Blog

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

Post Thanksgiving

Hello, friends. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, socially-distanced, of course. Indeed I’ve written before that I don’t blame anyone for wanting to gather during the holidays, even under these dire COVID circumstances. Because it’s been a really rough year, and human beings are social animals (even for the introverted me). Certainly, the “right” thing to do would be to not gather at all, but we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place if every American did what was right far earlier during this pandemic.

We have to accept reality: people are going to get together for the holidays. Christmas season is next.

It comes down to how much risk you are willing to take, and amongst my friend group, we chose a short gathering for Thanksgiving, with the appropriate masks and precautions (my own family never celebrated Thanksgiving). We hung out for about an hour at a friend’s house, and then individually took home food to-go. Later on we joined a Zoom session as the replacement for chatting over the dinner table. It was the best we could do under the circumstances, and most importantly, everyone felt good about it instead of someone stressing they are taking an undue risk.

It’ll be fun to look back at the pictures from this year and laugh at how peculiar it all is. A moment in our lives that hopefully is an anomalous blip, rather than a new normal.

Celebrations aside, I took the entire Thanksgiving week off work, so it was nice to have some leisure time to recharge the mind and body batteries. At first I was hesitant to even take the days off because I can’t go anywhere for obvious reasons. Normally I’d be off to Asia for the week, or at least not stuck at home the entire time. Instead, the only difference from work in taking vacation during COVID is that I don’t have to follow the online work channels for eight hours out of the day.

That being said, the respite from work allowed me to get the last bit of things I need to completely finish the moving process that started almost a month ago. It’s always nice to able to go to IKEA on a weekday when there’s far less people, and I can flaneur through the showrooms unbothered by crowds.

There’s one more month to go on this crazy year. I am grateful that me and the people close to me are still healthy and gainfully employed. That’s all we can ask for.

iPhone 12 Pro

A few weeks back, I pondered about whether or not I am going to do the yearly iPhone upgrade this year. Well, now that the entire iPhone 12 lineup has been released, I’ve purchased an iPhone 12 Pro. Yes, despite the supposedly better camera system in the larger Pro Max, the quality improvements that I’ve read in the reviews aren’t enough to justify the dramatic increase in size. Ever since returning to the “regular” sized iPhone last year, after two consecutive years of having “Max” iPhones prior, the smaller phone is far handier to use on a daily basis.

I can even take a photo while holding the phone with one hand. Comparatively, it’s a two-handed affair with the Max iPhones, unless you want camera shake.

So I am glad the camera improvements in the 12 Pro Max isn’t compelling enough for me to make the switch back to the larger iPhone. I get to keep the same size, and save a bit of money as well. One thing I did switch back to this year is using the iPhone without a case. Dangerous as it may seem in terms of dropping fears, the iPhone design and colors are so beautiful that it’s a shame to cover them up in a case. Why opt for the fancy “Pacific Blue” color just to disappear it into a cradle of plastic? Not once did I really get to enjoy the lovely “Midnight Green” of last year’s iPhone 11 Pro, having stuck it in a case soon as I took it out of the box.

Admittedly, it was very awkward initially to once again use an iPhone without a case. The whole thing felt super fragile; lacking in the extra grip that a case provides, there’s an additional stress layer of dropping potential. Thankfully, after a week, I am now used to the feel and handling of an “unprotected” iPhone, and I have to say it feels tremendous and high-quality in the hands. Like a Zippo lighter, it’s something you want to keep in your hands for no reason at all, because it’s so nice to touch.

The last time I ran an iPhone case-less, I only dropped it twice over the span of a year. I’ll be quite happy if that is repeated with the iPhone 12 Pro. Let’s see!

Apple silicon Macs

Let’s talk a bit about the Macs with Apple silicon. Announced last week and releasing this week, there’s new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini equipped with Apple’s M1 chip, a derivative from its illustrious line of A series chips that’s been powering iPhones and iPads for a decade. Long story short: Apple is abandoning Intel because the chipmaker is unable to produce CPUs with the power and efficiency that Apple requires. Apple’s own in-house team has done such a fantastic job with the iPhone chips that porting it to the Mac platform is the next logical leap.

