Blog

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

Don't forget to live

Recently, a retire faculty member came back to visit us. She bought a house on an acre of land back at her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. For way less money than the typical home here in the San Francisco Bay Area, she now has a main house, a guest cottage (that’s about the size of a small starter home), and plenty of grass and woodland to roam around in. It’s always been her dream to to move back home after retirement, and I’m really happy for her that it’s coming to fruition.

For whatever reason, the faculty went on this small lecture with me (once a teacher, always a teacher) about not being able to take all this money with you when you’re gone. She’s drawing two pensions plus social security. She’s not married and have zero kids. She’s 72 this year, so the clock is rapidly ticking to spend the wealth she’s accumulated over the years. Splurge mode! I’m eager to see how she decorates and furnishes the new (to her) home.

I very much agree with her that one should spend the money they’ve work so hard to acquire. I simply disagree with this eminent faculty member on the timing. I am definitely not waiting until I’m properly retired to begin enjoying the fruits of my labor. There’s no guarantee I will even reach that age: either via my own volition, or whatever natural (or man made) disaster should befallen us. My aim is to enjoy life and procure experiences throughout all of it. Pushing it all towards the supposed end is not the marshmallow test we think it is.

Some activities are better to do at an earlier age than after retirement. What good is traveling the world when you’re 60 and cannot muster then energy to be awake for longer than 24 hours. Attending the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race would be measurably more enjoyable in my 30s. Which is why I aim to go to one sometime this decade.

A more affordable Tesla

Late last week, Tesla announced price cuts to its entire model lineup, ranging from 15% to 20% - effective immediately. This is the power of direct-sale to customers: you the company can dictate the price at anytime. Don’t forget that Tesla actually raised pricing multiple times in 2022. This latest price cut is not so much a discount but rather a revert to the before times.

Still, if you just bought a Tesla vehicle in December 2022, you must be rightfully pissed off. Had you waited just that bit longer, you could have saved tens of thousands of dollars, plus be eligible (on certain variants of the Model 3 and Model Y) for the federal EV tax credit. $20,000 is a considerable amount of money, even for those who can otherwise afford a Tesla car before the price cut. This is like buying a TV for a certain price, only to find the same unit on sale the following week. On a larger scale.

Even those who purchased a Tesla car earlier in 2022 now have cars that are suddenly worth 15% less overnight. That would include dealerships who bought Tesla models on trade in: they are now upside-down on practically their entire Tesla fleet. I sure hope you’ve diversified! If your entire business is trading on used Tesla vehicles, you are effectively done.

It may be extremely salty for owners of recently-bought Tesla cars right now. I think if you’re in that situation, you have to suck it up and keep owning and driving the cars. That’s the only way to make back that money, so to speak: to get the most utility out of the original purchase price. Unlike the TV, you can’t simply return the Tesla or ask for a price match.

If you’re looking to buy a Tesla model, now is obviously a great time! The next day after the price-cut news, a friend of mine immediately sorted out financing and ordered a Model Y long range. He’s been pining to buy one for the longest time. The latest price reduction, plus the tax credit eligibility, was finally incentive enough for him to make the move. Now comes the hard part: the waiting game. As someone who have ordered a few cars, I can relate to that anxiety and agony.

Movie rentals

I’ve been an Amazon Prime subscriber probably since inception. Back then they offered discounts for college students, something like 50 bucks a year for free two-day shipping. Obviously nowadays it’s far more expensive - $139 annual - and I’m no longer in college.

With the accompanying Chase Amazon Prime card giving me 5% cash back on purchases at both Amazon and Whole Foods (there’s one a few blocks from where I live), I make back that annual fee in no time. The card also gets you 2% cash back at gas stations, which is lovely. Last year I got back over $300, which is more than comfortable enough to continue my Prime membership.

There are times I really don’t need to receive an item in two days or less. Amazon gives me the option to forgo the standard two-day shipping. In return, it gives me a dollar or two of digital spending credits. What I do with those credits is rent movies on Prime video. Often times that rental comes out to be free. It’s how I’ve been watching movies at home for quite some time now.

I can’t remember the last time I actually bought a movie. With mountain of books taking up shelf space, I don’t have any left for Blu-ray discs and DVDs. Besides, I’m not the type of person to watch movies a second time, so physical copies of movies would literally be decoration after the first watch. This is why I rent digital versions as well, instead of purchasing outright.

Besides, whatever is stored on Amazon servers doesn’t really belong to me, does it? Who do I make a claim with if those servers go down? Do I get mailed a copy of all my digital purchases on a hard-drive?

(Often free) renting movies is the way to go for me.

It's raining sideways!

Last night was the first time in a few nights I slept through the entire time. Northern California has been experiencing continuous deluge of rain and wind since the end of December. 50 miles-an-hour winds and heavy rain (and hail!) keep waking me up from slumber. These are heavy storms through and through, and it’s not over yet: the forecast says we won’t see the end of it until the 20th. As of typing we are expecting another full day of rain and crazy winds. Floor advisory in effect for the afternoon hours.

I was lucky yesterday to have smarty moved my BMW M2 to my work’s covered parking garage. One of the perks of living so close to work is I can use the garage whenever I need to stash the car for relatively long term. Either when I go on vacation, or when I need to put the BMW away from harmful weather. For about $25 of my pre-tax dollars every month, it’s a convenience worth paying for, even though 95 percent of the time I don’t park any car at work.

