Blog

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

Bad news good news

It’s been a tough few days for the tech world: yesterday, AirBnb announced it’s cutting a massive 25% of its workforce, and today, UBER said it will be eliminating over 3,700 positions. It appears the tech sector won’t be immune to the job crunch caused by the coronavirus, especially if the business relies on people being out and about, and traveling to places. It's tough seeing other people lose their jobs, because it seeps in some doubt and anxiety about my own job security. You think you’ll safely weather through this and then suddenly, you get release papers; surely, many at AirBnb and UBER got such a shock.

The personnel cuts at these two companies have direct consequence to where I live, because both are headquartered here in San Francisco. This many high-paying jobs disappearing means people will leave, and that should cause downward pressure on rental prices, if classic supply and demand is to be followed. Not to be a shark smelling blood in the waters about this - you’d hope to be empathetic during these times - but that would be excellent news for me. If I’m lucky enough to still have employment out of this lockdown, I plan to finally move out of the house.

Talk about good timing.

The cost of rent in the San Francisco Bay Area is notoriously one of the highest in the nation, and before COVID-19 happened, there was no end in sight to those absurd prices because the city/region is super slow to build new housing to meet demand. The standard one-bedroom apartment costs nearly as much as my entire take-home pay, which is just insane because I make a solidly middle-class income. Those of us outside of the tech sector have somewhat low-key wished for a recession so that these people would move away from the area, and rent would go back down to slightly more affordable.

Again, the assumption is that I myself doesn’t get swept along with those job losses during the imagined recession. Well, the downturn is very real right now, and I’m lucky to still be afloat above the waters. Fingers crossed that continues.

Early evening grocery shopping in Guangzhou.

The Macbook Pro got refreshed?!

Such is the state of the current situation that yesterday Apple released an update to the 13-inch Macbook Pro and I didn’t find out about it until this morning. Without the ability to gather into fancy auditoriums to launch products - replete with a live video of course, these silent releases from Apple get lost with all the other more pressing news that’s going on right now. Maybe this isn’t the time to get excited about a refreshed laptop when a fifth of the country is unemployed, and the economic outlook is massively uncertain.

Personally, I am not looking to spend money on anything that isn’t essential. This is not meant as criticism towards those of you who are lucky to still be employed, and the dreariness of being stuck at home every single day is best interrupted by a few joyful online shopping sessions. I’ve heard from a podcast that distributors of aftermarket automotive parts are having their best month, because the bored enthusiasts with money are finally getting around to their respective car projects.

If only I had a garage.

Anyways, the newly updated 13-inch Macbook Pro signals the final phase-out of the much-maligned ‘butterfly’ keyboard. Every single new laptop Apple now sells has the revised ‘scissor’ keyboard mechanism that promises to not commit seppuku at the first hint of a bread crumb. As an owner of a 2019 15-inch Macbook Pro, I have to say I dearly love the typing feel of the butterfly mechanism, though indeed I have to clean the deck religiously because I don’t want it to fail. Like an Italian sports car, when it works, it performs beautifully, but more often than not it’s going to be in the shop for repairs.

But car enthusiasts love Italian sports cars; I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who loves the butterfly keyboard - its terrible reliability be damned, and am sad to see it sunset into the annals of Apple’s audacious failures. I’m certainly going to enjoy typing on my Apple laptop for many more years to come; now is not the time to upgrade to the latest and greatest simply because I have the money.

Fancy seeing out these British exports in Guangzhou.

May the 4th be with you

This is strange times to be celebrating Star Wars Day, isn’t it? Wishing each other “May the 4th be with you” has a decidedly different tone this year given everything that is going on with the coronavirus. The familiar phrase is no longer just a silly pun on an iconic movie line, but rather something more personal and true: I genuinely hope some higher power will be on your side, so you will get through this lockdown period relatively okay.

The melancholy doesn’t stop the festivities though, and it shouldn’t really because we could use something - anything - joyous to distract us from our current situation. Kudos to the teachers I heard about wearing Star Wars costumes during Zoom class sessions, and shoutout to my group of friends who did not forget to wish each other a happy Star Wars Day. The complete nine films of the main saga was also made available today streaming on Disney+, perfect for a marathon watch session, though with today being a proper weekday, I sadly have work.

Because I would totally binge-watch consecutively the entire Skywalker story, except for the very last one - Episode 9. I won’t rehash precisely how hugely disappointing The Rise of Skywalker is; May the 4th is a day of positivity. I’ll simply say that after watching the movie in theatres back in December of last year, I have no desire whatsoever to see it again, on any platform. Perhaps my mind will change many, many years from now - maybe when I have kids of my own and I’m preordained to introduce them to the Star Wars canon. - but for now, the frustrations I have with Episode 9 are still very strong.

This talk about movies, however, is making me miss going to the theatres. While I greatly love the home movie watching experience I’ve built for myself (read: I’ve got a large television), for the truly “event” movies - like Avengers Endgame from last year - the cinematic experience with a group of fans is unique and inspirational. (Of course, you would only be able to see such films in theatres, unless you are willing to wait the typical four months for it to come out on digital media.) The arrival of May means the traditional Summer movie season is upon us, though for obviously reasons, most of the slate have been pushed back.

We look forward to the day when normal returns. May the 4th be with you. Always.

Thankfulness 2020

The emotion I want to convey right now is that of gratitude.

With everything that’s going on with the coronavirus, it’s easy to be caught up in the moment, become always reactive to things changing rapidly all around us. Days start blending in together, and you’re simply doing your best to find some semblance of normalcy, especially so in the earlier days of the current crisis, when you have no idea what new paradigm shift the next hour will bring. When you’re so busy trying to stay afloat, there’s no time to take a step back and look.

