Blog

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

Hot hatches are awesome

I have indeed seen the light.

The Volkswagen Golf GTI is universally known for being the best all-round car for the money, an indefeatable combination of power, sports, and utility. If you need one singular car to do everything in, and you’ve only got around $30,000, the GTI is the definitive answer.

Which explains my excitement a year ago when my brother brought home a brand new 2018 edition of the GTI. I’ve never driven one up until then so I was eager to get a taste of what everyone’s been raving about. For sure it seats four adults in comfort, and the boot can swallow a surprising amount of gear; but does the Golf GTI really live up to its sporting acclaims?

Initial impressions were a bit of a disappointment. Yes, the power from the 2.0-liter turbo four is wholly sufficient, and the torque shove is tremendous fun on urban routes. However, it’s when I took the GTI through some corners where it started to baffle me: it’s very quick through the turns, but to my hands it felt numb and sterile. It was as if there’s a filter between my inputs and the car’s reactions. The GTI is an adequately fast car, but as is from the factory it’s curiously lacking in driving thrill.

It turns out, the culprit was the tires.

A few months ago my brother had an unfortunately run-in with a serious pothole, and the left front tire got obliterated. A perfect opportunity to swap the stock all-season tires for a set of proper summer performance boots. I recently got a go in the new setup, and the GTI’s dynamics have been utterly transformed. The car was simply let downed by the stock tires.

I finally got to experience the genuine joy of driving a hot hatch. Armed with a sticky set of tires, the GTI becomes incredibly playful and alive. The turn-in is just mega: jerk the steering wheel with abandon, and the front-end responds with seemingly endless grip. Mash the throttle out of a corner, let the limited-slip differential do the work of finding purchase, and the GTI rockets out with the gobs of available torque. The amount of confidence in the front axle so high, it beggars belief it’s front-wheel drive.

Combined with a good manual gearbox and nicely spaced pedals for heel-toe maneuvers, the GTI, when fitted with good set of tires, is an absolute revelation. I can now see why people adore hot hatchbacks; I might need one of my own.

Spring has sprung

It is proper Spring season here in the northern hemisphere, and all I am wishing for is the rains of winter to not make the jump to the new season. Ever since I bought the GT3 back in January, I’ve been beset with inclement weather, and due to the sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires the car is shod with - tires that don’t work worth a damn in the cold and damp - I’ve been unable to really push the car to its insanely high limits. I might as well could have wait until now to purchase the 911, and it wouldn’t have made much material difference in terms of driving.

First world problems, yes, but I do live in the first world (extremely lucky to do so), and it is a problem for me. Life goes on.

So I hope the coming months will provide more opportunity for some proper motoring fun. California is officially out of drought conditions, so perhaps it would be fine to not have so much rain again – kidding not kidding.

The weird thing about working at a university is that during the typical spring and fall breaks, all of he students and faculty members are gone for holiday, but us staff have to still be at work. It’s especially odd for us service orientated staff, because without regular classes going on, there simply isn’t much for us to do. In order for staff to get the same break, we’d have to use our own vacation time. This year I’ve drawn the short straw, and will be holding down the proverbial fort whilst my colleagues are away.

Not that I could afford to go anywhere after putting down the enormous sum for the GT3. Since then any spare change has gone towards the car, be it for petrol or maintenance items. Indeed, I’d be in much better financial situation had I not made the purchase (as I was before), but again there’s but this one life to live, and sometimes you simply have to forsake the contingencies and go for it. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Not to say I’m “car poor” by any means, but the monthly outlay for the GT3 has been and is significant. Which is why I need to weather to cooperate so I can make all the monetary pain worth it.

Bring it on, Spring; don’t disappoint me. Please?

I just need all of this to go away for Spring.

My first ever CD have expired

A few days ago I received a surprise cheque in the mail (we like those!). Sadly, it wasn’t some rich benefactor wanting to support me in my creative endeavors (please support my Patreon - just kidding); rather it was from TIAA bank. My first ever CD account - a 5-year CD - has come due, and the final cheque signifies the account closing. Five years have indeed gone by already.

And what a difference five years make: my expired CD carried an interest rate of 1.90%, which was the absolute best one can do in risk-free account, at a time when savings accounts were only giving out 0.70%. Fast forward to today, I’m comfortably getting 2.2% from Ally, and long-term CDs are into the 3s. Shout-out to the Federal Reserve for finally raising the base borrowing rate these past few years.

You’d half expect me to go on some cliché tangent about how five years have gone by in a blink of an eye, and that it seems like only yesterday that I’ve just opened the CD account, but that is the completely opposite of what I’m feeling right now. What an absolute slog the five years have been; I went through an intense period of transformation, from my mid-twenties of still finding my place in this world, to now in my thirties, wiser yet still massively unlearned, and seeking to improve every single day. When you start to look at every single day as its own challenge and reward, your reference of time slows down significantly.

I think time goes by quickly when you’re directionless and bored. It contradicts somewhat the popular saying of “time flies when you’re having fun”, but I can only speak from my experience. When days are filled with salient tasks and good habits, the time well spent acts as a defense against pangs of emptiness and waste. You think time have gone by fast precisely because you regret not having done more during that particular timeframe. I actively fight against that.

