Blog

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

Boring is okay

What is wrong with boring? What is wrong with stasis? What is wrong with living the same day everyday?

I don't understand the people who crave novelty and change all the time. Like, I just got here, why can’t I stay here for a little longer? Newlyweds know: soon as the wedding reception is over, everybody is asking when are you two going to have babies. Okay, maybe after you return from the honeymoon. It’s as if staying married with no babies for any period is not allowed.

Everybody knows: you hit certain age milestones and the questions start coming. 20: what do you plan to do with your life - for money? 30: why aren’t you married yet? 40: where are the babies? 60: what are your retirement plans? Honestly, is it your life, or society’s life? Other people are so eager for you to follow along to what everybody else do.

If you’re still single in your 30s and not looking to match up, you’re the weird one. Your parents, who are staring at the face of mortality in a few decades, are thinking: damn, I really want some grandchildren. So they nag you to get on with your life trajectory, to settle down with a girl and start producing some babies. And if you follow along with that, I think you’re foolish. You’d be living your life at the behest of others.

If you yourself want to settle down and make babies, that’s a different story.

Run your own race. So what if it doesn’t conform to the societal norms. So what if things don’t change for a while. Life is often boring anyways. People who can’t stand to be bored are those wont to divorce their wife soon as a younger/prettier version arrives on the scene. Is that what you want?

What's new for 2024

A running joke amongst my friends is that I change one - and only one - big thing about my rental studio every year. 2022, I bought an LG OLED television (that’s right, no TV at all in my room before then). In 2023, I bought a couch (from IKEA, of course). As a matter of fact, I am sitting on said couch right now typing this, while the LG TV is on in front of me. Absolutely luxurious.

The thinking is: one changer per year keeps it fresh. We all crave novelty, don’t we? We get something new, we get used to that new thing, and then we want something else - in addition, never replacement. By slow-playing these (let’s call them) upgrades to my room, I hope to avoid change for the sake of change. And obviously it’s way easier on the wallet to buy these big ticket items year over year, instead of all at once.

For 2024, the new thing for my studio space is: black-out curtains. My friends are baffled at how long I’ve gone without curtains. As they saying goes: it worked, until it didn’t. Curtains were not needed previously because early my sleep schedule did not warrant it. It was dark when I go to sleep, and it’s dark when I wake up. Window blinds alone were just fine for the task.

Recently, I’ve shifted to a later sleep schedule. Now, the sun is actually out well before my designated wake time. The problem then is the sun would often wake me up before it is time. And that is not a good thing in terms of maximizing sleep. Black-out curtains are now needed. It’s nothing fancy: I bought these curtains from Amazon, and this simple and inexpensive curtain rod from Home Depot.

That’s it! I am done for the year.

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.

Take care of yourself now

Today a coworker told me the sad news of her elderly mother taking a fall. She is still at a care facility on the long road to (hopefully) recovery. Falling down at that age is absolutely one of the worse things than can happen. My own grandmother was never the same after an accidental fall. Not only are elderly bones more brittle, but they also have less growth hormones and repairing capabilities. It is best to avoid entirely. For example, a broken hip hugely increases all-cause mortality:

A recent meta-analysis revealed that women sustaining a hip fracture had a 5-fold increase and men almost an 8-fold increase in relative likelihood of death within the first 3 months as compared with age- and sex-matched controls.

This is something I latently worry about my parents, as they enter into their retirement years. I stress to them often that they have to remain constantly active, and to continue moving heavy things (cardio fitness alone is not sufficient). They also must eat plenty of protein, and less carbs. Obviously, I can’t physically force them to do anything, so whether or not they follow through with my heeding is beyond my control. I think in the near future I will buy for both my parents an Apple Watch: for the fall detection feature. I want to be alerted immediately if my mom or dad takes an unfortunate tumble.

Hearing anecdotes of the fragility of aging, and the ignominy of being mobility hindered and needing assistance to perform basic human tasks, is always a reminder for myself to avoid that outcome to the best that I can control. That means taking care of my body and building a strong foundation now, while I am still at the meat of my adulthood. The retirement years are only worth living if I can be as active and moving freely as the younger years (relatively speaking).

Having grandparents that suffered through it, I can say with certainty that being confined to a living facility for the last decade of life is not the way to go.

