Blog

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

The soft power of China

Daryl Morey, GM of the Houston Rockets NBA team, caused quite the stir this weekend when he tweeted in support for Hong Kong people fighting for their freedom. A seemingly ordinary and inoffensive tweet - for us here in America anyways - set off a negative chain reaction in China, culminating in the Chinese broadcast partner of the NBA to cease any and all operations with the Rockets.

The immense soft power of China was on full display, and in quick succession, too. To go from an “offensive” tweet (keep in mind that twitter is officially banned in China) to then mere hours later a total severing of relationship is surprisingly rapid. It certainly gets results: Morey was (let’s face it) forced to offer a follow-up concession for hurting the feelings of China, and the NBA office released a statement acrobatically apologizing to Chinese basketball fans without outright outlawing Morey’s right to free expression.

It’s amazing to watch all of this unfold. For better or worse, China is now the preeminent super power on this planet. The Chinese market is so lucrative for the NBA that it had to reprimand one of their own for supporting democracy! This is the same league that moved its All Star Game from Charlotte in protest of a bathroom bill, and is widely recognized as the most progressive of the major sport leagues.

I guess money still speaks louder than woke-ness, and when billions are at stake, capitalism will always triumph. Personally I’m not surprised the league groveled to China in such a fashion; let it be a reminder that it’s a machine to make money first and foremost, and the NBA support for progressive causes only goes so far as the impact on league profits. Hating on the orange man at the White House is seen as a positive; criticize anything about China is most definitely not.

Basketball players will speak to power on the treatment of migrants at the Mexico border all day long, but anything to say about the situation in Hong Kong? Not a chance. When actual paychecks are at stake, mouths will shut.

It’s interesting to watch.

Time to pay up to Chase

Yesterday I got charged the annual fee for my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card, a quite hefty sum of $450 dollars. My Asian mother would never approve of paying a yearly fee for a card, much less one in the hundreds. Indeed, on the surface I do not fit the salary profile of a person who carries credit cards with high annual fee, but the beauty of Chase Sapphire Reserve is that it literally (?) pays for itself.

It’s just one of those things that catches you off guard when it shows up on your bank statements, like the annual membership for Amazon Prime. Just yesterday I wrote about being austere through the rest of 2019, and this charge was certainly a sudden shock. Thankfully, unlike Amazon Prime which has hiked its rates many times (I can remember when Prime membership was only $70 dollars), at least the Sapphire Reserve card has stayed consistently at $450 per year since inception. I’m very glad Chase did not follow the footsteps of American Express, who raised the fee of their premium Platinum card to $550.

It’ll be my fourth year with the Sapphire Reserve card, and as long as I remain traveling on a consistent basis, I completely make the annual fee back through points accrued. The $300 travel credit is still there, and that not only can reimburse for obvious stuff like airfare and hotel, but Uber rides and public transportation also count. Via rudimentary math, that cuts the net annual fee down to a manageable $150, which will get canceled out once I spend a cumulative $4,000 on travel and restaurants next year (a very easy target for me to hit.)

I reckon there will come a time when I will divorce from the Sapphire Reserve card and switch over to a pure cash-back variety (hello, Capital One!) I don’t suppose I’ll keep on traveling as I have done for the past few years, and at that juncture there won’t be enough appropriate spending to offset the annual fee. In the meantime I think Chase would be smart to split up the annual charge into monthly payments, because us millennials love that sort of accounting: my phone only costs me $40 dollars a month!

The new Salesforce Tower appears quite literally everywhere you go in the city.

But a recession is coming

I am ready and itching to head off on another travel adventure. It’s been a solid two months since my return from Japan, and as typical with the ebb and flow of these things, I’ve physically and mentally recovered, and recharged to set off again.

Of course, I don’t have nearly that much freedom from work to be able to skip town every two months, nor do I have the appropriate budget to do so. Indeed, the trip to Japan drained quite a bit of my cash reserves; a stash that was already lower than previous years due to my purchase of the GT3. I’m going to need at least a few more months to store back up the reserves, so even though I’m pining for another escape, the smart thing to do is to enact austerity.

Besides, I’ll be making my annual trip back home to China come the end of December. What’s another three more months of waiting, honestly. More importantly, homecoming trips don’t cost me any money because our family uses the proceeds from our rental property in China to fund it. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be making the trip this year.

Because the recession is looming, and I think it’s important to batten down the hatches for such an event. Perhaps it’s idiosyncratic to my San Francisco locality, but I am seeing the recession signs all around: vacant storefronts, restaurants closing down, houses not selling, and rooms not renting out. Things definitely don’t look as prosperous as the stock market and unemployment numbers would indicate.

