Blog

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

A free screwdriver

It’s kind of interesting that when I bought a non-stick fry pan on Amazon, it came with a full-size screwdriver to assemble the handle to the pan. It goes to show just how absurd the profit margins are on these products when they can afford to throw in a screwdriver for free. IKEA furniture at least expects you to have some tools at home. Or you can buy the tool set from them.

Avid watchers of Shark Tank understand how much margin are in the products we buy. It’s fine: that’s just how capitalism works. I needed a fry pan for eggs, another person is smart enough commission a factory in China to make them. I can certainly do it myself, but then I’d have thousands of fry pans that I’ve got to sell. I have a need, someone can fulfill that need, therefore that someone can reap the profits. (There’s a joke about hookers in there somewhere.)

The fact the seller can afford throw in a screwdriver for free with every pan shows how cheaply things can be made in my motherland of China. The country truly is the factory of the world. And with that means a whole spectrum of price and quality. I think it’s way past time to associate “Made in China” with horrible quality. Yes, many things coming out of China are crap (looking at you, Temu), but my brothers and sisters over there are equally capable of making world-class products.

Lest we forget, the Apple iPhone has been made in China for the longest time. The ever popular Fujifilm X100VI camera - a precision photographic device - is manufactured there. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a Hisense branded TV (if LG weren’t so damn fantastic with OLED).

The equation is simple: same (high) quality, lower labor cost. What corporation beholden to shareholders wouldn’t shift manufacturing to China - or any other country offering the same incentives. Made in U.S.A might only mean you’re overpaying for an American worker’s wage.

Always play offense

American football season is upon us, and all I can think about it to this past Super Bowl.

There I was in China on a Monday morning. Because that is how time zones work. While all my friends were gathered around the television on a Sunday afternoon back in the States, I was vacationing back home in Guangzhou. For a time I was concerned about how I was even going to watch the game. More so because our local team the San Francisco 49ers was in it. I can’t casually skip this one.

To the surprise of nobody, American football does not have a significant following in China. Besides, with an air time of 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, what working adult has time to even watch the game? Never mind finding a bar showing the broadcast. It’s way too early to be drinking, by anybody’s standards.

Lucky for me, the local sports station was showing the Super Bowl. I avoided performing many tricks to one, get by the Great Firewall of China, and two, get a not so legal stream of the broadcast.

The succinct memory I have of the game is during overtime. 49ers kicked a field goal instead of going for the touchdown. Soon as the ball sailed successfully through the uprights, I knew the game was over. You simply cannot take the safe points going up against Patrick Mahomes. Sure enough, he marched the Chiefs right down the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown.

The lesson is this: in life, you want to play offense. Even if it doesn’t materially increase the chances of success towards your goal, at least it minimizes regret. Because you took action, instead of reacting to what the world dishes out at you. Playing offense means leaving it all out there; there is nothing else you could have done differently.

Meanwhile, I bet the 49ers still sometimes think to themselves, “What if we went for it on 4th down during overtime, instead of kicking that field goal?”

There's no China in team

I love the Olympics. It’s a great reminder that there are no shortcuts in life. Because shortcuts, also known as cheating, is explicitly not allowed in Olympic competition. To reach a goal, there’s only the consistent grind. People love to see the end results of a triumphant victory, but behind that are countless sweaty sessions in a training gym. Successes are overnight only because on the television is the first time you’ve seen of some of these athletes.

The running joke regarding my mother country of China is that they perform superbly at individual events, but fail completely when it comes to team sports. If an event involves more than two people at once, it’s not going to go well for China. Doubles ping pong and synchronized diving? Not a problem. Football and basketball? A country of 1.4 billion souls can’t even qualify.

I have a theory on why this is so. In a way, Chinese culture is kind of selfish. For very good reasons, to be sure. The devastation wrought by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution created an ingrained atmosphere of not enough to go around. The zero-sum pie is very small. Therefore, for the common Chinese citizen, whatever you can get for yourself, you hang onto it for dear life. There’s no honor is sharing, because that means you yourself won’t have enough to survive.

There was a time when public bathrooms in China did not have toilet paper. Any stock would be stolen very quickly. You’d have to bring your own.

The saying goes: there’s no ‘I’ in team. A team of selfish athletes isn’t going to go very far. When the glory of personal accomplishment (and the financial rewards) overshadow pride for country, it’s obvious to see how China continues to fail at team sports on the world stage.

It's great to be back

It is wonderful to be back in the land of the free, home of the gun shooting at a Super Bowl parade (the price to pay for said freedom). But anything is better than the highly surveillance state of China, am I right? I’ll have much more to write about my two weeks in Guangzhou at a later time. In long form, with many pictures.

Not so pro trip: what really helps alleviate jet lag symptoms is drinking plenty of water during the flight (I must have drank over 2 liters), and wearing compression clothing (better blood circulation or something). It’s been 36 hours since I’ve landed yesterday at SFO, and I feel completely fine. 12 hour plane rides suck no matter what, however. Especially in the cheap seats. It’s all I could afford as a public servant.

