Friday, December 22, 2006

Hawaii 5.0


From Dec. 9 -13, I made my first trip to Hawaii. Upon arriving I got my first taste of Hawaiin food, it was a Hawaiian Japanese oBento. It consisted of a box of rice with a full size chicken leg and hot dog on top. This first impression governed my cultural thoughts for the rest of the trip. Japan meet Hawaii.

My good friend Alex lives and works in the Navy there. I hung out with him and his roommates who were cool guys. During those days we put on about 30 miles of hiking and running on the Nike Shox. We were staying about 30 minutes North of Wakiki. In fact, I did not even make it to Wakiki beach. We spent one day at North Shore doing some swimming. That area was quiet and nice without many tourists. I definately can go back out there.

We also went to a lookout, called ?, that had a nice view of the island. Apparently there was a big war there where people fell over the cliffs. It was during the re-unification of Hawaii.

Lastly we spent a night in the city at a few bars, one is called Nextdoor. It was pretty local crew of people and cool to get a feel for the local nightlife. At last I cannot forget my night with Alex`s good friends where we spent the night drinking and eating Sichuan Hot Pot. It was great.

After a 2 days, we took off for the Big Island, Hawaii. The east side, Hilo, was lush with green vegetation and had a cool climate and foggy overhang. We stayed in a town called Volcano where there was a national park and volcano with steams. At the national park, we stayed at the military camp. It was pretty nice. We spent the daytime running on the craters and trails, at night, we went out to do the long volcano hike to see the lava.

We hiked out for about 75 minutes to get as close as possible to the lava flows. As night fell, the view was better and more interesting. AJ and I decided to leave just before darkness came since the terrain back was so uneven and dangerous for knees and ankles. THe hike back took about 90 minutes. It was a challenging evening.

Lastly, we drove around the bottom of the island and stopped at the US most southern located restaraunt. I ate some crazy concoction that was rice, eggs, and sausages. Again Hawaii meet Japan. I will add this to one of my favorite dishes. It was called....After a quick 2 hours we arrived at Kona Kaliua. It was a combination of tourist hotels and very nice vacation houses. We did a little scuba and some shopping before heading to the airport.

All and all it was a solid trip. We got good food, some good runs, and time at the beach. Now back to work.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Chinamas vs. Christmas

Christmas is a time when all the people in the US scurry around to buy presents for their friends and family. Christmas is the time in China when everyone is working hard to supply the US with all the crap the Americans buy. Chinese New Year's is the time when the Chinese collect all the money from the Americans who spend too much money during the holiday they call Christmas. Sooner or later, it will be the Chinese government who buys all the US treasuries, not just 30%, that allow the Americans to take out debt to buy christmas presents that will pay for the chinese made products. What a cycle!

Christmas is a huge competitive disadvantage for America. Herein, Christmas will be Chinamas in my book.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Kurtism: On Potential

Potential means it ain't worth sh** yet

Kurtism: Invaluable experience

Invaluable experiences is a nice way of saying too bad you failed.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Pachinko's Influence in Japan - Korea - US Relations


Last night I had an early Thanksgiving with my colleague and good friend at Mitsui, Yoichi Asai. Yoichi is cool Japanese dude who just came to the US a few months back. He was "dispatched", as they say in JENGLISH (Japanese English), to the US to fulfill his training duty. Sometimes when I hear such words, I feel that I am part of some secret military force that is covertly sending agents to the US to gather information. In fact, I may not be far off. In the 1980's, it was well regarded that the Japanese trading firms had the best access to global information.

Asai-San and I started the night with a bowl of ramen at our favorite place Halu Ramen. Halu is Japanese for nice day and that it was a nice day. We then decided that we should drink large amounts of Asahi Dry and discuss the internal strategy of Mitsui. After finishing several beers we then decided to go across the street to a German Beer House called Harry's Hofbrau. Harry's is located next to my apartment and it has always touched my curiousity but I had never gone before.

So after we went in we ordered pints of Harry's Authentic German brew. In addition, they had a cafeteria line filled with turkey dinner helpings so I thought it would be culturally polite to show him what a typical T-Giving dinner is. So I ordered a few turkey legs and we gobbled them down.

