Blog

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

Thursday afternoon

I woke up this morning absolutely tired. Even after seven and half hours of sound slumber, I could barely open my eyes this morning. This isn’t laziness talking either, because I closed my eyes and slept for another two hours. The radiant sun shining through the shades wasn’t enough to break me out of it.

It’s another stressful work-week, I guess. Too bad it’s only Thursday. At least I get to work from home today, which is immensely less strenuous than physically going to campus. The art college is christening a new building soon, so us grunts on ground are busy with the move. Sitting at home working in front of a lovely windows is so much better than lifting heavy computer equipment into boxes.

At least it’s good exercise. Lots of squats and lifts. Hashtag gains.

I recently rediscovered how fun it is to read fiction. I generally skew on the non-fiction side in the books I read because I want to learn about new things. In my opinion, fiction is for entertainment, a good story. Though for sure you can study the prose of great authors as well. Nevertheless, sometimes you need a break from non-fiction (I challenge anyone to read all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago consecutively), so I make sure slot in a few fiction titles in between.

A novel with a great story can be very intoxicating. I usually read for about an hour every day, but I can’t seem to put Kevin Kwan’s latest novel - Sex and Vanity - down. So eager to find out what happens next that I just keep reading until it’s really time to stop, like needing to go to bed. The joy of reading isn’t just from learning something new, but also in embracing a wonderfully told story.

Being reminded of this, from now on I shall endeavor to read more fiction.

Down with RPP

In San Francisco, a portion of residential streets have this thing called residential parking permits. During the weekdays, there’s a time limit on how long a vehicle can be parked on such streets (usually one or two hours). To avoid this hassle, people who live there can apply for a permit. The privilege of being able to park your car in front of your house during the day costs about $150 per year.

The permit system serves two functions. One, the city gets the obvious racketeering-like revenue. Two, it prevents an overcrowding of cars parked on the street. Outsiders can’t take up spaces all day, and each additional car owned by residents would cost extra to park. I now live in an area with residential parking limits, and it’s rather nice to have ample parking available at all times. Because of this, I don’t have to dread coming home (or leaving in the first place) and worry about where to park.

It’s as close to having a private garage space as I can get.

Contrast that to my parents house, where it’s no-limit parking in the neighborhood at all times. Finding a spot is always a challenge, because each household have many cars (we have three ourselves). It seems half of them are always parked on the street, unmoved and unused during the work week. On late nights returning home, you’re almost guaranteed to have to park many blocks away. It’s a hassle and a battle. Soon as you leave your spot, another car is sure to fill it in no time.

February marks the start of a new annual on the parking permit in my neighborhood, which means I am finally able to get one for the M2. I waited this long - I moved here back in November of last year - because the city only prorates the cost for half a year. I did not want to pay the $75 for only three months. In the meantime, I’ve been parking the car at work during the weekdays, which thankfully is just a 10-minute walk away. It’s going to be great to be able to park in front of where I live (easily) once again.

Stop thinking about work

One thing I’m sort of struggling with lately is thinking about work during the hours when I’m not on the clock. After a particularly tiring day, I just want to relax at home and go about my personal business. But the mind won’t let me! The happenings of the work day keeps replaying in my head, and there I go overanalyzing every situation. It’s especially acute on days when there’s a relatively big screwup, or many raging problems that still haven’t yet resolved themselves.

It sucks that I am unable to be completely at ease. It’s a rather useless exercise: reflecting on the the work day accomplishes nothing but bring needless stress and misery. What’s already happened cannot be changed. Anything to be done in the future will physically have to wait until the next day. Thinking about it during personal leisure hours doesn’t prepare me any better. It just brings more anxiety about tomorrow.

But there’s another problem: the classic difficulty of trying not to think about something. If someone told you to not think about an elephant, an elephant is what immediately pops into your head. Even knowing all the merits of not stewing on the events of a workday, it’s tough to shut it all down at once. The harder I try, the more it’s not possible to.

What does help are physical activities to keep me otherwise occupied. Of course, exercising is always a great way to elevate the mood. Other activities as well, such as cooking dinner, or reading a good book. I don’t have the mental space to think about work when I’m engrossed in those things. I guess enriching the mind and body is a great way to salve it from useless rumination.

Eating out

Good news: outdoor dinning has resumed in California. Does this mean we’ve turned a corner from the worst of the pandemic? Who knows. The conspiracy is that Governor Newson reopened eat-in dining (albeit outdoors, obviously) to fend off the recall attacks. That COVID cases - especially in Southern California - are still bad enough that people really shouldn’t be congregating together.

It’s a very tough situation. The restaurant industry has been utterly decimated by the coronavirus. The ability to serve food outdoors is a slim lifeline against going out of business. Shutting down outdoor dining isn’t because eating outside is particularly dangerous vis a vis catching the virus. It’s about preventing what comes next, after the meal is ate. To stop those who aren’t likely to simply go home afterwards from hanging out further into the night.

