Blog

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

Perfect Days

It’s rare to watch a movie and have it resonate with me so profoundly.

On a usual browse through Reddit, a user turned me onto the movie called Perfect Days. It’s a Japanese language film set in Japan, directed by a German director (Wim Wenders). The movie details the daily routine of a public toilets janitor in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Perfect Days was nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards.

The main character Hirayama is a near mirror image of my proclivities. Toilet cleaner may be a mundane job, but it allows Hirayama leisure time to tend to his hobbies. Like my IT support role at a university, I put in my weekly 40 hours and never have to think about work outside it. I have great leisure to pursue hobbies such as photography, which also happens to be Hirayama’s passion. He enjoys listening to music too (on cassette tapes), which, don’t we all.

When he is on the job, though, Hirayama takes it very seriously - unlike his partner Takashi. There’s excellence to be had, high standards to achieve, even for cleaning toilets. You don’t give any less effort just because the job is low on societal perception, or the pay is horrible. I appreciate Hirayama taking immense pride in his work. Whether we’ve gave our best is something we innately know.

Hirayama is a man of routine, as am I. His workday and weekend never change. He does the same thing and goes to the same places. He wears the same clothes, too. That is all me in real life. Hirayama’s life is so routinized that he gets upset when life’s unforeseen happenstances interrupt the order. Something as simple as not having the same available seat/table at his usual restaurant. I too get upset when my usual parking spot in front of the home is taken by another.

I also get uncomfortable when my normal routine is interrupted with the necessities of social life. Don’t get me wrong: I greatly cherish my time with friends and family. However, there’s no denying that there is a trade-off. Having dim-sim on a Saturday morning means I can’t have my beloved coffee time lounging on the couch, by the window.

The key lesson of Perfect Days is there is sublime in the mundane. A mere toilet cleaner who enjoys photography can have a such a fulfilling and happy life. No matter how much we chase after novelty, most of our days are going to be the same, one after another. I think it serves us better to notice the beautiful and joy in that same boringness.

Evening blues.

Consistency is key

There’s nothing like facing your own mortality to spur people into action. As our group of friends head into our late 30s, the returning results of an annual checkup can start to look not so good in certain areas. I myself found out I was pre-diabetic just last year. Another friend recently learned he’s got high cholesterol. Yet another friend started exercising consistently after a lifetime of not doing so. Certainly he’s received some not so good news from his doctor.

I’ve increased my workout amount since my pre-diabetic diagnosis. The friend with the cholesterol issue has also vowed to get more active. It’s truly better late than never! Honestly, late 30s are not really all that late, however self-serving that is for me to say.

The key I hope my friends come to realize is what matters most is consistency. You can have the best, most scientifically-sound exercise routine in the world, but it would result in nothing if not followed through. You know: routine. That means doing something over and over for a long period of time. Even if it’s something as simple as walking three miles a day, everyday. If someone does that consistently for a year, I bet the results would be very positive.

Anything worthwhile takes a long time. We cannot escape putting in the work. Our social-media culture has conditioned us with dopamine ADD: we want results now. So we look for shortcuts, instead of simply putting our heads to the proverbial grind stone. Just look at the popularity of Ozempic: a diabetes drug with the wondrous side-effect of rapid weight loss. We can shed the pounds without changing diet and any exercising? Sign me up! Paying $800 per month is way better than working out, which is free.

Before you quit something, ask yourself, “Have I done this for a long enough time, consistently?”

Puffy.

Life is so cool

It’s been a week since I’ve returned from China, and I have to say it’s been overwhelmingly positive to be back. You know how people go on vacation and then dread going back home to their normal lives? I was actual the opposite. Towards the end of my two-week stay in Guangzhou, I was beginning to miss my life here in the States. Keep in mind: I was on vacation, at the land of my birth, with family I haven’t seen since the start of the pandemic, and eating Cantonese food incomparable to anything available in America.

And yet I was looking forward to returning home!

The realization here is that my life is actually pretty good. My response to coworkers wishing me a happy return is not mere lip-service - It genuinely is good to be back living my regular, normal life. Not hating your job - and perhaps even enjoying it - is such an advantage, and a privilege.

This past week was filled with calm and contentment. It’s the first time I’ve felt such things at the end of a vacation. I can remember coming home from Japan back in 2019 and getting depressed. So wonderful was that trip that the stark contrast to my life at home was emotionally damaging (cue the meme).

I guess I’ve done well to cultivate a living that is worthwhile and satisfying. Traveling then is no longer an escape. Rather it’s a brief detour, one that will take me back to the main road soon enough. Because the main road is pretty cool to be on.

The words.

Boring is okay

What is wrong with boring? What is wrong with stasis? What is wrong with living the same day everyday?

I don't understand the people who crave novelty and change all the time. Like, I just got here, why can’t I stay here for a little longer? Newlyweds know: soon as the wedding reception is over, everybody is asking when are you two going to have babies. Okay, maybe after you return from the honeymoon. It’s as if staying married with no babies for any period is not allowed.