Before coming to the US, Yoichi sold Pachinko chips with a Japanese subsidiary. So in the middle of our feast, we began to discuss Pachinko as a cultural phenomenom in Japan. Yoichi taught me some very interesting facts including that Pachinko industry is as big as the food industry in Japan, about $230Bn. I thought that was amazing! Also, Pachinko chips were made by two companies, one of them is Freescale which owns 50% of the market and that was one of the most profitable business lines for that unit.

Further and most interestingly, Pachinko Parlors are very much controlled by Koreans, both South and North. In fact, North Korea receives a very large amount of money from Japanese Pachinko houses. They earn so much that it would significantly impact North Korean's wealth if they were to lose this flow of money.

So let's look into strategic moves by the two countries. If Japan puts more pressure to regulate Pachinko, North Korea will retailiate by sending a missle over Japan so Japan will not do this. If North Korea makes any attack at Japan, then Japan will cut off Pachinko Money and North Korea will lose much access to wealth. This to me sounds like the ultimate strategic equilibrium.

But let's see how the US now plays a role. If Freescale decide to cut off production of Pachinko chips or sell the division that results in a decrease in chip supply, this will put supply pressure on the Pachinko machine production. Less Pachinko machines, means less Pachinko players and less money to North Korea. So Freescale, whether or not they know it is playing a very profound part of the equation.

Now let me bring up another very strange fact to this. During the North Korean uproar and threat of power there was one very large business transaction. That transaction was the taking private of Freescale by Blackstone, TPG, and Carlyle who are notorious for chopping up business divisions after buyouts. The transaction was consummated on September 16th and KIM tested his nucleur bomb on October 3rd.

It is in my opinion that KIM was making a direct threat to George Bush, who is a major shareholder in Carlyle. That threat was not please do not attack me; that threat was do not shut off my Pachinko Machines or I will attack you. If I were Freescale, I would have called up KIM and said you let us sell Motorola phones in your country and we won't touch your Pachinko Chips.

It seems to me that no one got this at all.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Kurtism: Defining Success

Success should not be defined by how much $$ you make but by the difference on society that you make.

In America, unfortunately, those who impart a great influence on our society, such as teachers, are highly unaccounted for.

PeopleSupport 2x

KD continues to think that cross border investment opportunities are ripe and available for investment. Just now has globalization really created mass scale businesses and there will be more to come. Earlier this year KD speculated that PSPT, peoplesupport, was highly undervaled, trading at 9x P/E. The call center business has aggressively shifted from US to low cost labor in India and Philippinnes. And most recently, the Phils has won over business from India. With this simple insight, KD made a bet on PSPT at $8.90. Today the stock trades at $21 and he will take that gamble to the bank.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

It is the Chocolate!

Today I realized that now I have 4 viewers on my blog. My two good friends and colleagues, Stephen Lee and Bert Navarrrrrrrete, have a feed and some Italian wine lover called Vigoure read my wine blog. That is awesome!!!

The blog dated November 1st discussed the effects that wine had on the lives of mice. In that blog, I pontificated that perhaps it is the chocolate that made the mice live longer, not that wine. Behold, I may have been correct. Read the article below that in short says that eating chocolate once a day may reduce platelet clumping which often clogs arteries and causes heart attacks. So it is now up to you to indulge in Chocolate eating or wine drinking to increase your life span. I think that I will do both!!

Does anyone have recommendations on good, low sugar, chocolate. I prefer dark.

Kurt


Take heart, chocolate lovers
Canadian Press

Perhaps being a “chocoholic” isn't such a bad thing after all, at least when it comes to your heart.

It turns out that some chocolate aficionados taking part in a study investigating blood platelet clumping couldn't stick to a promise to temporarily give up their sweet of choice — and they inadvertently ended up doing medical science a favour.

Their dietary offence led researchers to uncover what may be the first biochemical explanation underlying the confection's effect in preventing cardiovascular disease: just a few squares of chocolate a day can cut the risk of dying from a heart attack almost in half.

“What these chocolate ‘offenders' taught us is that the chemical in cocoa beans has a biochemical effect similar to Aspirin (ASA) in reducing platelet clumping, which can be fatal if a clot forms and blocks a blood vessel, causing a heart attack,” lead author Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said in a statement.

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That doesn't mean that people should start indulging in lots of chocolate candy, which often contains unhealthy quantities of sugar, butter and cream, stressed Dr. Becker, who presented the study findings Tuesday at the American Heart Association's annual scientific sessions in Chicago.

