Blog

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

Costco rethink

Who doesn’t like going to Costco? I sure do. There’s no place else that can get you as best a bang for your buck, no matter what it is that you buy.

Groceries is what my family most often buys from Costco, and now that I’m living by myself away from my parents, I’ve continued on that tradition. However, there’s a problem: buying in bulk is great in terms of price per single unit, but now, that giant bag of potstickers will need to be eaten entirely by me. There’s no other persons in the household to share in that burden of depleting a multi-pound tray of fish, so while it remains tempting to buy, these days the purchasing decisions involve careful planning on how to eat it all.

It turns out, that stops all the fun. Instead of buying multiple items, I’m stuck to buying just one package of breakfast sandwiches, because it will take me some time to get through all 10 of them. Never mind the fact the fridge I’ve got in the studio unit is not that large.

It won’t stop me from going to Costco probably every other week, but now I have to be more strategic with what I buy. If variety is what I want, then it’s the smaller chains like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods where I’ll need to shop at for groceries.

Luckily, there’s a Trader Joe’s within minutes walking distance from where I live, and sometime in the near future, there will be a Whole Foods as well. Be that as it may, I don't think I can give up going to Costco. It remains the most economical place to shop: a box of Keurig cups is half as expensive on a per-cost basis compared to Target.

Good thing those cups don’t need to go into the fridge, because mine is absolutely full.

One can never escape from a Costco run with less than $100 spent.

Got by with a little help

Followers of this blog would know: I recently moved.

And I could not have done it with my good friends. I don’t have many of them, but the few friends I do have I consider equally as dear as my family. The successful move out of my parents’ house reminded me just how awesome it is to have help from others.

Admittedly, I am a bit of a lone ranger when it comes to things: I prefer to go at it myself. It’s not like I see asking for help as a sign of weakness, it’s just that I’ve always had this mentality that in asking for assistance, I am being a huge bother to people. This is going to sound like I am blaming my mother: she’s the type of person who doesn’t like to owe anyone anything, and is quick to return a favor. She treats relationship with others as somewhat transactional, and some of that no doubt rubbed off on me.

So I was genuinely surprised and a bit taken-back when, without prompting, my friends offers their services to help me move. Things I would have done myself, like renting a van to haul my mattress, was taken care of voluntarily by my friends. In the case of the mattress, one of them had a Tesla Model S with a big enough boot to swallow the entire thing whole. Another friend - who happens to be the home owner I am renting from - saved me a trip to IKEA and got the bed-frame and bookshelves I needed. Yet another friend pitched in to ferry items from one house to the other, and assisted with building said bed-frame and bookshelves.

My stoic exterior belies how immensely moved I was by their gesture. My friend literally cut the time needed to complete the move by magnitudes. We started at 9 AM in the morning, and by noon the major move and build was complete, leaving me the afternoon to unpack and get my things into place.

If they are reading this: you guys are awesome! Thank you so much, with all sincerity.

What's the topic?

This is one of those mornings I really don’t know what to write about, but the show must go on. I try hard to not skip any scheduled writing days, because like missing a workout, the regret of having done so afterwards is rather unpleasant. Nothing should stop me from putting down the few hundred words on this page every day; except for Fridays, and the weekend.

With nothing to write about, I instead picked up a book and read for about an hour. I thought perhaps doing another task first would allow the time for inspiration to hit me and I’d have something to write about. Well, that completely failed on this day, and here I am rambling about particularly nothing just to fill up the word count.

But the show must go on.

The next time I put words to this page, I would have moved to my new spot closer to work, living the solitary independent life for the very first time. I am looking forward to this big life change with humbled anticipation, though with a few days still remaining at what I can now refer as “my parents’ home”, I am trying hard to not fast-forward time with the excitement of the future. It would be too easy to take these next days off and sort of lounge around until it’s time to move.

In those moments, I remind myself the core of what I do, which is plastered on the landing page of this very website: writer, photographer, car enthusiast, reader, traveler. So long as I am doing any one of those five things at a given time, (not so much traveling going on these days, sadly) I can confidently say I am being productive. Not to say one shouldn’t have hours of pure leisure, but for those with a tendency towards laziness like myself, reminders and affirmations are helpful tools to keep me on track.

Until next time, friends.

New car unlucky

It seems my somewhat rash action of trading in the 911 GT3 for a BMW M2 Competition have inspired my brother to do the same. He recently sold his Audi A3 to CarMax for a surprisingly large sum (the used car market is absolutely on fire) and is now the proud owner of a brand new Mazda MX-5 Miata.

Emphasis on owner, because he’s not really driven the car much since he bought it home some two weeks ago. On a cruise to Monterey during the weekend of purchase, the car threw a check-engine-light on the highway and went into limp mode. A brief stint at the dealership found everything to be okay, though after a few days the CEL returned, and as of writing the car is still at the servicing department, on a hoist with the transmission taken out.

At least they’ve provided my brother with a courtesy car.

