Nice and cool over here, but

Here in San Francisco we’ve been enjoying a nice cool spell (as per our summer usual) in recent weeks, with constant fog and temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s. It's really lovely indeed, and something we pay dearly for, isn’t it? This comfortable weather is partly why housing prices are still, sadly, through the proverbial roof. For those not fan of scorching climes like me, San Francisco weather is heaven. 

I do feel slightly guilty when I see record temperatures happening in other parts of California, especially so during fire season. While we are over here relishing a hot mug of coffee and snuggled underneath a blanket, our neighbors up north in Redding is battling against raging fires. It hasn’t even been a year since the Napa fires destroyed many neighborhoods and now we’ve got another one endangering homes and lives. 

Didn’t help at all that daytime temperatures in Redding over this past weekend was in the 110s. Hell is probably hotter but what’s happening there I imagine is quite close. Major credit to the brave firefighters having to endure those conditions. That’s an enormous amount of gear to be wearing under severe heat and triple-digit weather. Heroes; all of them. 

For sure San Francisco isn’t immune to maladies of mother nature: the next big earthquake is just a matter of when. I work in building basement so I hope this new library of ours is up to earthquake standards. It’s just what we’ve had a calm run for decades now, and it’s off-putting to see other towns get ravaged whilst we enjoy nature’s air conditioning. A few weeks ago it was absolutely beaming hot all over California, with many locales hitting record temps, but here in San Francisco it was chilly and fog as usual. 

I guess I’m worried about the karmic pendulum swing that will inevitably hit us back. I really should get that emergency kit for the house together... 

The divding line. 

Got knocked off my stringent sleep schedule

Sleep is supremely importantly to me, and having a consistent sleep schedule is paramount to my proper functioning. I go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day - no snoozing even on weekends, a habit that helps me fall asleep quickly and wake up really refreshed.

When social situations interrupt that flow, it takes quite a few days to get back into on track. Gone are the college days (man I miss those) where I can pull all-nighters with impunity. This past Friday I went to see the latest Mission Impossible film with some friends, and by doing so I completely missed my regular sleep window (11:30pm to 7:30am). I didn’t return home until well pass midnight, and wasn’t eyes shut until 2am. 

Sidebar: Mission Impossible: Fallout is a fantastic movie. Felt its length at times but the action is expectedly spectacular and the slow human bits decently executed. Tom Cruise is an action movie legend, as great as ever at age 56. Just look at this showreel of the crazy stunts he had to do for Fallout. The man truly is the Jackie Chan of American cinema. 

Anyways, by virtue go going to sleep late on Friday (or rather, early Saturday), I naturally woke up much later on Saturday morning. This created a negative cascading effect on my sleeping schedule that as of today I’m still trying to recover from. Last night I attempted to sleep at usual hour but it proved difficult and I dawdled in bed for a long time before success at rest. 

Having to wake at the usual 7:30am for work today meant I am of course tired and not at 100 percent. I resorted to buying a cup of coffee as soon as I got to work instead of waiting after breakfast as I usually do. Whatever voodoo recuperative energy I had back in college, if someone could bottle that into an ingestible vial I'd pay excellent money for it.  

Until that happens, perhaps the solution is to suck it up, take the hit, and wake up at usual time no matter when I went to bed the night before. That way I won't still be affected a few days later. 

Take me to church. 

Public transit supplemented with ride-share

This morning as I walked to the usual bus stop to begin my commute, the LED information board indicated the next bus would not arrive for another half hour. In the scant two months since I’ve started taking public transit to work, it's the first time there was such a severe discrepancy. More than a few drivers must have called in sick today, as SFMTA drivers are wont to do.

Normally I would simply wait it out and kept on listening to my podcasts. However today I was tasked to open up shop at work, so punctuality was absolutely paramount. A 30 minutes late bus would have been detrimental, so out came the iPhone and an UBER was called.

Is it politically correct these days to hail an UBER car, what with the company's problems of diversity and sexual harassment? Should I have gone with Lyft instead? Probably, but alas convenience trumps virtue-signaling propensities; I'm familiar with UBER and have yet to set up an account with Lyft.  

Those Bird electric scooters everybody in San Francisco is talking about and using haven’t gotten to our “poor” neighborhood just yet, if ever. 

