Blog

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

Want to go faster? Buy a faster car

Car enthusiasts modify their cars to stand out, to show off their personality. Unless they’ve got a super rare, practically one-of-a-kind vehicle (no one’s driving around a 250 GTO every day, I’m fairly certain), people will seek methods to make their car easily identifiable inside a parking structure. Even drivers of mundane grocery getters like a Toyota Corolla are wont to spend money to make it cooler than it really is. I know this, because I had one.

More importantly, car modifications are done in search of more speed and better performance. On one hand it makes perfect sense because who doesn’t want faster straight-line speeds and quicker cornering numbers? On the other hand, if you count all of the money spent to improve a particular car’s performance (and looks), wouldn’t it be more prudent to, combined it together with the car’s original price, buy a different model that’s simply faster?

Then again, I would argue most of anything related to the automobile is based emotionally, rather than logically. How many times have someone asked us for car purchasing advice only to go and not buy the one we recommended? Look at the popularity of heavy sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks: how often are those drivers hauling around enough people and gear to justify the extra volume?

Obviously, purchasing decisions aren’t logical, and therefore I don’t expect car modifications to be, on the contrary, completely utilitarian. The ‘Hellaflush’ and ‘StanceNation’ styling trend that’s been with us for a decade now (and don’t seem to be abating anytime soon) - I totally understand it, even if it’s far from my cup of coffee.

I’m known for my pragmatism amongst my friends, so it’s no surprise that I’ve gotten away from vehicle modifying since moving on from the Corolla. Admittedly, the Toyota was much too plain and unsightly for me to not invest some funds to lessen the enormous wheel-gap and give it a proper set of wheels - among other items. Since then, my motto has been if I want to go faster, I buy a faster car. Granted, my subsequent cars are built on decidedly sporting platforms, so there wasn’t any immediate impetus to improve on things.

Presently I own a 911 GT3, one of the best race-car-for-the-road platforms in existence; because honestly, we’re simply chasing after that race car aesthetic anyways. Cars slammed to the ground, body kits, wheels tucked neatly within a wheel-well, and adding horsepower: these are all inspired by motorsport, the look and sound of pure-bred racing machines (that’s why we like loud exhausts).

Instead of modifying the WRX STI and then the MX-5 to chase that aesthetic, I bought an entire car instead. Problem solved.

I've found SF's parking problem

I’m one of the lucky ones to have the city’s public transportation network be super convenient for my purposes. The bus-stop for the bus I take to work is only a block’s walk from my house, and the second-leg light-rail train gets me literally right to the door – the stop’s name is the university. The decision to cease commuting by car almost a year ago has been hugely beneficial to my overall mental health. I take serene pleasure in getting lost in podcasts on the train, only paying scant outward attention to ensure I don’t miss my stop.

I also enjoy the walk to the bus-stop, short it may be. It’s a good opportunity to get some sun, which is crucial because the university is at the western end of San Francisco - notorious for its lack of sunshine. Plus, our office is in the basement level with zero windows; the brief stroll to the bus-stop might be the only chance I have to get some needed vitamin D.

A thing I’ve noticed lately on those strolls is the sheer numbers of cars parked on the street – in the middle of a workday. Mind you I live in a decidedly residential area, so very few people would commute to my neighborhood for work. Therefore, it’s safe to assume the massive number of cars that remains stationary on the streets belong to residents.

In a city that’s infamous for its parking difficulties, I have to say it seems the problems are self-inflicted. It’s clear to me now that each household simply owns too many cars, so much so that during a workday, the residential streets are still full of them. All these vehicles are just sat there taking up space; it’s no wonder there’s such an immense parking space battle after the 5pm for the people returning home from work via car.

You may point out that perhaps those parked cars represent people that take the bus like I do, so that’s actually a good thing from the perspective of the environment or whatnot. To that I’d say, yes, good on them for taking public transportation – if that is the case, but it doesn’t change the fact they’ve left cars behind on the streets doing absolutely nothing. Indeed, I too have a weekend only car, but the 911 is parked in an actual lot, merely taking up space I paid for.

San Franciscans are wont to complain about the utter lack of parking, and how finding a spot requires prolonged games of musical chair, and every bit of luck. Well, it would seem a big part of it is our own fault. I wouldn’t go as far to say people should buy fewer cars; just that they should use a mirror next time they gripe about trouble finding a spot.

Avengers Endgame is a masterpiece

Spoilers, I guess?

Avengers Endgame is everything I ever wanted or needed. The absolute perfect culmination to this particular 22 film saga that makes up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The fine folks at Marvel Studios deserve all the special Oscars for their singular achievement in turning a franchise of films into a super convincing facsimile of a television season. Endgame is the best season finale one could have wished for.

It’s the MCU’s Return of the King, and it deserves the same accolades and awards the final Lord of the Rings film received.

