Blog

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

Want happy? Be less stressed

There’s lots of people out there chasing the ever elusive goal of happiness. Bookstores (okay; Amazon) and the Internet is filled with books and articles on how to be happy; that somehow once we attain it, all would be okay and we can live peacefully onwards thereafter.

I’ve certainly tried to find my happiness, and I have to say it’s as fleeting as it is difficult. The moments of joy in realizing a goal - like buying a Porsche - is a momentary dopamine hit that doesn’t last. Worse, once it wears off I am back to base one, back to before I started on the goal. I’d immediately need of another aim to deliver me that same joy once more. It seems that for me, happiness is indeed like the hedonistic treadmill, rather than something constant, which is I think is what we’re all after.

Is it possible to be happy all the time - as the default state of mind? I’d imagine the answer is quite idiosyncratic. If it were so easy then there wouldn’t be a vast cottage industry to provide answers for those seeking it. Personally, instead of adding things to my life and hoping those things will fill up the happiness meter permanently, to achieve somewhat constant happiness, it’s about paring it down: to do less, to want less, and really focus on only the truly important.

Via negativa.

These days I’ve realize that instead of chasing happiness, it’s far more constructive to eliminate stress. The side-effects of stress are readily apparent: my resting heart rate is elevated, I grind my teeth at night during sleep, and pimples sprout out on my face, even though you’d think at age 31 I’d be forevermore done with those marks of puberty. Nevertheless, it’s been a bit of an aim lately for me to be conscious of when I am feeling stressed, and to address the underlying cause.

For example, when I am wake up every day, my mind tends to wander to the work day ahead, even though I’ve yet to even leave the bed! Pondering about those various tasks fills me with anxiety and stress, needlessly so because I can’t do anything about those things until I actually get to work. It’s not something I should be thinking about while I go through my morning routine; if anything, I ought to be calm and relaxed so that I can perform my best later in the day.

There’s procedural examples, too: I gave up driving a car for the commute precisely because it got too stressful to deal with the massive amount of traffic every day. Taking the bus have been one of the best changes I’ve done last year, because riding the bus allows me to zone out and listen to my podcasts, rather than worry about other drivers on the road.

Obviously, not all stress are bad; some are crucial in kicking me in the ass to do better, like my daily checklists of tasks, and a self-promise to keep this website updated regularly. The stress from those pseudo deadlines are super helpful; what I am looking to eliminate are the frivolous and unnecessarily stresses.

As with anything in life, it’s a constant work in progress.

Bad luck for car enthusiast

As a car enthusiast, sometimes luck simply isn’t on your side. I’m not talking about the big sorrowful events like horrible accidents, but rather mundane annoyances that strikes at random (like a scraped bumper), and should you be so unlucky, a cluster of them seems to hit you all at once.

Mind you I am not talking about me, thank heavens, though back in April just about the biggest rock chip I’ve ever seen was thrown into the upper portion of the GT3’s bonnet. Actually, there was also that rear tire puncture as well, which turned out to be quite the chore to fix. But no, compared to my brother’s year with his mark 7 Golf GTI, I’d consider myself fortunate.

Indeed, said brother have only had the car for one year, and within that time-span the following misfortune occurred to his precious little hot hatch. First was the time during his move back to university for the Fall semester, and my clumsy dad absentmindedly scraped the rear quarter panel when he attempted to stuff the mini fridge into the rear passenger compartment (it didn’t fit through the aperture, obviously). Shortly after that, the GTI got broken into whilst parked in the lot of a restaurant, necessitating a replacement of the rear passenger window, plus that annoying tiny triangular glass at the corner that doesn’t really do anything.

California saw its wettest rain season in many years, so road conditions this winter was not very good. My brother drove over a set of light-rail tracks thinking nothing of it, but lurking adjacent to far rail was an enormous pothole. It obliterated the front left tire, requiring an emergency trip to the nearest tire shop. Now my brother did take this opportunity to swap the crappy stock all-season tires with a solid set of summer performance boots, which I have to say utterly transformed the GTI’s character. However, I’m sure his wallet holds a different opinion.

Lastly, a month ago an errant stone chip to the windshield proved a bit on the too large side, causing two parallel cracks to form at lower left quadrant, directly in the sight-line of the driver. My brother is still in the process of getting that replaced, which is another chunk of change that with better luck could’ve been avoided.

That’s all part of owning a car, isn’t it? To keep a car pristine, stuff in a garage forever; otherwise, it’s simply things a driver has to deal with. A person could go for years without a puncture, then suffer multiples of them within a short time. I jokingly told my brother that he doesn’t have to deal with any of this if he’d only take the bus instead.

Like I do. Sort of.

The old Apple is back

Apple at its best, and what drew me into the company back in high school, is when they announce products in the pro tier of their Mac lineup. Lust-worthy items with exorbitant prices that I desperately want, but cannot hope to afford. I remember when the 30-inch Cinema Display was first introduced: a display so unimaginably large that costs more than entire computer systems! I wanted one immediately, though sadly had to wait for that display technology to trickle down to the hundreds of dollars range many, many years later.