Anyways, with interest rates at somewhat healthy levels, I’ve no plans to roll the money from the closed CD to another 5-year term. I prefer as much liquidity as possible (outside of retirement accounts), and not having to chase better rates frees up extra money to be funneled into my other investment vehicles.

Cheers to the next five years. May that end date also creep up on me unsuspectingly, but in the best possible way.

Where's the EV infrastructure?

The past few weeks I’ve been writing about automotive industry quickly evolving to mass electrification. The annual Geneva Motor Show confirmed that is indeed where auto manufacturers are heading, and very rapidly. Fairly soon we’ll be seeing electric vehicles all over dealership lots, hoping to find a good home that will hopefully be fitted with an appropriate charger.

And there lies my only contention with electrification: the charging infrastructure, or lack thereof. Lots of automakers are talking up plans for electric vehicles on a massive scale, but none I can see are discussing the other side of the equation. Gasoline-powered cars have gas stations; where’s the convenient equivalent for electric power?

Some will point out “refueling” stations will be obsolete because owners can charge at home; but what if you don’t have a home? My apartment certainly does not have any sort of provisions for charging, and neither does my workplace. You can give me an electric vehicle for free today and I’d have no practical way of using it. Driving to a charging lot to then wait many hours to “fill up” a car seems like a tremendous waste of time.

Owning a home isn’t in my future, not with the historically astronomical homes prices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Basically, I won’t have the ability to charge an electric car at the place I’m living in, and if manufacturers want to sell me one, they – or someone – need to build out a charging network facsimile to the traditional petrol station. Ideally I should be able to visit a charging station, and fill up the batteries in less than 10 minutes.

Automakers are coming in hot on the supply side, but without a proper infrastructure, will the demand side be there? Up until now, most people who have purchased electric vehicles own a home, therefore capable of installing home chargers; that’s certainly the case with owners I know personally. If electrification of the automobile is indeed the future, then those of us not lucky/rich enough to own a home will need a different solution.

Perhaps this massive infusion of capital by automakers into electrification will be one huge waste of money. I don’t think we can yet know.

Then on some days you just want to pig out.

Fear of what other's think

One of my most crippling anxieties is worrying about other people’s perception of me. Perhaps this is why I never did jive well with social media, a world where the approval and praise of others is the common currency. I’d get really down on myself if someone didn’t reply to my inquiry, or had a negative reaction to one of my posts. To combat this, I’ve largely abandoned all forms of social media, save Twitter, because that is one service I simply cannot quit - far too engrossing.

The same anxiety manifests itself when I’m out in public: I’d want to be invisible, because any chance of drawing a reaction from someone - whatever it may be - has potential to be negative, or embarrassing. A strange paradox existed back when I had the Mazda MX-5 convertible: I seldom put the top down when driving because I felt completely exposed to the outside word. What if someone doesn’t approve of the music I’m listen to? Better turn down the volume.

And then I bought a 911. Yeah, that’ll help; Look at this asshole in a six-figure sports car.

Harboring such social affliction, I sure picked a weird subject to have as a hobby: photography. The task demands that I go out and be amongst others, yet I worry people will see me looking stupid, like crouching down in a yoga pose just to get the correct perspective on a shot. It’s no wonder I prefer to hike in mountains and take landscape photos: there’s no one around to see me.

In recent years I’ve been much better in dealing with this anxiety, though being amongst large crowds at events still fills me with dread. But I know that fearing what other people think of me is absolute nonsense: no one notices me, nor would they care what I’m doing; I’m not special at all. People generally have a live-and-let-live attitude unless someone’s in danger of physical harm, so my anxiety is unfounded. I can easily go on with what I’m doing and no one will blink an eye.

Easiest said than done, obviously, but it has to be done nonetheless. Stoic philosophy dictates that one shouldn’t concern with what they cannot control; other’s perception of me is squarely in that category of incontrollable. I can’t change their thoughts, only my own, and I should be 100 percent focused on living my life as I desire it.

I'm a silhouette, chasing rainbows on my own.

Car OCD strikes again

They say stoic philosophy is life-long practice, and nothing reinforces this truth quite like a bad habit coming back from the supposed dead. You climb back onto the old destructive trains of thought, and your mood reverts to a state you’d thought was put away for good. Once the gap opens, the rabbit hole goes forever deep.

Practicing stoics are taught to detach from situations and to view it from a bigger, macro perspective. It allows us to figure out exactly what we can control, and what we absolutely cannot. After that we only put our thoughts on the things we are able to manipulate, and to not put an ounce of worry towards things we can’t hope to control. The point is, don’t let what you can’t change ruin the pleasure and enjoyment of the present.

Something about old habits being hard to die…

This past Friday evening I took the 911 GT3 out for its weekly mechanical exercise, only to find the rear passenger tire was some 4 PSI lower than the other three. I surmised a small puncture, but lacking in any sort of repair tools (and the fact it was dark), I went to a gas station to fill the faulting tire back up to spec. After driving around for two hours, tire pressures remained constant so I thought maybe it aberration was a fluke.

