Blog

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

The opinion of others

Finally - some rain!

Coming out of the shower last night and preparing for bed, I heard the sweet tapping of precipitation on the window panes. It seems we haven’t had rain all year - and we’re deep into our typical rainy season, so the cleanse is incredibly welcomed. Free car wash, everybody! It’s also blooming season, so there’s a ton of pollen blowing around. The exterior of my BMW M2 is an absolute mess. I’ll check later if it rained enough last night to sheet the dirt off.

The blooming cherry and plum blossom trees in the neighborhood sure are lovely. Only one week out of the whole year do we get to enjoy their stunning gifts. Afterwards, the dead petals get blown away, many of which land right on my car.

It’s a reminder just how much I don’t drive the M2. It’s always fascinating to see the week’s worth of dust accumulation on the windshield when I do use the car on the weekends. If I were a strictly rational person, I would have traded the BMW for something far less expensive to insure and own. But car enthusiasm is never rational. Heck, car buying in general is not purely logical. That’s why I seldom give advice to people on what to buy, because they’ll inevitably purchase what their heart is already set on. It doesn’t matter that car is objectively worse than I would recommend.

I wouldn’t say I’m too emotionally attached to the M2. Admittedly, it is nice to have a cool car that stands out amongst a sea of SUVs. It provides a sense of smugness. It’s not quite that rich guy in a Lamborghini, but it’s similar. A good portion of car enthusiasm is about peacocking, and buying a car for the sake of impressing other people. We shouldn’t care about the opinion of others, but we do it anyways. Look at what I have! This expensive piece of machinery is an outside representation of me.

This is why I can’t swap the M2 for a more economical car. I love the power, and everything outwardly that BMW M cars represent. Though I do use the turn signals when changing lanes…

Asian excellence

The annual Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco was this past Saturday. I’ve lived in San Francisco since 1996, and not once have I attended the festivities - as a spectator. One year during high school I was part of the color guard team leading the parade. It was a cold and rainy night, and we marched behind SFPD mounted on horses. Said horses would poop on the street right in front of us from time to time. We literally had to march around those natural landmines while maintaining strict composure. Fun times.

This year, a friend wanted to attend the parade to have content for his Youtube channel. He bought bleacher seats situated right at the end of the parade route - on Kearny and Jackson - next to the VIP judging section. I didn’t realize one had to pay for seating to attend the parade. Of course, there’s plenty of free standing room along the entire route. Enterprising people would get there early and plop down a portable stool.

We were quite enterprising ourself: we got to Chinatown way earlier than necessary. In doing so we didn’t have to detour (and get stuck in traffic) because they haven’t closed down the streets yet for the parade. We parked at the historic Chinatown Hilton hotel for $16 flat fee, then went to explore the street fair on Grant Ave that was also happening the same weekend. It was a sunny afternoon, atypically great weather because it usually rains during the Chinese New Year Parade. Thanks. global warming?

The parade itself was spectacular and surprisingly long. It’s one thing to watch on television, but to be able to see absolutely everything in person is a completely difference experience. Being next to the judges’ pavilion meant every participant stopped and performed in front of us, which was nice. $50 to sit where we sat might be a bit expensive, but I think it’s totally worth it to do it once. The atmosphere is wonderful; super heart-warming to see Asian culture on display.

Afterwards we walked around Chinatown some more. Revelers were lighting up (probably illegal) fireworks and firecrackers on just about every intersection of Grant Ave. A fitting aural tribute to the Lunar New Year celebration.

I think it’s time they change the new to Lunar New Year Parade.

First week of school

It’s been a fairly hectic week. San Francisco State University resumed in-person classes for the spring semester, at 50% of all courses. First week of school is always a hectic time for us on the tech support side (I barely had time to eat lunch on Tuesday) I actually shifted my schedule to an earlier start time to accommodate the service needs. Thankfully I already wake up much earlier than I need to for work, so my rigorous sleeping schedule remains intact.

Three days in thus far and I’ve taken over 10,000 steps on every one of them. This is great for my cardio. If I had an Apple Watch I’d certainly have closed those rings. It’s lovely to see an active campus again full of students and staff. Even at 50% capacity, the halls seem mighty crowded, and lines have returned to the campus food shops. It’s nice to have people back, though I do miss the eerie quiet of the pandemic ghost town just a little.

Some of my coworkers would say they miss being able to find parking easily on the streets surrounding campus. I of course don’t have the problem: I smugly walk to work in about 10 minutes from home.

California and San Francisco have lifted the indoor mask mandate starting on the 16th. The City also no longer requires proof-of-vaccination for indoor dinning. Strangely, San Francisco State have kept its own indoor mask mandate for all of its buildings, deviating from the San Francisco public health guidelines for the very first time. Let’s see how keen people are to follow the masking rules when our campus is the exception, rather than the norm.

From a pure comfort standpoint, I am more than ready to not wear a mask for all eight hours of my workday.

Baby stay cool

Last week, we saw a string of unseasonably warm weather days here in San Francisco. Temperatures got into the mid to high 70s. It was sunny, dry, and kind of nice to be outside. The bad news is, we haven’t had any substantial rain since the end of autumn. It’s always disconcerting to see such excellent summer weather right in the middle of winter, what is suppose to be our wet season. At least it hasn’t been totally dry: the deluge of last October is absolutely hard-carrying our rain stats right now.

