Blog

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

Erase time, or speed up time

This video of Jenson Button driving his championship-winning Formula One car on the Goodwood circuit is utterly fantastic. For many fans - myself included - this is the era of F1 we remember most fondly. The naturally-aspirated engines that revved to the moon. The hair-raising, high-pitched wail of a scream that is still the gold-standard of engine sounds. The sort of fizzy feeling that is utterly absent in today’s turbocharged hybrid formula.

Sad as it may be to say, Formula One is never going back to that era. Things have moved on, technologies have gone in a different direction.

Which is why it’s important to be in the present and to fully appreciate what’s right in front of us. Because in a few years things can change rapidly, and you’re left wondering why the “good ole days” seem to have passed us by so quickly. I wished I had paid more attention to Formula One before this current decade-plus turbocharged era. I would have savored the screaming engines that much more. The sheer beauty that was displayed on the television screen.

It’s mechanistically perverse that we really don’t know we are in the ‘‘good times” until it has passed and we are looking backwards. It would be nice to get some signal that right now is a golden era that we should probably pay full attention to. But then again, we do love to live in the future tense. We can’t even enjoy a concert of our favorite artist without recording the proceedings for posterity. For the future us.

A good way to practice being in the present moments is to go to the movies. You are stuck there for the two hours completely engrossed in what is displayed on the giant screen in front. No phones, no distractions. We’ve all experience that feeling, right? That moment when we come out of the theatre and time seems to return to normal ticking. As if inside the theatre was a dream world. It’s a strange feeling because when we are fully in the present moment, the flow of time feels different.

But it’s only strange because our regular lives are so consumed by ruing that past or anxious about the future. We either want to erase time, or speed up time. That’s not a great way to live, especially when the human lifespan has a finite hard stop.

Maybe the reason we’re so addicted to nostalgia is because it gives us a chance for a do-over at being present for the thing to be nostalgic about. Right then, I’ll go watch more old Formula One clips on YouTube.

No toys store for kids

You know what kids these days miss out on? Giant, physical toy stores. Fantastical, multi-level paradises filled with everything a kid can dream of. I’m old enough to remember the FAO Schwarz in downtown San Francisco. The jingle went: “Welcome to my world, welcome to my world, welcome to my world of toys.” What an experience just being inside that building; my parents certainly cannot afford to buy me anything housed within.

The likes of Amazon has killed that joyful, magical experience. The closest substitute these days is the puny toys section at your local Target. What a joke!

What I don’t miss these days is having a commute. It’s been a little over five years since I ceased driving to work. Not because a fortunate remote work opportunity has fallen upon me. But rather I moved so close to work that I can simply walk.

As is human nature, the more you’re used to a thing, you start to take it for granted. I try really hard to remind myself everyday what a privilege it is to not spend any hours a day on the road. That only 15 minutes after I get off work, I am already in my home clothing and chilling on the chaise. Meanwhile, my colleagues have barely just circled out of the parking lot.

There are tradeoffs, of course. San Francisco housing is notoriously not cheap, and that means my rental is tiny. It is not more living space I pine for, however. I want space to work on cars. The aim is to have a home with a suitably large garage. To afford that on my meager salary means buying/renting one really far away from work. Is having space to fiddle with cars worth the cumulative 10 hours per week lost to commuting? It currently is not.

It may be some day, but right now the answer is no. The lack of a commute still reigns supreme.

Just do it

R/bogelheads is a subreddit dedicated to discussing Jack Bogel’s investment strategy. (For those of you under a rock, Jack Bogel is the founder of Vanguard, a pioneer of the index fund.) Genuinely: why does this subreddit exist? Bogel’s investment philosophy is as simple as it gets: consistently buy low-cost index funds periodically for a very long time. What else is there to talk about? R/Bogelheads should consist of one single pinned post outlining that exact strategy, and nothing else.

Same with r/personalfinance. What can there possibly be to talk about when personal finance can be boiled down to a single sentence: spend less than you make, save and invest the difference.

Same with r/fitness. Go move some weights every few days, consistently for a very long time. That’s it. Gyms have not changed, nor has barbells and dumbbells.

I think we get mired in discussions on the margins, seeking ever more nuanced information, rather than doing the damn thing. Or, we’re already doing the damn thing, but we want to keep ingesting information about that particular subject as some sort of feel-good pacifier. You only need one podcast with David Goggins as guest to know that you should get off your ass. Finding 10 more just like it with essentially the same information is just procrastinating.

Once you know the secrets, you can leave! Rather than scrolling through the same information day after day, that time is better spent doing something else. It can even be for leisure! Go start a new streaming TV series. Go play some video games. Go hang out with your actual friends and family.

So long, so slow

Boy, that was a long January. At least it was to me. Yesterday a coworker remarked that January went by in a flash, and I had to politely disagree with him. What was 31 days felt like 60 days. I mean, shouldn’t we prefer that our days go slowly? The whole life is short thing, right? What we don’t want is the sensation that time moved by in a flash. The that felt like it was only yesterday. I guess I’m doing something right: I didn’t speed-run through January.

I got an email yesterday from Amazon notifying me that in 2022, I’ve earn over $300 in cash-back from my Chase Amazon rewards credit card (the card earns a whopping 5% on purchases if you are an Amazon Prime member). That amount easily offsets the annual $139 premium for Prime membership. In fact, $300 would cover the membership fee for this year as well. It’s spending neutral, so to speak, for me to keep Amazon Prime.