Some people are saying that going out is the less of two evils compared to hanging out privately. I didn’t realize a significant amount of people are meeting up privately on a regular basis. I certainly haven’t: my small bubble of people I’ve seen since the start of all of this have not changed. And it will remain that way until we’ve got the vaccine needle twice over.

I saw on twitter a clip of restaurants in Beverly Hills with absolutely packed outdoor dinning areas on a Friday evening. I don’t blame those people at all. Coming up on the one year anniversary of this whole mess, we are completely tired of it. The vaccine is showing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and we simply cannot get there fast enough. After a hard week of work, I too want to break bread with friends at a restaurant. So I get why folk are going out to eat soon as it was allowed.

It’s good for the restaurants to get some much-needed income, too.

Good Friday

Hello, friends. I hope you are having a wonderful Friday.

I’m in one of those rare moods where I am completely satisfied with life. Literally everything is going in a positive direction (discounting the whole COVID situation, obviously). There’s a satisfying calm to it all, and no anxiety to speak of. Even the stress from work has dissipated, though it’s not like the workload has tapered off. If I can bottle up this feeling forever, that would be lovely.

That’s impossible, of course. Life is going to have its ups and downs, try as we might to smooth it out so that the valleys don’t hurt as much. It helps to have the ability to be content with whatever life throws at you, good or bad, big or small. If you can’t be happy with just a cup of coffee, you’re not going to happy sitting on a yacht. If you’re sad at the smallest misfortune, then the big disaster will utterly ruin you.

It helps to be in a state of not wanting anything, to be happy with what you already have. Easier said than done, I know. I’m afflicted with car enthusiasm, so I’m always on the lookout for the new and exciting. But, if I didn’t have the car I currently own, I’d be pining for that. It’s an endless cycle of chasing after novelty. As someone who have spent six-figures on a sports car, I think I’m qualified to say: the material stuff is never going to make you any happier.

You have to be happy and satisfied with what’s already there.

Are you not entertained?

How has your day been?

I’m writing this daily post in the afternoon, instead of my usual morning, because this whole thing with GameStop’s stock is so fun to watch. I woke up at 6:00 AM as usual and didn’t get out of bed until an hour and a half later, because the twitter feed was so enthralling. My whole morning routine got ruined by a gang of Reddit investors hoping to take down a few hedge funds.

Long story short: some retail investors discovered GameStop’s stock has more short positions than there were total certificates in circulation. So they went for a short squeeze by buying up GameStop securities en masse. The stock skyrocketed into hundreds multiple, and some hedge funds - with the short calls - lost billions of dollars. A few paper millionaires got minted over the span of a few days, and the rest of us are enjoying the show.

Things came to a standoff today: popular brokerage firms such as Robinhood and TD Ameritrade put a stop to new positions on GameStop and other companies that are being stoked by r/wallstreetbets investors. My twitter feed was filled with outrage at this seemingly blatant market manipulation. It sure helps the hedge fund short sellers to close out their positions easier, doesn’t it, if most $GME holders can only sell.

The optics are bad: Wall Street seems to be protecting their own, after being caught on the wrong side of a trade from a band of retail investors. Big Wall Street firms are the house, and the house always win.

Personally, I don’t have skin in this game. My investment plan is to dollar-cost-average index funds all the way onto retirement age. I don’t do individual securities. Some of these r/wallstreetbets investors are literally gambling their entire liquidity onto a single stock, which is amazing and reckless at the same time. If a position causes you to lose sleep, that’s not investing, that’s gambling. As with any gambling, there’s going to be those that specularly win, and those that spectacularly lose.

The rest of us are just watching to see what happens when the music stops playing.

Of budgets and cents

Boy, who would have thought that it’s harder to save money now that I have to pay rent! It sure was easy when I lived with my parents, and I get to squirrel away that 30% of my gross every month. It’s how I come to afford a six-figure sports car on a decidedly not six-figure annual salary. Well, the fun times are over: a far tighter monthly budget is one of the consequences of moving out.

And yeah, I’ve sold said six-figure sports car.

“Adulting” stops the fun. Everybody knows this. The need to save for some future probabilities means we shouldn't squander our entire paycheck. After subtracting rental cost, my discretionary spending have obviously gone way down. Nowadays, every dollar spent requires some serious thought and consideration. Gone are the days of dropping hundreds without thinking. Every outflow has to be reviewed. Did I mention I also have to buy groceries now?

The goal each month is to have something left over to stuff into savings and investments. Because having a money cushion provides optionality, and optionality provides stability and freedom. Stability in the sense that you have enough to cover any surprise money emergency. Freedom in the sense that you can do what you want, without being a slave to the any income. Work is turning out not so pleasurable? You can leave immediately, unless of course the next paycheck is figuratively life and death for you.

Having options is what I am continuing to strive towards. Paying rent is just a part of life, a new consideration that I have to account for. But it sure would be easier to not have it!