Blog

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

No water for work

Nothing makes you appreciate first-world amenities quite like having them taken away suddenly. For example: running water. I went to work this morning (as one does every weekday morning) and turns out the entire campus has lost water pressure. This is not because of any maintenance fault of the university, but rather the City and County of San Francisco. Our facilities staff had to call public utilities for assistance. I know you're staring at an enormous fiscal hole, San Francisco, but shortchanging SF State on water is not the way to save money.

When there isn’t enough water pressure to flush toilets, it becomes enough of a biohazard to send everybody home. Thank heavens for modern work safety regulations! (Apparently, OSHA states that if there are working bathrooms within a 10 minute walk, then it is okay to continue working.)The modern us have it so incredibly nice. Think back to when even the highest of kings and queens do not have access to such luxurious plumbing. We are literally living better than royalties of old. No amount of money back then could buy the standards we have now. It’s humbling to think about.

I greatly appreciate automatic hot water out of every faucet tap in the home (here in America) whenever I go back to China. There, it’s typical for older apartment buildings to only have hot water for the bathroom shower head. Can you imagine washing your face with cold water in the dead of winter? (I don’t have to imagine it, because that is exactly what I will be doing a month from now.) Meanwhile, here in the States we open the faucet and wait for water to get hot in the morning…

The living standards are pretty high here, and I think it’s useful to not take it for granted once in a while. And perhaps, to not be so wasteful of it either.

In nomine Patris…

All I got's a moped

I've noticed lately that a lot of the DoorDash/Grubhub food delivery drivers are on mopeds. Instead of, you know, automobiles. It makes sense: in a highly competitive game of being stuck in San Francisco traffic, the moped (and its motorcycle cousin) is hugely advantageous. The ability to weave in and out between stuck cars is crucial in ensuring that KFC order gets to the customer with reasonable temperature left over. No one likes cold fried chicken - a congealed mass of molasses.

There's advantage in parking, too. As in, there isn't a need to park a moped. Not that delivery drivers in cars obey the parking rules anyways. The speed demand means they double-park, and simply play the lottery of "hope you don't run into a meter maid." (Or an angry driver stuck behind.) I can confirm this to be the case, because my brother for a time did food delivery as a somewhat full-time job. (Surely he does not miss hustling in traffic all day for a measly $100 payout.) With a moped or motorcycle, the riders park them on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant.

What makes the proliferation of moped-as-delivery vehicles interesting is that in Asia, this has been the modus operandi for a very long time. You go to any major city in Asia, and mopeds are absolutely everywhere, ferrying all sorts of things. It's driven by necessity, of course: it's far cheaper to buy and own a two-wheeler compared to a whole car. Americans don't realize how, relatively to the rest of the world, car prices here are cheap and attainable. (Gas prices, too, in the non-Saudi Arabian category.)

Will mopeds become as the gig commerce vehicle of choice here in San Francisco - a la Asian cities? I think it depends how inflation-proof the gig economy is. Buying food - much less having someone deliver it to you - has become prohibitively expensive. If the economy contracts due to high interest rates, surely people will be way less inclined to order on DoorDash.

This is the sound of settling.

We can have nice things

The APEC summit is happening this week in San Francisco. Honestly, I’ve never heard of APEC until I started to see news of street closures and movement restrictions a few weeks back. Of course, when world leaders representing nearly half of the world’s economic output come together, security is of utmost importance. Especially in a country - the United States of America - where the second amendment exists. If the locals who live and work here are inconvenienced, so be it. Literally the price of doing business.

I sure hope the supposed increase in local spending from all the foreign visitors is worth it!

Because I am sure San Francisco is spending a significant sum in hosting, and its various logistics (Federal government is chipping in, surely). I was surprised to read the organizers literally built a 14-foot high security fence surrounding the Moscone Center area. Access is highly controlled and monitored, no doubt. (Who says we can’t built walls here in America?) Entire subway tunnels are shut down for the duration of the event. Freeway exits near the conference area are blocked, and entire lane of the Bay Bridge is closed to normal traffic.

There’s apparently a 30-mile no-fly radius - commercial aircraft excepted. Leisure guy flying his recreational Cessna better stay away, lest he wants fighter jets for company.

Another surprising thing is seeing the city actually enforcing laws! Sidewalk homeless encampments getting cleared out, and illegal street vending stopped. I bet the tacitly-allowed drug trade in the Tenderloin is also put to a pause. The Department of Public Works must’ve worked overtime to clean the downtown area. I love how shambolic it is that San Francisco only (literally) clean its act up when cameras and eyes from the outside world are upon it. Count me as one of the locals asking: why can’t we have this year round, all the time?

I wish APEC a successful summit in this city of ours. It’s wild to think I will be in the same 7-by-7 mile piece of land as Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The jade dragon.

Don't heat it up

October in San Francisco has brought along the typical few days of hot weather (hot for this region, anyways), even though it’s autumn. This brings a unique problem to someone like me who lives in a studio (read: very small). When the temperature is high, I cannot cook at night. The room (singular!) is warm enough already; cooking a hot meal adds heat to it, delaying the natural night cool down. The slower the room cools down, the more difficult it is to fall asleep.

A cascade of negative consequences, that’s what it is. Good news is, I live right by a mall with plenty of food options. So on the hot days these past few weeks, take-out dinner was the only sensible option. Not that I need any extra excuse to not cook. The downside of course is the hit to the wallet. Inflation is still high, food prices are still ridiculous. Can you even eat a non-fast food meal for less than $20 these days?

