Blog

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

Well, maybe not

I absolutely wouldn’t mind living in Guangzhou. What would I do for a living? Well, what would anyone do in China who speaks perfect English? I’d end up in the sector of the service industry that’s frequented by foreigners. A front desk person at a western branded hotel, perhaps. I reckon earning money should not be a problem.

The main problem is obviously the lack of citizenship. I mean, I had citizenship - I was born in Guangzhou. However, the Chinese government does not recognize dual citizenship. My Chinese nationality was forfeited soon as I became an American citizen. It seems the only American citizen who can be a Chinese national at the same time is Olympic gold medal skier Eileen Gu. And that is why I dislike her. Not because she “betrayed” the U.S. to ski under the five stars. But only because she’s got the dual citizenship that nobody else can have. Perversely unfair.

Oh well. For all its benefits - great food, complete safety, living under the great Chinese firewall is frustratingly difficult for someone like me who is used to American Internet. I cannot imagine life without access to YouTube - entirely blocked in China. Sure there are VPN apps, but their functionality relies entirely on the benefaction of the ruling communist party. If they decide one day to block them all, they can and will.

Kpop is also effectively banned in China, thanks to troubled relations between China and South Korea. As a massive purveyor of Korean music, that’s not going to work for me. It’s not about access to songs; that’s not the problem. The issue is the lack of concerts on the mainland. South Korean acts are currently banned from holding performances in China. Have you noticed that BTS - arguably the most popular boy band on the planet - is going on this massive world tour, and there isn’t a single Chinese city on this list? I’d be pretty pissed if I were a Chinese Kpop-head. I have to leave the country every single time I want to see my favorites perform.

Living in China would clash too much with my preferred forms of entertainment. I want my Hollywood movies unmutilated by censors. Would Grand Theft Auto 6 - if it ever releases - even be available in China?

Glued to the phone

One evening in Guangzhou, China we were having dinner at a local restaurant. We were soon joined at the table adjacent by a young couple. Instead of making conversation with each other, both were staring into their phones during the entire meal, each watching their own preferred programing. I guess dinner isn’t the best time to share details of your day?

As much as I assail our general addiction to smartphones, I am far from a luddite. There’s a time and place to enjoy the wonders of Internet videos. Dinner with your significant other shouldn’t be such an occasion? Maybe it’s cultural - here in the States, the person busy with their smartphones during a shared meal is absolutely the asshole.

Or perhaps I’m merely naive to think that conversation comes easily in a long relationship. Maybe when you’ve been with a person for an extended period, you kind of hang out by not really talking to each other. Enjoying each other’s company is just a matter of being in the same room.

That makes more sense. Thanks to urban density we can only dream of, big cities in China have plenty of local mom and pop restaurants. Sprinkle on some capitalism magic, and that means it’s not overly more expensive to eat out than to cook at home. The phone-occupied couple that sat next to us is practically eating dinner at home - the restaurant is not at all an occasion. Put it in this perspective, I can see the lack of conversation.

If it were me, though, I’d rather have the chat. The Internet videos will still be there when we get home.

Alone in my thoughts

Last week for two days the Internet at home was out of service. We suspect it’s due to all the digging that PG&E has been doing in the neighborhood. So who is responsible for the bill credit? The beleaguered energy company, or Comcast?

Nevertheless, the total lack of Internet access provided an excellent opportunity to do some digital detoxing. I couldn’t even rely on cellular service from my phone. Verizon is a dead-zone in my first floor dungeon of a studio.

As a reader of many books, it would be too easy to grab the next one on the shelf. I wanted to challenge myself: can I truly do nothing for the few hours before bed? Heck, can I even eat a meal without looking at anything that’s on the Internet?

I’m not some luddite that think we should abstain from the glorious dopamine drips that a modern Internet connection provides. I greatly enjoy spending countless hours on Youtube, and that’s never going to stop. A cabin on Walden pound without Internet is not some badge of honor. The online world is a wondrous place to be enjoyed.

Though I think it’s an important exercise to be able to sit still and do nothing for an extended period. I’m not saying you have to "raw-dog” a plane ride. But if you can’t do it at all - your fingers itches for the smartphone in less than a minute of nothing doing, then there might be some negatively addictive tendencies to look into.

Given the option I would take having an active home Internet over deadness every single time. But when the network does go down, it’s good to know that I remain capable of not going stir crazy.

Always work sometimes

It’s always interesting to see just how much of the common Internet runs on Amazon’s AWS. When AWS goes down - granted, not often at all - you quickly find out that half the websites you rely on everyday is no longer accessible. How can I function at work when Reddit doesn't load? Nobody can.

That goes to show how important AWS is, and how it really should have absolutely zero downtime. The backups and failsafes should have their own backups and failsafes.

Qualtrics - the online survey company - was completely non-functional during the AWS outage two days ago. (I know this because it’s a service we use at work.) Qualtric’s IT people must have the easiest troubleshooting job in the world: throw hands up, blame Amazon. There’s not much to do when the contracted third-party server your service runs on is acting up. Calling AWS support isn’t going to make them go any faster in fixing the problem. I don’t email Squarespace help whenever their service goes down (more often than I’d prefer, honestly). There's only the wait.

