Long-form

Long-form blog posts and editorials. Topics cover both personal and the world at large.

소중한 시간 (Precious times) - 2020 Reflections

Well, we made it! The very end of this crazy year.

First and foremost, I think it’s important to recognize that those of us that still have our jobs, a place to live, and our health intact: we are incredibly lucky indeed. The suffering of so many who have lost employment, and the unspeakable death toll here in America (one in 1,000 Americans have perished due to COVID-19) is a stark reminder of the utter privilege we have. The privilege of not only surviving through this year of the pandemic intact, but perhaps coming out ahead ever stronger.

How easily it could have turned out the other way. Be thankful, and give a hand to those in need.

So I’m not going to bemoan the fact all my travel plans in 2020 have been unceremoniously cancelled. I should be somewhere back home in China right now taking in the local sights. Instead, I am writing this at home in San Francisco, once again stuck inside of a lockdown situation. Many good plans have been forsaken this year, and we’ve all gotten immensely familiar with our homes, unable to go anywhere (shouldn’t, anyways).

And to think, I was right near the genesis of the coronavirus. Way back in January, I was in my hometown of Guangzhou as usual on vacation. News of the COVID-19 outbreak was already percolating out of Wuhan, though at the time it was only news in western media. The Chinese was still suppressing the information locally. The evening news in Guangzhou didn’t mention the bubbling crisis at all. If it weren’t for twitter, I wouldn’t have known about coronavirus until I’d taken the return flight in Hong Kong.

Never in my wildest predictions did I think that this viral incident from Wuhan would come to consume the entire globe. For a while, it seemed we would be okay here in America. We didn’t effectively lock down until the middle of March. Until then it was business as usual here in the States, even as we learned of devasting news coming out of Italy. Daily death tolls in the hundreds that seemed horrible at the time, but mundane compared to the now thousands that are dying in this country every single day.

Returning home from Guangzhou, I was more concentrated on picking up the pieces from a relatively dreadful 2019. I had a rather significant bout with anxiety towards the latter half of 2019. The annual trip back to China was suppose to the be a cleansing reboot of my personal operating system, coinciding nicely with the ringing in of a new year. The trip was successful for that purpose, and by the end of January I was on the mend, looking forward to a better 2020.

A realignment of the department at work (I am tech support at a university, for those who don’t know) threw a bit of wrench into that. It’s difficult to allay anxiety levels when such a major component of my everyday life is in so fluid a situation. Essentially, I got move to a brand-new role, and for the first time in nearly a decade I would be learning a completely new skill-set. Under normal circumstances this would be a tremendous opportunity for growth. However, the departmental realignment was so abrupt that there wasn’t enough time to assimilate myself to a new team. I was stuck in limbo, having to do some of my old responsibilities for the time being, while waiting for guidance on what’s ahead.

It would have had to wait until the Summer months to begin to sort everything out. Of course, COVID-19 abruptly entered the conversation in March. Americans joined the party as the coronavirus began to ravage our continent. New York City was the first hard-hit area, with hospitals running out of beds, and corpses needing refrigeration trucks to haul to the cemetery. It was only a matter of time before the spread comes to other parts of the country. Each region then had the choice: be proactive, or keep the proverbial head in the sand.

I am tremendously grateful the San Francisco Bay Area took charge and began shutting down well before COVID hit our area. Much kudos to the tech industry for telling its workers to stay home starting as early as February. Our university stopped in-person instruction on the 9th of March, a date I’ll remember for a long time to come. All classes were going remote, utilizing the piece of software we’ve come to know and begrudgingly love: Zoom.

The once bustling campus turned into a ghost town over the course of a week. San Francisco enacted a stay-at-home order soon after. The euphoria of getting to be at home and not have to physically go to work quickly turned into stress. I was still unfamiliar with in a new team, and now I’m thrusted – along with my colleagues – into this completely strange new instruction method. How to provide support remotely when none of us have really done it? How can I properly participate when I don’t yet know much of anything pertinent to the tasks?

For much of Spring, I would be supremely anxious each morning to open up the web portal to work. I was scared of my own incompetence, of not being able to contribute, and looking like a fool (hello, ego). What if someone asks me a question that I don’t have the slightest answer to? I got thrown into the deep end of the pool without yet learned how to properly swim.

Paradoxically, there’s no better time to rapidly learn and adapt. To make mistakes and the adjust as I go along. The situation caused by the coronavirus gave me permission to simply go and run with it. So what if I don’t know something? I’d do the best I can to find the information and then provide a solution for the customer. Being kind to others and wanting to help was my guiding principle in how I approached the work. It’s okay to make mistakes so long as the heart is in the right place.

It would be too easy to disappear under the cloak of remote work and leave the tasks to others, feigning an ignorance of knowledge. I’m glad I didn’t, because 2020 have been the biggest year of professional growth for a very long time. Sad that it took a global pandemic to make that happen.

I am incredibly lucky to have the shoulder of a giant to stand upon. A coworker of mine on the same team became a mentor of sorts and really helped me through this period. He patiently answers all my (what must sound to him) stupid questions with tremendous detail and clarity. I could not have been nearly as effective in remotely assisting faculty without his guidance and support. It’s a generosity that I hope to pay forward in the future.

Working from home is not without benefits, primarily the lack of commuting. Early in the year I was still taking the bus to and from work, and the nearly two hours lost each day was something I was looking to decrease dramatically. The long commute on public transport was a great contributor to my elevated anxiety levels last year. The stress of having to slog it back home in a crowded bus after a particularly tough day was huge, no matter how many informative podcasts I was able to consume along the way.

Driving would have easily cut the commute time in half, but there was a problem. In 2019 I took the “you only live once” mantra to the extreme and bought a Porsche 911 GT3. It’s a type of car that I was not comfortable with parking it on the streets in our working-class neighborhood. Therefore, the car was stored at the work garage instead, only taken out for drives on the weekends. To be able to drive to work, I’d have get a second car. A financially unfeasible ask, given the amount of money I was already paying to have the GT3 around.

The other solution was to (finally) move out of my parents’ place, to a spot of my own. Somewhere far closer to the work than the other side of the city. The ideal place would be somewhere close enough to be able to walk to work. But this option had the same problem: the bloody Porsche. If it was already monetarily unfeasible to get a second car, then moving out and renting would be nearly suicidal. I could have made it work, but at that point I would truly be “car poor”.

Even so, I had thoughts and plans of moving out in 2020. Bottom line: how much would you be willing to pay for less stress?

Obviously, COVID-19 kind of altered those plans. Working at home means no commute! I didn’t even have to get dressed. All things considered, not needing to physically go in to work decreased my stress levels quite dramatically. It was wonderful to reclaim those two hours of the day, to use as I please. I vowed to never commute by bus again. When the time comes and we are able to return to campus, I would either get a car to commute with, or move closer to campus.

Even though we are still in the midst of remote instruction and work, I’ve been physically going to campus on and off since the end of May. Some stuff you simply cannot do remotely, and I volunteered to go to campus when the time came to do that work. In the name of safety, I was being chauffeured on the days I needed to go to campus. It’s a burden that I loathed to heap upon my family. It did not sit well with me to ask my dad to come pick me up from work after a typically long and arduous day for him.