It’d be nice if I’d just left it at that, but once I got home I immediately went investigating on the Internet for any information concerning tire issues on a GT3. Not sure what good that did other than taking up copious amounts of time I had planned otherwise for more productive activities. With the worst case scenario being a slow puncture - probably an errant nail, it’s not exactly worthy of spending hours of research online. I’ve certainly dealt with such trivial items before: you simply get it plugged, or buy a new tire.

But no, my old habit of car OCD kicked in like a drug - something I did not miss when I went 9 months without a car. Even though I had to wait until the next day to confirm that it’s indeed a slow leak, my mind was so preoccupied with the varying scenarios that I had trouble falling asleep. The appropriate stoic reaction would be to understand that agonizing over the situation isn’t going to help - I can do absolutely nothing about it until Saturday, and getting a good night’s sleep is infinitely more productive.

The Next day it was confirmed the tire was slowly leaking air, having squandered 2 PSI overnight. For the day I had Radwood Sonoma to attend, and seeing that it wasn’t a massive puncture, I topped off the leaky tire and went on my way.

Trouble is, my mind was still preoccupied with the matter during the one hour drive to the event. Once again I was running through the scenarios on how to remedy the problem, from simply plugging the tire with rubber strips, to at worst having to fork over serious money for a new pair of rear Michelins at the dealership. The fact the GT3 is not fitted with an emergency jack, and the wheels are equipped with centerlock lug-nuts meant performing the repair carries an additional layer of complexity and cost. All of that piled on to my anguish, so much so that I couldn’t even enjoy the beautiful rainy drive through wind country.

The sensible thing to do would be to detach from the problem, and be content the punctured tire is still operational, therefore allowing me time to methodically diagnose the problem and fix it properly.

Indeed it seems I’ve still got some residuals of the nasty tendency of wanting my cars to be as perfect as possible, and any faults or blemishes must be handled in great haste, even to the detriment of my mental well-being. In the past I’ve had the tendency to overdo it, and instead of fixing the problem efficiently, I end up spending more money than necessary.

What I need to focus on is not let the condition of the GT3 affect my mood for the rest of the time, nor should I concern with things I cannot do anything about in the present moment. Currently I’ve got on order an emergency jack (off a 996-era 911!), which will allow me to raise the car to better check for exactly where the puncture is. The item won’t be arriving until end of this week, so I’ve got to practice keeping my mind off that until that time arrives; there’s far too much to do still during the week.

Detach.

Verdict from GIMS 2019: electrification

Media day for the 2019 Geneva Motor Show was yesterday, and there’s plenty of exciting stuff to see. I’ll leave you to peruse the major media outlets for an outline on each and every new model; rather I’m going to touch on the major theme I see at this year’s Geneva show: electrification.

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same (thanks, Thanos); the automotive industry is rapidly shifting from internal-combustion to the electric motor, and it’s all readily apparently when looking at what’s being displayed and talked about in Geneva. Super cars have a need for electric power in order to achieve ever lofty performance numbers: both Ferrari and Aston Martin will be turning to turbo V6 engines with hybridization for their next generation products. Normal city cars are converting to full electric to satisfy increasingly stringent emission standards: German manufacturers are promising massive electrification of their portfolio in a very short timeframe.

I don’t suppose in any of our lifetimes we’ve seen such a paradigm shift on the motive power of vehicles. The combustion engine has been de rigueur for the longest time, and it’s only rather recently the industry have changed from natural aspiration to small displacement turbocharged motors – for the sake of efficiency and lower carbon outflow. It appears this ‘turbo era’ will super short-lived: full and partial electrification is quickly arriving.

Let’s look at the brilliant Honda Civic Type R. The latest generation have only just made the switch to turbocharging after a long history of fantastic atmospheric engines, and now Honda is already announcing the next Type R will be an electric hybrid. We can thank tight emission requirements for this one: Honda could easily squeeze more power out of the turbo engine, but adding an extra electric motor instead makes it far easier to achieve that extra power, but with zero penalty at the tailpipe.

The automotive landscape is transforming right before our eyes, and the rate of change is something I did not anticipate to be so swift. My 911 GT3 is 2015 model year car, yet it’s already feeling like a relic of the past: a gas-guzzling sports car with a non-turbo engine.

To be clear, I am not against electrification: I think fully electric vehicles are fantastic for dense urban commutes. Once the powers at be figure out the technology to deliver “refueling” technology for electric at the same speed as the ubiquitous petrol station, electric cars will be a good fit for suburban and rural communities, too. For the sake of cleaner air and a healthy populist, the switch to electrification is a worthy process.

However, for the weekend sports car type of vehicle, electric motivation just doesn’t stir the soul. Once you get pass the accelerative prowess of an electric car, what’s leftover is, to me, immensely dull. I want an engine that speaks to me: a thundering howl as the revs climb, pops out of the exhaust on a throttle ease, and the clattering of the mechanicals. This is the sort of motoring joy I grew up with, and I’m going to cling to that ethos for as long as possible.

I intend the GT3 to be my ‘forever car’, and the electrification of the automotive industry isn’t helping to convince me otherwise.

Here we have the Golf GTI in its natural habitat.