version, scroll to the very bottom of post.

long version:

the point of this entry is not to seem bold, or to render sympathy, or anything like that. rather, a lot of people have wondered what happened to me lately, so this writing aims to:

(a) tell the whole story so i don't have to repeat myself tons of times

(b) educate people with random tidbits about inner ear problems

(c) bring attention to how amazing the human body is

(a) how it went down

thursday (june 3), i worked out at the gym after work, like always. it was triceps/biceps/shoulders day, and i pushed hard on the clean & presses and shoulder presses, setting new personal records. at the end of my workout, my ears felt very stopped up and weird. no pain, just weirdness. i drove home. arrived by 8pm. by 11pm, my ears started to ring. they both just felt weird. no pain. i went to bed at midnight.

friday morning (june 4), 5 a.m., i woke up for no reason and the room was spinning uncontrollably. you've felt dizziness before. imagine what dizziness feels like. the room spins a little, and it's kind of silly. well, this was 10x more than that. i was half asleep, and out of nowhere it appeared that the room was moving upwards and over very fast. it was as if i were going to fall out bed, even though i was lying down. this is "extreme vertigo."

luckily, sheley was staying over -- sleeping in the living room -- because she originally had a flight at 8am and i was going to drive her to the airport. i woke her up, saying "sheley. something's not right!" i felt very nauseous and couldn't even stand up on my own, much less walk to the bathroom. with sheley's help, i made it. i vomited many times.

harvard's hospital, ranked top 5 in the nation, is literally 1 street away from my apartment. yet, i couldn't even make it there on my own. sheley to the rescue! she drove me. i was admitted to the ER and vomited many times over the next few hours. having received little sleep, i wanted to sleep. however, closing my eyes or reclining back even a few inches made me really nauseous.

friday 3pm: i was moved from the ER to an observation room. they continued to pump fluids into me through an IV. i was told that i vomited many more times between 3pm and 11pm. i have no memory during this 8 hour span, and i was asleep during most of it.

saturday (june 5) 4pm: i was released from the observation room. i was a little dizzy but stable. still no hearing in left ear. sheley was a complete lifesaver. if it weren't for her, things would have been very ugly. just for me, she even cancelled her flight home to see a wedding of an immediate family member. now that's love! she's so great.

sunday (june 6) - today (june 12): i still feel the same. i can walk on my own pretty well, but any quick head movements or turning takes a second or two for things to register. i have zero hearing in my left hear, and it's been ringing for 1 week straight.

what's it like to only hear out of 1 ear?

imagine wearing noise-cancellation headphones only on 1 ear. plus, the headphones constantly emit a high-pitched ringing. imagine wearing these headphones for over 1 week straight. that's the best i can describe it.

loud places with many people (i.e., subway and cafeterias) seem to really do a number on me. imagine: people to your left, who are out of sight, make noises. the noises bounce of walls to your right and enter your right ear. so, you hear the noises coming from your right, but clearly nobody over there is making the noises. plus, you are unfamiliar w/ their voice, so your vision and all gets even more confused. now imagine this happening all around you, with dozens or hundreds of people all talking at once. lol, it's really pretty trippy. it drowns out and overwhelms my right ear so much that everything gets muddled and it's really draining. pretty wild stuff!

i've realized how much of our vestibular/vision/hearing systems that we really take for granted. it's amazing how much is being processed by our bodies all the time.

(b) researching the cause, thanks to doctors and the internet

i initially experienced "extreme vertigo" -- the intense feeling of everything spinning. but, the vertigo itself was not the problem; it was merely the result of the underlying issue. many (17-42%) of people who report vertigo, have it due to something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) [1][2].

BPPV:

basically, everyone's inner ear has a collection of calcium crystals that hang out within the 'utricle' (see above pic). but, it's possible for these crystals to randomly migrate to the semi-circular canals (the big looping things in above pic). when this happens, crap goes wrong (aka, you get sessions of vertigo).

but wait, what would cause this to happen? BPPV is considered idiopathic, meaning there is often not a clear cause; it just happens. it usually happens in older people, usually in women. it usually lasts for short periods, but can persists over years. oh crap. but there are solutions to it.

the canonical method to diagnose BPPV is to use a voodoo-looking technique called 'dix-hallpike.' basically, the patient tilts the head in certain ways, lies back, rotates head, sits up, and does silly things like this. there are many variations of this. it makes the patient dizzy, but one can look at the patient's eyes to conclude if it's BPPV or not. very interesting: it the patient's eyes spin downwards, it may often suggest that a brain lesion exists, rather than BPPV!

epley manuever, another silly method similar to dix-hallpike, is often used to treat it. how crazy is that? merely turning the head in certain directions can re-adjust the crystals in your inner ear and fix your balance and everything.

