Blog

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

Shopping spree

Black Friday for our local Target store is not the Friday of Thanksgiving. Rather, it’s the weekend of move-in day before the start of Fall semester at nearby San Francisco State University. The horde of freshmen, with their family in tow (keepers of the credit card, obviously), attacking the shelves for their everyday dorm-life needs. That includes a SodaStream for one guy, and a whole vacuum cleaner for another person. The latter of whom is a guy I very much personality align with. A dirty room is simply unacceptable.

Whilst witnessing the purchasing madness going on (I was going to the Whole Foods at the same mall), I thought to myself, “Gee, I hope the crew at Target knew to stock up for this occasion!” “What if everyone wanted a coffee maker?” You see, our Target is not as big as the typical one. Under normal operation there is no way it can handle thousands of freshmen moving in and buying stuff. Heck, I can still remember going there not too long ago and was unable to buy the particular socks I wear. Not in stock.

The manager of that Target should be fired if the store were ill-prepared for Fall move-in day.

Seeing countless SUVs lining up towards the dorms with the entirety of a student’s living needs is a reminder that summer is almost over. I don’t know, it sure felt like a quick one to me. Work-wise it’s been bit of a lull since June, honestly. I am actually looking forward to having jam-packed days of action, and a bustling campus full of students and staff. The 2023-2024 school year is the first one since the official end of the pandemic, (Federal COVID emergency declaration ended in May of this year) so I am wondering if the campus can return to its former glory of packed buildings and halls.

Like back when I went to school at SFSU in the late aughts.

Gray so gray

The drudgery of summer here in San Francisco have gotten slightly depressive, even for jolly ole me. The western side of the city remains constantly blanketed by a cloud of fog on most days. An unpleasant situation for receiving those mood-positive vitamin Ds from the sun. Even though I’m grateful for the coolness during the night, the grayish overcast during the day can be rather oppressive.

I thought of Conan O’Brien’s sign off during his last episode as host of The Tonight Show. (Shame forever on Jay Leno for forcing Conan out of his dream job.) Despite the clear unfairness done to him, Conan cautioned us to not ever be cynical:

"I'm asking this particularly of young people that watch: please do not be cynical. I hate cynicicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you: amazing things will happen. I'm telling you. It's just true."

It seems every time I get into a bit of a funk, I go back to this Conan quote. Indeed, nobody in life gets exactly what they want. What you thought something would be turns out to be completely different. That girl you like just might not like you back. Where you are right now isn’t where you’d thought just five years ago. But that’s okay. Like Conan says, you just have to be kind, and keep working at whatever it is that you do. Take some risks, make some decisions, and deal with the consequences head on.

What I’m working on these days is being first to communicate. If I encounter something and it makes me think of someone, I try not to hesitate to text that person. Typically, I would be paralyzed with anxiety and simply not make the effort. What if that person finds it bothersome? What if they don’t text me back? What if we haven’t talked in a while, and I come off as weird? I’m trying to fight against that programming.

The point is to let it out into the world. Whether that boomerang comes back is out of my control. Best case, however, it sparks some conversations that otherwise wouldn’t ever have happened - if I didn’t make the effort.

That that I like that

“Pandemic's over, uh”, sings Psy on his latest hit single “That, That.”

Honestly, he’s probably right. Life have largely returned to the pre-pandemic normal. We can even look at international travel plans again, without any quarantine restrictions. General indoor mask usage have decreased dramatically, though that largely depends on where you go. Costco is about half masked. Whole Foods I would put at 80% masked. H Mart is about 99%. Us Asians don’t mess around when it comes to masks! We’ve had a masking culture long before the world met COVID 19.

Of course, my readings are of the Bay Area. I suspect if I leave this enclave, the amount of people masking falls closer to zero. I’ve certainly seen this when heading up north. My friend just returned south from Monterey, and she was practically the only person with a mask on.

Since summer is the best time to take vacation for those of us who works in education, my supervisor asked me about any potential PTO plans. As much as I desire to go to Asia -South Korean and Japan is and will be open, respectively - it’s probably best to avoid the crowd of people who also have similar thoughts of finally escaping on a holiday. All these Koreaboos who got into Kpop during the pandemic will be dying to go to Seoul.

Glad I already made that pilgrimage back in 2017.

I think I’ll stay put during this summer. Enjoy that San Francisco lifestyle for a bit, free of any COVID restrictions. I have everything I need and want right here.

Walking home

With summer semester going into action at the university, the staff are being asked to work on campus fully for two to three days out of the week. California is getting ready to fully open in about a fortnight, so things are returning to normal quite rapidly. Every weekend in May, I’ve gone out to places and ate indoors at restaurants. I’ve hung out indoors with a relatively large group of friends, unmasked. We are back, baby.

Except for much of the rest of the world. Rising COVID rates in countries with formerly ultra low outbreaks such as Taiwan and Vietnam show that vaccines are the only solution out of this mess. It’s perverse luck that the United States is amongst the worse in COVID deaths, yet we are the amongst the first to achieve an appropriately high level of vaccination. I read on twitter that some people are contemplating travel to America just to get the vaccine.

From worst to first, the underdog story. That’s America!

Anyways, being back to working a full day at work makes me appreciate how nice it is that I now live only a 10 minute walk away. To end a nine-hours day on campus without a commute slog in a car afterwards is just the best feeling. Yesterday evening I walked by heavy traffic on 19th Avenue on the way home, and thought to myself how grateful that I’m not the one stuck in a car amongst that quagmire. Maybe it’s not the job that’s soul-sucking, but it’s the commute?

