Blog

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

No mods for old man

It’s been nearly two years of ownership with my BMW M2 Competition. The common question I get from fellow car guys is if I’m going to do any modifications to it. Because as of right now the car is still bone stock as it left the factory. There isn’t even a decal on the windows, zero signs of personalization whatsoever. The days of spending the next paycheck on car parts is truly passed and gone.

It’s not that I wouldn’t want to do modifications to the M2. The problem is, the parts I would want to put on the car are so god damn expensive. $200 set of lowering springs and $1000 set of wheels this is not. When you’re dealing with cars the caliber of a BMW M2, a proper suspension upgrade is $3,200 for a set of Ohlin dampers. If I want to change the wheels, only a $4,000 set of M Performance wheels will do. What about an exhaust upgrade? The Akrapovic unit made out of titanium I very much would like is $5,700.

Car parts - the good stuff, anyways - are incredibly expensive! Just those three items I mentioned alone is enough money to buy a whole other used car. Never mind the fact that I also want to wrap the M2 in red - a color it never came with from the factory. Had red been offered - it was available in the lower trims of the 2 series - I would have bought it in that color instead of white.

So yes, I would love to do modifications to the M2. But I’m at a point in life I am unwilling (and shouldn’t, honestly) to spend nearly $15,000 to replace parts on a car that works perfectly fine. I rather save that money towards a down payment on a whole other car. Like the forthcoming Honda Civic Type R…

Going round in circles

On the roads near the San Francisco State campus, there are a few roundabouts. A type of road feature more often seen in Europe, it’s an efficient way to filter traffic connecting multiple roads, without resorting to stop lights. Unfortunately, because roundabouts are so rare here in the States, often times drivers have no idea what to do with them. The rules are simple, really: anyone in the roundabout have absolute right of way. All other traffic hoping to enter has to yield.

I think that’s the problem: yielding. I encounter too many drivers these days who loathe to wait for any seconds longer. You should see their frustration queuing at a red light! God forbid you’re the car blocking them from making a right turn on red.

Anyways, it’s always fun during the start of fall semesters because there would be new drivers to the area. And invariably some of them would do something crazy in the roundabouts near campus. Just the other day I was following a car inside the roundabout circle, and it actually stopped to let another car in. Luckily the other driver knew the rules, and waved the erroneous driver off.

Hey, at least it’s not someone going in the wrong direction! Public service announcement: roundabouts only goes one way - counter-clockwise in America.

But because this is America, and our driving standards to get a license is notoriously poor, I can never relax even during times when I have the absolute right of way. Never know when the next car approaching the circle don’t know or simply don’t care to yield to roundabout traffic. So I never assume: ease off the throttle, be prepared to brake. And if the car is a Nissan Altima, there’s a high chance it will not yield at all.

You'll miss it when it's gone

I go almost every Friday over to my friends’ house to see their two boys. Well, primarily for a free dinner, but it doesn’t change the fact the kids are there as well. At the tender age of six and four, the changes week by week can be rapid. One week you can kiss the eldest hello and goodbye, then the next he doesn’t want you to anymore. Because he learned at school that’s not what boys do. At least I’m not the mother who got asked to stop calling him “baby”. That must hurt!

This is why when it comes to young kids, I’ve come up with a saying: “You’ll miss it when it’s gone.” Especially the minor things you currently complain about with their behavior. Still wanting you to feed them food even though they’re six years old? You’ll miss the bonding time when they soon would rather eat by themselves, away from the dinner table. Asking you too many questions with that typically endless curiosity of kid? You’ll miss it come the teenage years, and it’s you who desperately want to communicate.

I’m not sure my friends appreciate me saying they’ll miss it when it’s gone. After all, I’m only there for about three hours out of the week. I don’t have to deal with those behavioral annoyances constantly. It’s entirely possible that if and when I have kids of my own, my tune would be different. Feed you? Feed yourself! You’re six! Carry you? You can walk just fine.

One things for sure: if I do have kids, they will get my absolute undivided attention. The time for hobbies and personal interests is over. Any kid will and should usurp all of those things. I come home from a long day at work and guess what? It’s time to play with the kids. No more piano practice. No more joys of reading.

Which is why I’m not in any hurry.

A tall crane

My neighborhood is the residential type with homes no taller than three stories. The tallest thing nearby is San Francisco State University, of which the highest building on campus is nine stories. The university is in the middle of constructing a new science building. Consequently, a giant crane have been erected for that purpose. This thing absolutely dominates the skyline, and honestly, a bit of an eye sore.

I get it now: I can see why NIMBYs all over protest against tall, dense housing. It’s not very nice to have your horizon of pure sky suddenly get obstructed with some monstrosity. What NIMBYs have to do is admit that is the real reason for their opposition - in additional to lowering the values of their home, of course. They chose to buy in a suburban area, and indeed it would suck to have that changed from under them.

