Blog

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

Xmas is cancelled

The U.S. stock markets saw a 3% drop in each of the past two trading days and everyone is of course going nuts. After hovering at all-time highs for the past few weeks, the ever expanding threat of the coronavirus has finally spooked the markets into a mild drawdown. As I written about it briefly last week, the economic impact of the coronavirus is a huge lagging indicator, and we’re just starting the see the beginning signs that everything is not going to business as usual.

Being a relatively young person, I am immensely long on the stock market, so the past few day’s drops don’t materially affect me at all. I can’t even pull money out or put more money into my ROTH IRA: the former is restricted by definition, and the latter is restricted under the federal guidelines of $5,500 per year maximum. But it’s fun to watch, isn’t it? I certainly had a good laugh commiserating with workmates about how much money we pseudo hypothetically lost in the past 48 hours. That is, unless you have individual positions in Zoom or Campbell Soup: you’re actually up!

It’ll be interesting to see how President Trump reacts to this slump in the market, especially if it continues on (as of writing we are on pace for a third consecutive day of red). Trump sees the stock market as a de-facto referendum on his presidency, so any significant decline - like the ones we saw in the 4th quarter of 2018 - triggers him into irrational action. I’m sure Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is already hearing from our President to do something about this latest contraction; to continue lowering the borrowing rate and increase the Fed’s balance sheet.

Meanwhile, more so than fears of losses in the market, the coronavirus issue seems to still be proliferating, with bad news continuing to come out day after day. A friend of a friend has cancelled his wedding in South Korea because of the travel issues for attendees, and surely they’re just one of many couples in Asia that had their wedding dates affected, through no fault of their own. Yesterday, San Francisco Mayor declared a local emergency so the city can allocate resources in preparation should the virus spreads to our area. It appears we - the United States - are steeling ourselves for that eventuality, and not for a matter of if.

No Porsche until the weekend

The problem with having your weekend car stored many miles from where you live is that you can’t do anything to it during the work week. Even as parts arrive and you’re eager to slap them on or make repairs, you’re prevented from doing so because getting to the car itself is supremely time-consuming (could easily become a two-hour round trip, in my case). So you have to be patient and wait for the weekend to arrive, which is easier said than done no matter how much you love your job.

It’s just another part of the car enthusiast disease.

I don’t really pine for much these days - trying to be anti-materialistic and all, but a place to live with proper garage space to park the 911 is low-key at the very top of the goals list. Indeed there are days I feel frustrated I can’t even lay eyes my car because it’s stored so far away, especially one I paid so much money for. What it must be like for people to take their morning coffee in the garage while starring at their beloved machine and studying the lines. That’s a feeling I rather like to find out for myself in this lifetime.

However, to bring up housing in San Francisco is to invite despair; buying property anywhere near the city would mean I’d have to sell the 911 - I can’t have both. There may come a time I will have to make that decision, but as of right now I’m keen to hold onto the car for as long as possible. Because selling it means I’d be forsaking amortizing the value of the taxes paid when I bought the car - you don’t recoup that on a sale. I can stomach regular depreciation that any vehicle has, but a five-figure tax bill? I’d like to draw quite a bit more utility out of that than a mere few years of ownership.

I’ve bought my dream car, though it seems I did it backwards because usually you’d want an appropriate living situation first. That said, following the typical is so boring; that’s the story I’m telling myself, anyways.

I don’t often go downtown, but when I do…

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

One thing I’ve learn as I grow older is try not to commit yourself to something many, many months from now. It’s rather easy to throw away your time like that because whatever the thing you’ve just committed to seem so far away in the future. Surely you have time for it, right? If anything, you’re being responsible for actually planning it out in advance!

This past weekend’s showing of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Curran Theatre snuck up on me unsuspectingly because the tickets for it was bought nearly a year ago. It was quite surprising then to find out that one, the tickets had cost me $210 (I could use that money now for something else, honestly), and two, the production is two shows, and our group is watching both parts back to back, with a two and a half hour break in between. The thought of sitting for seven hours seemed dreadful; had the tickets been purchased more recently, I don’t think I would have opted for such an arrangement.

