Blog

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

When this is all over

As we go pass over a month of being under the shelter-in-place rules, the mind tends to wander into the many possibilities once this coronavirus business is over. What would I want to do first once I am able to go outside freely? Anything big I would change about my life now that this once-in-a-generation pandemic has put a mirror to our current lives?

Lots to thing about, honestly. The exercise also provides something to look forward to, that there’s light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, that this too shall pass, and we will get through it relatively okay.

Of course, I speak as someone supremely fortunate enough to have a job where I am able to work from home. The countless people who were laid off these past few weeks certainly don’t have the ability to indulge in the pleasant what-if thinking of the post-coronavirus world. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to worry about finding gainful employment once the lockdown is over, and the other tangential things that comes along with a job, such as paying rent, and having health insurance.

I have pondered about the negative possibilities with my job, steady as it may seem to be working for the State of California at a public university. It’s already a forgone conclusion that the Spring semester will remain completely remote and online; the mystery is what will happen in the next school year beginning in September. No one can say for sure what the situation will look like by then, and regardless I think enrollment will be significantly lower than usual. Less students means less funding for the college, and those of us working there just might have to bear some of that.

We all remember the furloughs following the financial crisis, though from a different perspective, that might be of some assurance. No one (that I know, anyways) got fired; we simply took a 10% pay-cut collectively. I hope it won’t come to that, but it’s certainly something to think about.

Whether good or bad, the best we can do is be ready.

We got a cat

What do you do during these trying times when you are stuck inside the house all day everyday with seemingly no end in sight? Well, if you’re my brother, you adopt a cat. Indeed, our family gained a new member today as the adoption of our black cat named ‘Oreo’ was completed. A two-year old that was formerly kept by another family that had to let it go, Oreo comes already highly domesticated, very docile and free of commotion. It’s like getting a baby after the phase where you don’t get any sleep because it’s crying the whole time.

I’m sure you’ve read the articles about how during this coronavirus quarantine, there’s been an uptick in pet adoption. I think it’s a really good thing that these animals are finding a home that wouldn’t have otherwise during normal circumstances. My brother’s been in a bit of funk since being laid off from the car dealership (obviously not a lot of car selling happening these days), so hopefully having a cat to occupy his time and mind will be a huge positive for him.

I always had the notion that if I were ever to get a pet, it’d be a cat over a dog. Not that I don’t like our canine friends, but a cat is far lower on maintenance, and they simply keep to themselves most of the time. There’s no need to take them for walks, and about the only sort of fuss with cat raising is trying to give them a bath, and trimming their claws. I never got around to adopting a cat, even as I entered deep adulthood, because I rather spend the money and time towards cars. Surely you’ve all kept up with my GT3 diaries.

Now that my brother did adopt one, however, I get to somewhat live the pet ownership experience through him. I think it’ll be nice to have a furry little monster running about the house, and a good distraction from what’s going on in the outside world.

Working from home

As a person whose job doesn’t really suit the mythical work-from-home paradigm - tech support at a university - the notion of having no commute and working from the leisure of my very own desk was not something that crossed my mind often. Not that I wouldn’t want to try it, but in my line of work, being remote is a disadvantage; computers are best troubleshooted in-person, when I can see and manipulate exactly what’s going on.

Well, the coronavirus is the paradigm shifter that keeps on giving. Within the span of one week, San Francisco State University took all its classes completely online, and effectively barred any non-critical personnel from coming to campus. All of a sudden, I was thrust into a role I’d thought would never happen: helping faculty and students with technical problems while sitting in my room. What once was thought impossible: converting the whole university to remote education, we now try and make the best of it, using the wonderful collaborative technologies such as Zoom and Slack.

It turns out, tele-troubleshooting can be effectively done, just in a wholly different sort of way. How you disseminate information goes from conversational to almost entirely in typed words: writing concisely and conveying difficult tasks using common language become the skill to have and develop. You’re force to be creative, too: the physical barrier of not being able to meet up is something we must navigate around, and on certain problems it’s a supreme challenge. For example, it’s not so easy to exchange a laptop that won’t power on when you don’t have access to backstock.