In addition to not cooking when the weather is hot, I also do not use my LG OLED TV. Did you know that OLED televisions consume more power than the equivalent LED unit? All that wattage has to go somewhere: radiating right into the room. So what do I do for entertainment on a hot October San Francisco evening? I use the iPad. That thing runs so cooly that it doesn’t even have an internal fan. Indeed it’s kind of slumming it to go from a 65-inch screen to a 10-inch screen, but I must avoid heating up the room unnecessarily.

Because as mentioned: sleep is utmost importance. The body needs to cool down 1 to 2 degrees in order for the person to fall asleep. The warmer the room, the more challenging it is to get there. What would be ace is one of those mattress toppers that has active cooling. If climate change gets worse, and San Francisco sees more and more hot weather days, it’s something worth considering.

You can go to Chinatown for a meal under $20.

You son of a beach, I'm in

I am officially in on the Waymo app. I can now hail a fully autonomous car to take me anywhere (?) in San Francisco. Bad news for me is unlike the early invitees, rides are no longer free. But, I am excited to see what it is all about. Hopefully there won’t be any crashing into emergency vehicles. There definitely will not be any sex.

Can we trust computers fully? This morning, my Apple Watch did its hourly thing of reminding me to stand up. Problem is: I was already standing for the past 20 minutes! Kind of disappointed it wasn’t completely foolproof to detect that. I guess the Apple Watch doesn’t use a proximity sensor to gauge how far it is from the floor? That makes sense, actually. Otherwise, you can fake standing by sitting on a bar stool.

Pilots trust autopilot programs on airplanes, and by transitive properly, so do we as passengers. Obviously, there are way less airplanes in the sky compared to cars on the road. Also, there aren’t pedestrians and other objects to potentially run into.

I think the so called robotaxis are perfect for the introverts like myself. I almost never (want to) talk to the UBER driver, and always sit in the back passenger space. (Are there UBER drivers out there using two-door coupes?) With robotaxis, even the subtle pressure of making conversation with the driver will be gone! It is a completely silent car ride - there’s nobody else but me. I would totally watch a Youtube video during a Waymo ride, if I weren’t prone to carsickness.

Will I get annoyed at how strictly a Waymo ride follows the rules of the road? Example: everybody’s going 10 above, while the robotaxi is pegged to the speed limit. Unlike a human driver taxi, there isn’t (yet?) a financial incentive for a robotaxi to get to the destination as quickly as possible.

The glow up.

Good to have healthcare

How’s everybody in the Bay Area handling the smokey air conditions? AQI reached the 180s yesterday (read: unhealthy), and it’s hovering in the 150s so far today. Thanks a lot, wildfires burning up in Oregon! I haven’t worn a mask outdoors since the early days of the pandemic. Remember those days? In hindsight, it was rather needless to mask-up outdoors. So was wiping down packages and bags with disinfectant.

The horrible air quality did not stop people from exercising outdoors. I saw plenty of people working out at the Marina Green yesterday. And all I have to say is, “Why!?” I can’t perceive any net benefit whilst breathing in this bad of air. This is what indoor gyms - with proper air filtration - are for.

Our health is too important, and so is having quality health care. It’s open enrollment period at my work, and it’s a good annual reminder how fortunate I am to have health care paid for by the employer. It’s the good stuff, too: my friend and I are both with Kaiser Permanente, but her emergency room deductible is $150, while mine is just $50. This low deductible tier do not come cheaply: my employer pays over $960 a month for the privilege (that’s $11,520 a year). I can’t imagine having to fork over that much money myself. Good thing the healthcare mandate, part of the Affordable Care Act, was struck down in court…

I can totally see why people stick with a job they may not like too much, all because of maintaining healthcare coverage. In America we sadly don’t have universal healthcare like rest of the first world. Our healthcare is dependent on employment, or being so abjectly poor that you qualify for government assistance. It adds degrees of difficulty for those wanting to take a leap of faith in pursuing the arts, or going freelance. Especially so if you’ve got dependents relying on you having health insurance.

It would be fantastic if there were universal healthcare. Instead of paying Kaiser $11,520 a year, my employer can pay that money directly to me instead. That would be lovely.

Free candy.

We are sitting too comfy

Apparently, July 2023 is the hottest month in recorded history. It sure does not feel like it here in San Francisco, though I’m sure it’s been absolutely sweltering soon as outside of the city confines. Just a week ago I was sweating it out across the bay in Oakland at an A’s game. But soon as I cross back over to San Francisco, the marine layer welcomes me like a blast of chill in a summer’s desert. We are damn lucky the city have stayed relatively cool, whist the rest of the world is melting down. Granted, we sure pay dearly - in cost of living - for it.

Sometimes I wonder if we ought to have survivor’s guilt, vis a vis climate change. Other than the droughts and smokey wildfires of past years (never forget the big orange sky), I would say San Francisco have been relatively unscathed thus far. Good thing increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere doesn’t cause a correlative uptick in earthquake risk? They’ve been telling us since middle school (that would be early 2000s for me) that we are due for the next big one, and we ought to be prepared. Yet we’ve still not experienced anything close to the 1989 quake.

I really should get that earthquake preparedness kit (finally) in order.

It’s been devastating to watch the wildfire tragedy in Maui unfold. Nearly 100 people dead, whole neighborhoods burned down, and the fires still burning throughout the island. The deadliest wildfire in over a century, and it’s in Hawaii of all places. The islands are not what you would associate with fire disasters (Hurricanes or tsunamis would be more apt), so it makes what’s going on even more shocking. Please donate to the first-respond efforts: American Red Cross is always good. For something more local, the Hawaii Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund is recommended (That is where I donated).

The curious cat.