So that was my whole Saturday, dedicated to watching a play about wizards and magic.

And I’m happy I did. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a fantastic play, replete with a story that’s deserving of following up the main books and movies. The acting is superb, and the practical effects used to show the various magic and spells are done really well. About halfway into part one, I was already glad we chose to watch both parts on the same day, because the story is that grippingly good. It would be slightly unbearable to have to wait another day to find out the conclusion, never mind that getting to San Francisco downtown where the theatre is isn’t the easier of tasks.

Anyways, I highly recommend the play to anyone who is a fan of the Harry Potter books and movies. I would bet good money they’ll make a movie out of this story with original movie cast some time in the future. That is when I shall see The Cursed Child again, because I’m too old to sit for another seven hours to watch the play a second time, no matter how great and entertaining it is.

Chinese winter is coming

At this point, I would not be surprised if the Tokyo Olympics gets delayed.

As we head into the third month of the coronavirus disaster, I think we’re starting to see the economic ramifications from the global supply chain being effectively shut down. China is such an integral part to practically everything the world runs on that sooner or later the consequences of the country-wide lock down will start showing up. Apple have already served caution for its next quarter’s revenue due to production delays and lack of demand in China. The world’s largest mobile phone show - Mobile World Congress - is cancelled, probably because the huge contingent from China is unable to travel to Barcelona. The Formula One grand prix in Shanghai is heading towards cancellation.

My brother, who works at a Toyota dealership, tells me there’s currently a huge shortage of hybrid models, presumably due to disrupted raw material supply in China for the batteries. The situation is not ideal for him and Toyota because the company’s hybrid cars are some of its best sellers.

The stock market in the States is still at all-time highs, though I suspect with the looming cliff of quarterly reports from companies since the coronavirus outbreak, the markets might not look so rosy in a few months’ time (I’m not a professional advisor; please do your own research).

I think we take for granted how crucial China is to the smooth running of the rest of the world, so quick and easy it is to hate on China because of its communist one-party rule, that we don’t think of what can happen when that gets taken away. Unfortunately, we’re all about to find out soon enough. Personally I’ve already eliminated any thoughts of traveling abroad this year; until the corner is turned on the coronavirus, going to Asia is effectively impossible.

I suspect holding the Tokyo Olympics on-time will largely hinge on this.

Porsche really hit it out of the park on the styling of the current-generation Panamera sedan.

Not too much to ask

Today is one of those days where I don’t have one concrete topic to write about, so here comes a string of thoughts until I’ve achieved the appropriate length for one these blog posts.

My 2017 era iMac is middle of the line in specs with extra memory installed, yet somehow it’s struggling to run Adobe Lightroom smoothly. There’s a noticeable pause between toggling a setting and having it reflected on the image I’m working on. My 2019 era 15-inch Macbook Pro does not have this lag, which is baffling because there can’t possibly be this much advancement in processing power in the span of two years. The blame is squarely on Adobe for putting out a product that can’t run smoothly on a two-year old high-end computer.

Then again, Lightroom was never known for its smoothness and efficiency. Sadly, I can’t move away from Adobe to something like Capture One because my entire catalog since the very beginning of my photographic journey is in Lightroom. Having to migrate and learn a new system is more bothersome than whatever deficiency Lightroom has running on “old” machinery. So I simply deal with it; I could move all my editing work to the newerMacbook Pro, but the 27-inch screen real-estate of the iMac is difficult to give up.

Indeed this is a first world problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. I get the sentiment of detaching from our issues and taking a different perspective when people remind us that our problems are of the first world variety; it’s a good exercise to remain humble and see that maybe the significance of an issue isn’t what we had initially assigned. However, it’s wrong when people use the “first world problem” refrain as a dismissal of what others are dealing with, as if taking another perspective would magically make the problem go away. That’s not how it works.

Perhaps my particular example of griping about the speed of Adobe apps is hilariously trivial even for first world standards, but let’s see you try editing through hundreds of photos while dealing with the lag. Those seconds of waiting for the interface to respond can add up really quickly. Professional photographs aren’t upgrading their computers every year, so I think the onus is on Adobe to make sure Lightroom doesn’t run slowly on PCs and Macs alike that aren’t of latest iteration in hardware.