My friend did some quick math, and figured out that $300 in 5% of rewards equals to about $6,000 of spending last year. Since I’m notorious for buying lots of books, the friend quipped, “How much are these books that you buy?” Honestly, I was a bit surprised at the $6,000 figure. Granted, about $2,500 of that was spent towards an LG OLED TV and a set of speakers. The rest of the $3,500 is simply the spending of daily life. The books, the supplements, the health products, etc. Since I do get 5% cash-back in return, I try to do as much shopping with Amazon as possible.

Shoutout to the delivery guys and gals.

I certainly don’t plan to buy a TV this year or anything too spendy. I’m at the stage of life where it’s all about buying high-quality things and using them for a very long time. For example, this Herman Miller Aeron chair I’m currently sitting on, I’ve had since my college days. I endeavor to have this sort of longevity with the things I own now, and the stuff I buy moving forwards.

Precious times

They say time is the most valuable asset we have, and we should try our best to not squander any of it. Sounds great on paper, but have these people ever try to get out of a warm bed in the morning? The eternal fight between the comfort and protection of the covers, and the dreadful cold of a morning bedroom. Keep the heat on during the night? I’m too Asian and not rich enough for that.

Instead of getting out of the bed promptly after wake, I waste about an hour scrolling through twitter on the phone. Having my phone within reach of the bed is probably one of my worst habits, but I simply don’t have the willpower to quit. Reading through twitter in the morning is like reading the morning newspaper for people back before the times of the Internet. It’s informational and entertainment. The real enemy is infinite scrolling: there’s no natural stopping point, unlike an actual newspaper. The dopamine drip can be as endless as your capability to stay in bed.

The productive thing to do would be to actually get out of the bed, and then check twitter on the MacBook Pro. This preserves the value of checking the news in the morning, but crucially, it also gets me out of bed. Crossing the physical barrier is what releases me from the intense hold of that warm cover. Back when I lived with my parents, feeding the cat was what got me out of bed immediately. I think I need something similar to that to serve the same purpose.

Ultimately, I can’t be wasting an hour plus stuck in the bed every morning. What’s the point of waking up so early if I’m just going to squander away those precious morning hours? Perhaps it is time: I shall charge my phone overnight on the drawer across the room. I’d have to get up and out just to turn off the alarm.

Time is of the essense

Last week, Costco had a sale on face marks. Only five dollars for a pack of 50! Remember during the early days of this pandemic? When there was a shortage of medical face masks for sale? I once paid for a similar box of 50 for 50 dollars! Steep as that price may be, it was absolutely paramount that we protect ourselves.

Comparatively then, five dollars for 50 masks is an unmitigated steal. So I order four boxes. That should last me well into the rest of year (I’m not the type to reuse a mask then next day). I am optimistic that vaccines will proliferate quicker and quicker, that soon we’ll be back to some semblance of normal. However, I don’t think I’ll be stopping mask use even after that time. I may not wear them anymore when I’m at work or in a private setting with friends, but in public spaces I’m going to be Asian about it and continue to wear masks for a long time to come.

I received the shipment from Costco, and sadly only three boxes arrive. I had a decision to make: do I spend the time calling customer support to contest this? The decision is no: my time is worth way more than the five dollars I’d be (potentially) clawing back. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, and choosing to spend it wisely is just about the best thing we can do for ourselves. Chasing after a human error for less than ten dollars is not that.

Similarly, I don’t bother returning things that’s of a similarly low value. The hour that it cumulatively takes to package the thing and then drive it to logistics store could be better spent elsewhere. Like reading a book, for example, or partake in a lesson of guitar. As an adult that makes solid money, I can afford to essentially spend money to save time. Or in this case, forsake money to save time. Either which way, it’s very worth it.

My first ever CD have expired

A few days ago I received a surprise cheque in the mail (we like those!). Sadly, it wasn’t some rich benefactor wanting to support me in my creative endeavors (please support my Patreon - just kidding); rather it was from TIAA bank. My first ever CD account - a 5-year CD - has come due, and the final cheque signifies the account closing. Five years have indeed gone by already.

And what a difference five years make: my expired CD carried an interest rate of 1.90%, which was the absolute best one can do in risk-free account, at a time when savings accounts were only giving out 0.70%. Fast forward to today, I’m comfortably getting 2.2% from Ally, and long-term CDs are into the 3s. Shout-out to the Federal Reserve for finally raising the base borrowing rate these past few years.

You’d half expect me to go on some cliché tangent about how five years have gone by in a blink of an eye, and that it seems like only yesterday that I’ve just opened the CD account, but that is the completely opposite of what I’m feeling right now. What an absolute slog the five years have been; I went through an intense period of transformation, from my mid-twenties of still finding my place in this world, to now in my thirties, wiser yet still massively unlearned, and seeking to improve every single day. When you start to look at every single day as its own challenge and reward, your reference of time slows down significantly.

I think time goes by quickly when you’re directionless and bored. It contradicts somewhat the popular saying of “time flies when you’re having fun”, but I can only speak from my experience. When days are filled with salient tasks and good habits, the time well spent acts as a defense against pangs of emptiness and waste. You think time have gone by fast precisely because you regret not having done more during that particular timeframe. I actively fight against that.

Anyways, with interest rates at somewhat healthy levels, I’ve no plans to roll the money from the closed CD to another 5-year term. I prefer as much liquidity as possible (outside of retirement accounts), and not having to chase better rates frees up extra money to be funneled into my other investment vehicles.

Cheers to the next five years. May that end date also creep up on me unsuspectingly, but in the best possible way.