Blog

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

China the powerful

The soft power of China is infamously tremendous and often times amazing to witness. Yesterday I woke up to a tweet of wrestler-turned-actor John Cena apologizing in Chinese on video. There’s many dimension to how wild that is. First, John Cena speaks mandarin quite decently! As a speaker of three languages, I am a big fan of learning a second language. A white guy from Boston learning Chinese is just not something you expect to see. Good for John.

Second, Cena is apologizing to the people of mainland China for referring to Taiwan as a separate country. The faux pas happened during the current press tour for the ninth Fast and Furious movie (I can’t wait to see that in an actual theatre). Amongst the many things you absolutely cannot say vis a vis China, calling Taiwan a country is up there near the top. So of course Cena had to say sorry to the Chinese people, via the Sina Weibo social network.

Because third, had he not apologized, Cena is risking the financial future of anything he is attached to. The Fast and Furious franchise does huge money in China. Imagine if Cena’s slip-up cause the film to be banned there. There goes nine-figures of revenue right out the window. The movie studio cannot have that, obviously, which is why Cena had to quickly release a mea culpa, in what looks akin to a hostage video.

Just another day of doing business in the People’s Republic. If corporations want those numerous Chinese dollars, they must answer to ruling party. Boycotts and bans are swift. as the likes of H&M and Adidas found out recently.

On a similar vein, you won’t ever find me speaking negatively about China. I have many relatives living over there that I very much would like to visit often. Last thing I want to do, is say or write something careless and then get banned from entering my country of birth. Good thing websites hosted on Squarespace are blocked by the great firewall anyways…

Waking on time

It’s been, what, two months since the clock moved forward an hour for daylight saving time? It has taken that long for me to finally readjust my sleeping schedule. For the past two months, I’ve been content with not setting an alarm, and letting myself wake up whenever. Usually that occurs at around 6:30AM, about half and hour later than my usual 6AM alarm. On certain mornings it would be past 7 o’clock. Must have been tiring days prior.

Well, the natural wake experiment is over. Due to my tendency of scrolling through twitter in bed for at least half an hour, waking up just whenever is costing me time. The obviously solution would be to stop reading twitter in bed, instead of waking up earlier, but that’s far too logical and prudent for me. I enjoy my morning twitter read, the equivalent of reading the delivered newspaper every day.

But I also miss being up during the tranquil hours of early morning. On both days this past weekend, I forced myself up right at 6AM for various activities. Being up and active during those ungodly hours, while everyone else is still sound asleep, is the magic of having an early sleep-wake schedule. Nothing better than reading a book in absolute silence with a cup of coffee in hand, while the view outside the window does it morning color dance. Or a stroll through San Francisco chinatown before any shop have even opened.

This is why I’ve once again set an alarm clock for 6AM - everyday. No more “sleeping in”; morning hours shall be utilized to the maximum. The past few days I got my hour of daily reading in before I moved on to breakfast. It’s really nice.

Induction life

One of the most useful tool for living alone in a small studio apartment is an induction stovetop. A simple single-top unit from IKEA and be had for less than fifty dollars. That is what I bought, and it works magnificently. The best attribute of induction stove compared to a gas stove is that the lack of an open flame. Not only it is safer, it heats up the room less, too.

And it would be super easy to add another, to have two cooking surfaces. However, I haven’t gotten that fancy just yet. For now I am quite okay with cooking one thing at a time.

The pain-point of induction stoves is of course the need to have induction-ready pots and pans. Lucky for me, I had to buy a whole new set for the move anyways, so it was only a matter of bringing a magnet when I went shopping for kitchen stuff. If the magnet sticks to the bottom of a pot, then it is able to be used on an induction top. Best of all, should I ever move to a place with a gas stove, the induction-ready stuff works just as well.

Another quirk is that without a visible flame to look at, it takes a bit of trial and error to get accustomed to what a certain wattage setting means in terms of heating power. What is the correct wattage to perfectly cook an egg to sunny side up? How big is 800 watt, really? The answers will take some time to figure out.

But once you do, I don’t think you’d go back to open-flame gas stoves. The safety and convenience factor is huge in induction’s favor. Cleaning up is ridiculously easy: a few spray of your favorite all-purpose cleaner, then wipe with a towel. That’s it! One flat surface with zero crooks and crannies for food stuff to get stuck in. It’s brilliant.

PTO request

I guess the pandemic is truly over:I finally requested vacation time at work! The last two weeks of June will be the first time since the beginning of this COVID-19 mess that I’ll be taking time off. It coincides quite nicely with California’s plan to fully reopen on the June 15th. The possibilities are endless, even though there are no concrete plans as of this writing.

Given I still can’t yet visit Asian countries without a fortnight’s worth of quarantine, I really didn’t plan to take vacation this summer. Staying at home for two weeks just doesn’t have that much appeal to me. However, our manager is encouraging people to take time off. A friend of mine wants to go either up to the Pacific Northwest, or down south towards Los Angeles. So I figured why the heck not. Let’s see what those two weeks will develop into.