Per chance, this year a good friend of mine moved to a house that is only a 10-minute walk from campus. The house happens to have a studio unit available for rent. A perfect storm of compatibility – it’s easier to rent from a friend than a complete stranger – allowed me to move out on my own at the beginning of November. A wish fulfilled: no more slogging commute to and from work.

But I did not commit financial suicide to do it. A year of zero travel have reaffirmed my affinity and love for traveling. Adding rental cost on top of payments for the GT3 would prevent me from doing so comfortably in the future. The car had to go. As much as I don’t want to admit it, the enormous expense to purchase and run the Porsche was a huge albatross. I don’t regret buying the car, but it was time to move on. To support the move out of the house, I sold the 911 for something a bit for sensible to the wallet: a BMW M2 Competition.

The weight of the Porsche off my shoulders is really freeing, something I didn’t know would happen until I signed over the pink slip. Selling the GT3 would have been beneficial even if I had stayed living with my parents.

With the coronavirus very much still ongoing, perhaps it’s the wrong year to add the financial burden of renting. Indeed, it would have been more prudent to wait until the vaccine is properly disseminated and things return to normal. While I am fortunate to have kept my job throughout this pandemic, the future is not guaranteed. The smartest thing would be to stick it out at home for longer and build up the war-chest.

Ultimately though, the timing felt right in my gut to make the move. I turned 33 just some weeks ago, and it’s way pass due (by American standards) to start living on my own and take care of myself completely. The milk isn’t going to replenish itself when it gets low. My parents are also of that age where they’d rather sleep apart in separate beds. With me vacating my room, they can now do so comfortably.

Having move to a far quieter neighborhood further decreased my stress levels. Where we are located it’s practically a subdivision, so the amount of vehicle traffic is low. There’s also a distinct lack of noisy neighbors playing loud music into the night; I can sleep soundly without needing earplugs. As someone who loves silence and tranquility, moving to this new place is worth every single dollar.

Even a card-carrying introvert like me can say I was struggling with the constant stay-at-home order towards the end of Summer. By then the pandemic was assured to stretch on for the rest of 2020. I’d no idea how much I would miss sitting down at a restaurant and breaking bread with friends. The movie-going experience is completely gone. I couldn’t go out on drives with fellow enthusiasts because who wants to be the jackass in the Porsche screaming up and down a mountain road? Even visiting friends carries a calculated risk, one that we seldom took.

I’m used to and love the introverted, homebody lifestyle. I just very much want the rest of you to go back to your regular, extroverted life. One that I can sometimes participate in when I so choose. Like the BTS concert that was supposed to happen in May.

To keep some modicum of social engagement, our group of friends had weekly virtual Zoom meetings. We’d talk about how things are going (same), and then play some online multiplayer games. During the Summer when the cases went down and places began to open back up, we stopped meeting regularly. Sadly, things made a U-turn heading into Fall. Once lockdown 2.0 happened, we returned to our scheduled Zoom chats.

We even managed to have a socially-distanced Friendsgiving.

During other times, I have to say it wasn’t too difficult to keep sane during this pandemic. Long-standing habits I’ve had since way before COVID-19 continued on nonstop: write on the blog, read books, exercise, and study Korean. Aside from the periodic travel, my life pre-pandemic was fairly Groundhog Day-like already. I didn’t have time to stew on the fact that we’re stuck in our homes due to a highly contagious virus with no end in sight. I had stuff to do, so I continued to do them. The lockdown simply provided more time.

I didn’t keep count, but I like to think I’ve read more books this year than in previous. I did quite a bit on Zen Buddhist philosophy, the study of which greatly helped with my struggles with anxiety. Alan Watt’s The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety, Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul, D.T. Suzuki’s An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, and Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi are some of the highlights.

Overall, I have to say it’s been a great year, personally speaking. I found solid footing at work, and had tremendous growth in skill. I finally moved out of my parents’, beginning a new stage of adulthood. In selling the 911 GT3, I got rid of a stressful money pit. Combined with saving up diligently during much of the year (couldn’t spend it on travel/going out), I’m once again back on good financial standing.

A combination of those things, plus the continued study of philosophy, I was able to lower my anxiety and achieve mental equilibrium.

Did I mention our family got a pet kitten? What a bundle of joy he is.

More importantly, my family and immediate circle of friends remain healthy and gainfully employed. In a year as turbulent as 2020, that’s is all that we can ask for. For so many, this has been the worse year imaginable. Empathetic as I am, their situation is out of my control. I will continue to work on myself, be better and improve day by day. I will help others whenever possible, in whatever capacity.

My only great hope heading towards 2021 is for the world to get back to normal as soon as possible. And that those who have lost plenty will be able to regain what’s been missed.

The wisdom I take from 2020 is this: the time we have is precious.

Top 10 songs of 2020

1. Shaun - Way Back Home
2. Twice - More & More
3. H.I.N.P (Hot Issue of Ntl. Producers) - Rumor
4. Changmo - Meteor
5. ITZY - Not Shy
6. IZ*ONE - 환상동화 (Secret Story of the Swan)
7. 방탄소년단 (BTS) - ON
8. Red Velvet - IRENE & SEULGI - 놀이 (Naughty) (Demicat Remix)
9. Zico - 아무노래 (Any song)
10. 여자친구 (GFRIEND) - MAGO

Making Haste Slowly - 2019 Reflections

Honestly, I struggled to think of what to write about for this year’s year-end reflection piece. My 2019 from a certain perspective can be viewed as typically good: work is going well, I got to travel a bit as usual, and personal relationships are stable as ever. I even bought a car, after a one-year hiatus of going without a vehicle. Based on those things I can certainly write the standard start-to-finish expository piece, telling you how awesome everything is chronologically, and then put down some more awesome things to look forward to in 2020.

And that would’ve sufficed okay, because from a macro view, 2019 was a good year. However, beneath the varnish and veneer of showing people only the best side of us, this year can also be viewed as one of the more confounding and tumultuous years I’ve had in quite some time. In complete truth, my feelings towards 2019 run the gamut of joy and misery, with lots of self-reflection and soul-searching.

I do grant that relative to many others, there’s really nothing to complain about; but this game of life is unique to each individual, and the problems we face aren’t diminished just because others have got it worse. Detaching to the look at the bigger picture is a tool to deal with our problems, rather than be used a cudgel to bludgeon us to “get over it”.

And I think it would be disingenuous to simply give the circumstances of the year 2019 a happy spin. It’d certainly make writing this far easier, but for the sake of posterity and learning from my faults and pitfalls, I shall allow myself to confront once again the troubles I’ve had in 2019 and spell them out for you here. They stem from three crucial moments this year, and it’s around these three incidents this 2019’s year-end reflection post will be centered on.

The first, is my Porsche 911 GT3.

In many ways, it was very premature to buy the 911 back in January. Coming back from my annual winter trip home to China, the aura of making a big change for a new year sort of took hold of me; few things would come close to as big of a move as spending six-figures on a sports car I’d only drive on the weekends. It completely altered my financial situation, especially coming off of not owning a car at all for a year. Suddenly, it’s not just car payments making a return, but ancillaries too, like insurance and fuel costs. There were definitely times where I thought I might have bitten more off than I can comfortably chew.

