Blog

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

Sadly, another one

It’s sad to see the utter devastation of Pacific Palisades burning to the ground. I was last there back in 2023, meeting up with some car people at the local Gelson’s. We then took a spirited cruise on Malibu canyon roads. All of that beauty is gone, in a flash of monstrous 100 mile-an-hour winds.

At least folks in California aren’t stupid enough to blame President Biden for controlling the weather.

Indeed, can municipalities even prepare for sustained dry winds in the triple digits? I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s really no one to blame here but the act of god. A god who isn’t completely benevolent when he is wont to inflict such ruin on a community (shoutout to The Brothers Karamazov). Losing a home is a horrific ordeal, no matter your income circumstances. It’s disgusting to see the worst of social media relishing the destruction, because Malibu and the Hollywoods hills happen to be high net worth zip codes.

Envy is a disease.

Climate change seems to be throwing at us weather emergencies the size and frequency of which we can’t prepare for. Florida got hit by two seismic hurricanes within the span of a week just last year. There’s nothing one can do other than not be there when the disaster happens. Emergency rations aren’t going to do shit against fires capable of leveling towns. (Well, you absolutely should make sure to have insurance for the most valuable things. If you even can get insurance for it.)

A hearty best of luck and a speedy recovery to those suffering from the fires in Southern California.

First and last of the year

After going the entire 2024 without once being sick, it took but six days into 2025 for me to catch a cold. I guess it was my turn. At least it’s not COVID! (Are they even counting COVID deaths these days?) My record of never testing positive for the coronavirus remains intact.

Honestly, I rather be not sick and at work, than being sick at home. Staying home is not so glamorous when you are completely lethargic. It’s not like I can do chores or go for a drive on the mountains. I don’t have the energy to workout (this is especially rough). The only thing to do is slump over the couch and watch TV, which is torture for a type-A productivity chaser such as myself.

Perhaps this is nature forcing me to take a break.

With the common cold, you’re just kind of wasting away the day as quickly as possible, so you can get to sleep. Slumber is where the real virus fighting happens, at least that’s how I think of it. I always feel better (than the day before) after a night’s sleep.

As it is anytime I get sick, I am reminded how great it is to be normal and healthy. I shall savor the first meal I eat once I am fully recovered. To be able to actually taste the food is something I won’t take for granted for at least a whole week. A great dish for those with a cold: oatmeal and two eggs. (Bring oatmeal to a boil, then add in two eggs. Stir until egg is cooked, then add milk to the desired consistency.) Takes five minutes to make, and it goes down as easy as porridge. Obviously tastes like nothing, but your buds aren’t working properly anyways.

I can’t wait to be done with this.

If I die, I die

The book The Last Place on Earth narrates the duel between two teams of explorers aiming to be the first to reach the very southern pole. The too long didn’t read is the winning team took a measured, calculated approach, while the losing team went full Rambo at the beginning, running out of steam at the end. It’s the same tortoise and the hare story that they’ve been reading to little kids since forever.

My personality is definitely on the hare end of the spectrum. Years ago while running a 10K, I drained myself going too fast on the first half. I then essentially walked the second half, leading to a slow result. If it were on a North Pole expedition, I would have surely perished.

It’s a deadly thing for motivation to strike me, because the sudden inspiration will cause me to focus so intently that I forgo everything else. I can be researching hotel accommodations in South Korea for hours, and won’t pause to even drink a lick of water until the job is done. Fiction books are especially dangerous towards the end, because I won’t stop reading until the very last page. Bed time? No it isn’t!

Besides, it’s not likely I would be able to sleep anyways. Slumber is not possible when that thing with the car still isn’t fixed (so glad my brand of car enthusiasm doesn’t involve massively fixing or upgrading car parts). Or the stuck kitchen pipe needs something stronger than Drano to clear. Is this the opposite side of the coin to procrastination? Once I begin something, it’s difficult to stop until the job is done. Regular life be damned.

Good thing then that none of my projects or tasks have downsides that involve death.

Toasty hands

The best feeling in the world during these cold winter months is a heated steering wheel in the car. I think toasty hands are more important than a toasty bum (read: heated seats). Funny enough, my previous Subaru came equipped with the cold weather package, but it didn’t have a heated steering wheel! I guess they expect users to wear gloves.

What are some car features that you absolutely cannot live with? I reckon Apple CarPlay (or the yucky Android Auto equivalent) has got to be number one on the wishlist. Though it seems that feature has already reached critical mass. Ferrari has stopped implementing factory navigation software because most customers connect their phones. Smart: why waste software engineering hours on a feature customers don’t use?

Only General Motors is dumb enough to drop CarPlay support (in their EV lineup). GM wants to be Tesla - own the entire software stack, but does it have the requisite engineering talent to execute? (It’s going so well over at Volkswagen.) I can excuse Tesla cars not having CarPlay support because the built-in software is amazingly intuitive and effective.