I have to say it’s been fun to come up with new solutions to these challenges, and it’s been a great learning experience thus far working from home. It’s also really nice to be able to climb out of bed, sit on my task chair, and already be ready for action. The one thing about “normal” work that I don’t miss at all is the dreadful commute. However, I do miss being at the actual office, seeing my coworkers, and the social collaboration that can only happen in-person. Video conferencing is great, but physical face-to-face interaction is crucial in our area of IT support.

There’s at least one more month of working from home to go. As with most things in life, I’m going to enjoy the process while it’s here.

Well well, how the turntables

As an Asian person who’s had a habit of casually wearing face masks when going outside, it’s funny to see that America has finally embraced it as a mechanism to decrease the chances of catching the coronavirus. Who’s the weird person wearing a medical mask now? I’m not saying I’m enjoying the schadenfreude of western countries finally accepting something that’s been a part of the culture in Asian countries for longest time, what with these dire circumstances and what not, but I’m not saying I don’t enjoy it, either.

It seems so basic and obvious that wearing face masks helps to decrease the spread of viruses and flu strains: otherwise, why are officials giving us tips like sneezing and coughing into our shirt sleeves, and to avoid touching our face? A face mask does brilliantly to preempt the need for those preventive actions, doesn’t it? Not only am I not spreading my own germs towards others, but I’m also (somewhat) shielded from the expelled particles of other people. This was especially useful when taking public transportation, and screw those who gave us Asians weird stares and hateful looks during the infancy of the COVID-19 outbreak for having face masks: we’re protected - that’s what matters most.

Anything that may help against a coronavirus that doesn’t discriminate between age or health status is worth doing; like playing the lottery, you can’t say for sure how severe symptoms will be should you be unlucky to catch it.

The example set by Asian countries like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, how they didn’t have to shut everything down because one, they had enough testing, and secondly, there’s a fierce habit of mask wearing already ingrained into the population. What did the western would do with this information? Much like their preparation for the coronavirus outbreak overall: absolutely nothing. It’s was only recently did the CDC reversed their stance and began to recommend face covering when heading out in public.

I get it, we should do everything we can to provide enough stock of masks and other protective equipment to frontline medical staff. That said, the general public should’ve be reprimanded for buying them for ourselves. Good thing though I already had a stash of face masks from before the virus hit our shores; I’m Asian, after all.

Eggs, bacon, and seaweed: the lunch of quarantine champions.

Back from the slumber

Hello, Internet friends. I hope you’ve been well, and the people you love are well, too, given the current circumstances we find ourselves in. It’s been nearly a month since I’ve written on these digital pages, and indeed it has taken that long for me to return to some form of normalcy. Things happened so quickly: from the first news of the coronavirus making it to the San Francisco Bay Area, to the enacting of the shelter-in-place directive that’s been extended to the beginning of May. It was a mad dash to get everything in order for the extended home-stay, the major one being the transition to working from home.

When you are confined to the house every single day of the week, the days do seem to blend in together. You’d wake up and have no idea what day of the week it is, needing a fumbling of the phone to tell you that it is Saturday, a day that you don’t need to login to the web portals at work. For a time, there was no normalcy to be found, even if home life and work life started to become consistent. Because I am consciously aware that it’s not okay on the outside world, no matter how nice it is to jump out of bed and right to the front of the computer screen to start working.

But I’m immensely fortunate; my line of employment at least provides a work-from-home option, rather than the alternative that millions of Americans are currently facing: getting laid off. I try hard to not take this for granted, and it only takes a few scrolls of the twitter feed to remind myself that there are far worse things that can currently happen than being stuck at home, virtually assisting people with the intricacies of Zoom meetings.

