Blog

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

We got the slow shipping

As an avid purveyor of books, I greatly prefer the feel of actual pages than the digital equivalent. Therefore I buy physical copies on Amazon, instead of opting for the Kindle version. The latter is likely kinder to the environment, but the analog texture and smell is worth the sacrifice of a few trees. Besides, I don’t want to give Amazon even more information than I already am: the company is not getting my highlights and reading patterns. It only knows what genre of books I tend to purchase.

In the effort offset some of the environmental impact, I buy used books whenever possible (unless the price difference between new and used is negligible). The downside of this is that shipping takes forever. I am so used to stuff arriving from Amazon in two days (Prime shipping!) that something taking more than two weeks feel downright archaic. Books would show up to my surprise that I had bought it in the first place. Multiple times lately I thought the item for sure got lost in the mail.

It is a busy time for shipping, after all. Everyone is trying to get their holiday shopping in. Amazon managing its own shipping supply chain is a massive advantage over its competition. You’re not handing off a package to Fedex and praying it’s able to keep its delivery timeframe promise. And as a customer, who can you trust but Amazon, when you’ve procrastinated until the last minute to buy presents? It’s far easier to get refunds too should an item arrive late, not that you should abuse this.

What Amazon should offer is the ability to read the Kindle version of a book, until the physical copy I bought actually arrives. That would be so clutch. I’d even buy a Kindle device just for that purpose. Anyone got a line to the current Amazon CEO?

The cost of borrowing

Interest rates are nuts!

If you’re in the market for a car and you need to borrow money for it, now is not exactly a great time. Even the best interest rate I can muster with my excellent credit these days is in the five percents. On a typical 60 month loan for an average priced car ($48,000), I’m looking at about $7,500 in interest alone. A net 15% taxation on the purchase price, because the central bank says so.

Hey, it’s great time if you’ve got cash - savings account are finally earning a healthy return again, but not so great if you need to borrow. The situation is even worse for home buyers looking to plop down at least a million for a home in the San Francisco Bay Area. The money towards servicing just the interest must be depressing.

That’s the point, isn’t it? The Fed raises interest rates to stop people from spending, thereby creating downward pressure on inflated prices. The problem is, the average transaction price of news cars have not come down fast enough. Demand is still high due to the chip supply shortage. If you’re in the market for a car right now, it’s a double whammy: high purchase price and borrowing cost.

At least one car company is offering incentives, however. Tesla announced a $7,500 price cut for customers taking delivery of cars by the end of calendar 2022. Got to juice those year-end numbers, am I right? The news got my friend - who’s been considering an electric vehicle for his next car - pondering on finally purchasing a Tesla Model Y. The best interest rate he can get from a bank is the same as me - mid five percent. On a $60,000 car, he’s staring at an interest bill of nearly $10,000. Ouch.

But we Chinese folks have a secret weapon: the bank of mom and dad. Thankfully, the only interest they charge is the unending commitment to filial piety. Easy peasy.

Waiting for QR

Yesterday I was at the local Whole Foods doing some grocery shopping during lunch (as one does). I got to the self-checkout terminals and the first thing to do is scan the Amazon Prime QR code. That lets the system know I am a Prime member and to give me my 5% cash back and other associated discounts. But there was a problem: my iPhone did not a have a strong enough network connection to load the QR code in the Amazon app. Apparently two (out of five) bars of 5G cellular is insufficient.

To load quickly, anyways. The loading circle kept spinning, so I just stood there waiting for the QR code to pop up. The people flow during that hour was slow so I was not holding up anybody. Honestly I think Whole Foods should make sure there’s solid network connection in their stores, especially now that everything is on our phones - including our credit cards. Gone are the days of Safeway where you bring a tiny card with a barcode to scan as confirmation of membership. Even Costco have migrated to digital ID cards on the Costco app. I never bring the physical card with me these days.

Soon as California allows for digital driver licenses in smartphones, I won’t bring a wallet with me ever again.

After a few minutes of waiting, the QR code finally appeared. I simply refuse to give up the 5% cash back (that is, if you have an Amazon Prime Visa card). Amazon Prime membership is not cheap these days, and I need to “make that money back” as fast possible so that I’m in the green. I bet the security guy was looking at me really funny, though. What is this guy doing staring at his phone and not scanning any items?

Would you be annoyed?

Scenario: you are driving me and another person. That person is up front in shotgun, while I am sitting in the backseat. You drop off the person first at his or her location. I then refuse to move up front for the remaining portion of the trip, still sitting at the back. Would you be annoyed by this?

Apparently more than one friend is annoyed by this! One so much so that he insists I sit up front to begin with.