But as little as 30 millilitres (two tablespoons) a day of dark chocolate — made from the dried extract of roasted cocoa beans and considered the purest form — could have a heart-healthy effect.

Dark chocolate is chockablock with flavonoids, which have long been known to lower blood pressure and have other beneficial effects on blood flow. The study identified the effects of typical doses of chocolate found in ordinary foods, unlike previous studies that found decreased platelet activity only at super doses of flavonoids equivalent to eating kilograms of chocolate a day.

“Eating a little bit of chocolate or having a drink of hot cocoa as part of a regular diet is probably good for personal health, so long as people don't eat too much of it — and too much of the kind with lots of butter and sugar,” Dr. Becker said.

The Genetic Study of Aspirin Responsiveness (GeneSTAR), conducted at Johns Hopkins between June 2004 and November 2005, began by enrolling more than 500 men and 700 women, aged 21 to 80, to examine the effects of ASA on blood platelets.

Prior to starting an ASA regimen, participants were to stay on a strict program of exercise and to refrain from smoking or using foods and drinks known to affect platelet activity, including caffeine-containing drinks, wine, grapefruit juice — and chocolate.

When 139 participants were disqualified for the main study after admitting to eating chocolate, the researchers decided to analyze their blood to determine chocolate's effect on platelets.

When platelet samples from both compliers and non-compliers were analyzed, researchers found that the chocolate lovers' platelets were less reactive, taking on average 130 seconds to clog up a mechanical blood vessel system. Platelets from those who avoided chocolate clotted faster, at 123 seconds.

A second test, designed to detect waste products from platelet activity in urine, showed that chocolate eaters had significantly lower activity and waste products on average compared with chocolate abstainers. In all, more than 200 different tests of platelet reactivity were performed.

Although none of the chocolate offenders had previous heart problems, all had a slightly increased risk of heart disease because of family history.

“These results really bring home the point that a modest dietary practice can have a huge impact on blood and potentially on the health of people at a mildly elevated risk of heart disease,” said study co-author Dr. Nauder Faraday. “But we have to be careful to emphasize that one single healthy dietary practice cannot be taken alone, but must be balanced with exercise and other healthy lifestyle practices that impact the heart.”

Friday, November 03, 2006

On Fire #2: Funmobility

FunMobility Named by Deloitte & Touche as One of the Fastest Growing Technology Companies in the Country
'Fast 50' Award Recognizes FunMobility's Growth and Success in the Wireless Sector; Company ranks 8th in Media and Internet in Silicon Valley; 122nd in North America


PLEASANTON, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- FunMobility, Inc., a leading developer and publisher of wireless entertainment technology for wireless carriers and mobile phone users, has been named to Deloitte & Touche's Technology Fast 50, a compilation the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the Silicon Valley region. The company was also named to Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 for being one of the 500 fastest growing tech companies throughout the USA and Canada. Both awards are based on measurements of each company's percentage revenue growth over the past five years. With five-year growth rate of more than 1600%, FunMobility ranked 8th in its regional category, and 122nd in North America.

"This is an tremendous accomplishment, especially considering we're participating in the most competitive technology market in the country," said Adam Lavine, FunMobility's CEO. "I'm very proud of our team for the dedication they've shown, and we feel the best is yet to come."

"To rank on Deloitte's Technology Fast 50, companies must have phenomenal revenue growth over five years," said Mark Jensen, National Director of the Venture Capital Services Group for Deloitte & Touche LLP. "FunMobility has proven to be one of the fast-growth success stories in Silicon Valley, and we applaud their dedication to making their vision a reality."

The Technology Fast 50 award is given to the top 50 performers in each of 16 regions across the USA and Canada. Winners from these regions are automatically entered in The Technology Fast 500, with the top 500 firms receiving the additional recognition.

