Blog

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

The cold winter days

It’s been seasonably cold lately here in San Francisco, which is a stark change from the past few years where our winters have been relatively warm and very dry. It’s so cold that even my Asian mom have consented to the use of the central heating, though of course we set the temperature at just enough to be comfortable with two layers on. The dream of walking around with t-shirts and shorts during the winter months will remain a fantasy until I move out of the house.

If I can afford to move out of the house.

The severely unaffordable Bay Area housing market have ceased to be a point of anguish for me, and now I have this content resignation of my current situation of living at home (being Asian is awesome). It isn’t so bad at all: I get to hang out with my parents while helping them out around the house, and furthermore, I’m not spending half my income simply to house myself. Our parents are only as young as they are today - as we all are - so time spent with them is super important and never a “waste”, no matter what society dictates as the stage of life I’m suppose to in given my age.

The people that reflect on life and wish they’d spent more time with their parents? I don’t think I’ll have that problem. If anything, I’m front-loading the majority of it, instead of circling back to it many years later after I’ve established my own family. Besides, in Chinese culture you don’t abandon your parents under any circumstances: my aunt is still taking care of my grandparents to this day, even though she herself have already become a grandmother. The family unit is strong in Chinese culture because we stick together and help each other out.

That’s the story I’m telling myself anyways. I don’t pretend to not want to move out at all: I think the challenge of independence is something worth doing and a necessary learning experience. But the crisis in San Francisco is what it is, so I’ve stop lamenting the impossible housing problem and instead focusing on spending quality time with my family while the opportunity is still here. Hard to say what’s going happen a few years down the road, but focusing on the future isn’t helpful anyways.

It still amazes me I can shoot pictures like this handheld with a phone.

All tea all the time

Ever since I returned from China (pre Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, mind you) mid-January, I’ve been drinking lots Chinese tea. One of my uncles gifted us multiple pounds worth of the stuff, so it’d be disrespectful to not consume it. I’ve always been a tea drinker, eschewing the sugary stuff or anything with calories, but lately the habit has gone on overdrive. My relatives in China drink tea constantly (coffee is way expensive over there), day through night, so I sort of kept up the practice back in the States.

The great thing about tea is that I can drink it the entire day and not have it affect my sleep like coffee would. Drinking coffee in the afternoon would keep me awake all night, but the caffeine from tea surprisingly doesn’t have the same affect (must be the thousands of years of tea-drinking tradition of my ancestors). I can have a sip right before bed and still be able to fall asleep quickly, which is wonderful because honestly who likes drinking plain water other than after a hard session of exercise? SodaStream exists because people crave flavor and texture in their daily liquid intake.

The logistical problem with drinking lots of tea is one of keeping temperature. Tea obviously tastes best when it’s hot and fresh, and it’s quite involving to make enough tea to drink while maintaining the appropriate temperature. Because if I make a large batch, and the tea will get cold before I’m even half way through the (large) mug; make a small batch, though, and I’ll have to constantly make more, which is time I rather not spend. Mind you I’m not talking about instant tea bags here: I use actual tea leaves and proper steeping techniques.

Due to my laziness, I’ve been making big batches and simply deal with the lukewarm tea towards the end. That is, until I bought an obvious solution: a thermos. I’m ashamed to say it’s taken this long to arrive at this answer, because of course we’ve long had the technology to keep liquids at the desired temperature. I’ve heard good things about the Yeti brand of outdoor products, so I went to the local REI and bought a 26 oz Rambler bottle. Now I get to enjoy my tea all day at the correct temperature, using a French press to make a large enough batch to fill the bottle.

Yeti products aren’t exactly cheap, and I still can’t say whether it’s overpriced or not. That said, the thermos I bought works tremendously well. I’m sure there are cheaper versions out there that perform the same function, but hey, the Yeti Rambler keeps the tea hot: that’s all that matters.

I'm fine

Perhaps it’s because I’m older and wiser now at the age of 32 (ha!), but I’m feeling quite fine today, even though the team I was rooting for utterly lost the Super Bowl the previous evening. The younger, sports-obsessed version of me would’ve had his night and the following week completely ruined; current me understands what’s truly important in life, and local sports teams isn’t one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love to watch sports; it’s the outcome that I’m now detached from. Obviously, I don’t judge people who stake their entire being and existence on a particular sports team; those are the true believers that make sporting events possible in the first place.

What I take out of the Super Bowl is the time spent with friends watching the game. Those are the moments worth remembering: gorging on unhealthy food, drinking alcohol, and focusing more on the conversations than what’s being broadcasted on the television. Truthfully, because I had a vested rooting interest in this year’s big game, I did pay more attention to the match than year’s past, though I kept reminding myself that there will always be a Super Bowl, but the people around me are only as young as they are today.

Not to get completely morbid, but just look at what happened to Kobe Bryant: anything you hold near and dear can be taken away from you in an instant. Relationships are what’s important, not a football game. Would I be tangibly happier today had the 49ers won the Super Bowl? Probably, but that sort of happiness is fleeting - the shine will inevitably wear off. Having great experiences with people close to me? That sort of happiness is forever.

Footnote: I did try the vaunted ‘White Claw’ drink for the first time at our Super Bowl party, and I have to say it’s a damn efficient way to get people drunk without realizing it. There’s no alcohol taste at all, so I can see how a person can down multiple cans and not think about the ramifications. In certain hands, I would say White Claw might be more dangerous than the infamous ‘Four Loko’ drink.

The longest January

I’ve been seeing on twitter people complaining about how this January have felt insanely long. It led me to think for a moment, and yes, January have indeed felt like it has gone on for a very long time. In fact, I thought the beginning of this week was February, not realizing there’s yet another week of January to go. Today’s only the 30th! This month does seem rather endless.