To be sure, the plan was always to buy the 911, and heading into the close of 2018, the financial side of the equation, in terms of saving up for the hefty down payment (half), has come to completion. In that sense I was ready to pull the trigger at any time, and as is the wont of car enthusiasts, I was not keen to wait any longer than necessary. From the time I returned from China to the moment I signed the papers for my Sapphire Blue Metallic GT3, it took but one week. I was of the mind to get it over with as quickly as possible, and as chance would have it, a reasonable example was for sale over at Porsche Fremont.

By mid-January, I was the owner of my dream car: a 2015 Porsche 911 GT3. A decision that utterly changed the trajectory of 2019 in ways I did not expect.

It didn’t take long for me to ascertain an innate understanding of the mantra that material things don’t bring you any more happiness, and chasing after them for that specific purpose is as pyrrhic as it gets. I wish it didn’t take writing the largest check I’ve ever written to achieve that clarity, but perhaps the same lesson wouldn’t have been there had I instead dropped $50,000 on a BMW M2. Immediately post purchasing the GT3 I was not overwhelmed with joy or even a sense of satisfaction; rather, the sensation I got was immense anxiety.

Anxiety that comes with car ownership: the related chores like parking and maintenance that are now back in my life after a blissful year of not having to deal with any of it. Worse, the stress is amplified by magnitudes because of how expensive the GT3 is. For sure, it’s not something I thought a lot about during the process of saving up to buy the car, and indeed that’s a gross miscalculation when the car in question is priced into the hundred thousands.

Compounding the stress is the unconventional route I took to buying the 911, one that’s largely backwards from the usual 911 owner. Primarily, I lack a house with a garage, and cars in the class of a GT3 aren’t ones you’d leave parked on the street, especially when said streets are in San Francisco. While most owners have a nicely secured place to store their 911, mine is parked at work some seven miles away from where I live. It’s a covered lot away from the elements, but to have your pride and joy be that far away and semi out in the open, it can increase anxiety levels no matter how much mind detachment exercises I do.

Nevertheless, I had to quickly become okay with the situation, and that was the hope going in anyways that I would be able to handle the arrangement, because otherwise I wouldn’t have bought the car. I wasn’t going to spend an additional $300 – the going rate of a private garage for rent in San Francisco – simply to have that extra peace of mind and proximity. Instead, I had to accept the situation, and let go what I absolutely cannot control – the risk of someone – or acts of god - messing with the 911. I put my full trust onto the fact that if anything were to happen, that is precisely what auto insurance is for.

By providence and extreme good fortune, the GT3 hasn’t incurred as much as an errant nick this whole year while parked, and for that I am extremely thankful, and currently knocking vigorously on actual wood.

After the anxiety of potential damage to the car subsided, then comes the difficulty in accessing the car just to go out for a drive. It can either take 15 minutes if the family car is available to borrow, or up to an hour if it isn’t and I had to take public transport. Naturally, during the earlier months when the excitement of the GT3 was still fresh and simmering, I’d no problem doing the long schlep to get to the car. Once the newness wore off, however, it became an utter chore, which is quite an insane thing to say given it’s my dream car and whatnot – I should be chomping at the bits to drive it each and every time, but that’s how it goes once you settled back down from the highs.

It was often times annoying and stressful to have the car be that far away. A ‘first world problems’ kind of complaint, perhaps, but it’s the truth.

Ultimately, it’s the relatively vast financial commitment that I’ve made to the 911 that’s caused me the greatest amount of anxiety, and the genesis to the question whether it was premature to buy back in January. Not to say I couldn’t comfortably afford the car – this isn’t a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation, but the fact is the monetary outlay to purchase and keep the GT3 is equivalent to renting a studio apartment in San Francisco every month, and as with renting a place, the initial acquisition cost for the car took up the entire amount of savings I was comfortable to part with. To go from a place of security in having many 10s of thousands saved up to instantly vanishing it into a material object was superbly jarring, more so than I had anticipated.

I absolutely love cars, and I don’t ever regret spending money on any of it, but to make such a significant jump to another price category without the sort of income typical to the usual purchasers of such cars was a paradigm that took me much of 2019 to get used to. Sometimes the GT3 does feel like an albatross of sorts, that I’m betraying my values of growing up in a family that had to scraped by from paycheck to paycheck. The six-figure commitment took away any flexibility I had to make financial moves in the next few years, and dealing with that reality was often times quite hard.

It didn’t help that everything else that goes into supporting the 911 is dramatically more expensive than most cars, so it was tremendously difficult to get back to a savings equilibrium where I feel mentally comfortable and whole again. Two of the three crucial moments of 2019 that I will expand upon later made the problem worse, and effectively I was chasing my tail for much of the year, filling a hole that’s seemingly bottomless.

There are many positives to owning the 911, obviously, and indeed those outweigh the combined negatives of what I’ve written about. The GT3 truly is the best sports car for the money (fight me, Miata fans), and the sublime of wringing out the engine to its 9,000 RPM redline is enough to make all the stress and anxiety disappear into the background. I’ve kept a diary about the joys of ownership here on this website, and I can honestly say it’s my proudest creative work I’ve done in 2019. Please go there for many words and pretty pictures, and a far rosier frame of the 911 experience than the pages here.

The second big moment of 2019 that had a profound effect on me is traveling to Japan in July. It’s somewhat hilarious that it was a trip that I wasn’t even all that excited to go on; perhaps I’ve become jaded to traveling abroad after doing so much of it the past few years, but I think the key reason to my lack of anticipation for the Japan trip relates back to the 911. After sinking a huge chunk of money to procure the car, it was definitely not the best decision to spend another few thousand dollars only a few months later. Just as I recovered somewhat from the gaping financial hole that I purposely gave myself, out goes the last modicum of savings yet again.

The promise to go to Japan was made before I bought the GT3, so it would be unfair and selfish to renege on it. Good thing then, because as it turns out, the time in Japan was some of the most wonderful ever while traveling abroad.

You can read all about why in the five-part photo stories series I wrote. I was so enamored with the trip that for once I actually felt compelled to spend the numerous hours putting the many thoughts and scenes together as a memory to relive. To make a long story short, I discovered a near perfect affinity for Japan: the country’s culture and customs fit so well with my own introverted nature that I instantly felt at home. I greatly admire the Japanese people’s passion and dedication to practically anything, from the most mundane and boring to the most exquisite and complex. Particularly for my car enthusiast leanings, Japan is practically heaven.

I’d thought South Korea was the best sort of home away home for me culturally, that if I ever had to emigrate anywhere, somewhere around Seoul would be the top destination. After the Japan trip, that spot has changed. Again, it’s funny that before going I was decidedly not excited about traveling there.

So there was considerable sadness when I left and flew back home, made worse by the third major moment of 2019 that I’ll talk about soon. Before Japan, I never got the sort of post-vacation sadness or depression that some people do, and I never could empathize with those feelings. After coming back, however, I got to experience it for the very first time, and the effects of the post-travel depression lingered on for way longer than I’d expected or wanted.

Ever felt like a stranger in your own home city? Well, that was what it felt like for a certain period after returning from Japan. I had so completely fallen for the way of living in Japan – however surface and superficial one-and-half weeks’ worth of vacation time can provide and prove – that I almost hated here in San Francisco. It didn’t take much to trigger those thoughts: on the first day back to work, the morning bus was late by many minutes, which was a super stark contrast to the always-on-time (or someone is going to have to commit hara-kiri) public transportation system in Japan. Why can’t we have nice things here in States?

