Blog

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

Perspective, my friend

The people taking the bus at 6:00 AM in the morning on a weekday are legends. Shoutout to the early risers. The ones with a long public transit commute ahead of them. The ones with an ungodly start time to their work day. Or perhaps the ones returning from an arduous graveyard shift. And then there’s me: taking an early BART train to the airport because I had an 8:00 AM flight to Las Vegas for vacation. It is an humbling sight.

Beneath the glitz and money of the Vegas strip is an entire cottage industry that feeds off of it. The cleaning staff who keeps the hotels and Las Vegas boulevard spotless at all times. The solicitors on the strip hoping to make some money off the multitudes of tourists. The workers of all the restaurants and shops, catering to the whims of customers. There are no bathroom breaks when the line at the hotel Starbucks is stretched out into the casino floor the entire morning.

Throughout my time in Vegas last week I was filled with gratitude at how fortunate I am to not be one of the folks described above. I’m so lucky to have a job where I get paid for what’s in my brain than actual, physical labor. A steady 9-5, Monday through Friday job that I don’t have to think about outside of those work hours. A job that allows me to take paid vacation pretty much any time throughout the year, so long as I give proper notice.

What this recent vacation have reinforced in me is to be incredibly grateful at what I already have. There’s always plenty more to chase, sure, but so many have far less. Thank you for the much needed perspective, Las Vegas.

Weekend routine

Saturday mornings are the best. I wake up well-rested because I got to sleep in. Mind you that means waking up at around 8:00AM instead of the usual 6:30. Even if I wanted to, my body won’t allow me to sleep deep into the morning like before. Unless of course I absolutely had a very late night on Friday, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve gone out on a Friday. What with the pandemic and everything.

Upon waking up, I head straight for the iPhone. Not to browse twitter, because I’ve deleted that app from my phone (it’s the only New Year’s resolution I have). Instead, it’s the McDonals app. I’m ordering breakfast before I take the leisure stroll to the mall that’s three blocks away. Buy one get one free of the breakfast sandwich is always a good deal.

The walk is super lovely. Blues skies, early sunshine, and breaths of fresh air. There’s not a worry in the world. Because it’s Saturday; the Sunday evening panic won’t arrive for another earthly rotation. So I’m the calmest I can be over the two days of the weekend. Errands can be done later. My friends are still in bed at such an early hour. The Saturday morning is sacred, and mine alone.

I see grocery shoppers heading into Trader Joe’s. A silent high-five to fellow early risers. As I grab my order from McDonalds, I notice a woman also getting breakfast to go. However, she’s not heading home, but rather she’s off to work. McDonalds is the reward, a treat for herself before she has to face the arduous work day. I silently wish her well, and count myself lucky to have a job with proper weekends off.

So I can have these Saturday mornings.

Before others wake up

One of the joys of shifting to an earlier sleep-wake schedule is the ability to take the GT3 out for a drive before most other people have even gone out of bed. Such was an occasion this past Sunday, the first time I’ve taken the 911 out for a spin since I’ve shifted my sleep schedule ahead by two hours. I’d forgotten how serene it was to be amongst the few on the road during those ungodly hours; the gas station I filled up the car in was almost deserted, and en route to the mountains the freeway was nearly empty.

This is my kind of meditation.

To have done almost two hours’ worth of driving before the clock strikes 9 AM is something to relish: most of the time it was just me on that piece of mountain road, no slow cars to block my advance. In the background is the gradual transition of the rising sun, from a grey morning dawn to an intensely realized daytime. The interesting colors bouncing off the foliage is unique to these hours, and I find myself actually slowing down the pace to enjoy the beautiful sights. Once I’ve stopped at a turnout for a brief break, the morning air greets with a freshness like no other.

The cooler air in the morning is savored by the car as well: the GT3’s atmospheric engine sings a sweeter tune during those hours of the day.

9 AM signals the time to return home for breakfast, and as I am driving to leave the mountains, on the opposite direction were many cars heading towards where I’ve just been, folks starting their Sunday of recreation in nature. I smile slyly at the fact I’ve beaten these people to it, that I’ve already had my fun, without needing to contend with other patrons of the mountains for a mere parking spot. In fact, I had the entire lot to myself, a thing that’s well worth waking up early for.

I can say that shifting my sleep schedule is one of the best thing I’ve done in this super weird year of 2020; silver linings and whatnot.

Sleep experiment day three

Today is officially the third day of shifting my sleep schedule experiment to an earlier sleep and wake hour, and honestly I am rather sleepy right now as I am typing this after having just woken up. I guess my body clock still thinks 6:30AM is insanely early, therefore it must be out of the normal for me to be awake, and hence this groggy feeling in autoimmune response. This is precisely why the first order of business every morning have been straight to the coffee machine.

