Blog

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

Light weight, baby!

Pro tip for those into the habit of weightlifting: rent from your friend whose garage has a squat rack. Not for actually squatting, but for the ability to do pull-ups. The pull-up is such an essential exercise (for back and lat muscles) that I would have bought one of those power towers on Amazon for my (small) studio if there weren’t a squat rack already. The movement is that crucial, well worth the sacrifice in room space. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that.

Recently, I have graduated to actually using the squat rack for (barbell back) squats. For the past year I’ve done goblet squats, clasping onto a single dumbbell with both hands to my chest. I seem to have reached critical mass with that, because my arms are tiring of holding onto 60 pounds well before my legs are giving up. Make sense: our leg muscles measurably bigger and stronger than the arms. The need to graduate to proper squats with a barbell is obvious.

What I did not realize is that having a huge metal rod putting pressure on my trap muscles kind of hurts! And my first attempt wasn’t even heavy: it was just the 45 pounds of the barbell itself! I guess (and hope) it is merely something to get used to. Surely it will feel more comfortable as I do more sets.

I am extremely lucky to have access to this setup right at home. While a set of adjustable dumbbells can take the upper body pretty far, leg day is a bit compromised as you advance in poundage. There comes an inflection point where It’s difficult to hold in your hands enough weight to stimulate the legs muscles properly (without doing a crazy amount of reps). The hands will get tired before the legs do. A barbell with weight plates solve that problem so easily.

To close or not to close

There was another Presidential debate this evening, and I could not care less. Between this one and the last debate, we’re no longer voting between two senile old men. That in it of itself is a win. Whatever happens in November is whatever. Besides, living in a California means the electoral votes will go to Vice President Harris, regardless of how I vote. It doesn’t materially matter.

Locally in San Francisco, I will have to vote on banning cars on the Great Highway. For those who don’t live here, the Great Highway is a long stretch of road running alongside the western beachhead. The road has been closed to traffic on the weekends already, but now people are petitioning for full time closure.

It seems wrong for me to vote on a thing where I have zero skin in the game. I hardly ever go to the beach (it’s not really a beach weather kind of town), and I don’t use the Great Highway to commute. I think the biggest opponent of banning cars are those who commute on the road. Make sense: I wouldn’t want to deviate from my normal routine either. Plus, it’s simply math: other arterial roads will see an uptick in vehicle traffic, and perhaps congestion.

Proponents of shutting down the Great Highway wants to turn it into a public park. I’m dubious of this one two fronts. One: who the heck is going to pay for the renovations? I thought San Francisco government is in a budget crisis. Second: there’s already a public park there. It’s called… the beach! For a region so much in need of more housing, if we’re going to shut down an entire road for good, let’s turn it residential.

I remain undecided.

For a rainy day

In a pleasant surprise, my health insurance premiums - subsidized by my employer - will not be going up in 2025! I was fully expecting it to, because one, inflation is causing everything to be more expensive these days. And two, Kaiser Permanente had to pay its workers more after their strike last year. Did you think a corporation is going to eat into its profit margins? You’re hilarious.

Just as well, then. Whatever difference I thought I’d had to pay more in the coming year will go right into the savings account.

Towards what end? I’m not sure. I am seeing a lot of people my age (mid 30s) having babies these days. Personally, I have no interest (or prospects) to be doing so myself. Not that I don’t think I wouldn’t be great at parenting. If anything, I am leaving positives on the proverbial table. Word on the street is that people who have kids tend to happier and live longer. As a person who is deathly afraid of dying, and has always strived to maximized longevity, why haven’t I made any babies already?

One things for sure: it is not too expensive to raise children. Our expectations toward what goes into child rearing have simply inflated. Baby showers, birthdays, the best diapers, humidifiers, bottle warmers, etc: I was raised with none of that stuff! My working-class parents could not afford it. And I turned out okay, if I do say so myself. Daycare? In Chinese culture, that would be the grandparents. No need to spend thousand(s) dollar per month.

Social media can make it difficult, I reckon. It’s like an arms race to show who can provide the “best” childhood for their kids. Don’t complain to us about how expensive it to raise kids when you go into debt for Disneyland. Public parks are free.

Always play offense

American football season is upon us, and all I can think about it to this past Super Bowl.

There I was in China on a Monday morning. Because that is how time zones work. While all my friends were gathered around the television on a Sunday afternoon back in the States, I was vacationing back home in Guangzhou. For a time I was concerned about how I was even going to watch the game. More so because our local team the San Francisco 49ers was in it. I can’t casually skip this one.

To the surprise of nobody, American football does not have a significant following in China. Besides, with an air time of 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, what working adult has time to even watch the game? Never mind finding a bar showing the broadcast. It’s way too early to be drinking, by anybody’s standards.

Lucky for me, the local sports station was showing the Super Bowl. I avoided performing many tricks to one, get by the Great Firewall of China, and two, get a not so legal stream of the broadcast.

