Blog

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

To vacation or not

Summer is nearly upon us, and for those of us working in education, that means we can plan for some vacation time. 2020 was obviously a lost year, but with the vaccines proliferating nicely throughout the country, we can indeed entertain the thought of going away to places. Just recompense for being stuck at home for more than one year.

And it seems the proverbial floodgates have opened. My friend is heading off to Hawaii around Memorial Day, and the cost to rent a car is utterly extravagant relative to what it should be. Vaccinated people are planning to travel in droves, and prices for the touristy stuff are reflecting that demand. I haven’t checked, but I bet a plane ticket to Hawaii for the summer months is decently above average in price.

I’m in a conundrum, because while I do want to take vacation and travel somewhere, the places I want to go are all outside of America. I would love to go back to South Korea or Taiwan. Sadly, as of right now, traveling outside of this country is still prohibitive due to two-week quarantining requirements in most other countries. I only ever take two weeks of vacation at a time total, so I can’t spend all of that stuck in safety limbo.

The vacation I want to have is not a possibility, therefore should I even bother requesting time off this summer? I guess it would be prudent and healthy to take the time anyways even if I’m just staying home. It’s too early to say right now: if the aforementioned Asian countries relax their quarantine requirements in the coming months, I would definitely quickly make a change of plans.

But so would everyone else. I reckon traveling this year - especially outside of America - is going to be an expensive endeavor. Come on, guys, we make money now…

A house for you

It’s crazy to see that amidst this unprecedentedly hot housing market, both my close friend and my cousin have closed on houses recently. Houses in San Francisco. I think if you go back and asked us in high school if we think we would ever pay over a million dollars for a house, we would say that is impossible. In our mind, million-dollar homes are the province of the rich and wealthy, of which we are decidedly not.

And yet that’s the entry price for a decent house here in San Francisco. I feel overwhelming joy for my friend. He’s going to get married soon, and buying a house was definitely on the checklist to do before settling down onto the next phase of life. I just didn’t think he would make the move during this housing madness. There are way more buyers than houses for sale, and with interest rates at historic lows, the scale is tipped heavily towards sellers.

But sometimes you have to make the move, even if the conditions aren’t ideal. So what if people are overbidding each other? For a home to presumably live in for a huge chunk of the rest of your life, a few hundred-thousand can be amortized nice and long. The crucial thing is my friend gets to stay in the city he grew up in, and live close to his family. I say that’s money well spent, even if it is seven-figures for not really a lot of house.

Plus there’s the remodeling.

It is slightly jarring to see my cousin and friend getting married and buying homes. Meanwhile, I’ve barely started embarking on proper bachelorhood and living on my own. I guess I shouldn’t expect the people around me to all be at the same stage of life. Some will for sure move faster, like my other friend who’s already got two young kids. Perhaps I’ll feel some pang of missing out when everybody else joins in on the fray, but thankfully that day won’t come for awhile.

Forgot how good it sounds

A crucial component of my piano learning setup is a proper set of headphones. The Yamaha CP88 keyboard I bought doesn’t have any speakers built-in. I don’t think my housemates want to hear my horrible beginner's pecking for an hour every single day, so some discreet headphones is the way to go. Not to half-ass anything - look at the price of the piano alone - I went for a pair of relatively expensive beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO.

Sound quality is important, but so is comfort. If I’m going to be wearing headphones for hours, I don’t want to feel burdened by them after 30 minutes. The DT 770 PRO fulfills that superbly, with excellent comfort and zero fatigue after an hour of wear. I would probably use the beyerdynamics to listen to music regularly, if not for the fact it is corded.

Indeed, after many years of wireless music listening with various AirPods and Bose noise-cancelling headphones, it’s very difficult to go back to being tethered to a cord. There’s no freedom to move, with means wearing them to cook or exercise is a complete non-starter. The cord being there at all can get in the way and be rather annoying. The only reason I went with wired cans to pair with the piano is because I don’t want to introduce any lag.

Well, and also because the CP88 keyboard doesn’t support any wireless connections.

I did try using the DT 770 PRO for some typical music listening, and I have to say I had absolutely forgotten how awesome a good pair of headphones can sound. The clarity of the bass and high notes is amazing. My AirPods sound like crap in comparison, as bad as the headphones they hand out for free on airplanes. It’s kind of funny how much quality we are willing to trade away in the name of convenience.

Not to say I’m giving up the wireless stuff anytime soon. However, I think for serious music listening - like hearing an album for the first time - I’m going to plug in the beyerdynamics from now on.

Baseball is truly back

Baseball has been back for about two weeks now, and the games are something nice to keep on in the background while I go about other tasks. I can’t say I follow the San Francisco Giants like I used to, but I will always root for them to do well. The days of spending three hours a day watching baseball is truly over, and that’s been the case even before the pandemic.

It feels as if there weren’t any baseball last year at all, though obviously the league did manage to hold a 60 game season late in the year, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the World Series champion of 2020. An asterisk on them not because the team isn’t deserving, but to mark the year of the pandemic, where everything turned weird. Watching baseball on TV with no crowds in attendance is thoroughly unexciting, which is why I did very little of it last season.

