Blog

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

Boring is good

What if boring is good? What if we are not meant to strive for greatness? Surely it’s perfectly fine to be comfortable, content, and be at leisure.

I had a mini existential crisis of sorts recently. It was the weekend, the time to do the stuff I want to do. To do things that improve and better myself. Like reading a book, or study some skill. Perhaps to go outside and explorer, grab that pricey Sony camera that’s been gathering dust since the pandemic started and do something with it. Why am I not being more productive? It’s the weekend! The time I pined ever so much to have during the busy work-week.

And yet, all I wanted to do was absolutely nothing. There’s errands to run, of course, but after that, lounging around seemed like the thing to do. But guilts of unproductiveness and stagnation quickly hit me, and I would then get stuck in rut, fighting between what the two sides want.

Why do we strive for more anyways? A lot of it is novelty. We can’t bear the pain and reality of doing the same things over and over. No matter how much the pandemic have made Groundhog Day a reality for us, the taste for something new and different is always the dangling carrot in front. This is why so many people are predicting a post-vaccine boom: we are all so ready to do something other than what we’ve been doing for the past year.

Why do I study things, read books, travel to places and do photography? For the chance that it may lead to something different, something new in the future. That’s the treadmill that I didn’t know I was on, but here it is on a quiet weekend, making me restless because I can’t force myself to actually rest. What if this monotony of life is all there is? Why can’t I be okay with doing the same thing day after day, week after week? I live a comfortable life: I should be satisfied with that if this is all that ever will be.

It’s okay if life is boring.

WFH on rainy days

The best days to work from home are the rainy days, when I am comfortably indoors with a hot cup of tea. The flowers are blooming this time of the year, so the view outside my window is rather lovely. The BMW M2 is getting a free car wash courtesy of the rain. The clouded skies means the sun isn’t shinning directly into my eyes during the afternoon. I have window shades, but I prefer to keep a view towards the outside.

Rainy days are great when you don’t have to go outside. One thing I didn’t calculate for when I moved closer to work is that I would have to walk through the rain to get to campus. Even the strongest umbrella cannot prevent the bottom half of my body from getting wet. The brief 10 minute walk is enough to completely soak the shoes. I really need a pair of rain boots, or shoes that are somewhat weatherproof.

The ultimate first world solution would to actually drive to work when it rains, even though I only live two longish blocks away. My parents would never dream of being so wasteful, but what’s the point of making money if not to make our lives more convenient? More so than the cost of gas, I’d be more worried about such a short trip having a negative effect on the engine. Advantage to electric vehicles: there aren’t any internal fluids to get up to temperature.

But there’s a problem: the distance from the school’s parking lot to the building where I work is precisely the same distance as that building from my home. I would literally gain nothing from driving. Perhaps those boots are indeed the way to go.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy working at home in front of the window on these rainy days. As the vaccines proliferate, pretty soon I’m going to have to say goodbye to this pandemic work lifestyle.

Slight delay

I was supposed to get the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine tomorrow morning, but sadly I got notification the City College of San Francisco vaccination site do not have enough supply to fulfill the original appointment. Therefore I am not going to complete the vaccination circle until Thursday of next week. After a grueling year of the pandemic, what’s another seven days of waiting anyways?

Of course, getting the second shot doesn’t mean I am immediately immune to COVID-19. It takes another two weeks after that for the vaccine to take full effect. That means I still have three more weeks of this super careful, masked-up, lockdown lifestyle that’s been going on for more than a year. Not that I’d be going around freely not giving a crap as soon as the two weeks is over, mind you.

Once I am fully immune, my friends and I are having a gathering to celebrate the occasion. Due to sheer luck, our friend group all either work in education, or in the medical field. Therefore, we were amongst the first batch of people to get the vaccine. This milestone should be celebrated properly: by gathering indoors without masks, and hugging each other with impunity. After a whole year of not hanging out together, it’ll be a sweet feeling indeed.

We certainly won’t be the only group of people doing this. I am genuinely happy that as more and more are vaccinated, we get to go back to socializing physically, rather than over a Zoom screen. I just hope we have enough supply for everyone to get the vaccine as quickly as possible. Hopefully my delay is just a small hiccup, rather than some widespread issue.

An EV should be your next car

To get around the relatively vast San Francisco State campus, we have these small electric trucks to drive around. They are similar in size to the kei cars you see in Japan: small engine, narrow size, supremely maneuverable. Especially during these COVID times, when the campus is largely empty of people, it’s very fun to zip around these things. A few years ago we got fully electric versions to replace the aging gasoline fleet. It’s with these tiny trucks where I had my first prolonged experience with EVs.

Conclusion: I think anybody with the capability to plug-in at home should buy an EV, and never look at gasoline vehicles ever again.

Our trucks at work are always charging and ready to go. The electric motor have more than enough torque to push a full load of cargo up an incline. Best of all, there’s no emissions to speak of, so when there are people mingling about on campus, we’re not choking up the place with smog. Range is not a problem: there’s enough on a charge to drive around campus multiple times over. Soon as we return to base, it goes straight to the plug.

