Blog

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

I got a Swiffer

My friends know me for being a fastidiously clean person. It’s habits passed down to me from my parents. They’re the type of people who would mop the floors nightly, and clean the kitchen stove after every dinner making. The house carpets would get vacuumed twice a week. I grew up in a clean home, so naturally then I carry those habits with me to my new place of abode.

Thankfully, it’s only a small in-law studio, so the physical surface area that needs to be clean is tiny. During the first month of living, I was content with spraying down the floors with all-purpose cleaner, then do a wipe with a towel (hardwood floors, obviously). The process takes about 10 minutes, not the most back-breaking of work. Once a week of this is enough to keep the place satisfactory clean to my high standards.

Last week I was suddenly inspired to get a Swiffer mop. A combination of both laziness and low entry price barrier impelled me to make the purchase. For only about 15 dollars, I got this plastic stick that cleaning pads clip onto at the base. This simple device cut down my cleaning time to mere minutes. The Swiffer saves me from having to bend down to the floor, and it picks up more dust than the old fashion method.

This goes to show that sometimes it’s worth paying for convenience. Whatever saves me time and energy from the mundane tasks is money well spent. I salute the person who invented the Swiffer system; I won’t clean hard floors without it ever again. The pad refills are economical enough, too. I am glad I made the switch.

Laundry day off

As a public employee, I got the day off yesterday due to it being Veteran’s Day. It’s rather nice to have this mid workweek break on a Wednesday, and today feels more like a second Monday than a regular Thursday. Nevertheless, because there’s a still a pandemic raging on - with drastic upticks in cases in many parts of the country - having a day off just doesn’t seem as awesome as it used to. Even though you can go out to places, you really shouldn’t if it isn’t something essential like getting groceries.

What about hanging out with friends? Well, you probably shouldn’t do that either, though the fact most of my friends don’t have Veteran’s Day off sort of solved that conundrum for me.

So what I did yesterday was just hung out in the new-to-me studio apartment, enjoying a quiet day of solitude. It was also a good time to do my first load of laundry at the new (again, to me) premises. The place has got the latest fancy and eco-friendly front-loading washers and dryers, very smart and super quiet in operation. It’s such a stark contrast coming from my parents’ apartment, with its nearly two decades old top-loading units that make a horrendous racket - everybody in the house knows when laundry is being done.

Advancement in technology is lovely indeed.

Another point of difference from my parents’ is that I no longer have to hang-dry my clothes. Even though there is a dryer at the old house, for the sake of saving a few dollars of energy cost, my family have hung-dry our clothes since forever; the dryer is there only for sucking up the lint afterwards. So to go from that to immediately transferring freshly laundry into the dryer and using that machine as intended is rather awkward at first, though the end-result of slightly warm and fresh-smelling clothes is such a luxurious feeling.

Surely some of my stuff that’s never seen a proper mechanical drying session will shrink from the heat; I guess I’ll find out which ones eventually.

Now that I’ve sold my 911, of course I’m seeing them everywhere. Like a taunt!

People are leaving California

Recently I’ve been seeing quite a few people I follow on twitter announcing they are moving out of California, due to the myriad of reasons I’m sure we’re all familiar with: the absurd housing costs, quality of life problems, high taxation, and the insane amounts of traffic. I certainly don’t blame these people for moving away from the only State I’ve ever known, but rather I’m anxious, staring at the fact that I will also have to make the same move sometime in the future.

Especially if situations stay the same.

It’s a mathematical certainty that I won’t be able to afford to buy a house anywhere close to San Francisco, so when I do decide to do the proper adult thing and start a family, the only option would be to move away (Unless of course my future wife makes substantially more than I do). Potentially leaving to another State isn’t the hard part, however: the difficultly lies in employment, as in the headache of finding a new job at whichever new location.

The trouble is, I like my current job tremendously, and if SF housing cost is ignored, the pay is competitive, too. The benefits are great, and the job allows for the mythical work-life balance; there’s even a nice pension at the end, should I be so lucky to see this particular career path all the way through. Needing to give that up in order to move on to the next stage of life is a sobering thought indeed, if not cruel. Such is the situation here in the population centers of California: middle-class millennials like me are being utterly squeezed out, those of us who aren’t so fortunate to have housing bequeath to us, or to share with family.