Rightly or wrongly, I started to compare things here in San Francisco with those in Japan, and it always led to frustration. Take for one example the amount of property crime and theft here in the Bay Area: you nearly can’t go a day without a Citizen app alert saying there’s been a strong-arm robbery somewhere, or reading someone on twitter saying his parked car has been broken into for the nth time. Compared that to Japan where I felt fully comfortable and safe leaving my camera bag exposed in the back seat of our rental car while it’s parked, and how you can walk around anywhere at any time of the day without fear of robbery.

The more I thought about the contrast between here and Japan, the more stressed I got. I was depressed that there was nothing I can do to change the situation, and it was a matter of becoming okay with living in San Francisco again, and relearning to love it, warts and all. That took a while, slowed significantly by the events that transpired immediately after my return to the States, the third crucial moment of 2019.

Thanks to my Chase credit card, I’m a member of Global Entry, so coming back into the States through immigration is usually a scan and on your way affair. In returning back from Japan into LAX, however, I got flagged for secondary search. Initially I didn’t have a problem with this, thinking that it’s probably a random routine search, and I always comply with the regulations of bring things into the country. However, during the questioning, the agents started asking pointed questions about my itinerary and what I did for a living, drilling down to what I felt was way more detail than necessary. At one point an agent even got frustrated with me because I couldn’t come up with my phone’s unlock code fast enough.

Something was amiss, because it felt like I was being treated like a suspected criminal, rather than a routine search to make sure people with Global Entry aren’t sneaking in contraband. Of course, the agents found nothing on me, and after 30 minutes of grilling I was on my way to my connect flight back to San Francisco.

Four days later, Federal agents served a search warrant on our family home.

I never thought I would get to tick the bucket list box of experiencing being held at multiple gunpoint and then be handcuffed, while I was still in my sleeping t-shirt and underwear. Thanks to having been and being acquainted with members of law enforcement, I knew exactly what do in that situation, and tried to be as calm as possible. It’s my dad who I felt sorry and worry for, him being the person who was actually awake at that ungodly early hour and had to witness the Feds knocking down the front door, DEA style.

It’s not a type of trauma you recover from quickly.

After the initial shock, I was more amused that anything because I know for sure me and my parents have not done anything wrong – I’ve never got so much as a speeding ticket. Without going into much detail, it turns out my younger brother did something shady involving things on the Internet that the CBP was investigating, and since we live under one roof, and the Comcast Internet account is under my name, that’s likely the reason why my profile was flagged and I received the intensive secondary questioning coming back into the country from Japan.

The Feds took away all related electronics, which unfortunately included my computer, tablet, and phone, because what I have largely mirrored what my brother has, and for sake of thoroughness they wanted to go through my things to make sure everything is good and kosher. I knew I’d be fine, but Federal investigations take a very long time, so it’ll be a long while before I’d have my things returned to me. A mere four days after coming back from Japan, I got stripped of every one of my electronic devices, through no fault of my own.

This isn’t a cruel judgement on my brother; that’s just the reality for me. I’m a bit of stickler for routine, and the Feds breaking down our door is about the biggest shock to the system I can imagine. Already in the beginning throes of post-Japan sadness, this particular episode’s timing was horrible.

So, I had to go out and spend another many thousands of dollars to buy a new laptop and a new phone, piecing back together as much normalcy as possible. Remember I wrote earlier about the filling a seemingly bottomless hole after buying the GT3? The Japan trip was a jab against it; this thing with my brother and the Feds was nearly the knock-out punch. I went completely into austerity mode, shaving down any unnecessary spending, which meant driving the car less (fuel costs are hefty when the best you can manage is 17 miles to the gallon). That presented double-edge sword, as the act of driving is highly meditative for me, and doing less of it in the latter half of the year meant it exacerbated the existing issues I was facing.

Most acute of which was the hanging specter over my brother: his case with the CBP. While his infraction was small compared to the criminal empire that was under investigation, he did break the law, and the consequences are real, if the Feds choose to press charges. It was a huge cloud of uncertainty looming over my family, and try as you might to ignore it and go about daily life normally, it was tacitly understood that there is no relief until the investigation is over and a decision is rendered.

Adding to the difficulty was the revelation that my brother had been suicidal for a few years now, ever since he moved away to Santa Cruz for college two years ago. It was another layer to grapple with for the rest of us, dealing with not only how my brother got mentality distraught enough to want to end it all, but what roles did we each play in contributing to that crisis. Coming to grips with that was tough, and it heighten the stakes of the investigation. If the decision turns against my brother, jail-time might be the least our problems. Recovery for my brother would be lengthy process.

For much of the second half of 2019, I had to deal with that aftermath, on top of my own issues with post-travel depression and the weight of owning the GT3. It was certainly rough at times, stressed and anxious about impending bad news as I went through the motions of daily life. It’s a terrible way to live, being in fear that the next phone call or knock on the door is the one to forever change our lives permanently. The strongest one is for sure my brother, to be able to string together some semblance of regular life under such crazy pressures, able to find a job after undergrad, and seeing therapist regularly.

In any good story, there’s got to be hope and resolution at the end, and here at the conclusion of 2019, I shall provide some positivity to this otherwise stark year-end reflection.

Two weeks ago, as of this writing, CBP returned the confiscated passport to my brother, and I got my entire haul of electronics back (great, now I have two phones). While they can’t say for sure since the overall investigation remains ongoing, it appears my brother will not be charged, given the entirety of the circumstances. Needless to say, it was a massive sigh of relief, especially for my brother, who almost broke down upon hearing the news.

As for me, I’m obviously overjoyed for him, and on a personal level, getting my stuff back was a much-needed puzzle piece to get myself back to an equilibrium. It was a total trip turning the iMac on and seeing everything in pseudo suspended animation, with everything frozen in the time to that Thursday in July. The return of my things coincided perfectly with me finally shaking off the haze I was trapped in since coming back from Japan, and also coming to satisfactory terms with owning the 911.

In life, you make some big decisions, and in doing so there’s no turning back or taking a do-over. I would say buying a six-figure sports car would rank up there in that category, especially for me doing it the unconventional way: before making a great amount of money and buying a home. The trigger has been pulled, and I have to be okay with that decision and make the best of whatever associated outcomes there are, good or bad. There’s no use in lamenting inconvenient situations or the extra hassle that comes with my inability to store the car right next to where I live. Buying the 911 is the choice I made, one that I should have no regrets about, and the thing to do now is enjoy the process of ownership as much as possible in the coming years.

I’d like to caution once more that nothing material will ever make you happy or happier; it must come from within. The momentary high of achieving a goal or buying that dream car is infinitesimally fleeting, and sooner or later you return to your original baseline, necessitating a new chase to be “happy” again. Owning the 911 for sure doesn’t elevate my level of happiness: I’m still the same person who just so happen to have an expensive car. That’s it.

Not to say you shouldn’t keep striving for goals and achievement, but I think it has to be for different reasons, rather than hoping to be any happier once you’ve done it. I used to think having ‘passion’ for something was relatively useless: who needs passion when simple work ethic can carry you through anything? (Ah, must be my Chinese communist upbringing…) That may be true, though I’ve come to realize that passion is the only thing that will differentiate out what truly matters, and the key ingredient that provides meaning. Passion makes you want to continuing moving forward and making process, without the dangling carrot of money in front.