There are similar signs as well in an area near and dear to my proclivities: the automobile. The recent car auctions in Monterey back in August saw a 34% drop compared to 2018 results. You know things are turning sour when ultra rich people are holding off spending their free cash. Just yesterday, Subaru announced its first month of decline in sales after a streak of 93 months (almost eight years!) consecutive growth. That’s the proverbial canary in the coal mine stuff, and the entire auto industry in a downturn now.

I don’t think I’ll stop traveling if and when the recession happens, god willing that I myself don’t get laid off from employment, but for sure I need to build back up the war chest so to speak, for the next rainy day.

The 70th October 1st

Such manic and inconsistent weather we’ve been experiencing lately in San Francisco. It was only last week that we got a few consecutive days of high 90’s weather, during which we all melted because none of our indoor buildings has got air-conditioning. Fast forward slightly to this week, and we are solidly in the mid 50s with a strong winter chill factor. As I type this, I am in two layers of clothing with a healthy thick blanket draped over. Yes, it feels that cold, and no, Asian households don’t turn on the heating system under any circumstances.

Our heavy jackets aren’t just for the outdoors.

Today marks the turn of the calendar over to October, and indeed we are heading into my favorite time of the year. As the recluse and introvert that I am, it’s only natural that I am drawn to the wintery months where the weather turns sour and we are forced to stay in our abodes (I can’t wait for the rain.) The cooler and denser air also provides more power to a car’s engine, so there’s an extra punch to come when I step on the throttle of the GT3. As the song goes, “it’s the most, wonderful time, of the year.”

This year’s October 1st marks the 70th founding anniversary of the communist party of the People’s Republic of China. My home country has come a very long way from being the utterly weak and bullied (don’t think we’ve forgotten, Japan) to now a preeminent super power on par with the United States. There’s lots to say and criticize about the many atrocities and violations of the communist regime, but the rapid growth of China in these last 70 years, under the leadership of the CCP, is a net positive for the overall body of Chinese people both in China and internationally. Our own standing here in the States owes a lot to a strong China, having come from an ugly history of discrimination and exclusion.

I can remember reflecting on the hardships of our ancestors as I rode the Amtrak train through the Sierra Nevada a few years back. Not since the august periods of the Qing Dynasty have our people looked so strong and mighty now. Warts and all - and there are many - the National Day of the People’s Republic of China is an occasion worth celebrating.

She took the midnight train going anywhere.

2018 Audi A3 impressions

Recently my brother traded in his Volkswagen GTI for a 2018 Audi A3, and I got have a brief go in the new-to-him car. Here are some quick thoughts on the entry-level Audi machine, though I’ll caveat my opinions with the fact that my views are incredibly colored by the fact I drive a 911 GT3, the preeminent sports car, so the potential to misjudge a compact luxury sedan with some sporting intentions is quite high. Anyways, here goes.

The first immediate complaint is that the seating position is far too high. My brother’s A3 has the optional sports seat for the driver, and while its comfortable and supportive, it doesn’t go down nearly far enough - the stock seats of the front passenger can go lower, which is just baffling. I’m only 5’10” on a good day, and with the seating position adjusted properly, my hair is brushing the ceiling. I had more headroom in my old Mazda ND MX-5!

The A3’s 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder, ubiquitous within the entire VW group portfolio, offers decent punch and adequate passing power; it makes the car a solid urban runabout with the occasional fun sprinkled in. I was able to zip in and out of traffic with ease. The motor obviously doesn’t make the most entertaining noise, emitting the same dull growl that all other turbo four-poppers make. Coming from the mighty atmospheric GT3, it’s indeed a bit of a let down, and so is the meager redline of barely 7,000 RPM. Gunning through the gears in the A3 for the first time, I almost didn’t upshift in time because I’m so used to having an engine that revs to 9K.

Main reason my brother switched from the GTI to the A3 is for the transmission: at a ripe old age of 21 years, he’s already tired of the manual transmission (someone take his car enthusiast card away, honestly) and wanted out into an automatic. The DSG dual-clutch unit in the A3 proves to be as advertised: the shifts are rapid, and its slow manners are super smooth (it even imitates the off-brake creep forward of a traditional automatic gearbox). It’s definitely engineered towards an economy bent, however: at anything less than full spirit throttle, the DSG will acquiesce to minimizing emissions such as letting the engine rev-hang before snicking over to the next gear, and upshifting to the highest gear as quickly as possible.

Armed with an all-wheel drive system, the A3 never lacks for grip, though the reactive Haldex differential is not an ideal situation. Again, it’s a luxury sedan with some sporting intentions, rather than a pure sports sedan, so the all-wheel drive system is designed towards efficiency, rather than maximizing lap times. Under normal situations ,the A3 feels like a front-wheel drive car because indeed only the front-axle is getting power. It’s not until under certain conditions does the computer activates the Haldex differential and sends power to the rear. I could feel this happening, too: punching the A3 off the line there’s a definite pause because the rear-axle hooks up.