I also remember the first ever Mac Pro, a monster of a computing machine for three times the costs of my poverty-spec Macbook laptop. I couldn’t possibly utilize all that number-crunching power (much less pay the price), but the 'cheese grater’ tower just looks so damn awesome. Apple is clever like that, aren’t they? Their superb ability to make people pine for their products is one of the biggest reason I upgrade to the latest iPhone every year, even though for my purposes I’d still be okay currently with an iPhone 8.

So today it was a throwback of sorts for Apple at their annual developer conference, where they announced a brand new Mac Pro tower, and a 6K display to do along with it. The unit starts at $5999, and the monitor is $4999 for the panel only; the aluminum ‘Pro’ stand with the fancy hinge mechanism is another $999 on top! I could hear the collective groan from the audience over the keynote livestream when the guy on stage announced the stand was separate and costs the same as an iPhone. This is Apple pricing madness at its best, and it brings me back to youth.

Of course, the specs of the new machine and the display is out of this world, and just like a decade before with the old Mac Pro and pro display, it’s way more computing power than I can ever use in my current capacity as a photography hobbyist and a writer. The difference now is that I don’t want the new Mac Pro at all, even though I can somewhat afford it (just have to put a few things up on eBay). Perhaps its my adult sensibilities coming into effect: I no longer buy things for the heck of it; the item has got to serve a purpose. My two years old 27-inch iMac is still up to the tasks superbly, so there’s no reason to replace it with a far nicer box for marginal gains in speed.

Indeed, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display is strictly for the professionals, the type who can expense such extravagant acquisition on their respective company accounts. I’m definitely not one of those people, the type to work with three simultaneous streams of 8K footage, or mix 1000 tracks of sound at the same time.

Who am I kidding, though; I still want it.

Twitter imposter syndrome

Sometimes twitter can be quite depressing, but not in the way that you’d expect. No, I am not one of those people who lacks self control and get absolutely entrenched into twitter flame wars and arguing matches on for hours on end. I am a nobody; my follower count as of this writing, after nearly a decade on the platform, stands at 186. Half of those I’m convinced are bots.

The thing about the twitter that depresses me is the sheer amount of intelligence on display. The reason I can’t quit the platform even though it’s one of my biggest time-sucks is because I learn so much from so many people, from all areas of life. The sheer knowledge and the way people can articulate it within the framework of 280 words per single tweet is something I am in awe of almost every day. Nowhere do I feel more like an imposter than on twitter, where everyone seems to be and probably is smarter than I am.

That’s not exactly a negative - I learn plenty from those people ,after all - but it does make me doubt my own abilities and knowledge sometimes.

I have to remind myself the witty and eloquent people on my feed have immensely more experience than I do, and their smarts don’t invalidate my current standing - we’re simply on different life levels. Those people have been immersed in their respective industries for decades, so of course someone like me in his early 30s isn’t going to have remotely comparable knowledge or eloquence. My false move is equivocating a similar standing between myself and the people I follow. With enough hard work and continued learning, I will get to the same level someday and be a wizened master dishing out tactics and qualified opinions.

I mustn’t skip ahead of myself.

Back in my early college days when I was active in a local car club, everyone else seemed to be driving far cooler cars than my lowly Toyota Corolla, or people with the same car had more modifications and extra bits on theirs than mine. The inadequacy I felt was intense, being so one-track minded (and very immature) that I failed to detach from the situation and see that those with more/better were simply further in stages of life. Of course the fully-realized adult with a full-time job is going to have a far nicer vehicle than me who’ve only started university.

A decade later I am able to detach and look at the macro view, but sometimes I still want to run before I’ve fully learned walking.

San Francisco is kicking me out

There’s been a lot of chatter lately about how San Francisco is a hell-scape for the poor and middle class, and that thanks to the tech boom and concurrent chronic lack of housing, the city have turned into a province for the rich only, in a Monte Carlo sort of way. While it can’t rival the tax-friendliness of the Principality - in fact it’s the precise exact opposite - I’ve been viewing my hometown as a facsimile of Monaco for a quite bit now, and it’s low-key weighing on me these days.

Indeed you need at least a six-figure salary to even entertain the notion of building a life in San Francisco. On my daily commute I’m reminded of this when I see adverts for newly online condos, with the basest of units costs more per month than my entire take-home pay. On a macro level I am making slightly more than the median U.S. household income (and I consider myself lucky to be in a position to do so), but put that in perspective of the insane SF housing market, I’m downright in relative poverty.

As I transition into my thirties and having thoughts of marriage and family starting, I am coming hard to face with the reality that I cannot do those things in the city I grew up in - and love. Unless I marry someone who earns well into the six-figures, even with dual income it’d be supremely difficult to rent an appropriate amount of rooms to raise a family, much less outright purchasing a house. Even if somehow I manage to scrounge up large enough of a down-payment to mitigate somewhat the monthly outlay, the hefty California property tax alone renders it prohibitive.