Saves us the "we don’t want luxury apartments and developers to get rich” bullshit.

Just because I understand NIMBYs, doesn’t mean I am with them. San Francisco need to build more housing, full stop. And it cannot all be concentrated in the north east part of the city. Our nearby Stonestown mall is planning to develop addition apartments and shop areas to surround the existing mall. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets approval, because the skyline of our neighborhood will be changing with it.

Who knows if I’ll even be around to see that come to fruition. Not because I’d be dead, but because I might have moved away. Major constructions in this country - unless it’s a stadium/arena for a sports team - takes a long time. That aforementioned science building at San Francisco State won’t be complete for another four years!

Not so magic keyboard

Recently I got my hands on an Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. This tiny piece of aluminum and plastic costs a whopping $150 dollars. A $50 dollar premium over the already expensive Magic Keyboard that doesn’t have Touch ID. All for the privilege of unlocking your Mac with your finger.

I was intrigued: my MacBook Pro lives “clamshell” mode plugged into a Pro Display XDR at all times. Therefore I don’t use the built-in keyboard. Which means I can’t use the built-in Touch ID sensor. Gone is the convenience advantage to not having to type in my password every time. It’s the one feature I miss most in running the MacBook Pro in closed position.

The $150 dollar keyboard from Apple fixes this problem, but I was never going to pay that kind of money just for the convenience. And now that I’ve had one on hand to test, my choice is confirmed. Indeed it is wonderful to be able to wake and unlock the Mac from sleep in one press of the button. However, the keyboard itself is utterly crap. The deck is so shallow and thin that it’s like typing on a piece of paper. Especially coming from a keyboard with full-height mechanical keys.

The ease of Touch ID unfortunately cannot trump typing comfort. I can foresee getting hand fatigue rather quickly in using the Magic Keyboard. It’s a shame Apple doesn’t allow third-party keyboard makers to integrate a Touch ID sensor. Or Apple can simply make a keyboard worth of avid typists. The company certainly used to make external keyboards with proper height and key travel.

I’m sticking with my Keychron K8.

Any song

I don’t really have any topic to write about today, so this will just be a train of thoughts. It’s important to keep up the writing even when I have absolutely nothing coming to mind. Often times I would troll twitter to look for news topics and whatnot, but this morning I am drawing a complete blank. I don’t want to write about former President Trump getting deposed in New York today. Hey look, the markets are up so far!

There’s a natural ebbs and flows when it comes to working in education. The middle of August is sort of the deep breath before plunging back into the bustle of the regular academic semester. But we don’t get to relax, at least not for those of us in IT support. We are busy getting things ready: the multitude of computer labs on campus, and making sure incoming new faculty have computers ready to go for Fall. With a week and half to go before classes begin, the deadline is quickly looming.

And then once I get home from all of that, I’ve got my own round of things to do. I imagine most other single people would simply collapse onto a couch and veg out of a bit before even thinking about dinner. Well, I don’t have a couch. Soon as I enter the home and put my stuff down, I start a pot of a rice cooking. In between that 30 minutes of cook time, I put my stuff away properly, wash up a bit, clean the floors, and cook the rest of dinner.

I take my time to eat dinner though, because that is never to be rushed. Not after an already long day at work. Once I’m done eating, then it’s an hour of piano practice. And after that I would get some reading in. Then it’s already time for bed. In a way I’m like a kid that have an evening of homework to do. That’s why I jokingly refer to my weekday nights as school nights.

That’s it for today! Off to work.

Dim sum on a Friday

My friends and I have been consistently getting together for lunch on Fridays. We live in the same area so it’s easy to meet up. They have the freedom of working from home, and I work only a few blocks from home. Lunch on Fridays is a nice reprieve from the work week, a sort of early start to the weekend. We’re privileged to have jobs that allow us the leisure to do so.

Last Friday we went a bit ambitious. Because our respective afternoons were decidedly not busy, we went to get dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. And if you’ve ever gone dim sum, you know those things take hours. At popular spots on weekends, you will be waiting an hour just to get seated. Koi Palace is significantly less busy on a Friday noon, but even then we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table. Apparently there were lots of party of fours.

I was not surprised, because I knew there would be plenty of Chinese uncles and aunties - since retired - lunching at Koi Palace. What better social spot than dim sum? You sit and chat for a few hours, whilst munching on this and that. I hope my parents will do exactly that as well, once they are retired. My related uncles and aunts already do so back home in China.

So it was a bunch of retired Chinese people, kids that don’t yet have school, and then us at Koi Palace. If you’re able to, I highly recommend going dim sum on a weekday. It’s far more chill and relaxed than weekends. But then you can probably say that for lots of places, like a museum or theatre.