the doctors found a liquid buildup/pressure behind my left inner ear. BPPV doesn't necessarily include this. also, my prolonged hearing loss is not too characteristic of BPPV.

let's rule out BPPV.

so, what's causing my inner ear problem? there are a few typical causes:

• brain lesion(s)
• meniere's disease
• labyrinthitis

brain lesions: i didn't have any head injury, but having 8th cranial nerve damage would yield the same exact symptoms as i'm exhibiting (i.e., no hearing in 1 ear, vestibular system messed up). i got an MRI and no tumors were found:

whew! yet, it doesn't mean that nerve damage couldn't exist. we don't know. so, the doctor prescribed a small dosage of prednisone for anti-inflammatory reasons, just in case.

meniere's disease: i might have this. it includes everything i have, including the fluid build-up. it's also idiopathic -- no clear cause -- but the only thing that suggests that it might not be this is that i haven't had migraines, as they often occur within those with meniere's.

labyrinthitis: the doctors listed this as the probable cause. seems about right, and i really hope this is what it is. often, labyrinthitis is cause by a virus in the inner ear -- as opposed to a bacteria -- and goes away within 2-6 weeks, but can take months or years. hearing is gone until it goes away. rarely, permanent hearing damage occurs. [3]. viral labyrinthitis may re-occur anytime, maybe several years later, but if it does, it's likely actually just meniere's disease. they are very similar.

so, what can/should i do in the meantime?

• don't drive
• don't do anything that requires balance beyond walking
• take over-the-counter medicine to help de-congest me.
• take over-the-country motion sickness medicine
• take prescribed predisone for 10 days to help w/ possible inflammation
• avoid loud, crowded places

oh, i forgot to mention that the MRI results show that my sinuses had thick lining, which further suggests that it's either labyrinthitis or meniere's, as opposed to my straining too hard in the gym and causing a hole in a membrane. whew, i hope that's true.

(c) the human body:

how crazy is it that such a very tiny area within the inner ear can completely wipe someone out and make them unable to stand up? sure, parts within the brain are even more sensitive with respect to vitality per volume. it's interesting how vital every part of the body is, and that luckily, most of our body is very resilient and good at automatically rebuilding itself. think about how insane that is.

short version:

over a week ago, i woke up to the world violently spinning. vomited tons, and i haven't had hearing in left ear since. it's hopefully labyrnthitis, a virus in the inner ear, and will go away in a few weeks and maybe never come back again?

[1] Bhattacharyya N, Baugh RF, Orvidas L et al. (2008). "Clinical practice guideline: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo"

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_paroxysmal_positional_vertigo

[3] http://www.dizziness-and-balance.com/disorders/unilat/vneurit.html

google is so nice

last week or so, i casually posted my "top 100" pics on picasa web albums, which i rarely use. to my surprise, one night i started receiving tons of foreign language comments on my pics. nobody even knows about my picasa web albums, so i figured this must be spam. when i woke up the next morning, i had ~30 more comments/email notifications, most of which were in foreign languages. "what in the world is going on here?" i then noticed that 2 of my pics made google picasa web's main page, amongst the thumbnail images!

i'm not sure how long it'll be featured, but it's been about 5 days so far. check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/explore# we all know that google gets tons of web traffic. well, it's still been a wake-up call to me as to how much they really get; my featured pic(s) is usually just 1 of the 12. yet, within 5 days my 100 picture have received roughly 250,000 views, with the highest pics receiving over 20,000 views. how crazy is that!

i know my pics aren't phenomenal or anything, but it's still been cool to see tons of strangers from all of the world say "nice picture!" in so many different languages.

KFC's double down!

in case you haven't seen it, KFC has released a double down sandwich: http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/

instead of bread, they use chicken as the outer layers. sheley and i whimsically stopped at a KFC/taco bell on our drive home recently, so of course i had to try it. it was pretty darn good!

it clearly looks fattening and overboard, i know. so, i feel obligated to defend myself, or it, or something, heh:

1. it's actually only 540 calories (although about half of your RDA of fat).
2. my mint.com report shows that i've only eaten fast food 5 times in the last 4 months, all at subway for a grand total of $25.
3. i've eaten-out/ordered-in 5 times during the last month.
4. all other meals (aside from some lunches at work) were cooked at home.

anyway, i recommend the double down! or, if you're feeling in even more courageous or in need of clogging arteries, ask for a quadruple down.

crazy recruiter

lately i've been randomly contacted by recruiters from facebook, google, etc. this is usually flattering, but i explain to them that i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln laboratory. yesterday though, i definitely encountered the oddest recruiter.

at 7:40pm, my phone rang. the guy on the other end of the phone immediately spoke in such a casual tone that it suggested that he already knew me. he almost sounded like he was joking, and his accent was like a surfer's mixed with a southern guy trying to act ghetto.

chris: hello?

guy: hey, hows it going, man?

chris: fine. um, who is this? (wondering if i know him)

guy: my name is ___, i'm with calvin group. i have an exciting opportunity to share with you.

chris: wait, what's calvin group?

guy: calvin group is your life, man!