I have to say it’s really nice to wake up during a time when the sun is just beginning to make its transition from sunrise to fully bright. To witness the ultimate power in our nature do the thing it has done for over four billion years is a humbling sight. It sort of reminds me of our sheer insignificance in the universe, how we’re all mere travelers on a spinning marble mass within a universe that’s an unimaginable light-years in size. Seeing a sunrise makes the small things that are currently bothering me right now becomes trivial in an instant, refocusing me onto truly what’s important in life.

Not sure I meant for a philosophical lesson simply by choosing to wake up earlier, but there it is.

The morning hours are indeed some of the most tranquil and quiet of the day, and I’m massively enjoying the early stillness to go into a meditative state and get some tasks done. It creates something to look forward to every night before I go to bed, that the next morning I will get to have these hours of blissful calm. It makes falling asleep easier, and also creates an eagerness to actually get out of the bed when the alarm clock inevitably signals.

Even though I’m still quite sleepy.

Sleep changes

Good morning! I am typing this out at 7AM on this brilliant Monday, grateful for yet another day on this planet, and the thankful that I’m still relatively okay in relation to the current coronavirus situation. I am writing this daily blog at this seemingly ungodly hour because I’ve decided that starting this week I am switching to an earlier sleep schedule: from the previous 12PM to 8AM timeframe to the new 10:30PM to 6:30AM. The primary reason for this change is simple: I want more quiet time.

Early mornings - before much of the world around me have woken up - are some of the most tranquil and silent hours to be had. In a time when we are all stuck in our homes and the neighbors are particular rowdy into the night, it’s better to go to bed early (with earplugs on, mind you) than to contend with the noise whilst trying to type out one of these or read a book for an hour. Mentally speaking it’s also better to get a bulk of my daily tasks out of the way - such as this blog, rather than having to think about something to write after a rigorous day at work. The few hours after work will be slanted towards leisure, where my mind can relax completely because the jobs of the day are done.

That’s the hope, anyways.

Not sure why I didn’t do this earlier; with the lockdown in effect since March and I’m largely working from home, I don’t necessary need to keep the old sleep schedule that was largely predicated on the fact I had an evening shift and didn’t get home until 11PM on most work days. Unencumbered with that limitation, I am free to adjust what time I go to sleep. I guess I wasn’t yet resigned to the fact that this quarantine will go on for the rest of the year, so in some ways I was still clinging on to the old way of doing things because surely we’d go back to that soon enough, right?

With COVID-19 not showing any signs of abatement in the States, coupled with the campus remaining remote for the entire Fall semester, my current situation is not going to change. Resigned to this, it was appropriate to make additional moves that would go towards improving my well-being, and I think this sleep schedule shift towards regaining a few more calm and productive hours in the morning will be really beneficial.

Happy Monday, everybody! Let’s get after it.

The early morning drives

Living in a dense city full of cars and traffic, it’s mighty difficult to find space to truly stretch the legs of my beloved sports car. Even the mountain roads gets congested on the weekends; due to hikers, revelers of nature, and people trying to get to the Pacific Ocean. It only takes one not so cooperative driver refusing to pull over for your obviously faster car to ruin what is suppose to be a joyful drive (there always is one). Of course, I can be a dick about it and pass them crossing the double yellow line, but I’m the type to follow rules of the road absolutely, and also I don’t want to reinforce the stereotype of the asshole (junior) supercar owner.

A good strategy to avoid the crowd and traffic is to get up super early and drive the same mountain roads whilst everyone else is still soundly asleep. It’s an especially serene time as well, perfect opportunity for a bit of meditation and reflecting. Driving on city streets and highways with nary another car on the road, backdropped with the subtle haze of glow from the approaching sun dancing with the darkness of the receding night, is something immensely therapeutic. I’d get up before dawn, so that by the time I’m finished with a few hours of driving, I’m greeted with the day’s sunrise (weather permitting, naturally; can’t be sure with San Francisco’s notorious fog).

Well, at least that was what I did with my previous cars. Due to unique circumstances with the 911 GT3, its let’s call it permanent location is not inside the house (we don’t have a garage, sadly). Rather, the GT3 is parked some distance away at a different location, necessitating a 20 minute drive to access. Therefore, to perform an early morning blast on the mountains, I have to add at least 20 minutes on top of the already ungodly hour I’d need to wake up. In my twenties perhaps this would be doable (as if I could afford a Porsche in my twenties), but nowadays with me paying close attention to the quality of sleep, it’s not an enticing proposition.

Just one of the many idiosyncratic realities of owning an expensive car in a crowded urban city.