The succinct memory I have of the game is during overtime. 49ers kicked a field goal instead of going for the touchdown. Soon as the ball sailed successfully through the uprights, I knew the game was over. You simply cannot take the safe points going up against Patrick Mahomes. Sure enough, he marched the Chiefs right down the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown.

The lesson is this: in life, you want to play offense. Even if it doesn’t materially increase the chances of success towards your goal, at least it minimizes regret. Because you took action, instead of reacting to what the world dishes out at you. Playing offense means leaving it all out there; there is nothing else you could have done differently.

Meanwhile, I bet the 49ers still sometimes think to themselves, “What if we went for it on 4th down during overtime, instead of kicking that field goal?”

What are we doing

It is absolutely embarrassing for the city of San Francisco to have your football team’s first round rookie get shot whilst shopping downtown. In what looks like an armed robbery gone sideways, the incident reinforces the image of a lawless hellhole of a city that Fox News would like its audience to believe. Giants legend Buster Posey was right: San Francisco’s seedy reputation (perceived, factual, or otherwise) might indeed be a deterrent for free agents to sign with local sports teams.

Because if I am going to be paying over half my salary in combined State and Federal taxes (thank you for your service, millionaires), I definitely would want to feel safe.

Ricky Pearsall getting shot will only serve further pause to future free agents. Pearsall didn’t have a choice - he was drafted by the 49ers as an amateur out of college. Fortunately for him, he is going to make a full recovery. The bullet did not hit any vital organs.

With that out of the way, the blame for this mess is on everyone who are in positions of power in this city for the past few years. Mayor, supervisors, police, non profits, judges, et cetera. We can’t have nice things because those in power are actively choosing to not have them. Breaking the law must have consequences, even if the offenders are minors. A slap on the wrist simply because they are underage is not acceptable. We can’t let an entire class of teens terrorize the community with impunity. And If you really can’t charge the kids, sue their parents or guardian for supreme negligence.

The apprehended Pearsall’s shooter is reportedly a 17-year old male from nearby Tracy. There’s got to be at least some prison time, right?

It's just a car

I find that I am far calmer when I am driving not my own car. That is not to say I am more careless when driving other people’s cars. I still drive defensively, and avoid the assholes on the road as best possible. (Because the best way to win a fight is to not get in one in the first place.) But for some reason, I am more amped up when I am driving my BMW M2. It’s skin in the game: when the car is bought with your own money, you are wont to stress more about its condition.

Conversely, when something is borrowed, people tend to treat it worse. The fastest car in the world is a rental car. At my workplace, you should see the state of some of the laptops we get in return from users. They treat the computers with utter carelessness. I want to say they wouldn’t treat their own laptops like that, but I have to wonder. How a person do anything is how they do everything.

I have to say, it is nice to drive around with less stress. Perhaps I should lease a new car every three years, though that is a hefty price to pay for a slight increase in peace of mind on the road. Not sure about that one.

Because outside of rent, the automobile is our second largest expense. Spending unnecessarily high on cars is how people fall behind in personal finances. I would know. People talk of cutting back on the three dollar daily coffee (it’s probably six dollars now with inflation) in order to get ahead, and it is stupid. The much bigger lever is the car. You can have all the Starbucks you want when you are not spending hundreds (even thousand) of dollars on transportation per month.

You know what also would lower my stress while driving my own car? Not owning such a “nice” car in the first place. I might as well turn in my car enthusiast card in now…

Getting my ass kicked

What really counts is when you do the thing, even when you absolutely do not feel like it. It’s the first week of school at university, so on the support side it is the usual extreme busyness. The last thing I want to do after work is to then lift some weights. It would be all too easy to skip this one, because the excuses practically write themselves. But no: I got the workout in after I got off work yesterday. Felt like shit during, felt great afterwards.

The times when you feel no motivation, but you do it anyways? That’s where the gold is. Motivation is fickle, you cannot count on it for consistency. And it is consistency that will get you where you want to be.

Speaking of which, I am going to be in a consistent state of crazy dryness for the next five months. After antibiotics failed to resolve my persistent acne issues last year, I finally decided to go for the sledgehammer: isotretinoin, better known to the public as Accutane. It will solve any and all acne issues once and for all, but the reason it is to be avoided if possible is because of the arduous process. The side-effects of isotretinoin are not trivial.

All users will experience dryness to varying severity. That’s how you know the drug is working. I am actually looking forward to it drying out my oily face. You ever wash your face and then it becomes oily enough to fry an egg in about an hour? That’s me. The equation is simple: oily face plus bacteria equals chronic acne.

My degree of dryness is this: chapstick and eyedrops application every two hours. Full body lotion every evening. I am chugging water constantly like I am on a mountainous hike. Anything less and I would feel super dehydrated (and probably am). From what I can gather, these symptoms are comparatively not so bad. That said, I definitely do not feel normal. It’s as if a very thin layer of sickness has been draped over me. And it’s going to be like this for five months?

Worst: I think they up the dosage after the first month. One week in and I’m already getting my ass kicked!