Passion is what induce people to quit their regular 9-to-5 for something new and risky, and willing to devote many hours towards that endeavor. Passion is what you’d do for free, for no applause or recognition, because it’s important to you, even if it’s just you and no one else. For example, this website is my passion, and that keeps me producing content for it on a regular basis. I don’t ever check the site’s analytics because I’d keep doing the exact same thing even if no one reads it.

Cars are obviously a huge passion for me: that’s why I religiously saved and then altered my entire financial situation with one signature to buy the Porsche. Because it’s important to me. Therefore, so what if I have to take a bus ride just to access the car? It’s part of the process.

I think the opposite of passion is attachment. When you’re attached to the outcome of something you’re doing or anxious about events turning out the way you want, there’s bound to be disappointment. As Master Yoda would say, that leads to suffering.

Going forward I think passion makes a solid litmus test to filter down things that matters to me. It’s a shift from wanting to consume and do everything and treating life as a checklist – that’s how it spirals into a never-ending, unsatisfactory hamster wheel. One of the silver linings from having my phone confiscated back in July was that I lost my lengthy queue of podcast episodes to consume (it was at least 50 deep). In starting over with the new phone, I purposely became very selective and picked only the episodes that are absolutely interesting to me. I wouldn’t hesitate to stop listening to one midway, and I also ceased the habit of listening at increased speed: the whole point is to learn and improve, not jamming it into my brain as fast, and as much, as possible.

It’s less stressful that way, too. There’s really no rushing the process; being passionate doesn’t make it go any quicker. One of the books I read this year that stuck with me the most is ‘Creative Selection’ by Ken Kocienda. The book chronicles Ken’s time at Apple writing code for the ground-breaking devices like the iPhone and iPad. The key revelation I took away from the book was that even at the level of genius computer coders, there’s no avoiding the tedium of work, of the slow and gradual process of hacking away at a problem until the eureka moment. Of course, the consumers only see the spectacular end results, and have no idea the laborious and long ordeal it took to get there.

The actual work of super smart people isn’t that different from what we do. Reading that book gave me confidence to continue doing the things I’m passionate about, that it’s important to keep going and keep iterating; changes and improvements are supposed to be irritatingly slow.

This philosophy is useful for dealing with life’s problems as well, and I couldn’t have endured through the three major moments of 2019 without drilling it completely down to the principle of putting one foot in front of the other. The next day may not be any different than the previous; you simply have to trust that eventually, things will get better.

Last year the motto was trusting the process; in the coming 2020, let’s make haste slowly, step by step. See you all on the other side.

Top 10 songs of 2019

1. ITZY – 달라달라 (DALLA DALLA)
2. 방탄소년단 (BTS) - 작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) (feat. Halsey)
3. TWICE – Fancy
4. Chung Ha - 벌써 12시 (Gotta Go)
5. Taeyeon – 사계 (Four Seasons)
6. 볼빨간 사춘기 (BOL4) – You(=I)
7. IU – Blueming
8. Jung Seung Hwan – 눈사람 (The Snowman)
9. Red Velvet – Sunny Side Up!
10. Hwasa – 멍청이(twit)

Trust the Process - 2018 Reflections

Progress is difficult to see by when your goals are measured in many months and years. Gone are the days of rapid discovery and learning during childhood, where a missed day can be the difference between success and failure. Adulthood is a slow-roll of sameness, day after day. Motivation, then, is difficult to find.

If you’re as ambitious as I like to think of myself as, your goals are huge, fantastical, and takes quite a bit of time. The daily trudge to get to the end point can be altogether hopeful and extremely frustrating. Indeed life is a game of compounding: the daily gains of a savings account are minuscule, but come tax time the delight from the accrued interest is amazing.

That is until you realize you have to pay the U.S. government 15% tax on capital gains.

So every day is another day crossed-off on the calendar, slightly ever closer to the end-zone. This agonizingly slow yet steady progress is what I can best sum up this year of 2018. No major breakthroughs, no significant achievements; just normal, consistently consistent everyday life.

And that’s completely okay.

Or is it? Honestly It took me quite some months to find my rhythm at the beginning of the year. 2018 was always going to be a year of transition, deemed so by me turning age 30 the December prior. Contrived and cliche as it may be, flipping the leaf over to a new decade is indeed a transformative occasion. I’ve been a categorical ‘adult’ since turning 18, but this year was the first time I’ve ever truly felt the word and meaning of it. Anybody that’s still in college and below are considered kids to me, which can be strange because I work at a university.

ADULTING

As expected from an adult, I’m to completely invest myself in the adult milieu. First and foremost is a proper career. I’ve been at the same place of employment practically since college, and I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to have job with incredible work-life balance, and a public worker’s pension at the end, should I remain there for the rest of my working life.

And that’s where the rub was in early 2018. It’s typical human nature to constantly crave the new and the fresh, and work was getting just a bit too stale and same for me. I didn’t not enjoy it, but I was seriously juggling with the question of whether or not it’s something I want to keep doing for the next few decades. The easy route would be to stay, but is it the most satisfactory?

I didn’t have the answer, so I started dreaming and scheming. I’ve always been enamored with Asia, so perhaps I should move there and work as a proper English-speaking concierge type person for a hotel or business. San Francisco remains insanely expensive to live, so perhaps I should move to another less monetarily demanding State (like Montana), and try my hand at this Internet thing, whether it be freelance writing, or producing videos on Youtube.

The options that didn’t involve staying at the current job entailed leaving San Francisco, which I reckon was absolutely necessary because finding another job in the same city I saw as a lateral move, even if it paid substantially more. My routine wouldn’t have changed much at all, only what I did during the eight or so hours at work.

If I were going to change my line of work, so too must the scenery change.

Obviously, the career move did not come to pass. I’m still working at San Francisco State, and as of typing this I’m enjoying a nice week and a half of provided vacation time between Christmas and New Years.

And to think most people have work up until the very last day of the year; I am undeserving of such good fortune.

Momentum is a stubborn thing, especially when forces have been constant for many years. The exit velocity needed to alter the trajectory is tremendous and difficult to attain. I didn’t switch careers this year because my job, boring as it may have become, was too comfortable and reassuring to leave. I mean, what utter arrogance for me to be dissatisfied? What of the countless others who would absolutely kill to have what I’ve got. It isn’t enough for living in San Francisco, but discounting housing, what I make per year is enviously comfortable. You can actually look it up: California public employee salaries are public information.

So you can say I chose the easy way out, and on some level I agree wholeheartedly, but I can assure you the process arriving at that decision was anything but. I have zero regrets about what could have been; in life you make decisions, and then you simply deal with the consequences, negative or positive. That said I did leave myself a backdoor of sorts: if I were ever to be let go from my current position, I’d immediately execute any one of the exit strategies I’ve listed above.

Because nothing lasts forever, and I never take for granted that I can easily keep the same job until retirement, especially because I work for the State. It only takes one serious downturn in the economy for them to start paring down the expenses, and I’m not stupid enough to think of myself as indispensable. Nevertheless, I’m resign to the fact that it would take something on the scale of that to make me go skip town for a new adventure.