As much as I love the heated steering wheel feature in my M2, it’s not something I steadfastly look for in a car. My needs are what most cars come as standard: keyless entry, automatic climate-control, and Apple CarPlay. Any features above that are merely nice-to-haves. That means if I weren’t a car enthusiasts, I’d be just fine driving a bog-standard Toyota Corolla from new until it stops running.

I’d be far richer today, too. Expensive hobbies are expensive.

Where it all went

As a person who doesn’t typically do New Year’s Resolutions, I have but one in 2025: no buying new books until I’ve read all the ones I already bought. Tolstoy’s War and Peace will finally be devoured before I can clear off additional books on my Amazon cart. It’s the right thing to do. The least a book can do before becoming a gatherer of dusts on the shelf is to entertain me with its infilled information.

As 2025 gets underway, a good exercise to do is to take a look at your money in 2024. Credit cards make it super easy to gather and export all your purchases in an Excel file. The Chase cards that I predominantly use even categorizes the spending for me, and lets the user compare year to year. That’s how I was easily able to know that I successfully spent thousands less money (2024 compared to 2023) on Amazon.

I think it’s valuable to know the big picture of where my money went, so that I can intuitively plan for the new year. Performing the audit (if you will) was how I found out I only filled up my BMW M2 a total of twelve times. For a car that goes 200 miles before the gas light comes on (which is to say: pathetic), that means I did very little driving in 2024. I endeavor to accumulate a lot more miles in 2025. To pay for that extra gas, the amount of money not spent on books should cover a good chunk of it!

A surprise spend of last year was food delivery. How it can add up to so many hundreds of dollars, even though I’ve only ordered seven times. Those fees and tips really add up to already inflated food prices. This year there will be zero food delivery orders, unless I am so unfortunate to become incapacitated.

Spend wisely, my friends.

Never stop not stopping

Greetings to 2025!

Happy national start a gym membership day. I wish you folks the best in your health goals this year. Most of you will fizzle out by the time the calendar turns February, but not you. You are the warrior of consistency. You show up to gym even when you don’t feel like it. (Even those of us who like exercising have days of indifference.) You understand that doing at least something is what’s most important. Understand that getting healthy is a long process. The euphoric motivation of a new year is highly fleeting.

I don’t wait until gap between December and January to start something new. As a freshly turned 37 year old, I don’t have the luxury of time (tick tick). Any new ideas or inspirations need to be followed with action as soon as possible (monetarily allowing). I don’t even like bumping stuff at work off into the new year. The January me will hate the December me who did so. We’re adults: have some modicum of long-term thinking, please.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s was a supremely peaceful time. (I am of fortune to have that week off every year.) Not having to go to work just means more time to attend to extracurriculars. Instead of an hour to read, I had multiple hours in the day. I was able to write in the morning, which I greatly prefer to the usual post-dinner. I took long walks around the neighborhood during sunset (this is on my dating profile), which during this time of the year would still be work hours.

You know that universal basic income (UBI) thing that was a hot topic back in 2020 (Yang Gang)? What I described in the previous paragraph is exactly what I would be doing if I didn’t have to worrying about basic sustenance. It’s perhaps not very productive towards society at large, but that’s the wrong premise. All that matters is that it’s productive towards me. Surely there are others with a different predilection (someone with the free time to go find the cure for cancer), one that UBI would allow to foster.

Since UBI remains mathematically untenable, it’s back to work today for 2025.

The Christmas ideal

As a first-generation Chinese immigrant of poverty (I think the incoming administration wants to ban people like our family from coming here), Christmas was never a thing. Firstly, it was not in our culture back then. Of course the corporations have managed to commercialized it in China now, so even my relatives over there wishes each other Merry Christmas on WeChat. I’m happy for the children, who get presents.

Secondly, our family was too poor to afford Christmas. Presents? Just be happy father is able to make enough per month to put food on the table. Contrarily, I don’t remember being jealous of fellow kids talking about presents and trips over the Christmas holidays. Granted, social media was not yet invented. I wasn’t able to see on TikTok how millions of other kids live so luckily and lavishly. Envy only materializes when you have something to compare to.

Because of this upbringing, Christmas is merely another day off for me. Which is just fine: I don’t have the financial burden that other people experience during the holidays. All the presents and wrapping materials cost money! Imagine going into credit card debt to fund a holiday deemed necessary by the cultural milieu. Imagine if your kids were never taught the expectations of Christmas presents.

It’s all rather wasteful, too. As we grow older, we come to truly know what we like and don’t like. That makes gift giving difficult because it’s rather easy to buy a thing that others accept out of politeness, but in truth it’s yet another piece of trash clogging up precious space at home. So you either have to toss it or donate it, and that takes time out of your days off. Never mind the decorations and packaging and go straight to (hopefully) recycling.

My ideal of a Christmas: hang out and eat. No presents, no over-the-top presentations.