I did watch the Super Bowl whilst in China. At a bright 7:30 AM Monday morning, I awoke to turn on the game. Unexpectedly, the local Guangdong sports channel was televising the Super Bowl. I didn’t even have to perform any elaborate VPN magic to get my free trial of Paramount Plus (it is definitely not available in China) to work in order to see our San Francisco 49ers lose to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The bad feeling started when the Chiefs blocked the extra point try in the fourth quarter. That feeling turned into inevitable doom when the 49ers decided to kick the field goal in overtime, instead of going for a 4th and short. When you’re up against Patrick Mahomes in extras, a three point lead might as well be a tie. Mahomes then did exactly as I expected: drive down the length of field to throw the game-winning touchdown.

Disappointed? Sure. But I was in my birth home of Guangzhou, with plenty of activities to look forward to still. The sadness was brief.

I'm going to miss it

While I am extremely happy the San Francisco 49ers made the Super Bowl, I am extremely sad that I will miss the big party. Because I am due to fly out to Guangzhou, China at the end of this week, and scheduled to return after a fortnight. Indeed I will be at the opposite end of the globe whilst friends gather here in the States to cheer on our local team. The fear of missing out is incredibly strong right now.

It will be early morning in Guangzhou - the Monday after - when the Super Bowl is happening in Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, February 11th. As far as I know, American football is not big at all in China. Finding an establishment over there showing the game will probably be impossible. Especially not during that hour of a work day. Perhaps there's some die-hard NFL fans (dozens of them!) in Guangzhou doing a viewing party? Or maybe the NFL is blocked wholesale over there. Because, you know, too much western values. (Huge American flag and military planes flying over.)

I got to find a way to watch it somehow. Hint hint, wink wink.

Funny enough, the last time San Francisco was in the Super Bowl, it was back in February 2020. That was just before the COVID-19 pandemic effectively shut everything down worldwide. The opponent in Miami then is the same as it is now in Las Vegas: the Kansas City Chiefs. Sports can be coincidentally weird that way. It is going to take the maximum best effort on the 49ers to beat Patrick Mahomes, who is well on his way to becoming the greatest quarterback of all time. He will be playing in his fourth Super Bowl in the past five seasons.

I think Patrick should be kind and let the 49ers have one. Please.

No water for work

Nothing makes you appreciate first-world amenities quite like having them taken away suddenly. For example: running water. I went to work this morning (as one does every weekday morning) and turns out the entire campus has lost water pressure. This is not because of any maintenance fault of the university, but rather the City and County of San Francisco. Our facilities staff had to call public utilities for assistance. I know you're staring at an enormous fiscal hole, San Francisco, but shortchanging SF State on water is not the way to save money.

When there isn’t enough water pressure to flush toilets, it becomes enough of a biohazard to send everybody home. Thank heavens for modern work safety regulations! (Apparently, OSHA states that if there are working bathrooms within a 10 minute walk, then it is okay to continue working.)The modern us have it so incredibly nice. Think back to when even the highest of kings and queens do not have access to such luxurious plumbing. We are literally living better than royalties of old. No amount of money back then could buy the standards we have now. It’s humbling to think about.

I greatly appreciate automatic hot water out of every faucet tap in the home (here in America) whenever I go back to China. There, it’s typical for older apartment buildings to only have hot water for the bathroom shower head. Can you imagine washing your face with cold water in the dead of winter? (I don’t have to imagine it, because that is exactly what I will be doing a month from now.) Meanwhile, here in the States we open the faucet and wait for water to get hot in the morning…

The living standards are pretty high here, and I think it’s useful to not take it for granted once in a while. And perhaps, to not be so wasteful of it either.

It's over over

At work, the first batch of Dell laptops we purchased in response to the pandemic, in support of fully remote teaching, is about to expire on its basic warranty. Can you believe that? It’s been a whole three years since the start of COVID. Sometimes it takes a laptop warranty expiring to remind me just how long ago that is. Obviously, plenty have changed, both in the external world and my own personal life. And yet sometimes it can still feel like we’re in a bit of stasis since March 2020. A long continuation of (hopefully) the worse global pandemic in our lifetimes.

Of course, we don’t hear or talk about COVID-19 anymore. No more daily hospitalization numbers, no more masking guidelines. Even the vaccination campaigns have gone radio silence. It’s down to personal decisions now, on how careful you want to be. And we should respect each other’s rights to do so.

The pandemic is over. Life is back to normal. This past weekend I attended a lovely baby shower, in a recreation center room with about 50 people. Think back to two years ago: you wouldn’t dream to do such a reckless thing. Not without masking, lots of open windows, and minimal hugging. COVID is something we no longer think about. And while it’s taken longer than we’d all like, three years is not so bad in the grand scheme of things. We can, and have, finally move on.

Even the ultra-restrictive China have opened back up to complete normalcy. Foreigners can finally get into the country, on previously issued visas (or you can get a new one). I am not doing any traveling this summer. (Have you seen the prices of everything travel related?) The only flying I’m planning on is at the end of the year: to China. To visit relatives I’ve not seen in person in three years. In sha'Allah that will come to fruition.