About FunMobility

FunMobility is a company dedicated to revolutionizing how people use their mobile phones to interact with multimedia content and each other by providing applications and services that enable creativity, personalization, and community building. FunMobility's FLEX Mobile Application Platform(TM) is comprised of interchangeable modules featuring content, applications, and services supported by proprietary implementation technology. These modules can be deployed as a complete solution, or as stand-alone components that work within a carrier's existing mobile services offering, providing carriers with unparalleled flexibility, greater reliability, and faster time-to-market. FunMobility provides carriers with some of the industry's most popular and successful mobile applications, including Wallpaper Universe(TM), America's Best Mobile Pix(TM), Ringtones Universe(TM) TrueTones Universe(TM), Mobile Comics Network(TM), Personalized Wallpaper(TM), MyTonz(TM), MyScreenz(TM), Imagenes Calientes(TM) and FunMobility Animated Greetings(TM). FunMobility's mobile applications and services are distributed through major carriers across the globe, including, Verizon Wireless, Alltel, Sprint PCS, U.S. Cellular, Cingular Wireless, and many others. FunMobility has achieved an industry reputation for creativity, innovation and reliability, and is considered one of the industry's most unique wireless entertainment companies. For more information, please visit www.FunMobility.com .

On Fire #1: Integrian

Integrian #1 in Southeast:
From Pete Durand CEO, "Last night, Integrian was honored to receive the award for the Fastest Growing Company in the region, as determined by Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Triangle Business Journal. The event was the “Fast 50” awards Gala at the Embassy Suites in Cary, NC. There were 650 people in attendance in an “Oscars” type atmosphere. The 50 companies were ranked 1-50 and they did a countdown format by announcing #50 all the way through #1. The best part is that nobody knew who the winner would be. The tension mounted as fantastic company after fantastic company was honored, yet the question remained – “Who is #1?”. Finally, they announced Integrian as the fastest growing company, and played a very professional video about the business. I was honored to accept the award on behalf of all of our employees worldwide.


The real honor is how the award was determined. Rather than a popularity contest, this reward is based on actual financial data, reviewed by PWC and crunched in an objective formula. So, based on % revenue growth, $ revenue growth, and profit growth over the past three years, Integrian was the fastest growing company of the 50 finalists – and there were hundreds of companies reviewed."

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Blog and a Glass of Wine

Scientific news today has almost confirmed that drinking wine helps you live longer. While this has been speculated for several years, several Stanford scientists have proven that mice that eat large amounts of chocolate cake and drink lots of wine live longer than mice who have an ordinary diet. This research must be great because it is from Stanford and so is Google, Yahoo, and many more great things. But how do we know it is not the chocolate cake that help the mice live longer or that they only fed hamburger helper to the other mice? Think about it.

Well, regardless, i've decided to blog and drink a glass of cheap Pinot Noir and Jacob's Creek Wine. The wine has made me reluctantly accept that only two people have read my blog and they have not come back. But that is ok, I do it for the love. Or perhaps because I have nothing else to do.

The Shiraz is like a cold refreshing glass of Boone's. What is Boone's? You obviously did not get out much in High School. Boone's was bottle wine that cost $1.19 and for whatever reason, any 16 year old in South Carolina could get ahold of it. I think it is because the local convenient store could not get rid of the inventory.

The Pinot Noir is nothing more comparable than a glass of Thunderbird wine. Thunderbird never broke the $.99 threshhold for a bottle and it tasted as though someone squashed grapes in a glass and mixed it with moonshine. But let me tell you, there was nothing like it on a Friday night, roasted marshmellows, and getting down on the farm.

I'd be happy to hear about your "Blog and Wine" posts. Feel free to tell me about your best Boone's stories.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Long on Hot-Lanta

After spending a few days in Atlanta, i have decided that Atlanta is the last untapped niche in the US for the venture industry. Stanford and MIT have created a vast amount of great venture returns for those willing to take risks. Additionally, RTP has served a few small investors well. But I think the opportunity in Atlanta can be the third largest VC market in the future. Here is why:

Silicon Valley and Boston are each driven by one technology institute, Stanford and MIT. Georgia Tech is one of the best engineering schools in the nation. They create more patents per R&D $ spent than either Stanford or MIT. They also graduate more total engineers than either school and specifically more RF engineers than either school.

Lastly and most importantly, Georgia Tech students have the profile of great entrepreneurs that have come out of both schools. Many students are from overseas including India, China, and Eastern Europe. These people are more inclined to start companies and take risks. Many of these people also have very advanced engineering degrees which are needed for high tech startups.