I fully understand the various negative externalities emanating from the advent of ride-sharing, so let's focus on the positives! It is such a relief and convenience to be able to quickly hail a car in case of emergencies like today. I can remember back in high school, way before ride-share and smartphones, if a bus was late there was no option but to keep standing at the stop until it comes. Now I can call an UBER. I mean Lyft.

The events this morning reinforced my belief that public transportation supplemented with ride-sharing is the best option to commute in a major city. I see no practical need to own a car unless you've got young kids. 

Not sure if dungeon in hell or the first floor of the campus Administration building. 

Taxation is theft

There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you're not paying for it, someone is. 

It seems in response to and in preparation for upcoming elections, a sizable faction of the Democratic Party have been gaining traction, offshooting from the success of Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary. They're the Democratic Socialists (of America), and the group is heavily in the spotlight recently due to congress-hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseating a Democratic incumbent in New York. Some proper party-on-party friendly fire. 

President Trump have swung the Republican party so much towards the right fringe that the inevitable pendulum swing back left would naturally match it in severity. This explains the rise in popularity of the DSA platform, with promises of free health care, free higher education, and a decent wage for every worker. The platform’s emotional appeal is immense, a left-leaning equivalent of border security and ridding the country of illegals for Trump’s base. 

It sure sounds good on paper, doesn’t it? Who would say no to job guarantees and free college? 

Right, but then the age old question becomes: how are we going to pay for it? Indeed there are no free lunches. The obvious and sole avenue to acquire the money is to tax and tax a lot, especially the super rich. Because both parties can’t seem to cut spending ever, we can only resort to take from the rich to increase revenue. 

It bears repeating: taxation is theft. 

Do the wealthy have a moral responsibility to give back and take care of the poor? An argument can be made for the affirmative. However, agency and decision should reside with the individual, rather than compelled by government (i.e. tax). I think Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done well to corral a hundred or so billionaires and millionaires to donate their wealth. The campus where I work at is full of buildings and wings made possible by generous donors (The Coppola family, to name one). 

People say for a country as prosperous as the United States, it ought to have no issues in providing socialistic services. But think of how the United States become affluent in the first place. It certainly wasn’t socialism. It’s Capitalism, and we’d be careful to deviate from that at our peril.

Because how is Venezuela doing these days? 

Currently reading: Ray Dalio's magnum opus. 

Tom Cruise is still learning

I was watching one of my weekly Korean variety shows, and none other than Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Simon Peck showed up this week as guests. It seems nothing is more effective to promote a Hollywood film in Korea than special guesting on one of their popular television programs. Ryan Reynolds did it for Deadpool 2 to perfection, so I guess the Mission Impossible PR team thought it would be great to have Tom Cruise and company pop in on Running Man. 

Can’t speak for how it was received in Korea (probably well), but as an American viewer who speaks Korean, it’s always a bit weird when foreign stars and personalities show up on Korean shows. The language barrier between the hosts and guests almost always produce a few cringe-inducing moments for me. Because I can remember the awkward moments I had last year traveling to Korea and conversing with the local population in my then not so decent Korean.  

Before commencing with games the Running Man host conducted a brief interview, in which it was revealed that Tom Cruise spent a year and a half learning how to fully fly a helicopter for the new movie. Obviously he did all his own stunts as well. 

Cruise, in his mid 50s, with all the money and fame in the world, still found it prudent to dedicate tremendous amounts of hours to acquire a new craft. He could’ve easily pawn helicopter flying off to the stunt team but his dedication and passion wouldn’t allow it, and that I admire highly. I believe the challenge of life, aside from being gainfully employed to sustain ourselves and our family, is to be constantly learning new things. Tom Cruise gets that. 

I’m currently learning Korean - only reason I’m watching Korean television - and once I’m satisfied with my proficiency level (one is never truly "done" or finished with learning a language) I shall move on to attain another skill. A movement I hope to sustain, like Tom Cruise, well into my 50s and beyond.  

You know the Chinese always make good stuff. 

Landscape photography involves a lot waiting

The branch of photography I participate in is landscape photography, and the name of the game is waiting. Lots of waiting. To get the best light, to wait out strange weather patterns, and even the general public getting out of the shot, a hearty dose of patience is prerequisite to doing landscape photo work. 

