Blog

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

Bangkok, part 1

Pro tip: if you’re flying to Thailand from the San Francisco Bay Area, try not to do it all at once. Because there are zero direct flights to Bangkok from SFO, so a layover is involved. No matter your chosen layover point - be it Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong - you’re spending a cumulative 18 hours in the air before you touch the ground at Suvarnabhumi Airport. Arduous would be the apt word to describe that journey, especially if you’re a poor boy like me and can’t comfortably afford beyond an economy class ticket.

The smarter way to get to Thailand is stay at least a few days at the layover point. This avoids spending an entire day on the road and in the air. I should have traveled around Seoul - my layover en route to Thailand - for a week before then moving on to Bangkok. Given my propensity for the Korean language and affinity with Korean cuisine, it’s baffling as I type this that I didn’t spend any time at all in Korea. What a waste!

I think I was too focused on getting to Bangkok as quickly as possible. If not for my good friend getting married in Thailand, I had no plans to travel this summer (not in this economy). Honestly, I wouldn’t have otherwise visited Thailand at all. Southeast Asia - outside of Singapore - doesn’t hold any allure for me. Unlike some avid travelers, checking-off destinations for the sake of accumulation is not what I am about. I may never step foot on continental Europe, and that’s okay.

Therefore my thinking was to get in and out of Thailand as quickly and as cheaply as possible. I stayed five full days in Bangkok, just long enough to attend the marital festivities, and getting rested to endure yet another travel day back home.

Please don’t emulate me - enjoy Thailand fully! It takes at least that five days to acclimatize to the muggy hot weather. Be sure to take advantage of your layover destination and do some sightseeing there as well. 18 hours in the air in succession - plus all the waiting at the airports - will drain the life out of you.

O package, where art thou?

There is indeed a first time for everything.

Like most of you, I’ve been shopping with Amazon for the longest time. I’m old enough to remember when Amazon did not charge sales tax in California. Anyways, throughout this long relationship, the couriers contracted by Amazon have not once lost a package of mine. (Or stolen before I got to it, I guess.) Sadly, that streak ended this past Monday.

I got the standard notification email saying the package was delivered. However, it was nowhere to be found - and I was out the front door almost immediately. I live in a nice neighborhood, so package thievery doesn’t really occur (knock on wood). Couriers typically take a picture to confirm the delivery, but for this instance there was no picture! The only explanation is… well, bottom line is the package is missing.

In such situations, Amazon asks customers to check with neighbors to see if the package got delivered to them by mistake. Hope you’re on friendly terms with your next doors! If that returns unfruitful, the customer is then to wait 48 hours. Because apparently. couriers sometimes will mark a package as delivered, but will actually make the delivery on a different day (USPS has knack for this, according to Reddit). Only after 48 hours should the customer contact Amazon support.

If the courier is third-party (UPS, Fed-ex, DHL, etc), customers can and should contact them about the missing package that was marked delivered. In my case, the courier was Amazon (affiliate, probably), so nothing to do but wait the two days.

To Amazon’s credit, I was able to get a refund after a quick word with support chat. I was surprised at how easy it was, given it was about $160 worth of stuff. The fact that I’ve not once before this contested a missing package probably helped to grease things. I’m obviously not trying to scam Amazon here.

No Porsche for broke boys

Porsche announced today mid-cycle updates to the 992-generation 911 (992.1). My first reaction was: Jesus Christ, a base poverty-spec Carerra starts at $120,000 now?! That is not a lot of car for a crap ton of money. And that price is before you check any of the hundred of boxes on the options list. You want your 992.2 911 in traditional Guards Red color? That’s will cost $1,800 extra, whereas it was an no cost option in the 992.1. Kind of blasphemous.

Porsche seems to be evolving into a Ferrari-like way of doing business: charging extravagantly for its cars - because it can. The demand for its sports cars remains insatiable, so why not raise pricing across its lineup? Heck, the special edition 911s - the ones enthusiasts ejaculate over - are all at Ferrari level pricing anyways, after the dealership tacks on $150,000 of additional markup.

Can’t hate the player, nor can I hate the game. Dealerships charge markups because someone out there is willing to pay. Us broke boys can’t be mad that we don’t got (or unwilling to spend) the money.

New Porsche sports cars are for the wealthy car enthusiasts now. No car guy making middle-class income should be throwing down $120,000 (at least) for a new 911 (or any six-figure car). That’s not a value judgement, it’s just math. I know auto financing can stretch into seven or eight years these days, but one look at an amortization table should scare anyone off. A $120,000 car, putting a 10% downpayment, for an 84 months loan at 5.99% will equate to over $27,000 of interest alone.

You can buy a brand-new Toyota Corolla with that money.

Shogun

My one goal for this three-day Memorial Day weekend is to binge watch the entire 10-episode run of Shogun (streaming on Disney Plus). Long ago have I read James Clavell’s acclaimed novel of the same name. It was therefore super exciting to see it visualized in a new medium.

Verdict: Shogun is magnificently done. The cinematography is amazing, and the acting is superb (Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai should win lots of awards for their performance. Moeka Hoshi is a bonafide scene-stealer). Fans of the book - I would include myself - can be wholly satisfied with the show-runners’ interpretation of the base material. It’s largely faithful to the book. The subtle changes made contribute to better storytelling for television.

The depiction of Lady Mariko leading Toranaga’s retinue out of Osaka Castle, Mariko fighting through the samurai blockade, is wonderfully breathtaking.