Of course, there’s legions of people in a similar position who instead bought property way out in the inland suburbs, and every day they have to endure a two-hour commute slog just to get back into San Francisco proper for work. That’s not an option for me because I believe the stress and anguish that comes from a long commute is not conducive to good health, and no house is worth the tradeoff for that. If I were to move out of the city, I’d rather take the full plunge and skip out of California entirely.

A friend of mine shared an article that listed what $200,000 worth of home looks like in each of the 50 States, and no surprise the worst of them all in terms of amount of space for the money is California. On the other end of the spectrum, in States such as Montana and the Dakotas, 200 grand can buy you multiple rooms and multiple baths in a house with sizable yards front and back. We joked that San Francisco natives like us who aren’t fortunate enough to collect on the tech prosperity should look to move to those places. We wouldn’t even need to earn as much money as we do now because the cost of living is drastically cheaper.

Besides, I am confident that as long as I have an Internet connection, I can generate income however which way.

So that is something to seriously think about in the next few years; if San Francisco maintains its current trajectory, it just may force my hand. I still have hope it wouldn’t, but recently it’s been tough to find the optimism.

For excellent Texas-style BBQ in Dallas, go to Pecan Lodge.

A billionaire pays off some students' loans

A notable bit of news out of this past weekend was the Morehouse college commencement speaker announcing to the graduating class he’s going to pay off the entirety of their student loans. The final bill is estimated to be around 40 million dollars for the nearly 400 students, a princely sum that’s but a drop in the bucket for the billionaire Robert Smith, not to mention it’s likely tax-deductible.

A grand gesture, nonetheless, and for the 2019 Morehouse graduating class, the most welcome of reprieves as they embark on the next stage of their lives.

How much are you kicking yourself if you’re the Morehouse student who missed graduating this year by a few units, or busted your ass to graduate a year early and missed the opportunity at this tremendous gift? Also, whoever’s commencement speaker for the college next year is going to be put in a very tough position (“Sorry, class, I am not going to pay off your loans. Good day!”). Indeed, not just anybody can hand out eight-figure sums with relative impunity.

Someone ought to do a study of these lucky graduates on how this loan forgiveness will impact their future success compared to previous classes that aren’t as fortunate to receive such largess. I’d bet the blank state would prove quite significant a factor.

Anyways, a billionaire paying off student loans: isn’t this exactly what’s being bandied about by the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, only on a grander scale? Tax the billionaires to raise revenue and forgive all of the outstanding student loan debt. I do wonder what the Venn diagram look like of people who are applauding Smith’s actions and people who are against the federal government – via taxing the ultra-rich – paying out student loans.

My position on this is the government can do what it wants as long as it’s not using my particular tax money, though I wouldn’t necessary vote for the affirmative on student loan forgiveness; I literally have zero skin in the game. I never had student loans, and I’m definitely not in the tax bracket to be affected by the tax increase.

But that raises a question: if people with student loans are getting bailed out, shouldn’t people like me who graduated college without being saddle with them get something as well? I mean, I could’ve taken out loans as well; and had I known beforehand it’d be forgiven a decade down the road, I’d most certainly would have. I think it’s only fair the government forgive my other types of loans, like the car note on the 911…

The lone problem with the GR Supra

I’ve already written previously on how the new Toyota GR Supra is an important entrant to the sports car segment due to how rarely we see brand new, relatively affordable sports cars in an overall market heavily biased towards sport utility vehicles. It’s an achievement worth celebrating, even if Toyota had to partner up with BMW to turn the dream into fruition.

By all accounts the new Supra is a brilliant car to drive, and us car enthusiasts should buy one in support of their efforts. Only by showing up with our wallets at the dealerships will manufacturers continue to put in development money on such delightful cars, a segment so small it might as well be a niche (unless you’re Porsche).

But there’s a problem: I don’t think this iteration of the GR Supra is the one to buy.

As is the wont of Japan-made sports cars, each subsequent model year will have increment improvements, leading up to significant mid-model refreshes after a few years. Just look at the R35 generation Nissan GT-R: the 2012 model year got such an update it rendered the 2008 to 2011 cars to second-class citizenry. I’ve no doubts the GR Supra will follow the same production trajectory, therefore if I were buying one, I’d wait for the forthcoming refresh or special edition models.

There’s already points of improvement easily apparent in the new Supra. First there’s the power level: The same B58 inline-six has a higher level of tune in the BMW Z4 sister car, so it’d be no effort at all for Toyota to bump horsepower to that level, if not further. Second is the gearbox: the GR Supra simply begs for a manual transmission, and Toyota have heard all the clamoring for it. The BMW parts-bin do have a manual gearbox available – the unit currently providing service in the M2 and M3 – and I’d put money that a do-it-yourself stick version of the Supra will happen.

Those two key components, coupled with various upgrades to the suspension and body panels, and avoiding first model-year gremlins, makes it worth the patience to wait for the refresh.

Of course, if you’re so infused with cash you can buy the 2020 GR Supra now and trade that in when invariably a hotter version comes out in a few years. Good for you indeed if you are able to do that.