Shoutout to the coworkers who have to navigate fell trees and blocked roads to get to work. At least they are dry and warm in their sealed vehicles. I have to walk the half mile to work in the elements. Thankfully the storm have held up thus far during my commute hours, though I’m definitely prepared to go to a full poncho setup. An umbrella with these winds would just be utterly useless.

Another thing to worry about during times of heavy rain is leaks and flooding to the home. We’ve been fortunately in that regard, though I’ve heard too many anecdotes about roofs needing repair. My supervisor’s garage got flooded, a nasty confluence of geography. His house is situated on a plot where water naturally accumulates when there’s lots of rain within a short period time. No prevention - the only thing to do is pump the water out.

Stay dry and safe, everyone. More to come, unfortunately.

Man maths

10 days into the new year - have I already failed in the mission for austerity? Readers of this blog knows I am on the hunt for a new Honda Civic Type R. That means adding another car to the one I already have - a not-so-cheap to own BMW M2. Obviously that’s going to be quite a chunk of additional borrowing, and an increase in ancillary costs such as gas and insurance.

That is, if a dealership would even sell me a Civic Type R for a reasonable price.

Us car guys like to perform what we call “man maths”: a euphemism for convincing ourselves that we can overextend the budget to afford a certain car (or more). So I did my due diligence on the plan to buy the Civic. And what do you know: I can afford to have a second car, though I wouldn’t classify it was comfortable. I would essentially be “car poor”, which for a car enthusiast is probably not the craziest thing. What’s the meaning of life but to find the one passion and pour everything into it?

At least I won’t be in the negative, so to speak. I’ll just owe a bank a lot of money.

Alas, my Asian upbringing is convincing me otherwise. Buying the Type R would remove any cushion I have for other things. As of right now I would rather build up that buffer instead of immediately dropping another bag of money. This after a 2022 of somewhat heavy spending; I really need to bump up my monetary reserves. The second car will have to wait. It can still happen, just not right at this moment.

I think patience here is going to serve me well.

Rejected too few

Getting rejected sucks. Even when the situation is one where I fully expect to get rejected. My particular human psychology just isn’t built-up to deal with this kind of failure. It’s as if each successive rejection is a direct reflection of my personhood, a character flaw. How can rejection affect me so adversely even with the proper amounts of anticipation? Perhaps I’m indeed too invested in what others think of me.

Yesterday I made an offer on a car at a local dealership. It was soundly rejected, obviously, which put me in a sort of funk the rest of the day. I can’t really explain it. It was textbook negotiation: two parties can only agree to move on from the table. But then why do I feel so bad? I don’t think I put undue anticipation, hopes and dreams, towards my offer being accepted. It was just taking a shot: the answer is always no if I don’t ask.

Thinking back, I’ve always had this neuroticism. Back in my schooling days, I would dread getting English papers back from the teachers. Invariably their remarks and criticism would hurt me to the core. I was rather happy to be done with English classes after freshman year of college. Instead, I do my writing here in this blog. Where it’s safe from criticism (readership is minuscule, no one comments!), and I can commit all the subject-verb tense error I am wont to do.

Moving forward I think it’s helpful to get rejected. It’s good practice, and unless I plan to stay in my hole for the rest of time, it’s going to happen anyways. I need to learn to handle the afterwards better, to be able to move on quickly. It’s a part of what I’m trying to do in 2023: live authentically, and not care about what other people think.

The best MacBook Air

I think I’ve found the perfect writing instrument: a 2015 11.6-inch MacBook Air.

I use to have one back in the day. Until I unceremoniously left it in a bin passing through TSA checkpoint at San Francisco International. I probably should have gone back after my trip to claim it at the lost and found, but I was far too cavalier with money in my 20s. Lost a thousand dollar notebook? No big deal, I’ll just buy another one.

And I did. In came a Microsoft Surface Pro 4, a device I hardly ever used and sold it a few years later towards buying an iMac.

Thanks to work, I recently came into a used unit of the 11.6-inch MacBook Air. This particular one even beefier than my lost poverty-spec version: a maximum 4 GB of memory and 256 GB of storage, a tremendous premium back in 2015. At 2.36 pounds, it’s the second lightest Mac laptop ever, behind only the retina screen 12-inch MacBook introduced in 2015. That one weights just two pounds, but has a huge fatal flaw: the god-awful “butterfly” keyboard.

In contrast, the keyboard on the second-generation MacBook Air might be the best Apple has ever made. Full keys with appropriate height and travel. The smaller 11.6-inch unibody aluminum chassis - compared to the larger 13-inch version - offers a wonderfully strong deck with almost zero flex. It’s perfect for someone like me who strikes super hard on the keys.

A laptop from 2015 is decidedly obsolete for anything but word processing and light internet browsing. This is why this 11.6-inch MacBook Air is perfect for purely writing. There isn’t anything else to distract me! The screen is so relatively small I’m not even tempted to fire up YouTube on Safari. I wrote all 3,500 words of my 2022 reflections post using the laptop. I intend to use it for all long form stuff going forward.