Blog

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

Heat training

The curse of living in San Francisco and this year-round mildly cold weather of ours is that we are rather fickle with temperature extremes. Especially when the weather gets hot. Far easier to to deal with cold when it’s always sort of cold. But high temperatures? There’s only so much we can do when weather in the 70s already feel like shorts and t-shirts time. Imagine making that clothing combination last all the way into the triple digits.

I just end up sweating it through. Traveling the grueling summer heat in Japan, I brought a towel with me everywhere, constantly wiping sweat away.

But that was Japan. I made the mistake of not bring a towel with me this past weekend when we went to Marysville, deep north of Sacramento. Back home in San Francisco it was a nice low 60s, but it was well into the 90s near our State capitol. A 30 degrees swing from departure and the destination. How would you prepare for this? We all left San Francisco with two upper layers and long pants - as you do. Upon arrival, we took off our sweatshirts to the t-shirt layer. That was it.

Suffice it to say, I was struggling in the heat. At least I had the presence of mind to wear canvas shoes instead of my usual wool Allbirds. Really should have worn shorts, but I would have froze at the beginning of the trip in. By mid-afternoon I was feeling the adverse affects, and had to find shade whenever possible.

I actually don’t mind hot weather. Because we only get it for one week out of the year in San Francisco, we never get a chance to acclimate. I think I can do quite well living in a place where it’s always above 80 degrees during the Summer. So long as there’s air-conditioning indoors, of course.

Overall I think it does the body well to experience temperature extremes once in a while. It’s good training for resiliency. Going to Marysville and being in the heat felt great the next day, as if I had exercised the day before.

No driving for old me

These days I am driving my BMW M2 so infrequently that I’ve been entertaining thoughts of selling it. It’s rather irresponsible to keep such an expensive car around - plus the relatively high cost to insure it - only to have it sit outside on the curb most of the time (looking mighty pretty, I have to say). I don’t think I can go car-less, but switching to another that’s far less costly to purchase and own would be most financially ideal.

Not ideal for my car enthusiast heart, however. The push and pull between my love of cars and financial responsibility have been an ongoing struggle since my very first turn of the steering wheel. This “hobby” of ours is undoubtedly expensive, and our exravagent spending on cars isn’t suppose to be rational. Heck, car buying in general isn’t rational. If everybody bought only the right car for their purposes, we’d all be driving small, compact SUVs made by Japanese manufacturers.

Toyota is going to sell boatloads of the Corolla Cross.

Of course, cars are so much more than just mere transportation, even for those who aren’t the enthusiastic type. It’s an extension of our personality, a representation of ideals, for better or worse. Manufacturers are great at attacking those points with marketing. Everyone have notions of what a typical BMW driver is (again, for better or worse), same with a Toyota Prius driver. The latter of whom is probably hogging up the right-lane going way too slowly.

Must you own a cool car to be a car enthusiast? Even if all it does is just sit? These days I’m really pondering on those questions. I’ll certainly miss it greatly if I were to sell the M2, which is ultimately why I haven’t yet done it. Oh and the fact I’d be taking a bath on depreciation. Sunk cost fallacy is real and immense.

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.

Running and washing

The muscle pain from running four miles for the first time in over a year is expected, but present all the same. It feels great to run outdoors around Lake Merced again, breathing fresh air as I train aerobically. It has taken this long for me to return to running because I was never going to run outside with a mask on. Heavy breathing through multiple layers of cloth just doesn’t feel right. So I had to wait until I was both fully vaccinated, and for a time when not wearing a mask outdoors becomes socially acceptable in this liberal utopia of ours.

I am happy to report that it was rather easy to pick back up the old habit. I can’t say for sure that I didn’t gain any COVID weight, but my stamina has not waned that much, if at all. I completed the loop around the lake at my usual pace, surprising even myself that I didn’t lose a step, or become overly tired from the (more than) one year hiatus. To this I owe to keeping a regular workout schedule at home throughout the pandemic, and the fact I now walk to work on the regular.

It would not be wise to then on the next day go wash the car, what with the muscle aches and everything. However, that is exactly what I did. My BMW M2 hasn’t seen the cleaning side of a microfiber towel since January, which is insane now that I am typing this out on the first of June. A white-colored car parked outside attracts all the dust and plant fallout that our neighborhood has to offer. The M2 really deserves to be detailed more often, but that’s contingent upon me to not be lazy.