It was not until I start detaching from the situation and started to view things from on a macro level that I realize how lucky me and my family have been during this period of shelter-in-place. First and most important we are healthy and doing well physically, which is worth absolutely everything in these hazardous times. Secondly, our financial situation have remained very solid: my job allows me to work from home, and my dad who does general contracting hasn’t skipped a beat, because construction projects never really took a break.

Even the least fortunate of us - my brother - was lucky to get a month’s salary for March, and then filed for unemployment. Thanks to the generosity of the federal government in expanding the amount of unemployment insurance, it means he’ll be quite okay during this quarantine as well.

Indeed we are extremely lucky; there’s no other way to put it. Obviously I’m incredibly grateful that it turned out this way for us; I only need to go on twitter for a few moments to get a reminder that countless others haven’t got it so easy in this era of COVID-19. I hope to never take this for granted.

I am thankful for this little bugger too.

Independence finally?

With most people that have the privilege of work-from-home are currently working from home, the conventional wisdom that’s been going around is that this drastic change in the way we work going to cause a mini paradigm shift in how companies operate going forward, especially in the tech sector. If this somewhat coerced exercise proves that it’s possible for a company to operate just fine with a remote workforce, then it makes no logical sense to continue to rent real estate simply so that everyone can be in the same room. Especially so in the San Francisco Bay Area, where rent is utterly astronomical.

It’s being theorized the shift to working from home permanently will have further downstream affects, namely workers moving away from ultra expensive city centers and towards other parts of the country where a dollar goes way farther. Much like it doesn’t make sense for companies to keep paying rent, there’s no reason for employees to live in areas where four-figure rents would only net you a single room, if they are able to literally be anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and still work. Smart folk are predicting there will be an exodus of sorts of workers moving to the cheaper parts of the country.

And that is quite okay with me, speaking as a native San Franciscan. The downward pressure on housing demand, should the prediction of masses of people leaving the area comes true, means I’ll finally be able to comfortably afford the rent in the city I grew up in. It would be a lovely thing indeed to finally be able to move out of my parents place and attempt the independent life for the very first time. I did not skip town for university, so I lack the momentary emancipation that most of my peers experienced during our college days. I think the time is right for such a move.

If me and my family are lucky to make it out to the other side of this coronavirus mess healthy and employed, I’ll take a serious look at moving out of the house. The externalities of the virus have perversely created a situation where it actually make sense now. We shall see!

For a rainy day

These day it’s very tempting to go shopping for things online while we are stuck in our homes, especially for new items to keep ourselves entertained while we are still barred from going outside. I follow a set of people on twitter who are heavily into cars like I am, and the most common thing those guys and gals have purchased during the lockdown is racing simulation equipment. I get it: we all love driving, and since we’re prevented from doing so in the actual, driving virtual ones in a video game makes for a convincing facsimile.

Seeing so many people hopping onto their favorite racing sims even inspired me to pull out my own set of pedals and wheel from the closet and fire up Assetto Corsa for first time in almost a year. It didn’t take long for the muscle memory to return, and because I’m sat in front of a massive 58-inch television, the immersion factor is considerable, and super fun.

But that’s a setup I’ve already bought; had this not been the case, I don’t think I would have spent the few hundred dollars in buying a set just for this quarantine situation. The future is highly uncertain right now, and even though I’m extremely lucky to work for the State of California at a fairly secure position, I don’t feel comfortable taking that for granted. Right now, any discretionary income is going into the rainy-day fund; should the future economy make a turn for the worse than it has already become, I want to be as ready as possible.

Obviously, how another person spend their money is absolutely none of my business, and I’d be lying if I haven’t been tempted many times to plop down money on frivolous things. This is not a criticism towards others, but rather an explanation of my attitude towards the present situation in regards to money. The hope remains we will weather this cleanly and safely out towards the other side.

A month's extension

Well, it’s officially official now: the shelter-at-home order has been extended until the end of May for the Bay Area’s six counties. In a somewhat surprising move (to me anyways), we will have a third continuous month of quarantine action. If you’d ask me early in March when this all started that we’d be in for lockdown until the beginning of June, I probably would have said “no chance”.

It is surprising that we are in for another month of stay-at-home because San Francisco never really saw the major outbreak that occurred in New York City and in Italy. Undoubtedly due to our early efforts to stop mass gatherings of people and start working from home, coronavirus cases here never increased exponentially, and our area hospitals remain calm and at the ready. Due to these factor I thought the city government may see fit to loosen some of the proverbial strings and gradually dial back in some normalcy. Well, the answer is no; we have 30+ more days of the current status quo.

And I have to say I am quite used to the quarantine situation that we have now. The major change in working from home have turned into something normal, and my weekends are fairly the same given that I’m an introverted shut-in anyways. I am itching for the rest of you to return to your regular lives, and personally I can’t wait to be able to do one of the things I love most in this world: driving. It’s the reason I’m low-key dismayed that San Francisco have move the endpoint one month further. As much as I enjoy being at home, the current situation remains very weird.

I think my mind subconsciously knows this as well; I’ve been having difficulty falling asleep lately, even though I literally have changed nothing with regards to my evening and night routine. I can’t even say it’s stress from work because being relegated to sitting in front of a computer in my room is actually an easier task than during normal times. I think the troubled sleep stems from very subtle anxiety with everything that’s going on outside; no matter what new routine I settle into, it will never feel completely right until the lockdown is over.

April went by unexpectedly quick; what’s another month, really?