Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Castles in the sky

Hey fellow San Franciscans: are you seeing the light beam in the sky at night? Apparently that's an art installation for the APEC summit happening this week. Originating from the Ferry Building are 12 laser beams shooting down southbound Market Street. The fact this beam can be seen by me all the way on the literal opposite end of the city is kind cool. Though it's supposed to the colors of the rainbow? I can only see a beam of blue on this side.

The folks living along Market Street must hate the thing, right? A week-long light beam shining up your pricey luxury condo at night. I wonder if it's worse than the time Elon Musk put a giant illuminated 'X' logo on top of what was the twitter building.

But hey, anything for APEC, am I right? Who cares if restaurants and smalls businesses in the vicinity of the summit are struggling this week (tongue fully in cheek). I mean, did organizers think the opposite would happen? No one is voluntarily going downtown this week! The street closures, no-go zones, and transit detours signal one thing: stay away. I feel most terrible for Chinatown merchants. My own mother - who goes to Chinatown weekly - is avoiding the historic district for the duration of APEC.

Foreign travelers picking this week of all weeks to visit San Francisco also drew the short stick. At least the streets are clean and free of homeless encampments! SFPD is fully working overtime as well, so maybe your rental car won't get broken into? Condolences to the Czech TV crew who got robbed in front of City Lights Bookstore.

It'll be back to normal next week. Enjoy the light beam in the sky while it lasts.

On to the next

Because I’ve largely fulfilled the life goal of learning a third language - I’m on my sixth year of studying Korean - it’s time to move on to another item on the list. Since childhood, I’ve always wanted to learn the piano, so that is exactly what I am going to spend an hour on every single day for the next few years. My arthritic fingers already hate me.

Learning the piano has been a nascent ambition for the longest time. My family was too poor to afford me lessons when I was little. Throughout high school and college, other things took priority over learning an instrument. I took a year of piano in high school as an art prerequisite, but it was so slow going in that class that we didn’t even get to chords. Being able to play an instrument is one of those things that I think everybody should know how to do, like changing a tire, or speaking a second language.

In hindsight, I should have started on this at the beginning of this COVID pandemic, and not towards this tail end where vaccines are available for everybody very shortly. Soon, I’ll have a proper social life outside of the house to occupy my time. But, as they say, now is always a good time to start. I am ready to devote the time and energy that will surely be required.

It seems a lot of people have had the same idea during these COVID times. The piano I’m looking to buy - Yamaha CP88 - is currently backordered for what looks like a few months (the Suez Canal blockage probably didn’t help). A coworkers mentioned there’s a been a great shortage of guitars, and that instrument makers have had the best year in terms of sales during the pandemic. Unfortunately then, this endeavor will be delayed until I can get my hands on the keyboard.

Do what you love, even if it's for free

I‘m receiving a lot of questions from writers asking where to submit scripts or how to sell them. Others ask how to sign an agent, attach directors or producers, etc.

You won’t like the answer, but here it is:

You’re asking the wrong questions. (Thread)
— Christopher McQuarrie (@chrismcquarrie) October 23, 2019

Last evening, I encountered this golden nugget of a twitter thread by Christopher McQuarrie (yes, that Christopher McQuarrie.) In the thread, he answers the question of how to become a successful writer in Hollywood by saying that there aren’t any shortcuts: you have to do the work. Keep making stuff and show it to the world; have a portfolio of done and complete things that fully represents you. McQuarrie calls the act of pitching scripts to producers and various gatekeepers as “playing the lottery”, and it’s not advisable to have that as your sole focus. Clever metaphor, because I’m sure we all understand the futile odds of playing the lottery.

The director’s sound advice reminded of Charlie Munger (yes, that Charlie Munger) answering the question of how to become as accomplished as him by playfully scorning the questioner that he simply wanted Munger’s success, but far quicker - essentially asking for shortcuts. McQuarrie alluded to the same idea in one of his tweets, stating people are tacitly asking “What is the shortest route to [McQuarrie’s] career?" Indeed; to quote the great Jocko Willink: There is no shortcut. There is no hack. There's only one way. So get after it.

We should be happy to do the work anyways, because it’s what we love to do, right? Even if the end product leads nowhere and it pays nothing, the satisfaction of having created something is what really matters. That’s exactly what passion is about. The people asking for McQuarrie’s advice are looking at it from the monetary perspective, which the director cautions is the wrong lens to look from. The tools are out there - more than ever - for us to do the work and produce stuff, and if you’re truly serious about your particular craft, just go ahead and do it, without permission, and without thinking of some advancement endgame.

You have to ]detach from the results, and simply make the art for art’s sake. Produce or participate, then iterate and improve, and most importantly, put you and your work out there into the ether. The Internet has democratize and flatten many of the hierarchies and barriers that are no longer there, so there’s no excuse. It’s the reason this website of mine exist, and I shall continue to put out stuff, because it’s what I’m passionate about.

Thank you for coming to McQuarrie’s TED Talk.

Support physical books and art

Despite the amount of trees felled every year in order to produce them, I still can’t peel myself away from physical books. An Amazon Kindle would be so much easier and a more environmentally friendly way to consume books (digital copies are cheaper as well), but it lacks character and soul. The tactility I get from touching a book’s pages and the smell it gives out is a significant part to the overall joy of reading. Besides, I am a serial highlighter, and making markings on an actual book helps me retain information far better than sliding my finger over a Kindle screen.

