Blog

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

So close yet so far

Hey, remember the COVID pandemic is over? We don’t think about it anymore, right? No news of frightening new variants, no daily death counts. There’s people working in hospitals that no longer wear masks! That last one is kind of stunning when I went in a few months ago for my annual checkup. Things are truly back to what it was at the end of 2019. If we don’t counting the millions dead…

Just when I thought we would end the year at work with no one getting truly sick from COVID, a coworker caught the disease last week. (So close.) Unfortunately for him, COVID absolutely knocked him out. Every single flu-like and cold-like symptom you can come up with, he got it. The coworker was out for the entire week. Compounding the misery is that he can’t pinpoint where and how he contracted COVID! He would’ve felt slightly better if he were able to offload the blame somewhere.

I am fine, by the way. Very unlikely the coworker contracted COVID at work as the rest of us were business as usual. I still have not knowingly contracted the thing, though I maintain it’s because I don’t show any symptoms (thank god if that is indeed the truth). No symptoms, no tests, less chance of positives. Didn’t the smart people say that it is statistically likely that all of us will get COVID at some point?

Nothing will make you appreciate good health like coming out of a serious bout of sickness. The recovered coworker is filled with gratitude today in his return to work. He definitely do not want to experience that again. I bet if his COVID vaccine schedule isn’t up to date, it will be shortly!

It's nap time

You know things are slow at work when a coworker falls sleep while watching a YouTube video. Granted, the snoozing is probably not due to boredom. Rather it’s likely insufficient sleep. Sure we tend to yawn when we’re bored, but then we’d go find something to un-bore ourselves. Nobody goes, “You know what, I am bored. Let me go take a nap!”

Indeed, the workday does go by quicker when there is more stuff to do. This workload ebb and flow comes with the territory of one, working at a university, and two, being on the service side. People call us when shit goes bad, so if we’re busy all the time, then something is horribly wrong. We are smack dab in the middle of the Fall semester, so not a lot of things are going wrong at the moment (knock on wood).

The weather in San Francisco has finally turned cooler, a real autumnal feeling. That coziness probably adds to the drowsiness factor (I definitely sleep better during the winter months). The coworker did just return from a heavy lunch, too, so all the pressures of wanting-to-take-a-nap were working against him staying awake. Sadly, a public university is not the Google campus: there aren’t any nap pods around here.

As a purveyor of consistent, quality sleep, you won’t find me doing the head-nod into slumber whilst doing a sedentary activity. I haven’t done something like that since my college days of falling asleep in class. For obvious reasons, my sleep schedule was all over the place back then. No, professor, your lecture isn’t boring! I’m simply running on fumes.

These days, I no longer sacrifice sleep to the altar of continue playing a video game, or keep watching a TV series. I purposely leave social gatherings early in order to preserve the amount of sleep I get. It is too important for brain health to forsake.

Not enough juice

We are about two months away from the annual new iPhone launch in September (typically). I cannot wait to get a new one this year, because the battery life on my current iPhone 14 Pro has been the worse I’ve ever used. (And I’ve had every single iPhone since the 7.) The iPhone is famous for robust battery life compared to the Android competition. In my experience, this has been very true. I’ve never had to plug my iPhone in mid-day to top up the battery ever. It’s never gone down past 20% at the end of the day even in my heaviest usage days.

That is, until the iPhone 14 Pro. 10 months in, the battery life have not held up to standards. These days I’m down to 20% by the time I get home from work in the early evening. Mind you this is without any heavy usage of social media apps whatsoever. I’m only chatting with friends on Signal and reading ebooks on Kindle. I joked to my friends that I’ve become just like them: having to charge the phone battery during the day, otherwise risk running out of juice.

The forthcoming iPhone 15 Pro could have zero new features - only improved battery life, and I would still happily do the yearly upgrade.

Obviously, this is the most first world of problems. Here’s some quick perspective to bring me back down to earth. A new coworker of mine recently remarked that in all of his previous jobs, he’s never had the major holidays off. In the typical service industry-type jobs, the holidays is when you definitely have to show up for work. That’s where the money is made: restaurants needs tables filled, shows need to go on, and parcels need delivering. That coworker’s remark is a humbling reminder that I’m so lucky to only have had jobs where major holidays are actually a thing.

It reminded me of my younger (than me by 10 years) brother. He’s currently working his way up from the bottom at entry-level service jobs. There are no holidays off. And should he wish to take any time off, he has to find others to cover his shift. A two week vacation? He can certainly take one, but just don’t come back to work afterwards. It’s tough work for not that much pay. Fingers crossed he can eventually find a job that provide proper benefits and time off - like my coworker did.

Don't kill my vibe

Ever since I deactivated my twitter account, these days I’m largely cut off from the latest news. This is of course a very good thing. The news is nothing but tragedy and sadness. There’s never any good news, is there? The only reason even I knew about the missing Titanic submersible from last week was my friends told me about it.