While you needn’t have watch the prior 21 MCU films to enjoy Endgame, would argue it’s not nearly as fulfilling. In electing to use time-travel as the mechanism to undo the damage done by Thanos in Infinity Wars, Endgame offers an endless amount hark backs to the earlier movies that are not mere fan-service, but integral plot-points. Throughout the lengthy 3-hour runtime (I survived the great bathroom avoidance experiment), audiences are delighted with surprise after surprise, and each hit wouldn’t have as great an impact if you didn’t see some of the films in the series.

And that’s why the MCU is indeed like the biggest television series ever made, in terms of scale and monetary expense (take that, Game of Thrones). Endgame does superbly well to provide closure to the many plot-lines that’s been simmering for the past decade. There’s heavy emotional weight to the entire proceedings because of the backlog of stories that preceded it, where otherwise in a vacuum, Endgame wouldn’t have made any sense at all. Everything felt precisely earned, and as an audience you cannot help but laugh, cheer, and cry during the moments because the satisfaction hits you right at the heart.

One example: not once in the over ten years of MCU has Captain America uttered the iconic phrase “Avengers, assemble”, so when he finally did so just before the climactic battle in Endgame, my emotions came rushing out just as the Avengers went charging towards Thanos’ army.

Is that the best moment of the film? Difficult to say right now; there’s so many to choose from, and I’ve still got to see Endgame many, many more times. Cap’ wielding Thor’s hammer, Iron Man’s ultimate sacrifice, Hawkeye and Black Widow on Vormir, Tony saying goodbye to his father, Professor Hulk; there’s brilliance littered over the entire movie, and I’ve only peeled off the first layer of the onion.

The Russo brothers have created a masterpiece in Avengers Endgame, a marvelous bookend to consolidate the interweaving MCU storylines into the most gratifying last chapter. It’s a resounding closure for all of us that have followed from the very first episode: 2008’s Iron Man.

The Endgame is here

Indeed it’s the night before endgame – Avengers Endgame, that is. I am beyond excited to finally watch this three-hour movie tomorrow evening, and I’ve got my strategy all planned out. Honestly though for such a long and important movie, they really should’ve built in an intermission in the middle, but that would rob theatres of precious time to cram in as many showings as possible – something they’d never forsake. So that means I will have to control my fluid intake before and during the movie, so to avoid having to use the restroom during.

The plan is simple: no water intake two hours before show time, and only start replenishing (slowly) about an hour into the movie. I reckon that should be sufficient; fingers crossed.

You’d think for such an important movie event - on ticket pre-release day all major theatre chain systems crashed due to demand – I’d be watching the movie tonight instead. Or more extremely I’d have flew back home to China because the Endgame is (unfairly) released two days earlier there than the States.

Well, as to the first suggestion, I can’t physical do a Thursday evening showing because I have work, not to mention the likelihood of me getting those tickets was very slim. As for flying to China, now is not a good time because the weather there is getting hot and humid, and the seasonal monsoon has arrived. Also, I simply don’t have the money: I did just pay loads for a Porsche back in January.

I mean, what’s an extra day of wait for a movie that I’ve been anticipating since I came out of the theatre from watching Avengers Infinity War. I haven’t been this full of eagerness for a film since the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At least for Return of the King I knew the ending because I’ve read the book; I’m heading into Endgame completely blind to what the story is going to be, and that makes it extra bit more special.

But that entails fending off potential spoilers: since this Monday I’ve muted all possible words related to Endgame on twitter, and it’s so far so good. With people actually getting the opportunity to watch the film starting this evening, I may have to log-off the platform entirely from now until after I’ve seen the movie tomorrow night.

I’ll see you all on the other side.

This is brilliant: two Fiat 500s fitting in one San Francisco street parking spot.

Booking a room and renting a car in Japan

My friend and I are planning for a trip to Japan (finally!) in the third week of July, so periodically I’m going to talk about some of the process on here (trust the process).

A few weeks back I ranted about how it was cheaper to fly to Japan from LAX than our local airport SFO. The savings from flying out further south is quite significant, which is just as well because the next item on the list after plane tickets is accommodations, and it’s expectedly expensive in Tokyo.

It’s also astonishingly small. I’ve dealt with land scarce cities before, namely Hong Kong, but even the tiny hotels rooms there are generally larger than the ones I’ve browsed around Tokyo. Japan’s idea of a hotel room with two twin beds is an area that’s just big enough to fit two beds nearly stuck together, and not much else. Sure hope you didn’t pack a lot of luggage!

Obviously, the western branded hotels are slightly more hospitable to our American sensibilities of personal space, but those are prohibitively out of our price range. The space situation on Airbnb is better than hotels if you choose to rent an entire home, but even there you should plan to be somewhat cozy with your chosen roommate. The place we reserved is nevertheless appropriately tiny, but at least the two beds aren’t directly adjacent to each other.

Small living spaces is indeed how Tokyo manages to cram over 13 million people within its city limits.

After we sorted our living situation, the focus turned to renting a car. Now it must be said that we fully realize the public transportation system in Tokyo is robust and envy of the world, and we will be utilizing to the maximum. However, there will be a few days where we plan to leave the capital for the countryside, and the original plan was to rent a car because I’ve always wanted to drive on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country.