Wasted potential? I guess you can say that, but those are not your consequences.

Besides, I’ve found something highly motivating to keep me where I’m at. The story begins back to what constitutes to being a proper adult; I’ve already spoken of career; another pillar is a home. Great and awesome my culture may be to allow adult children to live with their parents until infinity (some would say it’s demanded), in early 2018 I looked at venturing out to a place of my own. Again, that whole turning 30 thing.

As it is infamously renowned, San Francisco’s housing market is damn impossible for anyone making under six figures. Even renting a one-bedroom place reasonably close to work would entail spending half of my gross income on rent, when the golden formula calls for at most a third. Theoretically and mathematically feasible, but being “house-poor” is not a good way to live. No more annual upgrades to the latest iPhone, for one (though I really should stop doing that irregardless).

Until or unless the local housing market softens back to saner levels - whenever the local and State governments can finally muscle out the reluctant NIMBY homeowners to allow for vastly more building - I shall remain living with my parents. Spending over two thousand dollars on rent goes against every fiber of my fiscally conservative sensibilities. I can afford to, but I don’t want to.

But that money otherwise has to go somewhere. For the past few years I’ve been on a traveling binge, so much of my disposable income have gone towards that. Flight and hotel costs add up eye-wateringly quick, especially when I tend to only frequent expensive first-world metropolises (I really want to go back to Seoul). It’s money well spent: I think everyone should do a bit of traveling at least once in their life, preferably before serious onset of adulthood and its accompanying responsibilities.

A RETURN TO CARS

Outside of the annual winter trip back home to China, I did not do any other traveling in 2018. I have found something else to direct my funds towards. It goes back to one of my first loves: cars.

Paradoxically, it has not been a good year for my family in terms of luck with cars. My father’s 1992 Toyota Previa finally gave up the ghost back around the time of the Super Bowl (suck it, Patriots). The head gasket failed, and water in the combustion chamber is never a good thing. The ruined engine wasn’t worth fixing, so the van was donated to charity (returning zero dollars in tax write-off), and the car my brother was driving for college - a 2006 Toyota Corolla (my very first car) - became my father’s new daily driver.

The Corolla wouldn’t last out the year, either, as I’ll write about down below.

So we had to get a new car for my brother. My parents’ generosity in buying a new car for me way back when was to be replicated for him, something about fairness and not appearing to play favorites. They had originally planned to do so after he finishes college, but the Previa’s untimely destruction forced an audible. In comes a brand new 2018 Volkswagen Golf GTI, much too nice and expensive of a car for a college kid that haven’t yet turn 21.

Crazy Rich Asians, my family is most decidedly not.

Jokes aside, a new GTI indeed proved to be too much car for a person who can’t legally be served an alcoholic drink. I found out when I did the arrangements for insurance. Due to young males being the worst demographic for auto insurance cost, the car was bought in my name, which meant it was up to me to insure it. The tactic only managed to dampen the blow slightly: adding my brother and a $30K vehicle to my policy of a 2016 Mazda MX-5 proved to be an absolute financial shock. I went from paying $90 a month for my lonesome to over $300 for the entire lot.

I can afford it, obviously, but that sort of outlay still hurts. Anything for family, right? Laughter turning into tears.

Aftershocks from the insurance increase would last for quite some months. My frugal sensibilities simply could not stomach paying that much money for auto insurance; a Porsche would be cheaper to insure. Also selfishly I don’t much like to pay insurance for a car I don’t even get to drive. For the few months up until the end of May, the $300 plus monthly outlay was an albatross glaring back at me. I had to make a change.

So I sold the Miata.

Obviously I was not going to bail on paying for my brother’s insurance, so to cut down the costs I had to get rid of my own car. Other contributing reasons are numerous; primarily because I’d rarely driven it (14,000 miles in 2.5 years), and also because San Francisco traffic is so horrendous that commuting - even though I’ve got one of the best most fun-to-drive sports cars for the money - completely wrecks the soul and psyche. For the first time since end of junior year of high school, I am commuting via public transportation.

Even though driving is faster than taking the bus, the serenity from not having to worry about navigating through the maze of other cars on the road is the greatest sublime, and well worth the extra time. One of the best thing I found in 2018 is the joy of listening to podcasts on the bus, and only needing mental energy for making sure I get off when at the appropriate stop. I arrive at work (and home) refreshed and ready to go, rather than tight and stressed, likely still incensed at the idiot who had cut me off earlier.

As long as I work and live in the city, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to commuting by car. Public transportation is better for mental health, and just better for the environment. Yes, I’m going to be one of those smug assholes.

Though it does leave me without a car. For the first few months after selling the MX-5, I was surprisingly, completely okay with the situation. The extra money in my accounts were looking ever so beautiful. Around late July however I started experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and began seriously missing the joy (and not so joys) of car ownership. For a self-professed petrol-head to not have a single car was probably too ambitious of a heading. The new plan, however, would be equally ambitious.

911 OR BUST

I was adamant to not commute in a car again, so what I needed was one exclusively for the weekend, something to enjoy in the leisure days in between work weeks. In my brief automotive history I’ve own a Subaru WRX STI and the aforementioned Mazda MX-5, and whatever I choose next wasn’t going to be facsimiles of those two types of cars. It has to be a proper sports car, needn’t be too practical because I’m only driving it on Saturdays and Sundays.

Aside from an Alfa Romeo, next on the list of must-own cars for a car enthusiasts has got to be the Porsche 911. The iconic shape have ensnared me since very first time I laid eyes on the wide fenders of a 993 Turbo. Owning a 911 have always been some far-fetched goal for me, principally because it’s quite expensive to buy. I’ve never paid over $40K for a car ever, so the prospect of a car in the six figures is pretty insane.

Insane enough to give it a go. If the ultimate goal is to own a 911, then wasting time and money with other cars in the interim is just silly. My next car will be a 911, and not just any plain 911 (because that’s not how I do things), but a GT3.

A rather ambitious plan, one that requires lots of capital. That’s why I’ve been absent in the traveling game this year; any discretionary income have been put away into the GT3 fund. I haven’t implemented such austerity measures since back when I was first saving up for the WRX STI. It feels good; feels familiar.

It was intense money saving mode for the latter half of 2018, which made everyday life a bit less interesting than it could be. Going outside costs money, so I seldom did. Remember also that I don’t have a car to easily go anywhere. I wrote at the beginning of this that progress is difficult to see on daily basis, and I did the best I could to endure the humdrum and mundane until the GT3 arrives. In a rapid society of instant gratification, it’s easier said than done.

Most of my weekends were spent with my parents: help run errands, do grocery shopping, and generally hanging out. Selfishly speaking those activities don’t cost me a dime, though I’m sure my parents don’t mind the extra attention.

No situation more so than in October when the Toyota Corolla, like the van in February, also gave up the ghost. The Corolla suffered a transmission failure in the form of shattered third and fourth gear. To fix it would cost more than the car itself was worth, but it would still be vastly cheaper than buying a new car. My parents were resolved to fix that car, until I intervened.

The Corolla’s failure gave me the opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted: buy my parents a new car. Being the frugal immigrants from poverty that they were, my parents would never dare to spend money like that on themselves, so it was up to me to return the favor. While my father’s preferred auto shop was busy sourcing a suitable replacement transmission for the Corolla, I too made some calls to car dealerships.