Don't heat it up

October in San Francisco has brought along the typical few days of hot weather (hot for this region, anyways), even though it’s autumn. This brings a unique problem to someone like me who lives in a studio (read: very small). When the temperature is high, I cannot cook at night. The room (singular!) is warm enough already; cooking a hot meal adds heat to it, delaying the natural night cool down. The slower the room cools down, the more difficult it is to fall asleep.

A cascade of negative consequences, that’s what it is. Good news is, I live right by a mall with plenty of food options. So on the hot days these past few weeks, take-out dinner was the only sensible option. Not that I need any extra excuse to not cook. The downside of course is the hit to the wallet. Inflation is still high, food prices are still ridiculous. Can you even eat a non-fast food meal for less than $20 these days?

In addition to not cooking when the weather is hot, I also do not use my LG OLED TV. Did you know that OLED televisions consume more power than the equivalent LED unit? All that wattage has to go somewhere: radiating right into the room. So what do I do for entertainment on a hot October San Francisco evening? I use the iPad. That thing runs so cooly that it doesn’t even have an internal fan. Indeed it’s kind of slumming it to go from a 65-inch screen to a 10-inch screen, but I must avoid heating up the room unnecessarily.

Because as mentioned: sleep is utmost importance. The body needs to cool down 1 to 2 degrees in order for the person to fall asleep. The warmer the room, the more challenging it is to get there. What would be ace is one of those mattress toppers that has active cooling. If climate change gets worse, and San Francisco sees more and more hot weather days, it’s something worth considering.

You can go to Chinatown for a meal under $20.

Regrets of the dying

Yesterday, my family went to see my maternal grandfather in the nursing home. He is 93, hugely diabetic, and struggling through his last days. My brother and I were there to pay our last respects, if you will. While I would say that 93 years is a sufficiently long life, the pain that comes with end of life is still a difficult watch. Grandfather could opt out of dialysis and go in a matter of days, but he continues to cling to life. Who can blame him?

The whole time I was there, I kept thinking of Bronnie Ware’s book: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I wonder what regrets my grandfather has, if any? Sadly, not a question I can ask, because at this point he doesn’t even recognize who I am. For those wondering, here are the top five regrets, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
"I wish I hadn't worked so hard."
"I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."
"I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."
"I wish that I had let myself be happier."

I know one regret I would have: making dumb health choices when I’m young, only for me to suffer later in life. What’s the point of living into the 90s when you’re bed and house-ridden for the final decade plus? I don’t see that as a very good life. This is why I hugely about the three pillars of getting enough sleep, eating correctly, and consistent exercise. Now, when I’m still in my 30s. I want to live a long time, yes, but I want that long time to also be as functional as possible. God willing, of course.

This is why I push my retired parents to be as active as possible, and get enough protein. Let my grandfather be an example of how not to end up during our respective end of days. It’s a tremendous burden on yourself and your loved ones.

Sheer convenience

Last evening, I had to pick up a friend from the airport. She was flying in from Singapore on a 15 hour flight. Foolishly she slept on the plane, which meant she will be properly jet-lagged today. From the looks of text messages in our group chat, she was still awake well into 3 o’clock this morning. Today will be rough for her indeed - the friend is already going back to work!

Before picking her up at the airport, we made a detour to the In-N-Out burger nearby in Millbrae. Whoever decided to put an In-N-Out there - right off the freeway exit just after the exit for SFO - is a genius. You can get the west coast famous In-N-Out burger immediately as you arrive into San Francisco. Grab your rental car, then cross the freeway. What, you want to take a bus there? Sorry, this is not Asia. Public transit doesn’t work like that around here.

Opposite to the Millbrae In-N-Out is the combined Caltrain and BART station. We were surprised and delighted to see a whole slew of apartments being built around it. Now that is convenience! I would totally rent a place there if where I work is accessible by train, either up into San Francisco, or further down the pennisula. I’d image those apartments will sell out quick, even in this climate of are we or are we not having a recession.

From the looks of the website, there will be shops and food places at the ground floor as well. As a person who lives two blocks from a major mall, I cannot overstate how valuable it is to be so close to these sort of amenities. Look at food: the reason I can make do with a relatively small fridge is because I can practically grocery shop at any time. The Whole Foods at the mall is open from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM. I just buy what I need for that next meal - there’s no need to stock up.

This kind of convenience is worth everything. You’d have to pay me double for me to even consider moving out of my current living/working situation.