And as a car enthusiast, I really wanted to visit and drive on the famed Hakone turnpike, a toll road that absolutely requires a car.

Upon further research, it turns out it’s highly not recommended to drive anywhere within or near Tokyo. The grid structure is practically a maze, and the signage isn’t the greatest if you don’t know Japanese. Getting lost is almost guaranteed. Yikes.

So a change of plans then: we are going to rent a car closer to the turnpike, and instead will travel to Hakone via the reliable and fast bullet train.

Much more to come!

I think more people should buy cars in colors that isn’t a shade of white, silver, gray, or black.

Closing up shop

My dear mother does her grocery shopping in San Francisco’s Chinatown, even though she lives at least a 40-minute bus ride away. There’s plenty of grocery store in and around our neighborhood, but she still prefers to shop at that wonderful tourist trap. The reason is very simple: food items are marginally cheaper in Chinatown, and my mom being the person that she is, can’t let any modicum of savings be forsaken.

Never mind the lost opportunity cost in the nearly two-hour commute to and from Chinatown. The generation of my mother’s doesn’t view time as we do: they can’t fathom paying extra for convenience. They rather circle for a half hour looking for free street parking than paying the few dollars to park in a garage. Granted that’s how my family were able to save money despite our meager backgrounds, but those habits never did go away even as our family collectively have climbed into the middle class.

Anyways, lately my mother has started to notice a lot of the shops in Chinatown that have been around for decades are closing up their doors. Stores she has known since we immigrated to the States back in 96 are shuttering down business. Chinatown is never lack for foot traffic, so my mother was confused as to why this was happening.

I told her the reason is the rent is too damn high. San Francisco is notorious for its super high residential real estate costs, and it’s only logical that same pricing pressure is effecting the commercial space as well. I’ve seen and read about it: old and sacred institutions that have operated in the city for decades are forced to close up shop because their respective landlords decided to cash-in on the frenzy.

I exactly don’t blame property owners for wanting to maximize their earnings, but indeed the consequence of that is a lot of what once made up the flavor of a particular neighborhood – what attracts people to live there – is and will be gone. What’s left will be artisan food shops that sell those famous avocado toasts for twenty dollars, or high-end grocery stores where (organic) apples costs ten dollars per pound. In a city that only rich people can afford to live, with minimum wage amongst the highest in the nation, the cost of living will naturally increase to a commensurate point.

Those grocery shops in Chinatown cannot simply raise prices to compensate for the increases in rent, because then people like my mother (and there are many of them) will no longer shop there. It’s a catch 22 where ultimately the solution is to shut down business, which is quite sad indeed. I genuinely don’t know and afraid of what San Francisco will look like in a few years if this housing issue of our time isn’t remedied.

Just chilling with my friends

I think we can all agree that we are much too immersed into our smartphones, spend way too much time the devices, and for not entirely productive purposes (if at any). Personally I wish I don’t linger on twitter for hours on end when I fire up the app every morning; sadly its gravitational pull is very strong. Up to a certain point I think it’s probably better to be watching television than losing ourselves in the mire of social media apps.

But then again, who amongst us haven’t reflexively picked up our phones during the particularly boring parts of a show? We can’t escape from its clutches even when there are other things to occupy our attention. Shame!

So lately I’ve been trying to be more deliberate with forcing myself away from my iPhone, especially on the weekends. The primary strategy is basically leave the house and go hang out, either with myself (that counts, right?), or with friends or family. I’ve found that when I stay home on the weekends, my fingers often itches for the phone, as if on impulse.

Hanging out with myself accomplishes the task quite easily because it means I’m out driving the GT3, and it’s rightfully against the law in California to operate a cellphone while piloting a vehicle. Not that I would otherwise anyways because driving the Porsche for fun demands a bit of attention and concentration, plus I’m having way too much fun to care about the latest outrage on twitter. Going on drives for multiple hours offers an opportunity for me to meditate and reflect; to detach and take a different perspective on things in my life.

This past weekend I did not go on a drive, but rather hung out with my friends for an entire day instead. The annual Cherry Blossom Festival was happening in Japantown, and one of my friends happens to live a block from the epicenter. Her place served as the perfect base of operation: we did a round of the vendors, got some festival food, and then went back to the place to chill. We laughed through three Netflix comedy specials consecutively until it was time for dinner, which we then headed back out again for.

At the end of evening I remarked to my friend how little I used my phone during the day, so infrequently so that the music app still remembered its place from when I previously paused. That’s a sign of a good day spent.

Admittedly it’s not the most exciting itinerary on paper, but it was a great time with my friends – I’m a huge fan of just milling about and chatting. As a known recluse, these sort of hang outs aren’t the norm for me, but I’m beginning to discover that actual human-to-human socialising is crucial to a person’s overall well-being. It’s not enough to simply do chat over messaging apps on our phones – we need to see, hear, and truly pay attention to each other to reap the benefits.

There shall be plenty more days like this.