I think this is why plenty of people are thriving with working-from-home. The commute time they get back in turn allows them to perform better. They are less stressed because they have more time. Unfortunately they’re going to hav a rude wake-up call if and when they are asked to return physically to work. Something for employers to look out for, surely.

To vacation or not

Summer is nearly upon us, and for those of us working in education, that means we can plan for some vacation time. 2020 was obviously a lost year, but with the vaccines proliferating nicely throughout the country, we can indeed entertain the thought of going away to places. Just recompense for being stuck at home for more than one year.

And it seems the proverbial floodgates have opened. My friend is heading off to Hawaii around Memorial Day, and the cost to rent a car is utterly extravagant relative to what it should be. Vaccinated people are planning to travel in droves, and prices for the touristy stuff are reflecting that demand. I haven’t checked, but I bet a plane ticket to Hawaii for the summer months is decently above average in price.

I’m in a conundrum, because while I do want to take vacation and travel somewhere, the places I want to go are all outside of America. I would love to go back to South Korea or Taiwan. Sadly, as of right now, traveling outside of this country is still prohibitive due to two-week quarantining requirements in most other countries. I only ever take two weeks of vacation at a time total, so I can’t spend all of that stuck in safety limbo.

The vacation I want to have is not a possibility, therefore should I even bother requesting time off this summer? I guess it would be prudent and healthy to take the time anyways even if I’m just staying home. It’s too early to say right now: if the aforementioned Asian countries relax their quarantine requirements in the coming months, I would definitely quickly make a change of plans.

But so would everyone else. I reckon traveling this year - especially outside of America - is going to be an expensive endeavor. Come on, guys, we make money now…

It's my Summer

It’s difficult to believe we’ve moved past Memorial Day already. That means the Spring 2020 school semester has finished, and Summer has officially begun, even though from the earthly orbit perspective there’s still about a month to go. In usual times I would have gotten on plane already, probably towards somewhere in Asia for two weeks of fun and galavanting. Of course, that’s most definitely not happening this year; chances are, I’m not flying anywhere for a very long time.

Indeed it’s the coronavirus that have made the turning to Summer such an awkward feeling. It seems like I’ve been in a mode of limbo ever since the beginning of March, when San Francisco announced a shelter-in-place order. As of this writing the order hasn’t even expired yet, which further exacerbates this feeling of disorientation. It’s great that we’ve turned the leaf over on another school year, but there’s really no change in joyfulness, not when we’re still stuck in our homes. What’s the point of taking vacation days when you can’t go anywhere?

That being said, it does appear the quarantine situation in San Francisco is de-facto over, and officially so in another four days on the 31st (unless they extend it again for a third time). Traffic have returned to their normal levels (which is to say, heavily congested), and the streets were mighty rowdy this past Memorial Day weekend. Compounded by a recent wave of excellent weather, plenty of people are so ready for the lockdown to be over that they didn’t wait until the official date. I don’t exactly blame them, though at the risk of virtual signaling, I’ve continued to stay at home unless absolutely necessary.

But I too am ready to go back outside. Cautiously, of course. Four more days to go untilI I can freely take the 911 out for a meditative drive. Four more days until I can freely hang out with my friends and share a meal. Four more days until the extroverts can return to their milieu (that’s you, not me). Four more days until we can see what this next chapter in the COVID-19 saga will look like. I am optimistic.

SFO vs. LAX

I am in the midst of planning for my usual summer holiday, and this year the destination is the isle of Japan. My friends and I are targeting the third week of July for this trip, and the obvious first order of business is to secure our flights. So on to Google Flights I went and executed a search for nonstop flights from San Francisco to Tokyo.

Sadly, the results were shockingly expensive.

For sure it was never going to be cheap flying to the other side of the planet, but nearly $1,800 for a roundtrip fare in economy is incredibly high – I can fly to Singapore for not much more. That fare is simply too rich for our group, especially considering Tokyo’s cost of living is world-famous for not being cheap in the slightest. We can’t blow a massive part of our budget on airfare alone.

An alternative plan, then: we dared to look at one-stop flights. As a general rule I’m wholly against routes with layovers, principally because it’s an enormous waste of time to be hanging out for hours at a transfer airport waiting for the connecting flight. Vacation time from work is already precious as is (thanks, America), so if I can pay a bit more to save time, I almost always do.

Unless of course the nonstop flight is untenably expensive. For the trip to Japan we found a one-stop flight for significantly less at $1,200 that involved a layover in Incheon, which honestly for me isn’t the worst thing in the world. I still hold fond memories the South Korea trip two years ago, so the opportunity to spend a bit time in that country again draws no protest from me.

My friends and I were all set on that itinerary, except I remembered that we are heading for Los Angeles only two days before the departure date, so what if we flew out of LAX instead? Once again to Google Flights I went, and to my utter surprise and indignity (at SFO), a direct flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo is even cheaper than our one-stop flight out of San Francisco.

What the heck!?

I understand there’s a larger Japanese population down south, but Japan is a popular travel destination for persons of all ethnic backgrounds, so I’m really quite miffed at why a direct flight out of San Francisco is some $600 dearer. In a childish protest sort of way, that’s not fair!

It’s an easy choice then for us to fly out of LAX. We’re still very ahead of the SFO-HND route in cost after accounting for the additional rental car down to Los Angeles and the flight back to San Francisco on the return. More importantly, we get a nonstop route over the Pacific, which is just the ultimate.

I can and will go back to South Korea at another date.