And the benchmarks show the M1 is simply amazing. Single and multi-thread scores equalling or better than Intel’s latest 11th generation chips, with only the very top-of-line still holding a slight advantage (I can cherish my Intel-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro for quite a bit longer). Keep in mind the M1 represents only the “entry level” product from Apple, and it does this amazing performance with incredible power efficiency - battery life on the new laptops is well above 10 hours. The M1 MacBook Air doesn’t even have system fan.

And because Apple now practically owns the whole stack, the seamless integration between software and hardware means the M1 Macs can get more performance out of a single unit of speed. The supreme fluidity of using a modern iPhones and iPads has come to the Mac as well, which is just fantastic.

I cannot wait for the truly “Pro” products to come out with Apple silicon, offering even more performance, and more than the 16 gigabytes of RAM and 2 terabytes of SSD that the new M1 Macs maxes out on. The only question is what should I buy: a MacBook Pro to replace my current 16-inch machine, or a new, hopefully redesigned iMac to compliment the mobile product? A confounding and fun conundrum to ponder on. I sold my 2017 iMac to consolidate down to a single laptop, so it would be interesting if I reverse the decision.

Intel and the rest of the PC world should be on high notice.

What I want is already there

Now that I am settled into my new place, I’ve began to sort put together a game plan of things to do. By the virtue of being within walking distance to work, the lack of a long commute have reclaimed a bit of time back into my day. So what do with those precious extra hours?

This year has been a complete wash for my photography hobby for obvious reasons. The early lockdown restrictions have morphed into lethargy and laziness. Ever since returning from Guangzhou in early January, I’ve really not done any shooting at all this year, and that is a shame. Now that I’ve got more time to my day, I’m going to force myself to focus back to taking and editing pictures.

My primary shooting device this year is the iPhone 11 Pro, and it bears repeating just how awesome smartphones cameras have evolved over the years. Computational photography have done absolute magic to overcome the physical limitations of small sensors and lenses. Push comes to shove, I have no problem at all selling my entire photography kit and only relying on the iPhone to take photos.

But a pixel-peeper like me wouldn’t be satisfied with a mere 12-megapixels, no matter how amazing the computers can make those 12 million pixels shine. What I do value and enjoy is how utterly portable a smartphone is relative to a traditional kit of camera and lenses. It’s incredibly painless to just grab the phone and go, rather than having to plan and prepare the kit for whatever eventualities. The cliche goes: the best camera is the one you have with you, and more and more, portability is something I greatly appreciate.

So I started looking through some of the latest premium small cameras that sits just below the full-fat lens-swappable mirrorless types. The Fujifilm X100V caught my eye immediately on how small it is while packing a solid punch with a decently-sized APS-C sensor and a fast prime lens. Like my iPhone, the X100V would be something I can simply grab and take with me without any thought, something that can live in the daypack constantly.

Then I got to the price, and that’s where I paused. Now is definitely not the time to spend so extravagantly, and upon reflection I remembered that the camera that I own - a Sony A7R2 - is rather portable enough already when paired with the compact Zeiss 35MM F/2.8 lens. I already have the thing that I seek and want; now it’s down to actually doing the work: go out and shoot.

Garbage out

Back when I used to live with my parents, I never understood why so many households on our block would come to dump their garbage in our apartment complex’s large communal bins. What’s so inadequate about their own garbage disposal arrangement? Admittedly it’s easier to simply dump it all into a giant bin, but to willingly take a walk outside of your own home to dump garbage is not something I can comprehend. Why not use your own? You’ve certainly paid for it.

Now that I’ve moved out of the house and into a situation where we have the same three bins - compost, recycle, and garbage - that most households have in San Francisco, I finally understand what’s going on. The reason people dump their garbage in our communal bin is because the standard-issue bins are too small to accommodate the trash output of a typical home. The place where I am renting consist of three persons, including me, and our garbage output easily overwhelms the absolutely tiny 16-gallon black bin. Without alternative disposal methods, there is no way we could fit a week’s worth of trash into it.