As terrible as it may sound, last week was the first time this new normal felt okay, and I was then ready to return to the habits I kept before this whole coronavirus thing happened. Perhaps I may have used the virus outbreak as a crutch and excuse to be lazy, but it wasn’t a complete waste: I took some of the time to get my mental health in order (I finally got around to a bit of Alan Watts). The anxiety is very real, and even though I’m an introverted homebody at heart, the need for everybody else to also stay at home is not something I particularly enjoy.

One of those habits is of course writing on this blog the standard four times a week, and starting today, I’ll be here to fulfill that self-prescribed duty. I’ll catch you all tomorrow.

SFSU cancels classes

It took one extra day then they’d probably wanted, but San Francisco State University - my employer - has suspended in-person classes for the rest of this month, due to the ongoing coronavirus threat. All instruction will be converted to remote and online starting next week, while for the rest of this one, staff and faculty is to prepare intently for that change, and the other affects of the prolonged campus shutdown.

You didn’t think I’d be free from the duties of work, did you? Plane tickets are cheap, sadly…

The horrible situation in Italy shows the potential chaos should the coronavirus be mishandled. While the circumstances in San Francisco are still in its infancy we should be doing everything we can to prevent a sudden and exponential increase in cases. That includes limiting or eliminating the opportunities for people to gather, such as crowded workspaces, and classrooms at schools. Of course, individually we should wash our hands thoroughly and often, while refraining from touching our faces with bare hands.

When this coronavirus business is done and over with (relatively quickly, we pray), I think it’s going to create paradigm shifts in different industries, perhaps lasting ones. Take for example universities taking classes completely online: what if a sizable amount of people - both students and teachers - discover that taking classes remotely and asynchronously is actually rather awesome? For a commuter campus like ours, who wants to sit in traffic for an hour, then fight desperately for parking, just to take one class for the day?

If enough people prefer the online method of attending class, I suspect there will be a big shift towards it even after things returns to normality. Support staff like us would benefit, too, because supporting remote classes using online ticketing systems can be done anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. The flexibility to work from home is not to be discounted lightly, because the commuter campus label for SF State doesn’t only apply to the people attending, but for a large portion of the staff as well. I have a colleague who travels all the way from Stockton; every single day.

Things are changing; it’s going to be a weird few weeks.

It's here

So things aren’t going well at all in San Francisco, as the coronavirus have finally reach this tiny peninsula of ours. As of current count there’s nine total cases, and if trends are to go by in other countries (Italy’s Lombardy region went from outbreak to complete lockdown in the span of a week), things are going to get worst before any corner is turned.

Meanwhile, I still have to go to school today, even though one of the guidances for preventing coronavirus contraction is social distancing. I guess packed lecture halls filled with students are quite okay. Hey, you only die once, am I right?

And I’m not saying we should shut down schools for a few weeks just because I would benefit from not having to physically go to work. Taking all classes online is no easy task, and I happen to work at the department that would be in charge of sorting it out and troubleshooting any potential issues. Should the campus close down, I’m not going to be chilling at home watching car videos on Youtube or taking the GT3 out for a spin - there will still be plenty of work to do remotely.

I did take the 911 out this past weekend for its weekly exercise, after performing a quick repair of a small plastic piece on the front underside. It’s been over two weeks since I took the car out for an extended drive, so on Sunday I had a fun and glorious four-hour stint covering nearly 200 miles in and around the San Mateo mountains. As I’ve said before: these high performance sports cars tend to be more reliable when they are driven regularly, getting the internals and oily bits up to operating temperature. It’s the ones that sit for months on end that skew towards having problems.

The long stint in the GT3 left me surprisingly exhausted, which is a reminder that my fitness is not what it used to be and needs to be. I think more cardio and going back to running is needed to gain back some of the lost endurance. That’s going to be tough to do in the interim with the coronavirus going around. It’s probably best for the rest of this month to stay home as much as possible.

Let’s see how the rest of this week develops.