What GT doesn't have is a real venture capital community. They have a few small seed stage and angel groups but they don't possess enough capital to drive a company from concept to exit. A true Sequioa or KPCB model in Atlanta would be effective. Many of the venture companies have received capital from Boston and Silicon Valley based VC's. Local VC's have not been active in a lot of opportunities. Take for example the following recent deals:

IISS: KPCB (Recent $2bn acquisition by IBM)
Stealbox: Sierra Ventures
Air2Web: Carlyle Group
N2Broadband: Highland Capital
JBoss: Matrix and Accel ($400M acquisition)

These deals show that the market is ready for a true VC fund ($400M) that can invest $10-20M in the lifecycle of companies and there is no better talent than Georgia Tech to do so.

KD is bullish on Atlanta and the opportunities within. Long on Hotlanta.

Monday, October 16, 2006

YouTube's Valuation

KD has decided that he should do a fairness of valuation opinion because in all honesty, it should be done. Sequoia is the largest shareholder of Google as well as YouTube so there are obviously some conflict of interests here. I have mixed feelings about the Youtube acquisition because I have not been able to determine whether the valuation was fair. I think that Youtube has built a great website and product for its customers, but they only began to scratch the surface of their business model. Let's dig in and see if there is more "meat on the chicken".

Many people claim that Youtube did not make any money but I fail to believe that. Here are the reasons:

First, they did have some unique video advertisements and also adwords. And if you know anything about online ads now, you know that one can build a business simply by Google Adsense. If you have 34M uniques, by GOD, someone is clicking through those adds! In addition to those, just before the acquisition, Youtube did strike several deals with large media houses.

Secondly, Youtube raised $8M on the first of April. LEt's do a quick cash flow extrapolation. They had 67 employees so they are burning $500k in opex and another $1M in bandwidth per month. But this obviously ramps up so let's say they burn $2-3M per month. Youtube funded the 8 months of the operation with $8M so the net burn was clearly less than $1M per month. Therefore, they were probably doing a few million per month in revenues before the acquisition and probably break even or higher the month before the acquisition ($3-4M) so they would not have to raise another round of financing. I don't think Google would buy a company about to go bankrupt, do you?

With that, there was an inherent projectable value in the business. Then, I'm sure Mr. Mckinsey, CFO Paypal, Roelof built some large financial model justifying the long term value of each unique monthly visitor to a potential acquirer. In fact, several weeks before the acquisition he said the company was worth $1.5bn.

Why wouldn't a savvy CEO have strung them out? Did buying them now prevent them from being a $2,3,10bn acquisition 2 years from now? What if Google waited for them to raise another round of financing and to build a more substantial business model? Let's investigate the valuation.

1) So let's assume that 1 year later they built a company with $10M per month from the content deals and adwords in gross revenues (because Chad said that he could in a newspaper article) and they have to share 50% with the content holders and others so they actually make $5M per month. As previously stated, they had 67 employees so they are burning $500k in opex and another $1M in bandwidth per month. But this obviously ramps up so let's say they burn $2-3M per month which yields a NPAT of about 1.2M per month or about 15M per year. Google trades at 60P/E so they pay the same multiple for YouTube, assuming a PE/G of 1:1 and the projected valuation is $900M. If you tube grows its earnings faster than that, say 2x, then a P/E of double that is justified and so is a $1.8bn valuation. An IPO in 2-3 years could have well exceeded that number.

2) According to Techcrunch, Viacom acquired iFilm and AtomShockwave (3.3M and 1.3M uniques per month) for $50M and $200M respectively suggesting per user value of $15 to 150 per unique). Sony acquired Grouper for 65M which was about 100 per unique. The Japanese have a tendancy to overpay for US entitities so we have to discount this. Youtube had 34M uniques per month suggesting a fair value of $3.4bn. Google only paid $48 per eyeball.

3) Google paid Myspace $900M to embed its search bar which is a deal they are definately not losing money on. Google is not going to hurt its gross margins of 60% so they probably are making about $1.5bn in revenues on that deal (60% of 1.5bn is 900M). Assuming Google would pay YouTube the same for such a deal and then have access to a whole new medium of media why not just pay $1.5bn for complete ownership of the website and they breakeven on an embedded search deal. It makes sense to me.

4) Lastly, Youtube does not represent a new medium for watching TV. I don't think people will watch TV shows on Youtube. People merely are entertaining themselves by watching their videos and their friends videos. I don't think any of this crazy legal issues are issues at all. Not many people are going to watch CBS, NBC, ESPN shows and so forth. All people want to see is someone fall of their bike or throw a pie in someone's face. This is the new medium and one that no large media company can capture and no one every will again.