Anyways, San Francisco going through one of its few warm weather spells is when I can appreciate the fact my studio in-law rental is on the ground floor of my friend’s house. Physics being what it is - hot air rises - my place stays relatively cool no matter the outside temperature. Sometimes I actually have to remove layers when I leave home, always surprised at how hot it actually is outside.

Meanwhile, my friend who owns the house is sweating his butt off in his third-floor office, working from home. At least he’s got a portable air-conditioning unit. I left mine at my parents’ place. I don’t need it.

Walking distance to work and a mall with absolutely everything (got to have my Saturday morning McDonalds), a nice and quiet neighborhood, and the room stays cool year round: I really can’t ask for a more ideal place to live. Difficult to say whether it’s a long term solution, but for now I’m just enjoying every bit of it as much as possible. It'll be a sad day indeed if I ever go back to having to commute by car.

Throw money at it

A coworker has an issue with her MacBook Air: it’s running out of hard drive space. Her laptop only has 128 gigabytes of storage. In between all her dalliances with the Adobe suite and (presumably) syncing photos from her iPhone, the hard drive is rapidly up against the free space ceiling. I’m not sure why anyone would buy a laptop with so little storage (even for 2019 when said coworker made the purchase), but nevertheless.

Another coworker suggests that she buy an external hard drive. Yet another said she should delete some Adobe working files that seems to be taking an inordinate amount of space. I offered seemingly (to me) the most effective solution: sell the MacBook Air, and buy a new laptop with as much internal storage as she can afford. The other solutions appear to only fix the problem temporarily. Eventually she’ll run out of space once again, and either will have to offload more file to the external drive ,or another round of file deletion.

Of course, no one likes to hear that they should buy a new laptop when the one they’ve got is still relatively new. I’m just of the opinion that if you’re able to throw money to solve a nagging problem, you should absolutely do it. I paid substantially extra to have two terabytes of storage on my MacBook Pro precisely because I don’t want to ever deal with running out of space and juggling external drives. One of the main point to a laptop is its portability, is it not? Dragging along additional devices seem counterproductive.

I think the coworker is going with buying an external hard drive, which is far less costly than my proposal. A patch on a pothole rather than repaving the road entirely. It’s okay: I appreciate that people may view money differently than I do (this coworker gets paid the same as I do, so it’s not like her disposable income is less than mine). I’m lucky enough to be able to view money as a tool, and I try to have as little emotional attachment to it as possible.

Immigrant dad

On a visit back home to my parents’ place, I noticed my father’s coffee mug has a large piece of gaffer tape at the bottom. I thought to myself: that it’s obviously broken! Why not buy another one? Then I realize my parents have that mentality that they won’t replace an item unless it’s absolutely broken. It’s that working-class, immigrant Chinese mentality. They wouldn’t dare to spend extravagantly on themselves, even if it’s just 20 bucks on a new coffee mug.

All (what little) of that disposable income go towards the children, and the future. Even if said children is fully grown (that’s me!) and the monthly paycheck isn’t so tight anymore.

So I had to step in. I went straight Amazon to buy a Yeti-branded coffee tumbler. The same one I’ve been happily using for well over a year. No more generic mugs from some random store in Chinatown for my father. He was so excited (in the Chinese immigrant dad sort of way, which is to say, not overtly) when I gave the Yeti to him. He immediately went to clean off the product labels, give it a solid scrub, then make a cup of coffee.

Finally. A proper mug.

A week later, my mom mentioned to me that father was very impressed with how long the Yeti tumbler kept the coffee hot. He’s really enjoying his cup of morning coffee these days. It wasn’t lost on me that it was mom who told me this, instead of father directly having a conversation with me. Some things don’t change! That’s fine, though: it makes me happy to be able to buy him something he wouldn’t have otherwise. A mere $30 dollar mug can do so much.

Not on a school night

Amongst my friends, I jokingly refer to weekday evenings as “school nights”. Not only do I have a set schedule of studies and practice to attend to, I also have to go to bed early. Not entirely because of work the next day, but because I prefer to wake up early and type out a few words on this blog. I guess you can say it’s a bit neurotic to force myself to such a routine. All I can say, is that it feels weird when I have to deviate from the schedule.

Such as last evening. Instead of eating dinner at home then commencing piano practice, I went out with some friends to a burger place at the main drag of West Portal. It was a particularly warm day so the ambiance was quite nice to be sitting outside and taking in the small town atmosphere. They’ve chained Christmas lights between the light poles so it was rather festive for a random February evening. The burger place was right next to a record store that constantly played music, adding to atmospheric flavor.

See, I’m not so strict with my routine that I can’t break it for these random excursions. The lost time for piano practice and reading can be easily made up later. Quality time with friends, that’s something to grasp at the first opportunity. I even thanked them afterwards for coming out of a school night. One of them is doing his doctorate program, so it actually was a school night for him. There was homework waiting soon as he return home. NERD!

I guess that’s why people adore Fridays so much. They can go out and deviate from their regular work-life schedule without a care. Friday nights are their proverbial oyster. As for me? I also have a set routine on Fridays: I visit my friend’s kids and have dinner at their home. Not all that exciting from certain perspectives, but it’s quality time with people I cherish nonetheless.