Good news for me, my livelihood is not dependent on this website. Bad news for Qualtrics, when your core service goes down for much of a work day, that’s a lot of lost revenue, never mind angry paying customers. Perhaps the company’s surely high-deductible insurance plan cover such events? If the cut is deep enough, I’d even think about suing Amazon. Word on the street is, Jeff Bezos has plenty of millions to spare.

Can you imagine your smart home devices stopped working on Monday because the backend is AWS? No doubt Internet-of-things make life convenient, but if a server outage somewhere causes me to be locked outside of my home, that’s not going to work.

Gym, tan, Thanksgiving

I hope you’ve had a great Thanksgiving day. I certainly did. I cooked a meal, worked out, and then ate that meal. What more can you ask for on a day off? Thanksgiving is just another day off for me because my family did not celebrate it growing up. One, because we were immigrants from China (where it’s obviously not a thing). Two, because our mom did not want to take the pots and pans out of the oven just to cook a 20 pound turkey that would take forever to eat.

What’s wrong with a chicken?

For the Thanksgiving holiday my friend is going on a cruise with his family to Mexico. He told us he will be unreachable until he gets down there because the ship does not have free WiFi. For the privilege of an Internet connection, the cost is $40 per day. Absolute thievery. I guess we have a new pro tip: if you would like to do a digital detox, go on cruise! Unless of course you are rich enough that $40 per day for Internet is of no consequence to your finances. (Or charge it on a card like a good Gen Z.)

I do wonder what it would be like to be without Internet for multiple days. The longest I’ve been without connection is the 15-hour flight to Hong Kong. The smartphone has largely gotten rid of boredom, so it’s an interesting dynamic to see people having to be bored. I have doubts: folks can’t even use the restroom without bring in their phones. At work I see people scrolling while filling up their water bottles. Our inability to be still for even a minute is astounding.

Never say never, but I don’t think I’ll step foot on a cruise ship. If I wanted to be confined to a specific location with multitudes of entertainment and food options, I’d rather go to Las Vegas. To see the ocean, I would head to the local beach side (lucky to live right by the Pacific Ocean.)

No Internet

Due to various circumstances totally of his doing, my brother is banned from using any Internet-connected devices. That is surprisingly difficult these days because many things more than just smartphones and computers connect to the Internet. For example, my brother had to switch television units with my parents’ Samsung because it’s old enough to lack any smart capabilities. What about gaming consoles? Those have been connecting to the Internet since the PlayStation 3 era. Therefore my brother is relegated to the PS2’s 480P experience.

As standard, computer of any sort is not allowed. Feel the urge to check twitter? Spend a few hours into a Youtube rabbit hole? Too bad. Impossible. My brother’s phone is the flip kind aimed at retired seniors that can only do phone calls and text messages. For someone who grew up in the age of the Internet, this situation must be tough. At least I’m old enough to have some training. I didn’t get decently fast Internet until high school; my first smartphone happened during the fourth year of college!

So I’d like to think I can go back to monk mode without too much agony. A few years back I actually went a whole week without my iPhone. I was definitely forced to be present and notice my surroundings more. There wasn’t a tiny screen to distract me constantly. No podcasts or music to listen to, either.

If I were my brother, now would be the golden opportunity to hit the books hard. Read anything and everything that interests me. Perhaps learn a foreign language, or a musical instrument. I currently do all of that (Korean and the piano, respectively) without being banned from the Internet, but I’m wired differently. Taking the enticing options offered by Internet away, what else is there for my brother to do? For his sake I hope he picks up a regular exercise habit, too.

What would you do if you suddenly lost complete access to the Internet for a long period of months?

No Internet for early man

Yesterday morning I woke up to the home WIFI not working. Because I rent, and all utilities are included, I don’t control nor have access to the Internet modem. I’m an incredibly early riser, so I wasn’t about to wake up my friend and landlord upstairs at 6:30 AM in the morning, just so I can have Internet. It will have to wait until he has woken up, and realizes the WIFI connection has stopped.

At least I still had cellular network on my iPhone. I can never quit you, twitter!

It turns out I didn’t really need the Internet for the first two hours of my morning. Indeed, I did use my phone to check the socials for a bit. After that, I didn’t bother to tether the phone to the MacBook Pro, even though I could (my cellular plan is unlimited). Lacking an Internet connection, I wrote my morning blog in Microsoft Word instead of directly onto the Squarespace CMS, as I am doing now. And then I read a book until breakfast.

The Internet has given us many wonderful things; it’s good to be reminded that I don’t have to be completely reliant on it to function normally. My morning didn’t get ruined just because the WIFI was down. It reminds me back when I lived with my parents, when I was in charge of the home Internet. Whenever the system was down, I’d immediately get a knock on my door from my parents informing me of such. As if they couldn’t bare to be without connectivity for one minute.

Sometimes I would wryly retort that they should go read a book, or do something non-digital (have a conversation with each other, perhaps). Not having Internet for the 10 minutes it takes for the modem to reboot is going to be just fine. Take a breath! At home we either stare at our phone or the computer screen constantly, so it’s good to have breaks from it from time to time. Even if said break is induced by nonfunctioning equipment.