The argument I’m hearing back is that it looks like I’m taking an UBER ride from the outside. “We are not your chauffeurs!” said one friend. It’s also slightly disrespectful because I’m suppose to move up front to keep conversation with the driver. To navigate if necessary, be on a lookout for danger in traffic. By staying in the back it shows I’m refusing to take on those obligations. The driver - presumably a good friend - is left on their own.

My argument is I don’t want to move! I’m not so large in size; the backseat is perfectly comfortable. I concede it does look like an UBER ride on the outside. But in terms of having a conversation and keeping a secondary watch, I can totally perform those duties from the rear of the car. Yes, the left side of my face is my best side, but you - the driver - should be focusing on the road anyways!

Of course, being a good friend I will henceforth move forward to the front after the shotgun passenger departs. Or perhaps this is my sly way of claiming the front seat no matter what…

Everybody wants it

A new guy started at work yesterday, and he’s got one gnarly commute just to get to campus. He lives in the East Bay so he takes a ferry to downtown San Francisco. Then he gets on the light rail, which thankfully takes him right in front of campus. I’m low-key not sure why he applied for this position given this arduous commute. What sucks even worse is leaving work at 6:00 PM and having to do the reverse. In the pitch dark.

Of course I not-so-meekly bragged to the guy: “Yeah, I live right across the street.”

Sorry about it! I will never be shy about my wonderful commute: a 10 minute walk. Moving this close to work is honestly the best thing to come out of the pandemic. The reclaimed hour lost to my old commute adds back to the work-life balance I deeply cherish. The fact the neighborhood near my work is also far quieter further decreases stress. I know this situation won’t last forever, so I’m going to enjoy it as much as possible while it’s there.

And I’m going to tell everyone about it, including new coworkers who’s got the opposite of what I have. Probably not the best for first impressions, however.

Work-life balance: it seems everybody around me want it. My one lawyer friend is looking to get back into government work after finding out even the slightly less hectic mid-size law firm life is still too hectic. My other friend who is a manager level position at a tech firm is overworked to the point of being hospitalized twice this year. Another friend who works at the same company but at a lower level have decided that management is not for her. The extra pay for the substantially increased stress is simply not worth it.

I completely agree. I too have zero desire to get to management level at my work. I’ve seen the hours my supervisor puts in. I very much like to take vacations, thank you very much.

Car buying dread

Early next year and I maybe (hopefully) will be in the market for another car. As I get older the traditional car buy process is just tiring. I bet a big reason Tesla cars are so popular is the absolute ease of buying one. You wouldn’t even have to leave the house! It can all be done online, from selection to financing. At the end your car gets delivered right to your home or desired location (mistress’ home).

Direct-to-consumer sale is where it’s at. It’s like buying a car on Amazon. You skip the headache of negotiating a price with a dealership salesperson (Tesla is famously one static price). In this current climate of low inventory, the customer is negotiating from a huge disadvantage. And that’s only the first gauntlet. Up next is the financing department, where they upsell you on extended warranties and maintenance plans. Better look at the contract carefully before you sign.

The quickest car-buying process I ever did still took a bit over two hours at the dealership. And that’s with me already agreeing to the price via email. In a time when my generation and younger are so used to buying stuff online and having it shipped to us (always a ton of Amazon boxes in the recycling bins during the holidays), the old way of buying a car at a franchise dealership is hugely obsolete. Traditional car brands are losing out to Tesla in this way.

What we want is options. The dealership model can stay, but automakers should offer the option to buy directly from them - online. That way the old timers can get their coffee and scones while a salesperson show them the intricacies of a particular car, while people like me - who already know exactly what I want - can simply do a few clicks on the smartphone to order the car.

Besides, dealership still have an important role that isn’t sales: servicing.

Yearly music top 10

It’s weird seeing people posting their Spotify and Apple Music yearly wrap-ups when there’s still a whole month to go in 2022. What if there’s a new release in December that you simply cannot stop playing over and over? That song or album would count towards this year, right? I don’t know, it just seems like people are treating December as a throwaway month. As if it’s already time to wind down 2022, even though there’s still 31 more days to go.

As for me, I don’t stream music from any platform, so no year-end wrap ups for me to show. Like a dinosaur I still buy and download each album, then use iTunes to catalog them all. There’s something to not being beholden to an Internet connection to enjoy my tunes. I’m sure Spotify and the like allow users to download playlists. Music is super important to me, so I rather have actual files that I can fully backup onto an external location. A lot would have to go wrong for me to lose it all.

Not that a year-end wrap of my musical listening would be of great interest to you readers anyways. Every song on the list would be Kpop, the only genre of music I’ve listen to for the past decade. I do make my own top 10 songs of the year, which you can check out in my year-end blog post that comes out on the 31st of December. That list is not about the most plays, however. What counts is the impact and meaning a new (to me) song has during 2022.

And there’s been times when a new song coming out in December have made it onto my year-end list. There might be one this year!