Everybody knows: you hit certain age milestones and the questions start coming. 20: what do you plan to do with your life - for money? 30: why aren’t you married yet? 40: where are the babies? 60: what are your retirement plans? Honestly, is it your life, or society’s life? Other people are so eager for you to follow along to what everybody else do.

If you’re still single in your 30s and not looking to match up, you’re the weird one. Your parents, who are staring at the face of mortality in a few decades, are thinking: damn, I really want some grandchildren. So they nag you to get on with your life trajectory, to settle down with a girl and start producing some babies. And if you follow along with that, I think you’re foolish. You’d be living your life at the behest of others.

If you yourself want to settle down and make babies, that’s a different story.

Run your own race. So what if it doesn’t conform to the societal norms. So what if things don’t change for a while. Life is often boring anyways. People who can’t stand to be bored are those wont to divorce their wife soon as a younger/prettier version arrives on the scene. Is that what you want?

HDTV.

Do the work

One thing I don’t see talked about in the ‘how to get better sleep’ discussion is the importance of a good day’s work. I don't know about you, but when my day is full of action and getting things done, the satisfaction at the end acts as sweet melatonin. Also helping is that I tend to be more tired, compared to, say, laying on the couch all day. Kind of like how on the days that I workout, those nights I sleep extra well.

Procrastination is only a salve for the moment. The future you will most certainly be happier the current you just did the thing already. No one ever regrets doing the stuff they are supposed to do “early”. Damn it! I should have washed my car today instead of yesterday! More importantly, it contributes to better sleep because I’m not thinking about what I still have to do tomorrow. It’s already done.

Often times when I go to fast food restaurants, I would see workers at the end of their shift leaving. The sense of relieving joy on their faces can be readily seen. They’ve just done a shift of endlessly supplying food to paying customers, on their feet the entire time. Now they get to switch off and relax, and not have to think about work at all until the next day. Can you - with your six figure job - switch off your work brain so cleanly? I think not.

It’s really about putting in the work. Those fast food workers can’t slack off like us white-collar folks can (often on Slack). Many hours are not being lost to Internet browsing. At the end of a work-day, they are tired (it’s hard labor for sure), but they can be satisfied with the output. And I bet they sleep well at night too, the stresses from minimum wage pay notwithstanding.

For you.

Again and again

It’s one of those rare weekends that I hardly spent any time home, other than to sleep. While the homebody me isn’t inclined to do so every weekend, it’s nice to have a packed schedule once in a while. I mean, that’s what we’re all chasing after, right? Novelty. A break from the monotony that is our work week. We fight so hard for change and excitement, yet the Sisyphean task of rolling up the rock remains ever constant. It’s Monday again! Time to go back to work.

You either enjoy the process, or be miserable.

Like the friend I was with yesterday. During dinner, after a long day of hiking around Angel Island, he lamented the oncoming workweek. I mentioned that perhaps he doesn’t sound all the enthused about his job, to which he replied, “I hate my job.” Quite a succinct way to say exactly what I was asking! Why stay at a job you actively hate? Why do most people, really? It’s the money, of course. And the sunk cost of the previous effort (read: education) to get you at that job in the first place.

No one wants to - or can - take a pay cut switching to a less stressful job. They’ve adapted their lifestyle to their current income level. Decreasing that means having to make other hard choices as well. For someone already miserable at a job, adding that complexity to the decision means they rather not make it. Or perhaps they can’t: the cost of mortgage and kids can’t really decline, can it? So let’s just slog through the workweek for that sweet reprieve of the two day weekend. Some weekends you might be lucky and get three days.

Then the loom of Monday creeps in on Sunday evening. The joy of that reprieve vanishes in a flash. To each their own, obviously, but that’s not how I want to live my life. Work is a necessity, yes, but I won’t stay a job that I actively hate. Life is too damn proverbially short for that.

Push that rock up for the nice things.

Patience, young Padawan

It’s funny to see a package to be delivered by USPS reach the destination facility, only to be diverted away. The package is in San Francisco, I’m in San Francisco, why then did it go up towards Eureka? Some intrepid sorter must have put my purchased item into the wrong bin. Granted, the thing I bought is rather small. I’d be amazed if, say, a television set would have gotten erroneously diverted. The post office is footing that fuel bill, not me.

Good news though: the package has since diverted back to San Fransisco, and I should be getting it today. God willing.

It goes back to the my main theme of 2023: have patience. The lack of patience have time and time again prove to be detrimental. Speeding up the process (the illusion of it, anyways) instead of letting things take their natural course have led to some huge mistakes. Like that time I wiped a whole hard-drive with user data - and no backup whatsoever to support that mistake. I’ve seen the lack of patience cause my friend to get physically injured. It can be quite pernicious.

The hubris is in that we think we can control the future. That getting to the desired outcome as quickly as possible will (finally) make us happy. What we need to remember is that’s a never-ending hamster wheel. You’re always going to be looking towards some future event for satisfaction, one after the next. Let’s say your impatience did get you the result faster: you’ll only be momentarily happy before something else on your list of wants need fast-forwarding.

I was for a split second annoyed that my package was not coming on the originally specified day. But I reminded myself it’s going to be okay to wait the extra few days. The boost of joy from receiving the thing is vanishingly ephemeral.

Giving life.