Luckily, the blue-colored recycling bin is a decent size, though you’re always one large purchase away from having too much cardboard to throw away in one collection. With the ease of shopping on Amazon these days, which household doesn’t have mountains of shipping boxes to throw away on a weekly basis?

No wonder the communal bin at my parents’ apartment is so damn popular.

The one bin we can’t hope to fill up ever during a regular week is the green compost bin. Being the same size as the recycling bin, a household would have to be consuming an absurd amount of food to have that much food-waste to throw out as compost. I guess the great imbalance between the volume of the general garbage bin and the compost and recycling bins is to create an incentive towards being eco-friendly. It certainly works: very few of us are so fortunate to live close to a communal bin where we can toss out the extra load with impunity.

Laundry day off

As a public employee, I got the day off yesterday due to it being Veteran’s Day. It’s rather nice to have this mid workweek break on a Wednesday, and today feels more like a second Monday than a regular Thursday. Nevertheless, because there’s a still a pandemic raging on - with drastic upticks in cases in many parts of the country - having a day off just doesn’t seem as awesome as it used to. Even though you can go out to places, you really shouldn’t if it isn’t something essential like getting groceries.

What about hanging out with friends? Well, you probably shouldn’t do that either, though the fact most of my friends don’t have Veteran’s Day off sort of solved that conundrum for me.

So what I did yesterday was just hung out in the new-to-me studio apartment, enjoying a quiet day of solitude. It was also a good time to do my first load of laundry at the new (again, to me) premises. The place has got the latest fancy and eco-friendly front-loading washers and dryers, very smart and super quiet in operation. It’s such a stark contrast coming from my parents’ apartment, with its nearly two decades old top-loading units that make a horrendous racket - everybody in the house knows when laundry is being done.

Advancement in technology is lovely indeed.

Another point of difference from my parents’ is that I no longer have to hang-dry my clothes. Even though there is a dryer at the old house, for the sake of saving a few dollars of energy cost, my family have hung-dry our clothes since forever; the dryer is there only for sucking up the lint afterwards. So to go from that to immediately transferring freshly laundry into the dryer and using that machine as intended is rather awkward at first, though the end-result of slightly warm and fresh-smelling clothes is such a luxurious feeling.

Surely some of my stuff that’s never seen a proper mechanical drying session will shrink from the heat; I guess I’ll find out which ones eventually.

Now that I’ve sold my 911, of course I’m seeing them everywhere. Like a taunt!

Walking to work

One of the major reasons for my recent move to a new place is for its utter proximity to work. Instead of a 45-minute multi bus ride or a 20-minute car ride (relying on others to ferry me), I can now walk to work. And I’ve timed it, too: about three songs’ worth, going at a leisurely pace. Living this close to work truly has no downsides: walking is tremendous for your health, and the time that would otherwise be squandered towards a long commute, you get that back to use productively (or not) within the day.

Being able to walk to work takes stress off me that I didn’t even know existed. Not having to do the whole song and dance of getting ready and watching the clock just so I wouldn’t miss the bus and be late is such a luxury, one that is worth the extra money I am spending on housing costs. At the end of the work day, I am not dreading a slogging commute home or fighting with the crowds on a bus. I can now take my time and stroll back home slowly, taking in the glowing sky of the setting sun, and smelling the freshness of the air. In 10 minutes, I would arrive at home, calm and unbothered.

This have obviously spoiled me for life: I am going to try my damnedest to not have a long commute ever again. To waste up to two hours of my day stuck in traffic or on public transport just feels wrong, no matter how many insightful podcast episodes I consume along the way. It is indeed a privilege that I am able to move home like this and be this close to work; the circumstance of others aren’t so convenient. If I had to buy a house right now, there is no way I’d be able to afford a one anywhere near my current place of employment.

Every single workday, I’d be stuck in a car for hours like so many out there, resigned to the malaise of San Francisco Bay Area traffic. A day in the future might come where I may indeed have to do that, but as I’ve said, I’m going to try really hard to avoid such a situation. In the meantime, I’m going to really enjoy living so close to work.