What happened? Back in my twenties I would consistent wash my car once every two weeks. Having a clean and tidy car - inside and out - is something of a prideful point for me. Driving a freshly washed car just feels different and awesome. It’s completely due to laziness that I’ve stepped away from this consistent habit. That said, going four months in between wash is unacceptable. I need to pick back up the pace.

Running and cleaning the car: things I’m endeavoring to start doing constantly again. Wish me luck.

I do lift

Part of doing IT support on a college campus is that sometimes we have to transport quite a few things to and from classrooms. A dozen or so computers altogether becomes very heavy quickly when it’s loaded onto one cart. This is the grunt work that goes on behind the scenes; it isn’t all just done with a keyboard. Who says IT support isn’t a physical job?

I always jump at the chance to do the heavy lifting stuff, because it’s really good exercise. I see it as getting paid to workout. It means I can skip an actual workout session. Pushing a cart full of monitors is far less boring than doing kettlebell swings a hundred times. Why restrain myself in my every day life just because I exercise consistently? It’s like the guy at hotels who valets his luggage but then goes to the hotel gym to workout.

Carrying the bags himself would have achieved the same thing, and more productive.

Of course, I am lucky that my work isn’t the constantly back-breaking type. I wouldn’t be saying any of this if I were a roofer. On most days, it truly is just sitting in front of a computer screen. Which is why it’s even more important to be active when I get the chance. It’s rather perverse when you think about it: white collar jobs need to find ways to keep their workers from becoming the equivalent of couch potatoes. I do very much appreciate my standing desk.

Never miss an opportunity to exert and use some muscles. I can always rest when I get home.

China the powerful

The soft power of China is infamously tremendous and often times amazing to witness. Yesterday I woke up to a tweet of wrestler-turned-actor John Cena apologizing in Chinese on video. There’s many dimension to how wild that is. First, John Cena speaks mandarin quite decently! As a speaker of three languages, I am a big fan of learning a second language. A white guy from Boston learning Chinese is just not something you expect to see. Good for John.

Second, Cena is apologizing to the people of mainland China for referring to Taiwan as a separate country. The faux pas happened during the current press tour for the ninth Fast and Furious movie (I can’t wait to see that in an actual theatre). Amongst the many things you absolutely cannot say vis a vis China, calling Taiwan a country is up there near the top. So of course Cena had to say sorry to the Chinese people, via the Sina Weibo social network.

Because third, had he not apologized, Cena is risking the financial future of anything he is attached to. The Fast and Furious franchise does huge money in China. Imagine if Cena’s slip-up cause the film to be banned there. There goes nine-figures of revenue right out the window. The movie studio cannot have that, obviously, which is why Cena had to quickly release a mea culpa, in what looks akin to a hostage video.

Just another day of doing business in the People’s Republic. If corporations want those numerous Chinese dollars, they must answer to ruling party. Boycotts and bans are swift. as the likes of H&M and Adidas found out recently.

On a similar vein, you won’t ever find me speaking negatively about China. I have many relatives living over there that I very much would like to visit often. Last thing I want to do, is say or write something careless and then get banned from entering my country of birth. Good thing websites hosted on Squarespace are blocked by the great firewall anyways…

Waking on time

It’s been, what, two months since the clock moved forward an hour for daylight saving time? It has taken that long for me to finally readjust my sleeping schedule. For the past two months, I’ve been content with not setting an alarm, and letting myself wake up whenever. Usually that occurs at around 6:30AM, about half and hour later than my usual 6AM alarm. On certain mornings it would be past 7 o’clock. Must have been tiring days prior.

Well, the natural wake experiment is over. Due to my tendency of scrolling through twitter in bed for at least half an hour, waking up just whenever is costing me time. The obviously solution would be to stop reading twitter in bed, instead of waking up earlier, but that’s far too logical and prudent for me. I enjoy my morning twitter read, the equivalent of reading the delivered newspaper every day.

But I also miss being up during the tranquil hours of early morning. On both days this past weekend, I forced myself up right at 6AM for various activities. Being up and active during those ungodly hours, while everyone else is still sound asleep, is the magic of having an early sleep-wake schedule. Nothing better than reading a book in absolute silence with a cup of coffee in hand, while the view outside the window does it morning color dance. Or a stroll through San Francisco chinatown before any shop have even opened.

This is why I’ve once again set an alarm clock for 6AM - everyday. No more “sleeping in”; morning hours shall be utilized to the maximum. The past few days I got my hour of daily reading in before I moved on to breakfast. It’s really nice.