There’s also something very zen about shelves full of properly lined books, giving off a suitable facsimile of being in a library right in my room. Libraries are awesome places that gives off endless vibes of learning and discovery; coupled with the inclination towards quiet and silence, it’s no wonder the library was one of my favorite places to hang out as a kid (our family was also quite poor, so there’s that, too.) These days as an adult I can afford my own books, and have created a small library of my own.

Physical books are cool, and I especially like it when the creators I follow comes out with these tangible works of art. The bulk of creative content - this website included - reside in the digital realm on the web, where cost of entry is superbly low. Compared to producing an actual book, and the material costs alone almost makes it not worth the effort; a problem particularly acute for photographers, where printing costs are exponentially more than simple words and paragraphs. I’ve printed a few photo books for personal use, and they are easily in the hundreds of dollar.

So I make a point to support creators who come out with physical books by actually buying them, because I understand how much effort and money goes into making it possible. In doing my little part, I hope to spur on the incentive for these creatives to keep making prints and books, that there is a sizable contingent who still love the unique experience of interacting with actual materials. Plus, it’s important to monetarily support your favorite authors and content makers anyways, most of whom are simple freelancers just looking to get by.

Due apologies to the environmentalists out there. I also keep the air-con at 68 degrees.

The passionate few

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly is having a “passion” for something.

On a car forum I frequent, there used to be this guy who would make excellent photo threads of car events. Recently he seems to have disappeared, and the rest of us forum members have been wondering where he went. You don’t realize you take people for granted until the first big car event where there’s no photograph thread afterwards. Where did he go?

Through discussion with a mutual friend, it turns out he was tired of spending the massive amount of time editing pictures and making it into a proper forum post, only to receive tepid response from the forum gallery. Why put in all the effort when the reception feels so unappreciative?

First, I have to say it’s indeed super time consuming and tedious to put together a story thread with photos and words; for the person consuming the content it’ll likely be scrolled through in minutes, but for the person creating, it takes many, many hours. Each of my own photo stories take at least eight hours each to make, so I can sympathize with the amount of work that forum guy puts into his posts.

Second, we should all be more vocally and visibility appreciative when we enjoy reading/watching things made by other people. Absolutely nothing brightens a creative’s day more than positive feedback and people giving thanks for sharing. It may sound cliche but it truly makes it worth the effort.

But with that said, I have to disagree with that guy’s decision to stop making photo threads, simply because of the perceived lack of feedback. Is it really something you’re passionate about if you get discouraged by the actions and opinion of outsiders? For me, having and following a passion is strictly internal: it’s for me and nobody else. It’s the engine behind the power that keeps me home on a weekend working on a project, while others are out having fun. Not that I’m not having fun, because passion projects are fun.

Creating content for this website is and will always be something of a joy for me, and I don’t care if not a single person reads it (and I’m thankful for those who do.) So long as I myself am satisfied with the output, that’s perfectly good enough for me.

Maybe that forum poster lost his passion, which is okay, too.

The pivot to video

I very much enjoy writing. Writing on this blog everyday is never a chore, though as with anything in life there are good days and there are bad days. Sometimes the lines flow one right after another, and sometimes the words just can’t seem to materialize and form together cogently, but still I must solider through. The goal is consistency, a daily habit I shouldn’t skip unless there’s truly compelling reasons to (like being debilitatingly sick).

I don’t ever concern over the amount of views this website is getting, and I wouldn’t care if the number is zero. Not once have I clicked on the analytics tab on the Squarespace console; I write (and take pictures) for myself, and if there’s some of you out there that happens to enjoy the content I put out, that’s simply icing on the cake. This isn’t some hopeful launching pad to a freelance career, but rather a genuine gesture at putting myself out there to the (Internet) world.

Of course it’d be incredibly nice to get paid to write and do photography, but that is not that endgame here.

As an avid viewer of Youtube, I’ve been noticing more and more people doing the “pivot” to video. It’s assumed that no one like to read anymore (if periodical circulation is any indication), and vivid visual media is where the money’s at. The barrier to entry is certainly minimal; anyone can start a vlog channel with their smartphone or laptop. With enough hustle and charisma, money from Google AdSense will start rolling in massively.

And there’s plenty of people chasing those AdSense dollars. Within the automotive genre alone are seemingly hundreds of Youtube channels with a bloke, a car, and a camera putting out videos everyday. Due to sheer volume of output, the production value is not that great; the content can be best described as disposable. You can tell their ultimate goal is monetization because in every video they’d pander the audience to click ‘thumbs up’ and subscribe.

Not everyone is like that obviously. Some truly do it for the art and passion, where view counts don’t matter at all. A particular automotive channel I highly respect is SavageGeese.

Far be it for me to criticize people for thinking only in dollars and cents; it doesn’t interest me how another person choose to make a living, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my business, or harm society. When the time comes for me to produce video content, the ethos will be the same as my writing and photography: for the enjoyment of creating art, and sharing a piece of myself with the world.