Blog

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

Already great and wonderful

My aunt and uncle are moving to a new apartment soon. For the first time in nearly three decades, they will have a proper living room (proper, as the British like to say). And a living room deserves the single best furniture in a home that isn’t the bed: a super comfortable couch.

Is there a better feeling than plopping down on a couch after a long day at work? I don’t think so. Even in this tiny studio apartment of mine, I bought a chaise lounger because the relaxation of laying down is that important to me. As much as I prefer the Japanese aesthetic of limited furniture and floor-based seating, the West got it correct: a large couch is where it is at.

This sort of comfort used to be the domain of kings and aristocracy. Nowadays, any common man can afford a couch with bit of saving. Perhaps it’s incorrect to compare timelines this far apart, but truly, the middle class of today live a life better than monarchs of old. Emperors of China wouldn’t even be able to comprehend luxuries like flushing toilets, and on-demand hot water. He did have a comfy dragon throne to sit on, though…

I think these sort of comparisons are an important exercise to keep us in perspective. Sure it may be worthwhile to keep chasing the better next, but what we already have - the most basic of modern living standards like regularly scheduled garbage disposal - is pretty great and wonderful.

Pay our respects

In Chinese culture, it is the season of Ching Ming. April 5th of every year signals the time to pay respects to ancestors at their respective grave sites. Because the actual date can land on a weekday, people tend go during the weekends immediate, before, or after.

I’ve been told the proper way to do Ching Ming is go to the cemetery in the morning. The tombstones get cleaned, and so does the area surrounding. Family members then pay respects with three sticks of incense and three bows. Fake paper money gets burned, so ancestors in the afterlife will have money to use. (These days you can even burn paper houses and paper iPhones.) Various food items are laid in front of the tombstone as offerings, and rice wine is poured onto the ground.

After the ceremony, you have a meal with your (living) family members.

2024 is the first year I get to pay respects to both of my maternal grandparents. Thankfully, they wasted a ton of money for plots at the nearby Cypress Lawn cemetery (my own parents, instead of spending money for holes in the ground, will elect to have their ashes spread), so Ching Ming for me is a mere 10 minute drive away. The festival in China - where my dad’s side of the family resides - is comparatively more arduous logistically: the ancestral grounds are a two hour drive from Guangzhou.

Of which I am looking forward to next year, as I will be flying to China for Ching Ming 2025. I’ve never perform the rites (as an adult) for my paternal grandparents, so it’s time to check off that box.

Ask any car enthusiast again

Another horror story I ran into on the r/cars subreddit is this story of a Subaru dealership messing with a customer’s WRX. Allegedly, a service tech took this guy’s WRX out to learn how to drive a manual transmission. As one would expect, some mechanically destructive stuff ensued. They even washed the WRX, after the customer specifically asked the dealership not to. It’s a complete violation of the trust between customer and business. Next to having your car stolen, this is another worst nightmare as car enthusiast.

This story brings up a good reminder: very few people know how to drive a stick-shift these days, especially the younger generation. Think about the age group of the minimum-wage dealership porters tasked with moving cars. Do you really expect some young thing in his 20s to know how to operate manual transmission? And I don’t even put the blame on him! Stick-shift cars are so relatively rare that the opportunities to learn are difficult to come by.

Owners of a cars with a manual gearbox have a conundrum, then: can you trust a dealership to have someone capable of moving it around properly? We’re not even talking about the actual servicing!

It depends on the brand, too. I have trust in a Porsche dealership, because manual Porsches are high-dollar sports cars. The dealers are used to shuffling around expensive metal. A Honda dealership I would be highly anxious about taking a Civic Type R in for servicing. Not only is it likely the only manual transmission car the service department sees all year, but the rare Type R stands out so specially that some young technician might be enticed to take it out for a joy ride.

Solution? I wouldn’t buy another stick-shift sports car in the future without the capability and space to service it myself. (My current BMW M2 is a dual-clutch automatic.)

Never eat alone

After my Wednesday evening workout session, I typical go to the local Chipotle for sustenance. There’s no better way to get the big three macros (carbs, protein, and fats) covered than a Chipotle burrito bowl. I’m fairly convinced one can properly bulk up feeding on that alone. Best of all, and the whole point of going there in the first place: I don’t have to cook after a strenuous workout.

But that post-exercise meal plan is changing. California’s new minimum wage law for fast food workers - a luxurious (sarcasm) $20 an hour - went into effect on April 1st. In response, franchises with over 60 stores nationwide (that would be most of the fast food chains we know and frequent) have raised menu prices. You didn’t think they were going just absorb the increase in labor cost, did you? Profit margins are too holy for that.

The price for the burrito bowl I usually get at Chipotle went up about $0.75. That may seem trivial, but fast food costs have already ballooned in recent years due to the pandemic supply chain and inflation. The latest increase is the straw that is breaking my camel’s back. After working out this evening, I cooked at home instead. $15 for a burrito bowl is so not Raven.