In the end I prevailed by buying (leasing) a 2018 Hyundai Tucson for my parents. My father over the years have frequently lamented he’s never driven a brand new car in his life, albeit half jokingly; he turned the golden 60 this year, so it was as good a time as any to fulfill that bit of want.

Of course, adding a lease payment to my monthly expenditures hasn’t done the GT3 fund any favors, but we’d do any for our parents, wouldn’t we?

It’s interesting how quickly I’ve transitioned from being the constant traveler to now staying put and turning my focus back to cars. Payments on the Porsche will keep me where I’m at for at least the next few years, which is just fine with me. 2018 has largely been the transition period between the two paradigms, with the second half of the year mainly consisted of me actively preparing for the next phase.

THE PROCESS

But what exactly do I do otherwise when the process is simply stack money and try not to spend any of it until I’ve got enough? Certainly I can binge watch the entire Netflix catalog in the meantime, but for me that would be a huge waste.

To beat back the boredom and blandness that adult life may bring, one must have strong discipline and good habits. There must be some things to occupy your everyday that excite you and get you out of bed in the morning (or afternoon; I don’t know you). There’s only a few out there lucky enough for that thing to be their career; the rest of us must find something outside our of jobs.

Each day I have my list of things to accomplish: read for an hour, study Korean for an hour, write on the blog for at least 30 minutes, and take an interesting photograph for the 365 challenge. I get a visceral endorphin boost when I tick of final item and I’m done for the day. Chasing that feeling keeps me motivated to not hit the snooze button on the phone, and I trust in the process that after doing this daily list for long enough, the effects would compound into something positive and spectacular.

It certainly has for my Korean studies, because mastering a language requires an intensely long time. Hard to think that it’s been two solid years since I’ve embarked on the endeavor, and I’m far from finishing (you never truly do when learning a language). In early 2018 I exhausted the third and final textbook, so for the rest of year I hatched my own study plan, which includes watching Korean shows and writing down words I don’t understand as new vocabulary, and perusing Korean newspaper as reading and speaking exercise.

An hour per day to study Korean is significantly less than the four when I first started, and with the reclaimed hours I was ready to move on to learn another skill. I’ve wanted to play the piano since I was a kid, but never had the opportunity to learn it completely. After scaling back on Korean I was set on the piano as the next challenge. Just when I had books and keyboard lined up for purchase, the goal of buying a 911 also came to into being. Due to the massive expenditure required for the car, I had no money to allocate for the piano, so that was ultimately put off yet again.

Priorities. I may or may not have them.

The extra hours instead got allocated to something that doesn’t cost money: writing. I’ve been slacking tremendously on that for the past few years, with the scant blog post here and there, and the only long-form writing coming in these end of year reflection pieces. It’s been said that to get and keep good at writing, one must do it everyday. Mired in the quagmire of indecision on life earlier this year, once I found my heading in deciding to stay at the job and selling the MX-5, I began to write on the blog every weekday.

The topics didn’t matter at all; the exercise is the point. To get the mind muscles thinking, and the fingers typing. Some days the words flow out like a breached dam, and some days I could barely muster a paragraph after sitting in front of the screen for an hour. It definitely got easier as the year went on, and I’m extremely chuffed that I managed to blog consistently all the way up to today. It’s probably what I’m most proud of this year.

LET’S POWER UP

And that’s what 2018 have mostly been about: doing my daily checklist, and spending time with the family on the weekends. It’s dependable and low drama, which from how I’m looking at it, is a very good thing indeed.

As for the coming 2019, it should be more of the same, except for one big thing: the arrival of the 911 GT3. I’m not sure exactly when during the year it’ll happen, but once it does, that is when the fun really begins. My life outside of work will revolve around cars again, a return to life in my early 20s. The difference now is that as a fully realized “adult”, I actually have the means to play.

It’s going to be sweet.

2018 TOP 10 SONGS

1. Red Velvet - 두 번째 데이트 (My Second Date)
2. Loco & Hwasa - 주지마
3. iKON - 사랑을 했다 (LOVE SCENARIO)
4. Red Velvet - Power Up
5. Yang Da Il & Wendy - One Summer 그해 여름
6. Moon Byul - SELFISH (Feat. Seulgi Of Red Velvet)
7. Taeyeon - 저녁의 이유 (All Night Long) (Feat. LUCAS of NCT)
8. Zico - Soulmate (Feat. IU)
9. Jennie - SOLO
10. IU - 삐삐 (BBIBBI)

Review: 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata Sport

2.5 Years of 'Jinba Ittai'

What most ensnared me to the car was Mazda’s philosophy.

In developing the fourth-generation (ND) MX-5, Mazda aimed to make the new Miata equally light as the beloved first-generation (NA) and dimensionally smaller than the third-generation (NC). I was pleasantly surprised by this because new generations of vehicles tend to be bigger than the predecessors; a contemporary Toyota Camry easily dwarfs a model from the early aughts.

I bet most people thought the ND Miata would be bigger and more powerful than the NC. Neither of those turned out to be true.

Colin Chapman would be proud: Mazda added lightness to go faster.

I was also drawn in by the beautiful shape. Before the ND I’ve dismissed the MX-5 as a viable sports-car because of its odd appearance: it’s too symmetric. The NC Miata was the worst offender: squint and you’d have a harder time differentiating the front from the rear. The ND finally gave the Mazda flagship proper front-engine sports-car proportions: long hood, short deck, wheels pushed to the corners.

If Jaguar were to design a tiny convertible sports-car, something to slot below the F-Type, it’d look very much like the ND Miata. Mix in there as well are a bits reminiscing of a BMW Z8, especially the view from three-quarters. After the hugely polarizing ‘smiley face’ of the NC, Mazda absolutely nailed the design of the ND Miata: a shrunken down grand-touring style convertible.

The car's best view? From the front.

The final hurdle before purchase was whether or not I’d fit. I’ve sat in an NC Miata and I cannot adjust to the ideal driving position without punching my head through the cloth top (drive top down all the time?). Mazda made the ND slightly smaller but have done so without sacrificing any of the already scarce interior space. To my relief I am able to sit properly in the ND, leaving two finger’s worth of space between head and roof. It’s clear Mazda have engineered the interior packaging to accommodate more body size variables than before.

It’s far from ideal, though. I’d love to sit lower but for whatever reason the ND Miata’s seat mechanism doesn’t have a singular adjustment for height. Rather than flat, the seat-rail is inclined ascending forward so that when the seat is moved laterally the height is increased closer to the dashboard and decreased when pushed away. It’s a genius engineering to save a bit of kilos but with my long torso/short legs combo I need to sit close to the steering wheel but that means the seat is higher than what it can be.

The steering wheel doesn’t telescope either (saving more precious kilograms) so while I do have a good driving-position in the ND, it definitely can be improved.

As expected it’s mighty narrow inside, and space is at a premium. I can reach over and roll down the passenger-side window without my back leaving the seatback. The glove-box is behind in between the driver and passenger, requiring elbow and or back contortion to access. The aperture underneath the center-console lid is so small it can’t even fit a smartphone. The door-panels are entirely absent of map pockets so the passenger seat suffices as substitute to store items.

