Blog

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

Safety recall on the 911

A few days ago, I received a safety recall notice mailer from Porsche Cars North America. My initial reaction was one of mild annoyance, because my favored dealership is some 40 miles away, and having to take my 911 there out of schedule would be a pain in the butt. That’s right, I was more concerned about logistics, rather than what the recall was about. Because I knew that whatever it was, I would not be out of pocket for any costs, and honestly I had some curiosity on exactly what Porsche - the vaunted German automaker - can actually screw up on.

Turns out, it was much to do with nothing: the safety recall was about insufficient documentation in the owner’s manual, particularly the section pertaining to the child safety restraint system - think car seats for kids. Inside the same envelope was the remedy/fix: a new supplement to the manual, printed on solid paper stock, with the freshly printed smell you’d expect. I’m sure to Porsche all of this is but a drop in the bucket cost-wise, but from my decidedly plebeian perspective, spending hundreds of thousands just to print and send out a supplement seems a bit excessive.

Especially considering, and I’m confident in saying this, no GT car owner has ever used the child restraint system in their specialized 911. These are thoroughbred sports cars of the highest order, not a vehicle to ferry the babies around (that would be a Porsche Macan, naturally). Not to say we shouldn’t: I would wholeheartedly salute the GT 911 owner who actually uses a child car-seat regularly. People who uses their cars rather than letting them sit in a heated garage are the true heroes of car enthusiasm, like this guy who takes his GT 911 to the snow.

Now that I think about it, when it’s time for me to have progeny and god-willing I still have my GT3, I’d totally put a child-seat in the front passenger space to shuttle the baby around. It’s never too early to get a kid started on the path to passion for Porsche and cars in general.

Second car and ride-sharing

Periodically, I surf on the Craigslist classifieds to look for a cheap car to buy. Mind you I don’t exactly need another car: I already have a sports car for the weekends, and I commute to work using public transportation. I guess I’m merely looking for a challenge: buy a cheap used car to drive and fix it up along the way as needed. It’s certainly far cheaper than buying a brand new car, and the repair skills I would learn along the way can totally justify the few thousand dollars spent.

But that’s only for the price of the car and future repairs; it’s easy to forget that there’s other costing components to car ownership, such as gas and insurance. When I include those things into the total equation, I cannot square with the comparative low cost of taking the bus to work, which buying a second car would replace as the commute method. I’m lucky to live in a city where public transportation is decent, and on the rare occasions when the next train isn’t due to arrive for more than a half hour - fairly common for late evening hours - the convenience of calling an UBER of LYFT is hard to beat.

Because parking is also a great pain in San Francisco, and buying another car would add that headache as well.

The occasional 20 bucks to get me home via ride-sharing is way less expensive than the fixed cost of owning a car, even one bought on Craigslist for a thousand dollars. UBER and LYFT have so infiltrated our regular everyday function that sometimes I wonder if both companies have reached the mythical “too big to fail” status. Indeed, neither UBER nor LYFT have ever made an annual profit in their existence, but the ride-sharing has become so ubiquitous that people’s livelihoods are wholly dependent on it, be it a driver that needs the income, or a car-less person who needs it to get to work.

A lot of people would be really hurt if UBER and LYFT were to collapse and go away - as money-losing companies are typically wont to do. I guess it’s that prevailing force of preservation that is somehow keeping both companies in business, even though there’s not a cent of profit made. Ride-sharing has become a subsidized method of transportation for the public good, and it’s not far-fetched to imagine one day the government stepping in to provide that subsidy.

I mean, it sure is nice to be able to quickly get home from anywhere, at any hour of the day, without needing my own personal car.

I almost bought an Apple Watch

Awhile back, the leather strap on my Hamilton watch finally broke off after years of use. To get that “officially” fixed, I was to send the watch to the Swatch Group’s service center. Weirdly, the website doesn’t list prices, but from what I can sleuth on the Internet, it’s about $300 dollars to recondition the watch. That price makes the situation slightly odd because that’s about how much I paid for the watch brand new, which means I can also do so again - buy another one new and save the hassle of shipping the old one in.

The nostalgia factor took over, however, and I decided it’s worth keeping my Hamilton watch going for as long as possible. I emailed the Swatch service center for instructions but then I never heard back! I guess they didn’t want to make money off me, and I sort of treat it as a sign that I should let my Khaki Field go to permanent rest.

It definitely feels weird to have an empty wrist after years of watch-wearing, so lately I’ve been hankering to (finally) buy the Apple Watch. I’m so entrenched into the Apple ecosystem that getting yet another device from Cupertino seems like the next logical step. Back when I still had a functioning Hamilton watch, it seemed irresponsible to splurge for the Apple Watch, but now that I’m free from those clutches, I’ve been eyeing the device on the Apple Store app frequently.