Difficult to say whether I will go back to traveling multiple times a year once everything truly goes back to normal. I rent a place now, so my disposable income isn’t what it used to be. Then again, I also don’t have a Porsche 911 GT3 to pay for and upkeep, so I reckon it all balances out. What will be weird is the first time I get back on an airplane. I wonder when I do fly again, if masks mandates will till a thing onboard. I’ll be wearing one for sure.

What I should do is take the BMW M2 on a road-trip. But have you seen the gas prices lately? The car does get around 25 miles to the gallon on the highway, so it shouldn’t be too bad taking it far away. The M2 could really use the miles. These days the only time I drive it is when I do my weekly grocery shopping, and visiting my parents across town. I am paying too much money for it to simply sit.

I think I’ll drive it somewhere far during some of the two weeks I have off in late June.

I went to school with that guy

Last night I was in bed scrolling through twitter on the phone (as one does) before shuteye. I came across a tweet on the KTVU account detailing the suspect linked to recent shootings in the Potrero Hill neighborhood. Reading the name and looking at the picture, the immediate thought came to my head: “I think I went to middle school with this guy!?”

This morning I message the lone classmate from middle school that I still call a close friend today. “Didn’t we go to middle school with this guy?” Said friend wasn’t sure, so I dug up the 8th grade yearbook. Sure enough, there the suspect was, right amongst former classmates I vaguely remember. It’s been two decades since middle school!

It’s kind of surreal to realize that I went to middle school with an alleged murderer. It’s just not something you think about back then, obviously. The childhood years are full of hope and goals. Even for students who aren’t academically gifted or behaviorally sound. You kind of expect everyone to figure it out eventually. The system sure gives people plenty of chances. Can’t get into a regular four-year university? There’s redemption at a junior college.

In the yearbooks, they never poll for most likely to murder someone. Not only because that would be wildly inappropriate - even as a joke - but also it’s not something you imagine would ever happen. You wish only the best for your school peers. I guess ultimately it’s jarring to see the divergent path of someone like myself and the former classmate who is now a suspect in a murder case. What were the influences and consequences that lead him down the dark path?

An intensely traumatic childhood, most likely.

Buy in bulk

One of the conundrums of living alone is: do you buy toilet paper and paper towels in bulk? A 32-pack of toilet rolls from Costco will last me well over a year. It’s not about saving money really, but rather it’s allocating the space to store the extras. Thankfully, I have plenty of unused cabinet space in the kitchen. If I were scarcer on storage space, I think I would buy a smaller batch from Target instead.

I mean, why move within walking distance to a Target if I don’t take advantage of it to the maximum?

I actually go through paper towels at quite a good pace, so the industrial-size pack from Costco is actually worth the initial storage hassles. My Asian mother would surely disapprove of how rapidly I go through a roll. I can remember her treating paper towels as if it were paper gold: only under the worse circumstances should I take a piece to use. Nowadays, I’d rip off a fresh sheet just to mop up some water on the bathroom sink. The Brawny branded towels do absorb very nicely.

The environmentalist part of me is just screaming in anger, but us first-world humans don’t care about that stuff when it comes to providing convenience and comfort for ourselves. Incentives have to come from above. The whole reason we’re getting the electric revolution in cars is not because of Elon Musk, or any altruistic feelings in the customer. It’s the super stringent European emissions regulations that are forcing automakers to ditch internal combustion.

I think if you have the storage space, you should still buy everyday essentials in bulk. Even if would take forever to go through a pack. Like the 24 dish scrubbing pads that would last me for many years to come. Something enticing about a low per-unit cost, even though we make good money now. Or perhaps I’m simply a hoarder at heart.

Forced relaxation

Part of being an ever aging adult is that some days you wake up and feel like shit. For absolutely no reason. This past Sunday was just that kind of day for me. I woke up in a massive fog of unwell, plus the pain of a right-side neck muscle from having slept on it incorrectly. I did nothing strenuous nor taxing on Saturday, yet there I was feeling like crap the day following. It never fails: you don’t realize how much you take feeling well for granted until you get sick.

It probably isn’t COVID, because I am typing this on the next day Monday, and I feel absolutely peach. Also, I’m fully vaccinated with the best vaccine available: Pfizer. According to new guidelines from the CDC, I have nothing to worry about whatsoever. No masks anywhere!

Anyways, feeling like crud on Sunday allowed me to do the one thing I can’t force myself to do: nothing. Yes, even on weekends when I am suppose to relax and chill, I usually still stack it full with stuff to do. Like working out, practicing the piano, or read. I didn’t have the mental power to do any of those things yesterday, so I sat in front of the laptop watching stuff, while keeping hydrated with plenty of fluids.

It took a bout of sickness for me to take a “day off”, which is kind of sad if you think about it. What is it about me that can’t seem to let everything go for a day and simply laze around? All the stuff to do will still be there the next day (and the next day). Even machines need to cool down and take a break every once in a while. I chuckle when I hear friends say they’re just going to chill for the rest of the day. It’s more envy than anything: I wish I can bring myself to do the same sometimes.

But soon as I woke up this morning feeling normal, it was back at it again. Break time is over.