Blog

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

I am priced out

I was walking through my local Target store when I noticed a 20 ounce bottle of Coke now costs $3.19? And that is before tax! I am old enough to remember when 20 ounce bottles were 99 cent. A dollar bill at the vending machine was enough to obey your thirst.

Talk about things I am priced out of. Buying soda drinks at a store is one of them. Filtered water is just fine, thank you very much.

But then people would argue that saving that three dollar on a daily soda (or four dollars on a daily coffee) is not going to get me to buying a house. The math on that in the San Francisco Bay Area is indeed tragic. Those people are right: keeping that $3 in my pocket is merely pissing in the wind of houses that start at a million dollars.

A better use for that $3 is to buy the lottery. At least there’s a infinitesimal chance!

In the grand scheme of things, buying a soda bottle here and there is not going to monetarily affect me one bit. But it’s the mindset that counts here. We can all agree that spending money is easy. The American credit system is fantastic in that regard. Therefore I think we have to train our resistance muscles (not to be confused with resisting a certain presidency). The calculus has to be more than: can I afford it, if yes, then buy!

Saying no to the $4 coffee helps me say no to a new iPad Air I’ve been eyeing, or a newer laptop to replace this “aging” M1 MacBook Pro. Those are the money decisions that really slice chunks: the hundreds and thousands of dollars at a time. Money that can otherwise grow significantly if put to proper investing.

If I really want to drink soda, I’d go buy in bulk from Costco.

Two months post Accutane

It’s been a little over two months since I ended my (first and hopefully only) round of Accutane medication. I am happy to report that my face is remains pimple free. That’s the main fear, you know? That soon as I hop off the drug, the persistent acne that so plagued me since puberty will return with a vengeance. Irrational, probably, though it’s not exactly uncommon for chronic acne sufferers to need multiple rounds of treatment.

The other fear is for the oiliness to return. One of the only good things about being on Accutane is that my face and scalp were bone dry all the time. It was so nice to touch my face and not be repulsed at the oil slick on my fingers. My hair was no longer matted down with oil the next day after shampooing. While on Accutane, I could have gone a whole week without washing my hair.

In this regard, some of the moisture has indeed come back to the face. It makes sense, because otherwise my lips would still be chapped all the time. You can’t expect to have selective dryness! That’s just not how the body works.

But I glad to say the intense oiliness seems to be a thing of the past. I hope two whole months post treatment isn’t still too early to determine. What’s the half-life of Accutane in the body anyways? (ChatGPT says about five days.) You’re apparently okay to make a baby - something you’re explicitly warned to not do while on the medication - one month after stopping.

Overall I am very happy with the results. The seven months of insular and antisocial behavior - due to needing to avoid being outside during the daytime - was worth it. Having lived with chronic acne for so long before, it’s difficult to believe that this acne-free condition will stick. I don’t think the anxiety of thinking every new odd sensation on the face is an oncoming breakout ever goes away.

So far so good, though.

No more stains ever

Not sure why it took me so long, but I’ve seen the light: the Tide to Go instant stain remover pens are absolutely magic. I finally have had enough of stubborn kimchi stains (I eat Korean food quite often) on my white t-shirts. A three pack of the pens on Amazon is mere six dollars, a real bargain. One for the home, one for the backpack, and one for the car.

Funny enough it was not removing the red dots of kimchi juice that I first discoverd the magic. Instead it’s a perennial favorite: splashed coffee. Against a white shirt it’s nearly as notorious to remove as Korean fermented cabbage. However, a few dabs of the Tide pen completely removed the stains. Couple that with immediate laundry, and there was no trace of coffee to be found.

Next time someone says Proctor & Gamble is some evil corporation, they should turn in their Tide to Go pens forever.

The price of coffee has certainly gone up since President Trump enacted import tariffs of varying degree and size. Sadly for Americans, most of our consumed coffee is grown overseas (like Columbia and Brazil). ChatGPT says the United States doesn’t have the warm and humid temperature conducive for coffee planting. That’s explain why at my local Peet’s Coffee, a medium cup of drip is now over four dollars (after tax). Why would Biden do this?

Even those of us who make coffee at home are feeling the spike in bean prices. But it’s not like we are going to stop drinking coffee. I most certainly will not! A 25% percent tax is not enough of a deterrence for an addicted coffee drinker. The box of Keurig cups I buy would have to double in price before I seriously consider stopping. There’s precedent: the price of McDonalds seemingly doubled since the pandemic, so now I don’t eat there.

In the meantime, I will begrudgingly pay the tariff.

The amazing Amazon

I don’t see how anyone can boycott Amazon. When you absolutely need that one thing quickly and you cannot be bothered to go anywhere to get it, Amazon always comes through in the clutch. Prime free next-day shipping is an amazing feet of logistical engineering. Labor exploitation be damned if I can replace a broken water bottle in less than 24 hours, for the cheapest price, with just a few taps on the phone.

Good luck getting that convenience genie back into the bottle. I have to wonder those who claim to boycott Amazon on Reddit: do they really do it? Often times, people’s actions do not back up their words. Those who rail against higher education have gone to college themselves, and will send (or have sent) their children to college. Those who advocate for leniency towards the homeless invariably do not have mobile homes parked in their neighborhoods. Women who claims partner income doesn’t matter have never dated someone who made less.