The feudal period of Japan is my absolute favorite historical period - of any country. Before I read Shogun the book, what got me into this slice of history is the book Taiko, by Eiji Yoshikawa. Taiko narrates the story of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s rise from lowly peasant to the Taiko - ruler of Japan - during the Sengoku period. That book is where I first learned of these giants of Japanese history: Oda Nobunaga - the unifier of feudal Japan, and Tokugawa Ieyasu - founder of the great Tokugawa Shogunate.

Shogun is actually a fictionalized version of Tokugawa’s maneuvers to claim the supreme title, during the period after the Taiko’s death.

I immediately wanted to play Ghost of Tsushima again after finishing the show.

Compounding small gains

What they don’t tell you about keeping a consistent weight training schedule is that you never feel 100%. Most of the time, at least one body part is slightly sore. And just when that soreness subsidies, it’s time to train that body part again! The only time you feel completely fine is when the training pauses for things like vacation. But then you don’t mentally feel good about pausing, afraid those hard-earned gains will all melt away in a few days of inactivity.

That’s obviously not how it works, but I did say it was psychological.

The gains are indeed hard-earned because contrary to expectations, it takes a bloody long time to put on muscle mass cleanly. (One can always stuff themself with as much calories as possible, but then they’d be putting on fat as well as muscle.) Those dramatic one year transformations you see on social media? (Or Kumail Nanjiani.) It’s totally steroids. Adding 30 pounds of muscle in 12 months - whilst keeping body leanness - is impossible without artificial medical assistance.

I’ve been lifting weights consistently for about six months (progressive overloading, and eating a crap ton of protein along the way) and only now do I see some tiny hypertrophy of the muscles. I’d be happy if I gain three pounds of muscle total by the end of 2024.

Of course, the aesthetic improvements are mere positive side effects to the main goal of strength training: longevity. I want to be agile, limber, capable for as long as possible, right into the golden years. The aesthetics will fade sooner or later anyways. The strength and muscles cultivated now will (hopefully) prevent me from taking a fall at 70, breaking a hip, and dying shortly after. (The mortality rate on the elderly after taking a fall is enormous.)

There are no shortcuts (unless it’s Ozempic). Anything worth doing takes a long time.

I don't need it

Speaking of Google Photos Magic Eraser: Adobe released an update to its Lightroom editing software touting a similar feature. Users like me can now harness the power of AI - as is seemingly everything these days - to remove unwanted objects from photographs. That’s nothing for me to get excited about, because I’ve largely stopped editing my pictures. (The most I do now to my photos is straighten the horizon. Dutch angles absolutely grinds my gears.) I am a straight-out-of-the-camera kind of photographer now. Those Fujifilm film simulations are just that amazing and convenient.

In my opinion, the best way to implement AI is to make it invisible. Don’t tell me it’s AI at all. Let AI do all the magic in the background. The user should only see the end result. Take this new Lightroom feature for example: AI removal should be integrated into the existing cropping and cloning tools. The program has always had the capability to crop things out of photos. It’s obviously more powerful and easier thanks to generative AI, but why mention AI at all? Simply say the crop tool is now way better.

I don’t care that Grammarly is using AI to make its writing assistance software better. I only care that the software works, and works well.

Of course, the cynical take would be all these companies are hopping on to AI in order to upsell (hashtag profits). Adobe is adding AI to Photoshop and Lightroom so they can easily justify increasing the monthly subscription fee in the future (mark my words). Microsoft adding Copilot AI to its Office apps is merely an excuse to charge more on the subscription. Extra computing power is not free, am I right? But what if I only want simple Microsoft Word - without the fancy AI stuff? I doubt there’s going to be an AI-less tier for a cheaper price.

What I would not be surprised is Microsoft adding an ad-supported tier of MS 365 for a lower price. Have you used Windows 11 lately? Ads are creeping in already…

A few to remember with

Spring graduation is the best time of the year to be around campus. There’s so many graduates roaming about in their caps and gowns, capturing graduation photos to remember. Shoutout to the budding photographers following these graduates around. I guess in a world of smartphones capable enough to capture the moon (Samsung fakes it, apparently), the value of a “proper” camera is still pretty evident. For a once in a lifetime thing, you’re not handing off your iPhone to a cousin to do the job.

You wouldn’t hire a wedding photographer that shoots with smartphones, right? (Or maybe you should…)

It’s good to see the pro-Palestine protest camping has come to an end, after reaching an agreement with the university. Before this, some of the protesters defaced the San Francisco State University signage at the corner of 19th Avenue and Holloway. This tiny monument thing is where graduates like to take pictures in front of (during graduation week there can be lines). How awful it is then to have that beautiful scene ruined by graffiti. Though I guess any good photographer can photoshop that out (or those A.I. magic erasers in Android smartphones). Moot point: the markings have since been painted over.

I wonder what is the popular photographic aesthetic these days, vis a vis these graduation photos. If I had to guess: retro is definitely in. Technical perfection is out of style. People buy older iPhones to take pictures with, simply for the “vintage” look (modern iPhones do over-process the image, I have to say). Fujifilm absolutely cannot make enough X100VI to keep up with demand, because the TikTok/Instagram crowd has hyped its film simulation to the sky. Heck, I bought a Fujifilm X-T5 because I wanted the retro film vibes.

Photographer: “What picture style would you like?”
Client: “I would like the photos to be slightly shitty.”