That sort of news is at least interesting and fascinating, worthy of a lengthy discussion that stretches multiple days (I guess our friend group doesn't have better things to do). What I can’t give a crap about is the daily political stuff that my coworker prefers to talk about. I literally don’t care what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doing or not doing. I live in San Francisco, California; I’m more interested in what our own mayor is doing.

But I have to maintain some modicum of politeness, right? I can’t exactly shut them down immediately soon as a coworker comes to me with a latest news topic. Do that often enough and none of them will talk to me again ever. Or perhaps that’s really what I want: to be left alone. (Which I do.) To be congenial with the officemates, however, I would listen half intently, then say something glib in response. The goal is to listen, then say things in a way that ends that particular conversation topic quickly.

Please don’t ruin my zen, people. I’m quite okay with not knowing what’s going in the larger outside world. I’ll simply watch the local 6 o'clock news to get my fix of what’s immediately pertinent.

Sonny

It was a somber workday yesterday. A coworker got the news that her mother is diagnosed with cancer, and not the good kind. Not to say there is a good kind of cancer, but you know what I mean. My own mother has had breast cancer, which while scary, is imminently survivable. She’s in remission to this day (god willing).

Obviously, my coworkers was in a bit of shock. As a coworker, I was at a lost of what to say, other than how sorry I was to hear the sad news. Was there more to be said? I’m not so sure. It’s tempting to encourage him to take the rest of the day off, but people handle bad news differently. Perhaps being at work and actually doing the work is a needed distraction from the difficulties to come.

It’s never fun when human mortality surfaces right front and center. Most of us go through life running away from contemplating our mortality. That in turn governs how we act each day. We think we have all the time in the world, but reality can snatch it away in a quick second. A normal workday will be utterly interrupted by the news your mother has terminal cancer. What a cruel joke! Just a minute before, another day was going swimmingly.

Sometimes you wish there’s a button to turn back the time. Like there is in a role-playing video game.

The constant contemplation of death should influence our actions. To not sweat the small stuff, be quick to forgive, and say the things you want to say now. Because it can all go away in an instant.

That's not what you want

A coworker of mine is dangerously close to being diabetic. The doctor has him on three medications already to try to stem the tide. Yesterday I regrettably informed him that being diabetic does indeed increases the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Just as smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. Maybe that will finally be the impetus for my coworker to change his lifestyle. Because losing the mind - our consciousness - is a horror no one wants.

Obviously, type two diabetes is overall bad news for practically every facet of the human body. My late maternal grandfather lived with it for the latter part of his life. It was a never-ending cycle of dialysis. It’s a surprise that he lived to 93, because he did not adhere to the strict diet and exercise advice typically prescribed to diabetic patients (you know, the part that doesn’t involve drugs). Maybe there’s hope yet for my coworker, because he’s failing massively to change his diet, and let’s not even talk about working out.

The easiest on paper prescription is the toughest to follow. I’ve another friend who got told by her doctor that if she doesn't change her diet and exercise habits, she won’t live pass 40 to see her kids graduate. That should be a sufficient wake-up call, right? The friend has changed her diet somewhat, but flat-out refuses to do any sort of exercising. It’s sad to see, honestly. My coworker also has a young daughter to live for. How much stronger do incentive need to get for people to change?

And to think the impetus that got me to change my diet and exercise - way back in college - was a mere borderline hypertensive blood pressure result during a routine checkup. I get it: most other people want an easy pill to swallow. Habits are difficult to build. Short term rewards are more salient than long-term thinking. All I’m saying is, the latter two decades of my grandfather’s life was no life at all. That’s cautionary tale enough for me.

For the sake of others

A coworker on mine recently got diagnosed as pre-diabetic. The condition is serious enough that he is now taking three separate medications for it. What he needs to avoid is the full type 2 diabetes: a lifetime of blood-glucose monitoring and kidney dialysis, if it gets bad enough.

Other than the meds, the prescription is simple, really. The coworker just have to eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep. Of course, what is easy on paper is really not when it comes time to move. It’s a drastic change for those who are used to a life of eating with impunity and not much exercising. The struggle is real when you’re trying to eat a salad while the people around you are eating cheeseburgers. Whichever pharmaceutical company figures out how to compress diet/sleep/exercise into a one singular pill is going to make all the money in the world.

Until then, my coworker is going to have to do the hard slog. So far, not so good. Just last week he went to the campus dinning hall to eat lunch, which is buffet style. Naturally then he stuffed himself to the gills, ruining his afternoon of productivity. It’s kind of disappointing to see a diagnosis of pre-diabetic isn’t enough of a wake up call for him. Especially considering he has a young daughter (and a wife, in Borat voice). Surely he wants to be healthy and functional for her sake.

The answer is of course yes - on paper. Wanting to be healthy and actually doing the steps to get there can be mutually exclusive. You’d think having a daughter to live for would be enough of an impetus, but we’ve yet to see the consistent change with our coworker. Hopefully it won’t take crossing over to full diabetes for him to actually get on with it.