And that can get tiring indeed.

Everyone knows the best light is the hours around sunrise and sunset: blue hour and golden hour, respectively. Getting shots during golden hour isn’t a problem because I’d simply stay out as long as needed. Blue hour however is slightly more difficult because the I'll have to break my circadian rhythm. Bad enough that sunrise is wicked early in the morning, but you have to factor in travel and setup time in addition to that, so obviously there's not going to be much sleep. 

In the trip to Korea last year, in order to get a sunrise shot up on this crater, we had to wake up at 3am because it took an hour to get to the location and another hour to hike up the mountain. Exacerbating the situation it was summer so blue houra was quite a bit earlier than it would’ve been during winter. Well worth the effort but I’m not sure I can do that constantly: I value a proper night’s sleep above a lot of things. 

So golden hour it is for me. 

Then I would pray the weather gods cooperates. This past weekend we wanted to take some sunset hour photos of the Golden Gate Bridge but San Francisco’s famous fog spoiled the party. The entire ocean-facing side was covered in clouds, not giving the sun rays a chance to poke through. Were I adamant about capturing this I would’ve needed to return another day under more favorable weather. 

It’s super time involving, but I love the solitude and peace when I’m out in the field, especially away from the bustle of the city. Something about setting up shop somewhere, music in my ear, and waiting for the perfect moment to appear before the lens: it’s thoroughly meditative. 

Perhaps instead of planing to buy another sports car I should instead purchase a rugged SUV and go overlanding for landscape photos. A thing to think about. 

When the sun isn't cooperating you go long exposure with an ND filter. 

It's all in the tires

This past weekend I did the usual driving on my makeshift simulator playing GT Sport. My absolute favorite thing to do - and just about the only thing I do these days - is drive the Porsche 911 GT3RS on the Nurburgring Nordschleife. Cumulatively since early Summer I must’ve driven around 200 laps on the 13+ mile circuit, which is a number I aim to get into the thousands.

For whatever reason, probably a mix of boredom and curiosity, I had the urge to sample another popular racing game: Assetto Corsa. The game also features the Nordschleife and the same model year GT3RS so I thought it’d be a bit of intrigue to compare the two titles. A hefty 25GB download and $40 dollars damage to the wallet later, for the first time ever I was driving a different game that isn't Gran Turismo. 

I really should’ve switched sooner. Assetto Corsa is absolutely fantastic. Graphically it cannot hold a candle to GT (zero attempt at photo-realism here) but on driving dynamics it’s a league above. For the longest time I’ve read about how the likes of GT and Forza are more on the arcade side than pure simulation, and that has been utterly confirmed within one lap of the Nordschleife in AC.

It’s completely down to the tires. GT’s physic engine is quite excellent in replicating responses and reflexes of a real car, and in that area it isn’t far behind Assetto Corsa. What AC revealed to me that was utterly lacking in GT is proper tire simulation. Tires in GT are standardized arbitrary values with no basis of correlation to anything realistic. High horsepower road cars in GT Sport are practically un-drivable even with traction control turned on unless racing slicks are put on. 

A Ferrari LaFerrari in GT Sport will roast its stock tires through the first four gears - highly unrealistic. Even the aforementioned GT3RS is unusable in first gear because it cannot find traction - unless I put on slick tires. 

Assetto Corsa has shown me the light: proper tire model is the foundation of a good driving simulator. AC replicates the actual tires of what a particular car came with from the factory. Select a Toyota Trueno Sprinter AE86 in the game and in the setup menu it’ll show it’s fitted with ‘Street 90s’ tires. A GT3RS on the other hand is shod with bespoke ‘Hypercar road’ rubber. Good tire modeling provides a tremendous amount of road feel and information transmitted through the steering wheel. Instead of relying on muscle memory I can now better react to the minute details of what the car is telling me. 

Playing Assetto Corsa has been a revelation. I don’t think I can go back to GT Sport, as incredibly beautiful and pretty to look at it may be (I’m going to miss the sunset flares and orange glow on the Nordschleife). AC is great if you’re like me and just want to get in a car and go: all tracks and cars are available right from the beginning. 

Cheers to many more miles to come. 

It may be a GT logo on there but it's all Assetto Corsa from now on.