It’s been well over two weeks since I’ve returned from my usual travel stint back home to China at the beginning of January, and I think being on the road sort of stretches out the time relativity, contributing to this month feeling like it’s gone on forever. When I’m on vacation, time seems to go by really slowly, which I guess is a good thing because those are the precious days you get to be away from your normal everyday life - last thing you’d want is for it to feel like it’s over before it starts.

With the news of the Wuhan virus getting more serious by the day, I have to say once again I’m really glad I came back to the States before things got to a critical level on an international scale. Much of China is effectively under lockdown, with large public gatherings and events cancelled, and citizens are staying home as much as possible to limit the risk of exposure. I’d imagine it would be troublesome under these circumstances to be traveling through China and needing to return home to America, or any other country.

Linger any longer in China and there might not even be a plane for you to get on. Just yesterday, British Airways cancelled all future flights to and from China, and surely other airlines would follow should the Wuhan virus continues to escalate catastrophically. While China hasn’t yet officially banned its citizens from flying abroad, the possibility is certainly there should things turn for the worse. What’s the next step after quarantining entire cities? The whole country, naturally.

Before any of this mess started, my cousin from China made plans to travel to America in March. With only a month in between now and the time she gets on the flight, there’s a high chance she may not be able to come if the world is still dealing with this coronavirus. My fingers are crossed for her sake, and for all of us.

Dance to the heartbeat

I think I am now able to pinpoint exactly when my anxiety levels are elevated.

It’s in the frequency of heartbeat, and I’ve train myself to feel for it when my heart-rate gets elevated when it really shouldn’t be. The body is pumping additional blood in preparation for potential calamity, even though I’m merely in the simple act of getting ready to leave the house. That’s true anxiety, and it’s a problem I’m working on lately.

The increased heart-rate due to anxiety creates many stress hormones, causing the body to constantly be in a fight-or-flight mode, unable to relax. There’s lots of triggers, though for me it’s primarily the habit of thinking ahead into the future and dreading the negative scenarios or possibilities. Funny thing is, most of the time the bad outcomes I’ve created in my head never come to pass, so I suffer the consequences from being anxious without any benefit whatsoever. I’ve steeled myself for nothing.

Being ‘in the moment’ is tough, and it’s a constant practice. At least now I know how to spot when I am overly anxious: an elevated heart-rate for no tangible reason.

How do you control something as involuntary as the heart? Via something you can control: breathing. Whenever I feel a brash of anxiety hitting me, I go into deep breathing mode: going super slowly with both inhale and exhale. I’d also try to clear my mind and concentrate on the breathing alone. That will usually do the trick to get me back to base-level, though sometimes it doesn’t work, and the anxiety will continue on unabated.

It’s definitely a process.

Kids these days

The progeny of my generation are so spoiled compared to how we had it. At least from my perspective of having grown up in a working-class family.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? To give the best to our kids. The generation prior suffered so the generation after can have more options.

This past weekend, my cousin threw a one year birthday party for his son, renting out a private room in a sort of fancy restaurant. Admittedly, it was great time spent with family, and the food was pretty damn delicious. All of that could not have been cheap, and yet I don’t think my nephew would ever remember the experience. I surely don’t remember my first birthday party - if there even was one.

The advantage my kid nephew has if he’s so inclined to revisit his first birthday party later on is that there’s plenty of pictures and videos of the event. The babies these days have their lives so well documented, thanks to everyone around them having a smartphone. Literally every single day since his birth, there’s photos of my nephew on my cousin’s phone. In fact, his wife specifically purchased the larger storage capacity of iPhone for this very purpose.

Talk about embarrassing photos of youth resurfacing later on in life: the kids of today have no idea what’s going to hit them when their parents can dig out photographic evidence from any particular time from their entire existence.

But are we too busy documenting our babies’ every moment that we are forgetting to be in the moment? I think the potential pitfall is certainly there. It’s rather like how some people attending concerts seem to be more preoccupied with capturing the performance on their phones than actually listening to the music live as is.

I guess I’ll find out for myself. Eventually.

Kobe Bryant, dead at 41

Quite honestly, I still can’t believe news.

Yesterday I was at a jovial family gathering to celebrate my nephew’s first birthday. During the lunch portion, one my cousins said, “Have you guys heard that Kobe died?”

My immediate reaction was hard laughter, because the notion of Kobe - the Kobe Bryant - dying is so wild and unfathomable that it simply has got to be a joke. I said as much to my cousin - as did other cousins at the table - but he then affirmed his position and restated that the horrible news is absolutely true, and to go check our phones for confirmation.

I thought to myself that if Kobe has indeed died, my phone would be blowing up right now because my boys would for sure let me know of such monumental breaking news. Sure enough, as soon as the lock screen appeared of my phone, I saw the text messages: Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna - among a total of nine people - have perished in a helicopter accident near Calabasas.

I was in utterly disbelief. How can he be gone? Kobe Bryant, the transcendent basketball talent of my youth (more so than Jordan), whose work ethic and dedication to the craft is stuff of legends, can’t possibly be taken away from us already. At only 41 years of age, there’s still so much he has yet to give to the world: to be that wizened man providing guidance to the kids, reminding them the true meaning of hard work, to be singularly focused on what’s important.

It’s a profound lost; of what Kobe has already given to us, and of the immense potential that’s now disappeared forever.

My heart aches for the Bryant family, the unimaginable pain of losing a husband and a father, and a child as well. It’s difficult to think of circumstances crueler than this.

From now on, my every yell of “KOBE!” when I toss something into a bucket or receptacle will be in honor of the great man. Rest in peace, good sir.