Momentum car as lesson for life

In car enthusiasts parlance we have what we call a “momentum car”. It’s a type car that hasn’t got enough power to pull itself out of corners, therefore to preserve good forward momentum the driver must scrub off as little speed as possible during braking and turning. Newton’s law of motion acted out: objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and friction is enemy to a car that lacks huge amounts of horsepower to hide it.  

The ND Miata I just sold is a momentum car: 155 horsepower is just enough be fun but if the roadster gets needlessly bogged down in the middle of a turn it takes considerable time to get back to proper speed. On a tight course the next string of corners are effectively compromised because they arrive before the car can fully recover.   

Momentum cars are excellent teachers of drivers. 

It’s also a good metaphor for life. Maintaining momentum is crucial in achieving success. Laziness or extra off-days may feel awesome in the present but the days proceeding will be heavily undermined. If I haven’t written on this website for awhile it’s extra difficult to pick it back up. Skip a scheduled exercise day because I didn’t feel like it? The stress of the one after that just got unnecessarily raised.

Consistency compounds into forward progress: when I finish a blog post the tiny dose of satisfaction I get turns into eagerness and I already start to think about what to write for the next one. Like a momentum car it’s about smooth continued progress and avoid needlessly slowing down. 

Don't skip a day; get after it. 

Sometimes you get lucky and mother nature frames things up nicely for you. 

Volkswagen shatters Pikes Peak hill climb record

This past weekend was the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and Volkswagen shattered the overall record by some 15 seconds. The German marque built a bespoke all-electric race-car just for the event, utilizing the power advantage in high-altitude to great effect in beating Sebastien Loeb’s time that had stood since 2013.

You can color me thoroughly unimpressed. 

For sure I think VW has done a tremendous achievement of engineering. Pikes Peak's immense elevation meant it was only a matter of time before electric power would come to dominate the hill climb event. Suffering none of the symptoms that ail combustion engines in super thin air, electric motors gives full, consistent power, limited only by the size and store of the battery.

So kudos, Volkswagen, but it hardly moves my needle. 

Electric cars are wonderful and will supposedly save the planet from climate ruin but for me it’s a type of vehicle I would not own personally. I’ve felt the searing acceleration of a Tesla before and while it’s an amazing party trick, the novelty of a Model S ends there.

I fell in love with cars because of their sheer mechanicalness: the miracle of formed metal and coupled gears harnessing thousands of mini-explosions per minute into motivative drive. The cars that stir the soul are those that reveal its mechanicalness to the driver: the constant shake of a connected gear-lever, the whine of a supercharger, the hiss of a turbo waste-gate purging, and the pops and bangs during an off-throttle lift. 

An electric car have none of those qualities. A plush Mercedes S-Class sedan doesn’t have them either. I’d never purchase the latter so why would I entertain buying former? Indeed electric vehicles can handle and turn a proper corner just as well as an internal-combustion car - VW now owns the Pikes Peak record after all, but more than astonishing numbers and stats it’s how a car makes me feel behind the wheel that ultimately determines its value. A Tesla Model S and a Porsche 911 GT3 occupies stark opposite ends of that spectrum. 

I predict as electric vehicles proliferate in the coming decades, purely internal-combustion cars will be relegated to the expensive segments like super sports-cars - akin to fine handmade mechanical watches and their cheaper quartz-movement counterparts. The discerning few of us will seek those out and keep the analog spirit alive for as long as possible. 

Waiting for dinner, waiting for sunset, waiting for god. 

A driving enthusiast

In the end it’s about driving. 

The singular distillation of why I like cars is driving. The other bits like mechanicals and aesthetics matter too, but a car isn’t a car unless I can drive it. I’ll never be the type to purchase an automobile simply to store for the promise of future appreciation in value, not that I can afford such a type of car anyways. 

Cars are meant to be driven. 

It’s the spirit of driving that makes the ancillaries worth the while. The sheer costs to purchase and insurance a car, the physical labor to detail and maintain, and the psychological stress of city driving - all of that disappear from view when you’re sat in driver's seat on an open mountain road in the early morning, not another soul for miles. 

I sold the ND MX-5 recently because the ancillaries have overshadowed the thrill of driving, chiefly the stress of commuting in San Francisco. The sliver of driving exhilaration I get from the neighboring mountain roads on weekends lost the battle hard against the traffic gridlock and parking nightmare I dealt with daily. The commuting grind can so suck the soul out of you that once the weekend arrived I often had no desire to get in the car. 

As long as I live in San Francisco I don’t think I’ll ever commute by car again because it kills the joy of driving, and that’s the greatest shame for a person who has loved cars since childhood. The next vehicle I purchase will only see weekend duty: every drive will feel like a special occasion, and ownership will be a labor of love once again. 

Flying into sunset. 

No World Cup for China. Again.

World Cup 2018 is in full swing and as us Chinese are doing that once-every-four-years pondering on why China have once again failed to qualify for the tournament. In the entire World Cup history the Chinese national team have only qualified once, quite a while back in 2002. The team then had a dreadful go of it, failing to score a single goal in group play. 

How can a country of 1.6 billion souls, in a football region that isn’t exactly competitive (you’ve got the twin titans of Japan and South Korea and that’s it), can’t ever seem to form a competitive team? One would think that simply by law of large numbers China would at least be able to scrap a group together and consistently qualify for the games. 

It isn’t for the lack of money: god knows China is full of wealthy corporations and millionaires. My father tells me China’s football federation and the clubs are awash with capital, able to attract foreign players away from Europe to the Chinese leagues. On the contrary I think it’s because of the immense prevalence of money that's preventing China from playing football on the world stage. 