(chris pauses)

guy: haha, jk. nah, check it. calvin group is a recruiting agency out in LA, and i got an exciting opening to share with ya. it's for a senior python programmer workin with django out in el segundo.

chris: ah, sorry, i'm happily employed with MIT lincoln lab out in boston.

guy: ah, good ole 'MIT', eh? (he prounded it MIT as in a glove, not the initials).

chris: heh, yea.

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff like that?

chris: what? (i didn't hear him clearly)

guy: you learnin to count cards and stuff?

chris: haha, something like that (nothing like that)

guy: that's coo, that's coo

(at this point, i'm still wondering if it's an old friend just joking with me the whole time).

chris: wait, how did you get my info?

guy: i dunno man. i just got an old copy of your resume from 2007. the last job you listed is with google in santa monica.

chris: hmm, maybe someone forwarded it from a ucla career fair?

guy: ha, no idea man. well, thanks for your time. keep on truckin' man.

(he didn't say the last sentence, but it was something like that).

how strange. his tone definitely reminded me of southern california and the beach lifestyle. haha.

losing a little bit of faith in human decency, again.

kind of long, but that's what happens i guess when i never update this anymore... plus, i guess i'm just really shocked that people can be this rude.

i often feel a great urge to help out others when they need it. even when a complete stranger needs something small, and if i'm fully capable, then i'm more than willing to help out. usually it's just something like directions, or even if it's questions about grad school, photography, or weight lifting, i am glad to provide any bit of advice that i can. the intent of this writing is not to paint a portrait of me as being atypically generous or selfless, but rather the opposite; i've always believed that i am typical in my generosity or charity. i believe my friends would donate their time and help just as willingly and eagerly as i do, and i have always thought that most people share these traits, too. recently, i'm starting to think that i'm wrong, and that the general population can at times be way more rude than what i've thought.

sure, there can be outliers, and one may occasionally see some punk driver or someone act completely rude to someone at a store or something. this isn't about that. i'm referring to situations that occur repeatedly and within a pretty neutral medium that would contain a distribution of people that is pretty unbiased and representative of the population at large.

the first example that comes to mind is craigslist. during my transitions of moving, i've had to sell stuff on craigslist several times. let's say 7 separate listings. craigslist surely covers a wide spectrum of individuals. many times, it goes like this:

• i post ad on craigslist
• several people express interest
• i contact the first responder. they arrange a time that they will come to my place to pick it up (once, i agreed for their bringing a uhaul at a certain time)
• they never come
• i call them to see what's up; no response. i leave a voicemail.
• i never hear back from them

this was mostly in LA. and, when i'm the buyer, similar stories occur, whereby they may respond to an email or even say that i can come at a certain time. later, i find out that they in fact sold it to someone else. this is even with my acting very quickly, too. it's not just like $25 misc tables or anything; this has happened with my buying a car for around $4k, and my renting an apartment (after we arrange a time later in the day for me to go give them money, i find out that they went ahead and sold it to someone else). it's not only surprising that people don't have the decency to keep their word, but that they don't even have the decency to follow up.

but, i didn't get caught up with this. i just dismissed it and convinced myself that maybe it's an LA thing, or maybe it's just because these situations don't involve face-to-face confrontation, so they can hide behind craigslist emails or unanswered cells. seeing people hold the door for each other in real life, well, things like this serve as assurance to me that people are all still nice in real life, ya know. not quite.

today, sheley and i went to the movies at 2pm. upon purchasing tickets, we were informed there were few seats remaining, so finding two contiguous seats may be hard. we braved it anyway and went into the theatre, only to find a packed house. there were a few singleton seats open, and a few people shifting due to the movie attendants' instruction. but, two seats together was impossible. the point is that we saw how desperate people were to find 2 consecutive seats together, and how badly some people wanted to find a seat. a huge slew of us had to return our tickets and wait for the 3pm showing. no biggie.

we get seats early for the 3pm showing. as we watch more and more people pack into the theater, we see what it was like to be us just 1 hour earlier, now from the other perspective. we see people desperately looking for seats. having just been in their shoes, sheley and i were sympathetic and very willing to move seats to help make room. to our surprise, nobody else was. it made no sense at all.

first, we saw a couple desperately ask someone to slide down one seat in order to open up 2 consecutive seats. the woman refused to move. i actually didn't believe that it happened. i thought that surely we didn't read the situation right, and that the seat was reserved or something. nope.