KD's final assessment on the YouTube deal is I think Youtube got the short end of the stick. They should have held out for $2bn. I also think it was savvy for Youtube to sell now, not because of the legal risk which I discount, but because they had peaked the success of the website without having a partner like Google.

KD

KD on His Blog Template

My blog template is ugly. I feel like this is a flag color of some rogue communist state governed by a lethal dictator with the last name of Kim. I really hate the star in the left hand corner but I don't know how to change it. Someone help me.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

FUNMOBILITY

KD would like to elaborate a bit on FUNMOBILITY. www.funmobility.com . Simply, these guys rock. KD has known FUNMOBILITY, previously known as FUNMAIL (FM) for over 5 years.

In 2000, FM started early in the foray of the mobile entertainment market with a small MMS application that allowed users to send a SMS to a friend which would then dynamically insert a picture message based on the message. Due to the sheer size of the SMS market, it was a good idea but limited handset capabilities in high usage SMS areas impeded large uptake.

In 2001 for the entire year, the team struggled to pay the rent and their employees. No one in Silicon Valley could see the potential in what they were doing. They slowly changed their business model to wallpapers and ringtones, which was going to explode within a few years. Silicon Valley investors failed to see the success of these applications in Asia and Europe and missed a great opportunity. Sole angel investor and successful entrepreneur, Randy Rissman, took the plunge and funded the company, just enough to pay the bills.

The CEO, Adam Lavine, and his Co-Founder, Dennis Chen, did a great job rolling with the market and using existing technology to grasp new market demand. Adam was highly creative in developing unique IP wallpapers and ringtones so he didn't have high licensing fees. The unique IP has given them a strong following of recurring users and of course high MARGINS.

Furthermore, Adam realized there was huge value in developing relationships with the operators and helping them to make money from value added services. This has given him unique advantage in deck space and first dibs on new applications the operators want published.

In 2004, the market spiked in the US. This was 4 years after Japan, 3 years after UK, and 2 years after China. FM was in perfect position to benefit. The cash cow businesses funded new applications like America's Best Mobile Pix which has been a great success. In October, it achieved its 100 Millionth Vote and gets 20M page views monthly.

In 2006, KD was able to help Mitsui merge one its subsidiaries, ZAPPTRIO, one of the original ringtone businesses in the US to merge with FM. The merger has been a success and the combined entity flourishes.

The company will continue to make great products for its users. Those products must be help users socially connect to one another via the phone in a unique way. They have the vision, they have the success; and, it is only a matter of time before the big boys come knocking.

The market is over billions and the management team has the 5 tools. I will never understand why the Silicon Valley Boys never saw these guys. It shows me the opportunities are there even for the covert Japanese investors.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Top 10 Reasons You Know You Lived In China/Asia Too Long

Upon returning to the US, here are the Top 10 Reasons You Know you were in China/Asia too long:
I wrote this about a year ago so I thought I would share with my 5 viewers.

10) You can understand everything that people say around you
9) When crossing the street, you feel uncomfortable because of the lack of speeding cars and bicycles. You wait until a car speeds by and then you sprint across stop on the yellow line, while both sides of traffic pass you and honk at you, then you proceed with another sprint until reaching the end of the street. This feels normal; people think you are suicidal.
8) You are driving, stop at a stop light, and wonder what happened to all the people riding bicycles.
7) When eating at a restaurant, you are not only surprised, but also a bit annoyed, by the kind waitress continually asking you how your meal is but you are also stunned, counter to logic, that you get free refills with iced tea
6) When an Asian-American speaks to you in English, you get startled.
5)  When you enter your local grocery store, you wonder, who in God's name, eats all of this food.
4) You often bite your tongue, speak a bit more quietly, less often, and speak English using different grammatical structures. People look at you strangely when you repeatedly say, "Oh, I see, I see" or "Yes, I understand, I understand (as they would in Japanese). You think this is normal; they think you are from another decade.
3) You walk to the end of your block looking for fruit and vegetable stands.
2) You get sick of getting in the car to go everywhere.
1) You walk into a bar with your friend and you look around and see a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and you comment, "that girl looks exotic" and your friend says, "Yeah, she's an American, you idiot"