The important bits however are well done indeed: the seats are supportive and comfortable even though they look plain and generic. On a road trip to LA the numb buttocks I experienced during a similar trip in another car was happily absent. The steering wheel feels good in the hand, though the diameter is a tad too large for me tastes, and the rim could be thicker. The manual convertible top cannot be more easier and faster to operate (unlatch, flip, latch – with one hand). One has to wonder why don’t every manufacturer use the same system rather than opting for heavy and slow automatic roofs.

It feels wonderful to be so cocooned inside the ND: driving feel is spot on and the proverbial “being one with the car” rings very true. The seating position is downright supercar: it’s super low (getting out the car is never elegant), your feet is splayed out front practically horizontal, and the interior is shrink-wrapped around you.

Not bad for 25 grand.

Power however is not so supercar, though lots of grunt was never the Miata ethos. The ND is motivated by the same naturally-aspirated 2-liter four-cylinder found in the Mazda 3 sedan. That sounds quite disappointing on paper, but given the pricing aim a bespoke motor is probably impossible. Mazda did tweak the engine slightly to make it rev freer and have a sports-car worthy exhaust note. It makes 155 horsepower, more than enough for the 2,300 pound frame. Indeed the motor sounds amazing, and unlike turbocharged units that run out of steam early, the atmospheric Skyactiv unit punches straight to redline, egging on the driver to play chicken with the rev limiter.

Grab the next gear and you’ll find one of the finest manual gearboxes ever made. Essentially a mid-engine car, the ND’s motor is entirely behind the front-axle. With drive going towards the rear, the transmission is located inline right underneath the driver’s shifting arm. With no need for connecting cables, the gear-level is connected directly to gearbox; at neutral idle it does this delightful dance as it shakes along other drivetrain components.

It’s tactile joy to row through the gears in the ND: the feel is heavy yet forgiving, and each gate is supremely defined. The stick slots into each gear with such mechanical ease and solidity you’d want to do it over and over – and the opportunity is always there. Mazda geared the ND very short: the run to 60 requires three shifts, and 6th gear is 1 to 1. It makes local street driving super engaging, much more fun than high power sports-cars where the end of 2nd gear is already jail-time territory.

The jewel of a transmission is paired with a great set of pedals. The clutch can’t claim to be the most feel-some, but vague it isn’t, and it does the job well consistently. The floor-hinged throttle pedal eases heel-toe maneuvers, and the placement of the brake pedal is judged perfectly for such purposes. The ND is a good car to learn advance downshift techniques (or manual gearbox in general) with; my first successful heel-toe pedal dance was in the Miata.

As my first foray in rear-wheel drive dynamics, the ND Miata’s supreme balance may have spoiled me forever. The car is neutral at all times; understeer can only be provoked by going too stupidly fast into a corner. Likewise I can only coax oversteer when the surface is damp from rain. With modest power and lacking a locking differential from the Club trim, in the dry it’s nearly impossible to induce the tail outwards. The ND smoothly points and goes without need to fight against any sort of countering forces.

In a word, it’s sublime. I’m going to ill-prepared in the future when I get into other rear-wheel drive cars because they won’t be nearly as balanced as the ND.

Though I hope those cars will have better steering feel. The rack on the MX-5 is pointy, direct, and sharp in complement to the brilliant chassis, but ultimate tactile sensation just isn’t there. My previous car was an WRX STI and its hydraulic-assisted rack was full of information to the hand. In contrast the ND’s electric power-steering is vague and leaves a bit wanting. The car is lucky in its balance because otherwise the scant details from the steering leaves the driver unprepared for sudden reactions; more muscle memory than innate adaptation. The ND Miata’s steering is adequate for its purposes, but a point for improvement in future iterations.

No need to change however is the overall size of the car. I love how small and nimble the ND is, especially in dense metropolitan cities full of traffic. The ability to slot into spaces and take shortcuts other vehicles physically cannot always brings a smile to my face. A normal car that would’ve been blocked by the leading pack from making a right turn on red, the MX-5 squeeze through on the side no problem. I reach the zenith of smugness when I find street parking spots in between two houses that only cars the size of a Miata and smaller can fit.

I became that guy in a parking structure that when parked in between vehicles my spot looks like it’s empty.

Of course, the diminutive dimensions also has negative side effects. Not only are vehicles getting larger, but the most popular kind of car these days are sports-utility vehicles. Suffice it to say the ND is at a dangerous size disadvantage. I can literally hide in most people’s blind-spots, and had to perform evasive maneuver countless times because the driver didn’t do a head check, thought the lane was clear (it wasn’t), and proceeded to switch lanes onto me.

It isn’t too difficult to imagine how horrible of a shape I’d be in were I to collide with the typical sized car. Thankfully I haven’t had to find out.

Blindspot monitoring systems saves lives.

Along with the aforementioned lack of interior storage space, the ND Miata’s barely six cubic-feet trunk is a hindrance during the rare road-trips and airport runs. It can fit an entire Costco pizza laid flat, for what it’s worth. Most of the time items larger than a weekend bag gets transported in the passenger seat, or by the passenger if one is present. On one particular trip to the airport the friend I was driving had to hold her luggage on her lap because it wouldn’t fit through the trunk opening.

Part of the fun of owning a Miata, I would say.

The running costs for all that fun is delightfully minimal. Weighting practically nothing compared to the average car, even when I mash the go pedal with abandon the ND returns around 27 miles-per-gallon. Hypermiling on a road-trip can easily net efficiency in the 40s. According to tracking on Fuelly, the ND costs me $0.111 per mile in petrol, which is apparently quite good.

Washing the ND takes half the time of a normal car.

The two-liter engine requires about five quarts of 0W-20 synthetic oil, costing only around 30 dollars for top brands. Throw in a filter for seven dollars and an single oil-change can be done for under 40 bucks – bring your own labor. The MX-5’s lightness means consumables aren’t as fast wearing: after 17,000 miles, tires and brake material looks barely worn in. When it’s time to service those items, it’ll be incredibly cheap. In the Sport trim the ND Miata runs 16-inch wheels, comically tiny these days when a new Honda Civic Type R comes standard with 20 inchers. However, a set of four decent replacement 195/50R16 tires is well below 400 dollars.

The same amount will only buy you one tire on the Civic Type R.

For urban city drivers I think the ND Miata is the best sports-car for the money; an MX-5 blends in where a Porsche Cayman couldn’t. The precise chassis balance, the short and sweet gearbox, and the punchy engine can be enjoyed well below speed limits. A favorite things to do in the ND is tackling 90-degree turns at street corners: I must judge the braking point, heel-toe downshift to second gear, and then steer the car smoothly through, waiting for the exact moment to apply throttle.

To derive the same driving pleasure from a Cayman you’d need at least a mountain road, if not a full-on track. In an old episode of Top Gear, while driving a Nissan GT-R through Tokyo, Jeremy Clarkson hyperbolically remarked that Tokyo isn’t a city, it’s a racetrack.

The ND Miata makes any city a racetrack.

The absurdly low maintenance costs and parking conveniences are just bonuses. If the lack of carrying capacity (for persons or otherwise) is a parameter that fits your lifestyle, the ND Miata makes a great daily-driver. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my 2.5 years with the car.

Did I mention the roof goes down as well? That is the coup de grace.