I see a succinct lack of national pride in Chinese athletes. For footballers in other countries it is an absolute dream to represent their national flag. Just this past weekend the Mexican players was in tears of joy because they won the match against the defending German champions. I seldom see this sort of elation and emotion from Chinese athletes. Look at the Olympics games: where are the signature shots of Chinese athletes standing on the top podium step bawling their eyes out while the national anthem is playing?

In every Olympics China wins a ton of medals, but how many of those are for team sports?

My father says sports in China is too focused on the individual, not nearly enough on team and country, and it’s largely due to the corruption of money. Athletes are selfish towards their own achievements in order to maximize the amount of money they’ll receive - there’s no play for fun or for the love of the game. A player gets upset his teammate scored the goal rather than himself. The lack of unity and playing for the collective have hugely contributed to China’s futility in getting into the World Cup tournament. 

I don’t know if the team China will ever get its act together and fight with some national spirit, but I constantly hope. I would love nothing more than to root for my birth country in future World Cups. 

I dig awesome restroom tile-work, especially public ones where I can look like a creep taking my phone out to take a photograph. 

Kevin Smith on dying

On the bus ride to work today I listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with guest Kevin Smith, who recently had an heart-attack scare. Towards the end of the three-hour episode Kevin Smith talked about his near-brush with death. He said for a guy who’s been scared of dying his whole life, he was surprisingly calm and okay when he was lying in the hospital not knowing whether he’ll make it out. Life is a journey and when the journey is over it’s nothing to be afraid of or lamented, but rather be glad: people are happy when they accomplish things and life is literally the longest and biggest thing we get to do. 

Kevin Smith talked about the feelings he experienced being okay with dying was surprisingly the same his mother felt that time when she went into cardiac arrest, was clinically dead for a few moments, and came back. She remarked that being on the “other side” for that brief time was the ultimate sense of freedom: this life she’s toiled so hard through is finally over and what's left was absolute peace. 

As someone who’ve battled the fear of death demon for years, I was shocked to hear a guy like Kevin Smith, with his tremendous success, can harbor that same fear. The wisdom I gained from his story is that in life if you accomplish many great things, get after it with gusto, and leave no regrets behind, that life well lived will make death spectacularly easy to face. Kevin Smith felt okay with possibly dying from the heart attack because he was satisfied with all the awesome things he had done.

Leaving this human world is the reward at the end of the marathon of life - even if it’s cut short by disease or other circumstances.

I’m afraid to die because I want to live, because there’s many things I’ve yet to do. Fear of dying is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more you try to avoid it by living super passively and avoiding everything difficult, the more that fear lingers and eats within. The way to make death acceptable is to live a life worthy of it: try new things, chase dreams, go after what you desire, be the hero.

To put it another way: is the things you’ve done and accomplish in life worth dying for?  

Up and up we go, less and less we can afford. 

World Cup fever

It's World Cup season once again and it's always a special time because I get to enjoy watching the games with my father. Every four years we'd spend the month of June in front of the television taking in all the matches - or at least endeavor to. The 2018 edition is held in mother Russia and the time-difference makes things difficult: the games are held during the day our timezone so we can only properly watch on the weekends.

On campus the games are shown at the Student Union which is great because none of us need to work during the Summer, right? (Wrong). 

Attending a World Cup game is on the bucket list so I am happy about the announcement the the 2026 games will be cohosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. it's Great news for America because Team U.S.A won't have to worry about not qualifying because host countries receive automatic berths - a genius move by our soccer federation. Anyways, I look forward to going to a live match with my father in eight year's time.

Might even kill two birds with one stone and go to a game in Canada because I've yet to travel to our northern neighbor. 

FiveThirtyEight has a quiz that will tell you which team you should root for in the World Cup. I got team Deutschland so I shall root for them since USA is not in the tournament. Sadly Germany's first match against Mexico didn't go so well (spectacular game, though) but it's still early days for the defending champions. 

The next three weeks should be quite exciting. 

The many shades of purple. 

Toyota finally wins Le Mans

Never give up a on a dream.

After decades of futility, Toyota have finally won 1st overall at this year's  24 Hours of Le Mans. The marque joins Mazda as only the second Japanese manufacturer ever to win the storied endurance race. 

It was the team's 20th attempt; how many billions of money have been spent in chasing this glory.  

With Porsche bowing out of P1 class this year the Toyota team had little competition other than lady luck herself. All eyes were on whether the two Toyotas can finish the race without the mechanical troubles that doomed them the past two years, and if so, which car would be on the top podium step. 

The pole-sitting number 8 car of Nakajima/Alonso/Buemi have been faster all week than the sister 7 car driven by Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez, but during the race the 8 car encountered an unlucky safety-car plus a 60-second stop-go penalty that dropped them nearly 2 minutes behind. Supremely mighty night-stints by Alonso and Nakajima erased the deficit and when the sun came up on Sunday morning at La Sarthe the 8 car regain the lead it won't relinquish. 

It was poetic and emotional to see Nakajima do the final-stint to the checkered-flag, him being the driver of the car that stalled-out before the final lap while leading the race in 2016. From ultimate heartbreak to ultimate redemption. During the podium ceremony Nakajima nearly lost his composure when the Japan national anthem was playing. To win one of the crown-jewels of motorsport with the team representing your home country is super special indeed. 

Honestly it was emotional for me as well. I've been following the Toyota Le Mans effort since the GT-One (TS020) era at the tail-end of the 90's, so it's been a proper long time. I thought the 2016 tragedy with one to go was the Racing Gods telling Toyota it was never meant to be, but the team kept fighting and now they've finally achieved the result. Omedetou gozaimashita. 

Got a white one as well, in the only size of Porsche I can afford.