I don’t have immediate plans to buy a house, so for the time being I can - and must - remain optimistic that things will change and somehow I’ll be able to stay and grow old in the city I grew up in. There’s no use to be stressed about it, even though honestly it’s a constant low-key worry at the back of my mind.

We shall see.

Will the Hong Kong passage be open?

I have a selfish concern regarding my annual year-end trip back home to China. As per usual, we are flying into Hong Kong and then taking the train into Guangzhou. Normally there’d be no problem with this, and I’ve always enjoyed spending a bit of time in the city before heading for true home. This year, however, as you may all know, there’s massive protests going on in Hong Kong, and as it stands right now, I don’t see it abating any time soon.

So the selfish question is: am I going to have issues getting through Hong Kong? I mean, protestors did shutdown the airport a few weeks back; it’s difficult to predict if it will escalate back to that level again. I’ll be slightly annoyed if my well-prepared travel plans get altered due to the protests.

That is not to say I don’t sympathize with the people of Hong Kong in fighting for a no strings attached governance from mainland China. As a person who lives in the free West, I think democratic values and basic freedoms are worth fighting for, and if Hong Kong feels like this is the moment to die on the proverbial hill, then all the power to them. One can certainly disagree with the protestor’s tactics or their demands in general, but for those of us on the sidelines looking in, I think we have to remember that we don’t live in Hong Kong, the protestors do, and I trust they’d know best what they want for their future.

That is also not to say I’m antagonistic towards China. Guangzhou is my hometown, and I have many family members there; I am not going to state (or tweet) anything negative towards the communist government that can potentially get me banned from entering my home country, to be cut off from my extended family. That is my skin in the game, and the incentive is to preserve my entry and exit privileges. I simply want to make a trip home every year without fuss.

Because of the situation in Hong Kong, this year we are not heading into the city proper, and instead, taking the shuttle bus to Guangzhou right at the airport. It’s a shame because I absolutely adore Hong Kong, and would have loved to sightsee there for a few days.

Maybe next year.

I don’t care if the reliability is highly suspect: Apple’s ‘butterfly’ keyboard is wonderful to type on.

A man and his castle

When I was in my twenties, I was completely into the urban city life. Having grown up in one, I love the density, the hustle and bustle, and how accessible everything is. Living in secluded suburbia was just about the dullest thing imaginable; there would only be the house, and nothing else. Give me the city, and the all of the lights.

Presently in my thirties, and properly “adulting”, my perspective on that has been changing. These days, peace and quiet is what I’m after, and ultimately a castle to call my own. I don’t want to hear the busy sidewalks and too many cars driving by; I don’t want to fight with the crowds and wade the troubles parking; I don’t want to pay the high tax for living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

I want open spaces, and dead silence.

I want the proverbial cottage at the countryside.

Too crazy of a dream? Perhaps. The immediate and biggest concern is what the heck am I to do for money. I refuse to be amongst the masses who live far away from the urban core, yet still commute for hours every day back into the city for work. That’s a significant amount of precious time to be squandered on the road, even in these modern times of endless podcasts and super intelligent cruise-control.

But those people do the commute slog for a reason: the city has almost all the jobs. It wouldn’t be so prosperous and constantly full of new developments otherwise. No doubt they’d all rather work much closer to home, but deep in the heart of suburbia or rural counties, there are no high paying jobs.

For me, the solution to that problem is the Internet, in the way of digital freelancing, or join a company that will allow work from home. With the cost of living ‘out in the sticks’ immensely less than metropolises, I wouldn’t even need to be earning as much as I do now for it to be sustainable. Besides, aside from cars (admittedly a big one), I’m not in the least materialistic about anything; I don’t need a huge salary to be absolutely content.

It’s definitely something to ponder about. I certainly cannot afford a house in or anywhere near San Francisco, so if I really want a place for myself – can’t live with the parents forever, no matter how Asian I am – I think I’ll have to get out from this city.