Final week

It took deep into October, but we’re finally getting some proper autumn weather here in San Francisco. After the seemingly endless heatwaves and mountainous wildfires, the cool crispness of Fall and the slight chills have arrived to welcome us to what is in my opinion the best parts of the year (even this, the year of COVID). Temperatures during the daytime are so mild that I can keep the windows shades open without the sun heating up the room, receiving those all-important vitamin Ds naturally.

This week marks the final few days I will be living at home - I am due to move out on Sunday the 1st of November. It’s exciting time indeed, though I’m sure I’ll be fighting momentary bouts of anxiety throughout the week. Living by myself alone will be a tremendously huge change, and there’s surely plenty of variables and things I’m can’t even imagine right now that goes along with it. I won’t get the complete picture of how it’s going to be until the actual move happens, but that’s okay: it’s part of the learning process.

Independent living is something we all have to do sooner or later. In my case, it took until my 30s to do because I never did the “go away fro college’ thing like most of my peers. I have the cultural privilege of not getting kicked out of the house soon as I became a legal adult, and for that I am forever grateful. However, the time has come to venture out alone and to take care of myself wholly and completely. The milk in the fridge and the toilet paper in the bathroom aren’t going to magically refill itself anymore.

This is also the final week I’ll have a commute to work: I am moving to place that’s extremely close to campus. It’s going to rather nice to take the 10 minute daily walk to work, under this fine autumnal air. This period of working-from-home have reinforced my want of living within walking distance to the workplace; a long commute on public transport is something I don’t ever want to go back to.

I hope you all will have a great week.

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This thing loves crips autumnal air as well.

Shame on California

This is simply embarrassing.

For the third straight Autumn in a row, California is experiencing severe wildfire events up here in NorCal and simultaneously down south in Los Angeles county. Thankfully, the destruction is not nearly as catastrophic as last year’s fires in Paradise and Malibu, but three consecutive years of this is not a good look for the State’s proactiveness towards mitigating such disasters.

Indeed, for what would be the 7th largest economy on this planet on its own, with the highest State income tax in the country, and the crowning jewel that is Silicon Valley, it is a spectacular shame on California that all of this is happening yet again this year. If ever there’s a State with the resources to combat and prevent wildfires, it would be California (on paper, at least). Unfortunately, in reality there remains the same incompetence, and it seems the people in charge are unwilling to lift a finger to solve the underlying issues that are causing these wildfires.

Oh, and new for this year: rolling blackouts! PG&E - the beleaguered utility company - in its infinite wisdom have deemed shutting down power to the grid in at-risk areas during the fire season ought to stop these massive fires from happening. Well, the outages have and are occurring, and yet much Sonoma county is currently burning, so the strategy’s efficacy is suspect. What’s even more laughable is that PG&E said these power shutdowns are the new normal to stop wildfires; an absurd position for an electric company to be unable to deliver electricity.

The obvious solution is to spend the massive amount of money necessary to upgrade the aging electric infrastructure. If falling power-lines are the culprit of these fires, then let’s start putting the grid beneath terra firma. For sure that’ll be a slow process, so in the meantime we should clear away the dry brushes and plants surrounding power poles and towers that are at high potential of igniting. We can’t change the weather, but we can make certain the power grid is able to withstand the many dry and windy season undoubtedly to come after this particular one.

These rolling blackouts cannot be the answer, because there’s vulnerable people who are dependent on electricity for their survival.

I’m not against having a private, for-profit company like PG&E (though the company is publicly-held) as the sole utility provider, but because electricity is one of the important public goods, there has to be tremendously strict oversight by the State government. Constant improvements to the grid must be made, and if PG&E isn’t up for that, then it’s time for California PUC to takeover operations. Electricity is critical to societal functions, and we can’t leave it to the negligence of a company that seems to care more for shareholder’s profit than ensuring a secure power infrastructure that won’t burn down homes every time Fall season comes around.

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Selling this lovely set of Grado sr80e headphones because I’ve scarcely used it. AirPods have completely taken over my music listening procedure.

It's too hot for late October

It's the final full-week of October, we are knee-deep into fall season, yet the mercury today read upwards of 96 degrees. What the French is going on?

One month into official autumn and I've yet to break out any sort of middle garments or heavy outerwear. This is San Francisco we're talking about; we pay out the nose in housing cost for foggy and cool weather and by god aren't we a cranky bunch when we don't get it. 

I sure hope this week's tiny heat-wave is the last of it and we can all enjoy proper San Francisco weather for the next eight months. 

Thankfully this weather did not occur two weeks back while the north-bay wildfires were raging on. It would've been a national emergency indeed if the unrelenting sun were mixed in with the smoke and ashes. Unimaginable. 

Due to the amount of destruction, we all either know or transitively know someone who has lost a home to the Napa fires. I was sad to find out an ex-coworker lost her newly rented home to the fire. I urge everyone to donate to our neighbors in need.