None of this is to say the A3 is a bad car; I can even live with the slightly high seating position. One aspect I cannot excuse, however, is the utter lack of steering feel, a sort of achilles heel of Audi products, even on models as focused as the R8 supercar. The A3’s rack is responsive and direct enough as most modern electric assisted units are, but there’s really no feel at all. I have zero idea what the front tires are doing, and road imperfections gets utterly filtered out. I intentionally ran the car over some cat’s eyes and I couldn’t feel a thing in my hands.

Even though they are built on the same MQB chassis and shares the same engine, I reckon I’d take the GTI over the A3.

Anxiety 2019

Lately I’ve come to realize I’ve been battling a new sort of anxiety for the better part of this year. I can’t exactly put a definitive word to it; the best I can describe it is a nagging sense of insecurity about the status quo. Perhaps it’s easier to give an example.

We’re suppose to relax on weekends, right? Those of us in a fortunate enough position to have a regular weekday job get to chill on Saturdays and Sundays after a hard week’s work. Problem for me is, I can’t seem to fully enjoy my weekends. When I’m out doing super fun stuff like driving the GT3 around, I’d often times have a sense of guilt about it: I am having too much leisure; this is too bloody nice of a car; stop having so much fun and free time, because there’s plenty of work to do to preserving this whole thing.

Things are going along far too nicely; exactly when is the music going to stop?

No wonder that even on a holiday like Labor Day, I can’t seem shutdown my operating system and be in a state of not doing.

Instead of fully relaxing, I’d have anxiety about the work week ahead, and stressing about am I doing my best to warrant a long future with the company. Irrational thoughts, too, like am I just one giant imposter? I don’t really deserve to be paid for the work that I am doing; surely the guillotine will drop any minute now! It became a never-ending rat-race, and downtimes at work would trigger my anxiety, because I immediately worry about not doing enough.

Keep in mind that in reality, from the outside looking in, things are going well.

There’s insecurity about other stuff, too, like the housing. Even though it’s highly unlikely we’d be kicked out of our current below-market rate renting situation, I’d have anxiety about that, and would get deep down into the negative rabbit hole of running worst case scenarios in my head and how everything will change. Again, it’s mostly irrational thoughts, but the stress from that is real, and only now that I’ve snapped out of it do I see it clearly.

One of the four noble truths in Buddhism is that life is suffering, but it isn’t the type of suffering in what we tend to associate the word with, but rather it’s the suffering from wanting to hold onto things, and preserving what we have. Even when your life is measurably great, you will suffer greatly if you become attached to the status quo, desperate to hold on, and constantly scared it’ll all be taken away.

I think that’s been exactly my issue, and I’m glad that certain events in the past months have rescued me out.

Spare a thought for the groom-to-be decked out in full tuxedo in Japan’s hot and humid summer weather.

Will the Hong Kong passage be open?

I have a selfish concern regarding my annual year-end trip back home to China. As per usual, we are flying into Hong Kong and then taking the train into Guangzhou. Normally there’d be no problem with this, and I’ve always enjoyed spending a bit of time in the city before heading for true home. This year, however, as you may all know, there’s massive protests going on in Hong Kong, and as it stands right now, I don’t see it abating any time soon.

So the selfish question is: am I going to have issues getting through Hong Kong? I mean, protestors did shutdown the airport a few weeks back; it’s difficult to predict if it will escalate back to that level again. I’ll be slightly annoyed if my well-prepared travel plans get altered due to the protests.

That is not to say I don’t sympathize with the people of Hong Kong in fighting for a no strings attached governance from mainland China. As a person who lives in the free West, I think democratic values and basic freedoms are worth fighting for, and if Hong Kong feels like this is the moment to die on the proverbial hill, then all the power to them. One can certainly disagree with the protestor’s tactics or their demands in general, but for those of us on the sidelines looking in, I think we have to remember that we don’t live in Hong Kong, the protestors do, and I trust they’d know best what they want for their future.

That is also not to say I’m antagonistic towards China. Guangzhou is my hometown, and I have many family members there; I am not going to state (or tweet) anything negative towards the communist government that can potentially get me banned from entering my home country, to be cut off from my extended family. That is my skin in the game, and the incentive is to preserve my entry and exit privileges. I simply want to make a trip home every year without fuss.

Because of the situation in Hong Kong, this year we are not heading into the city proper, and instead, taking the shuttle bus to Guangzhou right at the airport. It’s a shame because I absolutely adore Hong Kong, and would have loved to sightsee there for a few days.

Maybe next year.