second occasion: in the row right in front of us, there was an open seat. a boyfriend desperately wanting a seat for his girlfriend and himself asked the kid in front of us to slide over. the kid simply replied, 'um... sorry, i rather not.' what type of ownership does this kid feel with his chair? he's been there maybe 10 minutes, and he's already that attached and unwilling to move? the boyfriend asked again, to which the kid had no good excuse other than, 'sorry, i rather not.' the boyfriend left in frustration, exclaiming 'thats pretty inconsiderate!'

third occasion: same open seat in front of us, but the people on the other side of the seat were asked to shift one seat over. those being asked to slide over avoided answering for a second, until a girl in the group finally responded, 'we've actually already been here for like 20 minutes.' so what? this makes you entitled to not help out others? this example is just so hard to believe because it takes an insanely minimal amount of effort on their behalf, and it would bring the other party so much pleasure. yet, even with direct confrontation, people not only refused to help out, but repeatedly vocalized their refusal to help in a defensive manner with confidence. it's as if they were asserting, 'how dare you ask me to move. it's your fault.'

it was so very strange to witness.

stop backing into me!

note: if you're viewing this from facebook, the google maps won't appear, so please go to omggetthis.blogspot.com

i've been lucky in that during my 10 yrs of driving, i've never been in a car accident. well, kind of. i've had 2 people back into me, and lately, 2 more people come very close to backing into me. how strange -- does this happen to others often? here's the play-by-play:

1. july 2002, norcross, georgia. back home in georgia before i left for college. i was waiting in the designated left turning lane (seen to the right of the google map below) at position #2. the woman ahead of me was waaay in the middle of traffic (center of map below), waiting to turn. yet, when the light changed from yellow to red, she didn't turn. cars to our right started to cross the intersection, but she was so far in the middle of the road that she was in their way. they honked at her. so, naturally, instead of turning left, she tried to retreat back into her turning lane by reversing into me. before she hit me, i frantically tried to honk, but my 88 honda's horn buttons were not in the center like most cars; they were 4 tiny buttons on the outer center pad. the funniest thing is that after hitting me, she refused to get out of her car and exchange info. she spoke almost no english and gave me her phone #, which had 8 digits.
   
   
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2. september 2002, melbourne, florida. during my first semester at florida tech. i was driving my good friend francisco to a local check cashing place. while waiting to exit the parking lot, the car in front of me saw a bicyclist approaching from the right. the car was blocking the sidewalk path, so he reversed into me, despite my repeated honking. this is the parking lot we were exiting:
   
   
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3. october, 2009, quechee gorge, vermont. as mentioned in my last post, i went on a solo sight-seeing road trip. i got away from the city life for a few days, but apparently i couldn't get away from crazy drivers trying to hit me. quechee gorge is a huge gorge, and there is an overpass bridge which allows everyone to look at the gorge. it's a tiny bridge, and there are crosswalks both before and after it. toooons of people were on the bridge, and cars were very respectful/cautious of pedestrians on this tiny road. apparently they weren't cautious of other cars though.

   
   i was trying to leave the gravel parking lot which was located immediately before the bridge and the crosswalks. i waited for the slow-moving cars to clear before turning onto the bridge road. i started to pull out, but the last car just kind of stopped prematurely before the crosswalk. so, i'm half out of the parking lot, half on the road, waiting to fully pull-out as we are in this stop-sign-type place. but yea, why did the car in front of me stop? he wasn't even quite at the crosswalk section yet. i was just inches behind him as i saw his reverse lights come on. flashbacks from 7 yrs ago came back to me. i know how to handle this situation. the driver started to reverse FAST into me, as if he was trying to back into the exit-only direction of the parking lot. he clearly had no idea that i was exiting the parking lot, and maybe he was just trying to gain clearance before making an illegal u-turn. eitherway, i held down my horn and simultaneously threw the car into reverse as fast as i could. i stepped on the gas pedal hard. really hard. our cars reversed together, really fast, while being just inches from one another. it was like synchronized ice skating or something, without the ice skating. i admit, i'm not an amazing driver, for i'm not that great at parallel parking, and many city drivers are better than i. in that i'm too cautious at times and don't change lanes as carefree as others. with that said, i gotta say though that this stunt was pretty slick, and i felt like i did some maneuver from a movie. my heart was racing big time. luckily, i avoided getting hit.
   the parking lot i was exiting:
   
   
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4. november, 2009, boston, ma. i was leaving my apartment's parking lot. the exit is a narrow 1 lane passage that feeds into a neighborhood street. exiting requires making a sharp left turn, and to be careful not to hit all of the cars that are packed in like sardines on the side of the road. as i made the left turn, someone was trying parallel park into me. there was no way i could reverse back into the narrow passage in a bourne-identity-esque manner that i did previously. so, i relied on my horn. it was a close call, but they didn't hit me.

   the alleyway from which i exited, and to the right is the spot in which the car was trying to parallel park:
   
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based on my history, i expect 2016 to include 2 incidents of cars trying to rear-end me, within a 2 month span.