While I am happy for the fast food workers getting a raise, I just won’t be the one supplying those dollars. In fact, eating out has become so expensive that I am implementing a new personal rule: no more outside food unless I’m with others. The social aspect is definitely worth paying for. Otherwise, like the McDonald’s meme goes: we have food at home.

Ask any car enthusiast

A very sad thread on the r/cars subreddit today. A guy’s dream car - a 2024 Nissan Skyline GT-R - got stolen right out of his garage while he was away on business. The original poster says the R35-generation GT-R has been a dream of his since high school, and he’s worked his butt off to finally make the purchase. Then boom, gone in a flash like that. As a fellow car enthusiast, I empathize greatly. Having your pride and joy stolen is just about the worst nightmare.

Even if yo get it back, it’ll never be and feel the same.

Some of the responders mocked OP for being overly dramatic. A dream car is still a car - this isn’t like the lost of a family member. Besides, being so new, insurance will surely cover the full replacement cost no issues. It’s a loss, yes, but OP will soon be made whole.

For sure from a monetary standpoint the GT-R owner will be made whole. But from a mental perspective, the entire game has changed. To have something so valuable stolen right off your property is an act of violation that’s difficult to erase. A house has turned to not a home. Even if OP were to buy another GT-R, he would always have PTSD-like second thoughts when parking in that garage. Every strange noise emanating from there will jolt him to stressful alert.

It’s not simply about dollars and cents, my friends. Peace of mind is worth infinite.

Insurance on cars such as the GT-R (and other often-stolen vehicles such as the Dodge Charger/Challenger) must be ruinously expensive. It probably costs a whole car payment’s worth per month to cover the risks. Also: it’s seemingly that easy for thieves to clone an electronic car key and drive your car away? I guess anything electronic - like the push-button ignition start that most new cars are equipped with these days - can be hacked, if the incentives are high enough.

If it’s not save even in your own garage… what else can you do, honestly? Press F to pay respects.

That's exactly how it works

It seems people like to fight against the laws of physics.

I had one customer come in saying the battery life on her 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro is not to her satisfaction. Duh - of course not! A Mac laptop with an Intel processor and a three-year-old battery is not going to have great battery life. Degradation alone (roughly 20%, I later found out using coconutBattery) will negatively affect the experience continuously. The laptop will never be as good as it were fresh out of the box. That’s just the way it is with any device that runs on battery - even that Tesla Model Y of yours.

On top of that, I found out the user prefers to crank up the display brightness to the maximum, with a dozen apps running concurrently. Sorry, even the laptop with the best-rated battery life will suffer under those usage conditions.

Another customer brought in a Dell Precision 7680 workstation laptop complaining of, you guessed it, adverse battery life. He said the battery was draining even when the laptop is plugged into power. Unfortunately, that is by design. That Precision laptop features a desktop-grade Intel processor and an Nvidia RTX secondary GPU. Meaning: it will run very hot and draw lots of power. So much power that the 240-watt AC adapter cannot supply enough juice under full load - hence the aforementioned battery drain.

You cannot buy a glorified gaming PC laptop and then expect excellent battery life. That’s like buying a full-size truck and then complain about the horrible gas mileage. Laws of physics remain undefeated.

Perfect Days

It’s rare to watch a movie and have it resonate with me so profoundly.

On a usual browse through Reddit, a user turned me onto the movie called Perfect Days. It’s a Japanese language film set in Japan, directed by a German director (Wim Wenders). The movie details the daily routine of a public toilets janitor in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Perfect Days was nominated in the Best International Feature Film category at the 96th Academy Awards.

The main character Hirayama is a near mirror image of my proclivities. Toilet cleaner may be a mundane job, but it allows Hirayama leisure time to tend to his hobbies. Like my IT support role at a university, I put in my weekly 40 hours and never have to think about work outside it. I have great leisure to pursue hobbies such as photography, which also happens to be Hirayama’s passion. He enjoys listening to music too (on cassette tapes), which, don’t we all.

When he is on the job, though, Hirayama takes it very seriously - unlike his partner Takashi. There’s excellence to be had, high standards to achieve, even for cleaning toilets. You don’t give any less effort just because the job is low on societal perception, or the pay is horrible. I appreciate Hirayama taking immense pride in his work. Whether we’ve gave our best is something we innately know.

Hirayama is a man of routine, as am I. His workday and weekend never change. He does the same thing and goes to the same places. He wears the same clothes, too. That is all me in real life. Hirayama’s life is so routinized that he gets upset when life’s unforeseen happenstances interrupt the order. Something as simple as not having the same available seat/table at his usual restaurant. I too get upset when my usual parking spot in front of the home is taken by another.

I also get uncomfortable when my normal routine is interrupted with the necessities of social life. Don’t get me wrong: I greatly cherish my time with friends and family. However, there’s no denying that there is a trade-off. Having dim-sim on a Saturday morning means I can’t have my beloved coffee time lounging on the couch, by the window.

The key lesson of Perfect Days is there is sublime in the mundane. A mere toilet cleaner who enjoys photography can have a such a fulfilling and happy life. No matter how much we chase after novelty, most of our days are going to be the same, one after another. I think it serves us better to notice the beautiful and joy in that same boringness.