With America doing a fantastic job of vaccinating its population, fans are once again allowed back into the stadiums. The ebb and flow of the crowd’s emotions throughout the game has been sorely missed. The cheers when the team scores, or the groans when the umpire misses a crucial call. These elements are essential to baseball, even though they don’t directly affect the outcome of a game one bit.

And it is the return of the fans in the stands that I am now happy to keep baseball on in the background. So that I can hear when something happens, good or bad, because the crowd noise will alert me to it. It’s also nice to watch an inning or two when I’m taking a break from whatever I am doing. Best of all, it’s good to see kids in attendance being given caught foul balls. That’s the magic of baseball that you don’t get from other sports: a souvenir and a memory to last a lifetime.

Fingers pain

It’s only day four of taking up the piano again, and all can say is: ouch. More than a decade has passed since I last consistently touched a piano, and I had forgotten just how heavy those keys are. Maybe I should’ve bought the super entry level 61-key electric piano from Costco, instead of the ultra realistic feel of a Yamaha stage keyboard. I’m sure this is doing wonders for my arthritic future; my fingers are definitely getting a workout.

I’d also forgotten how uncomfortable piano benches are. There’s no back support, obviously, and I’m practically sitting on the edge of the seat. There’s very little cushion to speak of, so I’m getting butt cramps midway through a session. Oh, and I’m suppose to always keep the proper posture: back straight, hands and shoulders relaxed. Easier said than done, of course, after slouching my way through life. I’d surely get beaten by the stick if I were taking lessons from a real piano teacher.

Instead, I am taking lessons from an app, and I am starting right at the beginning. Even though I’ve taken a solid year of piano back in high school, it’s been so long since that it would be good review to start completely over. I vow to learn reading music notes properly this time, and it’s nicer to my mangled adult fingers to start slow and simple.

The Piano Marvel app keeps track of consecutive days I’ve practiced, so it’s also a motivation factor to keep the streak going. It’s early days yet, but I don’t think I’ll be slacking off anytime soon. Unlike the forced learning at school for children, the piano is something I chose to pursue as an adult. There’s an element of joy that keeps me going rather easily. I feel productive as well: learning an instrument sure beats wasting that same hour everyday on YouTube.

The lucky flow

The best days are when you get into a flow, and everything seems to fall into place. This past Sunday was like that. I woke up at normal time, and as per usual on a weekend day, I lazed around in bed reading up on the latest nothing from twitter. What I really should do is get up and take the car out to the wash before I go my parents’ for breakfast.

It would be too easy to keep being lazy and skip that, but natured called and I actually had to get up to use the restroom. Well, since I’m out of the bed anyways, might as well do take the BMW M2 to the car wash. The poor thing has sat outdoors for two months since the last time I washed it, so I am happy to spray the layer of crud off the paint.

Quite a few people had the same thought as me: the car wash place was decently busy for 8:00 AM on a Sunday. I got in line behind someone that looks to be just about to start the process. However, the guy couldn’t get his credit card to work for some reason, so he took off in frustration after a few minutes. This lucky happenstance meant I didn’t have to wait much at all for my turn. The same smugness that comes from choosing the faster checkout lane at the grocery store.

I got to my parents’ house on time, feeling good about having done an errand in the morning. I even managed to find a nice parking spot right on the same block, which in that particular neighborhood is practically a miracle. It was looking to be a good day.

After breakfast I had to take our pet kitten to the vet for vaccinations. The typically busy vet means finding parking in front is nearly impossible. But on this Sunday, I found a spot to park right in front of the entrance (albeit blocking a fire hydrant, but if it wasn’t me, it would definitely be another patron). The appointment took a total of 10 minutes, and soon I was back on my way to enjoying the rest of my Sunday.

Go with the flow, and sometimes life will reward you.

One car life

Okay, maybe I’m cut out to have more than one car at a time.

For past month or so, I’ve been caretaking my brother’s Mazda Miata. That is in addition to my own car, the BMW M2 Competition. As with most new things, it was fantastic at first. I love driving the little roadster, and best of all, it had a manual transmission. Top-down cruising in the mountains on a sunny day is just about as perfect as motoring gets.

But the reality is, I don’t have the time nor energy to upkeep both cars. I don’t put enough miles on the M2 as is! Having yet another car to put miles on means taking away seat time in the BMW. And I am paying way too much in insurance to simply have it sit around looking pretty in front of my home. Cars are meant to be driven, and sadly I don’t have the capacity to drive more than one.

I don’t know how other car enthusiasts who owns multiple cars do it. Either they apportion more time towards driving, or they let some cars sit for long periods. I love cars immensely, but I have other hobbies as well, so it can’t take up my life entirely. While it is indeed nice to have some variety in the cars I have access to, I just lack the bandwidth. I already don’t like washing my own car, imagine now having two to do!

So it is with some surprising relief that I gave the Miata back to my brother earlier this week. It’s off my hands (for now), and more time to concentrate solely on the M2. I reckon I am going to remain a single car owner for the foreseeable future, now that I’ve had a taste of the dual-car life. Be careful what you wish for, as they say.