If you have the capability to charge at home, there’s really no downside to an EV. Should on the few occasions you need to go somewhere far, you can always rent a regular gasoline-powered car. It’s the trap of thinking you need to have one singular car for all scenarios that’s giving people pause for EVs in regards to range. I get it: the current charging infrastructure is not broad enough and too cumbersome (who wants to wait over half an hour to “fuel” up?)

Which is why I caveat that only those with charging capabilities at home should buy an EV.

Just as you shouldn’t buy a pickup truck for the few times out of the year you think you’ll hit the hardware store, or a Jeep Wrangler for the few times you’ll go off-roading, don’t let the notion of a long road-trip deter you from buying a fully electric vehicle as your next car. EVs are the future, and I see everyday how awesome that future is at work.

DST can go die

I keep saying this, and I’ll keep on doing so until they stop: I hate changing the clock for Daylight Saving Time. Would the powers at be just pick one time and stick with it for the whole year? Why are we voluntarily giving ourselves essentially jet lag for no good reason? The agony is especially acute in the Spring, during which we lose an hour of time on that Sunday. I felt horrible yesterday, even though I did the same as I usually do every Sunday.

It’s going the greatest of day when congress passes a law mandating either we keep DST or standard time forever, and never changing back.

Until then, the best we can do is cope with the difficulties. Even though today is a work day, I still woke up at the same time before changing the clock forwards. I can afford to do this because my normal wakeup time is well before when I have to actually get ready for work. When the alarm rings, it isn’t the ultimatum like it is for most people. The snooze button isn’t some penalty I am going to have to pay for later. This freedom is rather nice, though obviously I also go to sleep earlier to compensate.

Instead of forcing myself to wake up at this “new” time, I’m going to slowly allow my body to acquiesce. I’m not going to set an alarm; whenever I wake up is whenever I shall wake up. There’s no need to set a backstop alarm, because I would have to oversleep for over two hours before I’d have to begin panicking about getting to work on time.

This begs the question: why set an alarm at all? If I have such freedom of hours before I have to get ready for work, why not “naturally” wake everyday? Surely it’s better than being rudely interrupted by an alarm. I reckon this is worth exploring.

Precious times

They say time is the most valuable asset we have, and we should try our best to not squander any of it. Sounds great on paper, but have these people ever try to get out of a warm bed in the morning? The eternal fight between the comfort and protection of the covers, and the dreadful cold of a morning bedroom. Keep the heat on during the night? I’m too Asian and not rich enough for that.

Instead of getting out of the bed promptly after wake, I waste about an hour scrolling through twitter on the phone. Having my phone within reach of the bed is probably one of my worst habits, but I simply don’t have the willpower to quit. Reading through twitter in the morning is like reading the morning newspaper for people back before the times of the Internet. It’s informational and entertainment. The real enemy is infinite scrolling: there’s no natural stopping point, unlike an actual newspaper. The dopamine drip can be as endless as your capability to stay in bed.

The productive thing to do would be to actually get out of the bed, and then check twitter on the MacBook Pro. This preserves the value of checking the news in the morning, but crucially, it also gets me out of bed. Crossing the physical barrier is what releases me from the intense hold of that warm cover. Back when I lived with my parents, feeding the cat was what got me out of bed immediately. I think I need something similar to that to serve the same purpose.

Ultimately, I can’t be wasting an hour plus stuck in the bed every morning. What’s the point of waking up so early if I’m just going to squander away those precious morning hours? Perhaps it is time: I shall charge my phone overnight on the drawer across the room. I’d have to get up and out just to turn off the alarm.

I need new clothes

The reason I can afford a six-figure sports car on a decidedly not-so six-figure salary is because I don’t spend much in other areas of life. One such area is clothing. Most of the stuff I wear are close to a decade old, and the amount of clothing isn’t great either. I can fit every single piece I own into two reasonable sized suitcases. I know this, because I did just that when I moved last November.

Back in college, there was a brief period when I bought a few too many sneakers. I am glad that phase was brief and gone, because spending over $100 dollars on a single pair of shoes is just not my idea of a good time. A rotation of about four pairs - including one for running - is about all I really need. Some of the shoes I bought back then, I still have, and in the coming years I hope to finally wear them out.

And I don’t plan to buy any more shoes until I do.

What I have started doing is replacing my wardrobe piece by piece. Any items that looks tattered are getting tossed. There’s also a hygiene factor: hats that are worn regularly and more than five years old are probably not the freshest thing. So recently I’ve completely replaced my aging hats with brand new ones. Thankfully I am not sentimental about having old hats around when I’m old and retired. I have no problem throwing away the SF Giants hat that commemorates the 2014 World Series victory.

My philosophy with clothing is to try to buy items that last, and I reckon I’ve done a pretty good job. Enough so that my relatives in China remarked that I’ve worn the same things that previous six years I’ve visited. Perhaps that was the signal to start changing it up. Slowly but surely.