Talk is easy and superficial when you don’t have skin in the game.

I returned from Korea late April. The trip marked a two week hiatus from weightlifting. I then got sick the week after - as one does. So in earnest I did not pick back up the weights until the start of May.

It then took an entire month for me to get back to where I was - in terms of strength numbers - before I went on vacation. I guess that’s about normal? (I lift three times a week.) That’s the thing about traveling when you are chasing the gains on a barbell: you have to accept the regression. You work so hard to gradually reach a certain weight for a certain amount of reps. Then, like the Itsy Bitsy Spider, you go back down and have to do it all over again.

I’m not saying don’t go on vacation. But if there’s a target weight goal you’re chasing, it’s going to get prolonged.

Do you even know how?

The best piece of furniture one can have in the home is a chaise longue. There’s nothing better after a long day of work than to plop down on the long sofa and chill. Even in this tiny studio apartment of mine, I made sure to accommodate one. In fact, it’s the only piece of chair furniture in the room. A chaise longue is fantastic for Saturday afternoon naps.

At work we have for checkout some relatively old DSLR cameras (like a Canon 5D Mark III). During graduation time the cameras get checked out quite often, which is rather confounding. The modern smartphone camera is so good - why bother with something so clunky and cumbersome?

Under capable hands, old DSLR cameras can still take superior pictures to the top smartphones. But I seriously doubt the casual users checking out the DSLRs from us have any understanding of the exposure triangle. Leaving the camera in full auto while taking pictures at a live graduation is a recipe for blurred bodies and missed smiles. (Pro tip: when capturing people, a fast shutter speed of at least 1/250 of a second is recommended.)

The latest iPhone would have captured dozens of frames’ worth of information before the shutter is even pressed. The output is going to be sharp no matter what, automatically. For the layperson, the smartphone is the superior tool.

We can talk about perhaps smartphone photographic capabilities have gotten too good. The pictures are too crunchy, too sharp, too perfect. Highlights are never blown, and shadows always recovered. I think the inherent limitations of actual cameras provide a vastly more satisfying outcome. The photographs out of my FujiFilm X-T5 can convey emotion, something largely absent from my iPhone captures.

Judging by how absurdly expensive old point-and-shoot cameras have gotten on the used market, and the fact apps are available on smartphones that take away all their computational trickery - I’m not the only one who feels this way.

No rush, no hurries

Sometimes I forget how decent the public transportation is in San Francisco. It obviously pales in comparison to the ones in Asian countries, but constantly comparing will only make you depressed. Instead of lamenting the intervals between buses is too large, and being on-time is merely a suggestion: it can be worse! At least we are not Los Angeles.

A few weeks back I attended an event at Golden Gate Park. Anybody sound of mind knows to avoid driving there on a weekend, especially when the weather is nice. Rather than hailing an increasingly popular Waymo driverless taxi, I decided to take the bus. The local 28 took me right to the edge of Golden Gate Park, and then I walked inward to the final destination. Easy.

The festivities continued into the evening at a spot downtown. No problem! We were a few blocks way from the N metro train, which can conveniently take us downtown right to the door steps of the venue. Later that night, I took the M metro train back home. No car, no parking, no gas, and worries. It was rather convenient and wonderful.

I can of course understand why we avoid public transportation. A car will almost always get there faster. If parking is a pain, we rather hail a ride-share than suffer through a bus. Think of the time savings, right? That’s the thing: when we travel to other countries, we have no problems slogging through the local public transportation network to visit a sightseeing destination. It takes however long it will take.

Why don’t we keep some of that spirit here? Especially in a city like San Francisco (or New York City) where bus and train service is reasonably extensive. Especially when going to places on weekends; you should not be in any hurry!

Let things end

Word on the streets is Taylor Swift has purchased the masters of her first six studio albums. This then creates one conundrum: how does it reconcile with the albums she re-released (Taylor’s Version) back when she didn’t have the rights? I just want to know which is the one true Enchanted!

I guess it’s now safe to say that the original recordings were way better than the Taylor’s Versions. She is not the same person when she first recorded those songs! The emotions, inflections, and feelings are completely different. Cause when you’re fifteen, it’s difficult to rediscovers those feelings when Taylor is well into her 30s. I’m sure she understands this, too. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent the surely enormous sum to buy back the masters.

People are so fond of nostalgia because they can’t let a good thing end. They look back at past events with tinted glasses, wishing for a present that would replicate those feelings. I think that’s why remakes and reunions are so popular. Stars Wars couldn’t end with just the original six episodes. We got sad when Top Gear/The Grand Tour came to an end because we wish for the good stuff to simply last forever. The finality of everything is too difficult to bear.

But finality is all there is. We are born, and we will die. Instead of wishing for things to continue on, be happy that it happened at all. Cherish what is already there, instead of pining for what might have been. Kpop sensation NewJeans - currently mired in legal battle with their management company - doesn’t have to come out with another song for the them to be legendary. What the group has given to the world already in three short years is enough sweetness to last a lifetime.

Things end. It’s quite okay. It’s going to be okay.