What the Apple Watch would be most beneficial to me - on top of telling me what time it is - is the heart-rate monitor. I’ve written before about my anxiety issues, and a clear sign when I’m having a case of it is an elevated heart-rate. Being able to set alerts on the watch to let me know when such an event is occurring would be fantastic, and on that reason alone I think I can justify the high cost. The Series 5 Apple Watch starts at $399, which is not cheap for a thing that is bound to be obsolete in a few years.

This past weekend I was desperately close to pulling the trigger, because there were discounts on the Apple Watch at all the major retailers (all except for Apple official, obviously). What stopped me from doing the deed? I remembered the yearly registration fee for the 911 GT3 is due soon, and being that the car originally stickered for ~$145,000, even five years on the fee would be quite hefty. I can’t justify spending over $400 on the Apple Watch when I have that looming over my head so soon.

Indeed, I got the renewal letter from the DMV just yesterday! For the privilege to operate the 911 on the road for another year in the eyes of California, I have to pay just over a thousand dollars. Honestly, that is still a shocking figure, even though I was wholly prepared for it. That’s one of the many consequences of buying such an expensive sports car, though ultimately I’m willing to pay the price.

But good thing I didn’t buy the Apple Watch!

Authentically Asian

Director Bong Joon-Ho’s “Parasite” becomes the first foreign language film ever to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

That is a heavy and well-overdue achievement, and the overwhelming joy from the Koreans on my twitter feed last night was especially heartwarming. Their feelings must have been what it was like for Chinese people when Ang Lee won his director Oscar for “Brokeback Mountain”. Lee absolutely paved the way for Bong’s eventual triumph, with the seemingly archaic Academy willing to give the ultimate recognition to a film that’s entirely in Korean, and produced entirely in South Korea. Honestly, I was prepared for disappointment throughout the ceremony, but when Jane Fonda read the word “Parasite”, the elation was rather emotional.

It’s been a banner year for Korean entertainment on the world stage, what with the great success of BTS, and now Parasite wining the top movie award on the planet. Even though I’m Chinese, I feel prideful for the achievement of people that look like me; for better or worse, the West treats us Asian faces as one homogenous blob (who amongst us hasn’t been falsely called one of the many Asian nationalities?), so the success of one group has a positive correlation to the other. Even though our cultures are varied and experiences different, within the bubble of American and European culture we are seen as one giant group.

Therefore, a win for Parasite is a win for other Asians in the film industry.

A belated shoutout to the team behind “The Farewell”; Awkwafina winning best actress at the Golden Globes was super amazing, and it’s a shame the film didn’t get one ounce of recognition - not so much as a nomination - at the Oscars.

I think Parasite winning Best Picture is the final signal to Asians all over the globe, but especially in Western countries, that we no longer have to contort and distort our true culture to succeed or receive recognition in the West. We can be completely ourselves - unapologetically unfiltered, and still get to where we want to be. If anything, it’s catering to what we think the West wants that has gotten us continually stuck. Authenticity is the best currency, even if it isn’t in English.

We’re only getting started.

We’ve got a functioning Apple II computer.

BTS hunger games

Tickets for BTS’ latest world tour goes on presale later today, so may fortune be forever in your favor (or whatever that famous line is from the Hunger Games films). Like most functioning adults, I am not free at 3PM on a workday to get in the virtual line on Ticketmaster; luckily, my friend is (he’s a functioning adult, though; promise), so I’ve given him my login information and hoping for a good result.

That said, it’s not a huge deal if I don’t get tickets, because I’m not the most ardent of BTS fans. I have been a fan of Kpop since the late 2000s, so I feel it is important to go see an act such as BTS - the worldwide cultural phenomenon the group has become. Our group of friends simply wants to get in and listen to the songs, rather than paying out the nose for expensive seats, hoping to get a close glimpse of whoever is our “bias” (Suga, obviously). I’m glad that BTS is a big enough act to host concerts in football stadiums, because that means we can sit up high for relatively cheap.

The cynical might say I’m merely joining in on the hype and “doing it for the ‘gram”, and my reply to that is, “so?” Indeed it’s true that I would not be trying to get tickets if BTS wasn’t the biggest pop group on the planet, but who says you can’t follow the horde or what’s popular? It’s not like I don’t enjoy their music; and unlike some, I can actually understand the lyrics without consulting a dictionary or Youtube translation videos (hate to sound elitist). Like I said, the point is to have fun, hang out with friends, and listen live to our favorite “genre” of music: Kpop.

Fingers crossed we get the opportunity to do so at the BTS concert.

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.