Sometimes the luck of the draw is just not in your favor, but that’s not something my brother can control. Good news is it’s a brand new car, so the MX-5 will get repaired to proper standards without costing him a dime. The powertrain warranty covers the next five years of driving, so there’s really nothing to worry about. If my brother’s car buying patterns continues (I certainly hope not), he won’t even see the end of that five years with the Miata anyways.

If the dealership cannot fix the problem, then Mazda will be compelled by California lemon law to buyback the car. If that comes to pass, my brother will simply get another MX-5. The ND2 generation of the iconic Mazda sports car is indeed too sublime and fun to forsake just because the sample he purchased happens to have a few gremlins to sort through.

I look forward to many blasts through the local mountains with my brother once his new car is fixed.

This is not going to help my wanderlust.

Magical sunrise

As someone who tends to wake up rather early in the morning, I for one am looking forward to daylight savings time ending this Sunday. Right now when I get out of bed at 6AM, the sky doesn’t even begin to get brighter until an hour later. I resort to turning on the desk lamp so my body would know it’s actually time to wake, rather than it’s still the middle of the night. Turning the clock backwards one hour will sync up perfectly with my sleep schedule, with the sky beginning to turn lighter just as I end my slumber.

And then obviously I hope they never institute daylight savings time again, because jumping forwards one hour in March is always a tiring experience, like giving ourselves artificial jet-lag for no bloody good reason.

That said, it is something special to awake before official sunrise time; looking outwards through the window and seeing the sky do its magical transition from absolute darkness to intense bright. The mightiest object in our solar system creating the biggest shift change to planet is at once awe-inspiring and meditative. The sunrise phenomenon puts things into perspective, of just how tiny and powerless we are against the might of nature, unending for billions of years. So perhaps that small annoyance that’s been bothering me suddenly doesn’t seem to bad after all.

I am lucky to have a bedroom window that faces east, so I get to watch the sunrise and enjoy its delightful light shift every single day. It’s something I’ll miss when I move out at the end of this week, to a spot where the windows faces west, but it’s on the ground floor so it isn’t high enough to see the sky without a crane of the neck.

I shall relish these moments while I still can.

Final week

It took deep into October, but we’re finally getting some proper autumn weather here in San Francisco. After the seemingly endless heatwaves and mountainous wildfires, the cool crispness of Fall and the slight chills have arrived to welcome us to what is in my opinion the best parts of the year (even this, the year of COVID). Temperatures during the daytime are so mild that I can keep the windows shades open without the sun heating up the room, receiving those all-important vitamin Ds naturally.

This week marks the final few days I will be living at home - I am due to move out on Sunday the 1st of November. It’s exciting time indeed, though I’m sure I’ll be fighting momentary bouts of anxiety throughout the week. Living by myself alone will be a tremendously huge change, and there’s surely plenty of variables and things I’m can’t even imagine right now that goes along with it. I won’t get the complete picture of how it’s going to be until the actual move happens, but that’s okay: it’s part of the learning process.

Independent living is something we all have to do sooner or later. In my case, it took until my 30s to do because I never did the “go away fro college’ thing like most of my peers. I have the cultural privilege of not getting kicked out of the house soon as I became a legal adult, and for that I am forever grateful. However, the time has come to venture out alone and to take care of myself wholly and completely. The milk in the fridge and the toilet paper in the bathroom aren’t going to magically refill itself anymore.

This is also the final week I’ll have a commute to work: I am moving to place that’s extremely close to campus. It’s going to rather nice to take the 10 minute daily walk to work, under this fine autumnal air. This period of working-from-home have reinforced my want of living within walking distance to the workplace; a long commute on public transport is something I don’t ever want to go back to.

I hope you all will have a great week.

This thing loves crips autumnal air as well.

No trip to China

As we roll deeper into October and the final months of the year, the sad reality is finally dawning on me that I am not traveling back home to China this year. Stating the obvious: the coronavirus pandemic have made doing so absolutely untenable. The yearly trip to Guangzhou to see family on my dad’s side is always a wonderful and loving time, and it’s rather disappointing we won’t be able to do the annual meetup this year. The steak of six straight years of spending a few weeks of winter in China will come to an end.

The holidays are a difficult time of the year to be stuck in our homes and unable to see friends and family. Humans are social animals, after all, and at this point even the most ardent introverts are feeling the pain of the lack in social interactions (that’s me!) Therefore I don’t blame anyone for meeting up for Thanksgiving, even with all the risk associated with COVID-19. For some of us, our grandparents are quite up there in age, and who knows if they’ll make another turn of the planet. I think it’s important to take all the necessary precautions (mask up!) to see them before this calendar year is over.

Fortunately, my grandparents are on this side of the pond, so the inability to travel to China this year wouldn’t be detrimental.

Further good news: while much of America is experiencing a rebounding rise in COVID numbers, San Francisco have good enough stats to enter a new phase of reopening. The city’s restaurants have already been allowed to open indoor dining at a reduced capacity, and now, more places of commerce will be allowed to join that group. In a year of never-ending horrible news, how San Francisco have handled the pandemic response is something to be happy and proud of. Despite the sky-high housing costs, I am really glad to be a citizen of this city and county.

Our friend group can feel less guilty about gathering for Thanksgiving in a month’s time.