I’m not holding my breath.

The waiting game is hard

Continuing with the story from yesterday, I had to order a small part to fix up the Porsche. Problem is, the particular piece of plastic is a special order item, which in combination with the Presidents Day holiday yesterday means I will have to wait a relatively long time the part to arrive at my doorstep (and hopefully not stolen). The extended wait is long and agonizing because I want nothing more than to repair the 911 as quickly as possible, however cosmetic and superficial the damage may be (thank god for that).

For better and worse, that’s just how my mind functions: any task worth doing, I’d like to get it done swiftly. I can remember back in my teens of forgoing meals and sleep on numerous occasions because the home-built PC was malfunctioning and I simply could not mentally bare doing anything else until the fix is finished. No surprised then I moved away from PCs later on in life and migrated over to Apple’s Macintosh. With Apple, at least I can go to sleep, knowing there’s nothing I can do about my broken Mac until my appointment at the Apple Store.

Not to say the waiting game isn’t anxiety-filled: the mind starts going through worse-case scenarios when the outcome of a job is unknown. It’s why I try to speed up the process as much as I can, to silence those voices in my head (Randy Orton theme song plays). Indeed, I could have paid for expedited shipping for the Porsche part, but the need to alleviate my anxiety was outmatched by my spending sensibilities. Instead, I’ll deal with the ambiguity that comes with the wait, difficult as it sometimes can be.

So I preoccupy myself with other tasks, which probably isn’t the best thing to do because the underlying problem is still there, but at some point you have to keep moving forward. Unlike Amazon Prime one-day shipping, life doesn’t acquiesce to your just-in-time wants quite so easily. Processes takes time; and even though I crave the calm that comes after a task is done, there will be others to come, and the anxiety renews again. I have to learn to be calm while things are in-flux, which as always, is a work in progress.

Life comes at you fast

San Francisco has been experiencing some heavy wind conditions lately, and an unfortunate victim to the numerous debris being blown around is my brother. A few rocks that my mother have been collecting over the years flew off the balcony ledge due to the strong winds, and a particular one landed on my brother’s parked car, right on the trailing edge of the trunk lid. Obviously, as a fellow car enthusiast who is deeply passionate about cars, this incident pained my brother a lot, having to deal with a fresh imperfection that’s through no fault of his.

As someone who has a few years on my brother, and used to be just as obsessive compulsive about keeping his car as perfect as possible, I cautioned him that stuff like this is just the nature of the beast, and it happens to everybody. The only way to keep a car absolutely pristine is to parked it indoors under climate-control and never drive it. Our brand of car enthusiasm is actually driving and using our cars, so we simply have to take the lumps as they come. Damage can be fixed, and worse comes to worse, entire cars can be replaced. Merely objects, after all.

Of course, it’s easy to preach calm and stoicism when it isn’t you who is suffering the anguish, and as life would have it, I quickly got my own dose of minor car damage to deal with. I was out driving the 911 as usual this past weekend, and on an especially narrow mountain road, I dipped the right-front wheel off the tarmac while trying to avoid an oncoming car that wasn’t keen on keeping lane discipline - it was either that or crash. With the GT3 being super low to the ground, the lack of suspension travel meant the car briefly bottom-out on the section immediately next to the wheel. The scrape of plastic and metallic was the stuff of car enthusiast nightmares.

Luckily, the damage to the 911 is only a small road-rash to the underside of the front pan, and one broken bumper retainer, which costs $50 dollars to replace (For a simple piece of plastic! The Porsche-tax is real). The damage to my psyche however was a constant battle between dwelling on the mistake and taking the same advice I gave to my brother. Old OCD habits die really difficultly, and I had to keep reminding myself that one, shit like this happens when you put miles on the car, and two, the damage is superficial and completely out of sight once the broken retainer is replaced.

The moment you think you’ve matured enough to handle things properly that used to bother you mentally, life will throw you a test to find out for sure. As I always say, with anything in relations to mental health, it’s a work in progress.