Blog

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

Where it all went

As a person who doesn’t typically do New Year’s Resolutions, I have but one in 2025: no buying new books until I’ve read all the ones I already bought. Tolstoy’s War and Peace will finally be devoured before I can clear off additional books on my Amazon cart. It’s the right thing to do. The least a book can do before becoming a gatherer of dusts on the shelf is to entertain me with its infilled information.

As 2025 gets underway, a good exercise to do is to take a look at your money in 2024. Credit cards make it super easy to gather and export all your purchases in an Excel file. The Chase cards that I predominantly use even categorizes the spending for me, and lets the user compare year to year. That’s how I was easily able to know that I successfully spent thousands less money (2024 compared to 2023) on Amazon.

I think it’s valuable to know the big picture of where my money went, so that I can intuitively plan for the new year. Performing the audit (if you will) was how I found out I only filled up my BMW M2 a total of twelve times. For a car that goes 200 miles before the gas light comes on (which is to say: pathetic), that means I did very little driving in 2024. I endeavor to accumulate a lot more miles in 2025. To pay for that extra gas, the amount of money not spent on books should cover a good chunk of it!

A surprise spend of last year was food delivery. How it can add up to so many hundreds of dollars, even though I’ve only ordered seven times. Those fees and tips really add up to already inflated food prices. This year there will be zero food delivery orders, unless I am so unfortunate to become incapacitated.

Spend wisely, my friends.

Never stop not stopping

Greetings to 2025!

Happy national start a gym membership day. I wish you folks the best in your health goals this year. Most of you will fizzle out by the time the calendar turns February, but not you. You are the warrior of consistency. You show up to gym even when you don’t feel like it. (Even those of us who like exercising have days of indifference.) You understand that doing at least something is what’s most important. Understand that getting healthy is a long process. The euphoric motivation of a new year is highly fleeting.

I don’t wait until gap between December and January to start something new. As a freshly turned 37 year old, I don’t have the luxury of time (tick tick). Any new ideas or inspirations need to be followed with action as soon as possible (monetarily allowing). I don’t even like bumping stuff at work off into the new year. The January me will hate the December me who did so. We’re adults: have some modicum of long-term thinking, please.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s was a supremely peaceful time. (I am of fortune to have that week off every year.) Not having to go to work just means more time to attend to extracurriculars. Instead of an hour to read, I had multiple hours in the day. I was able to write in the morning, which I greatly prefer to the usual post-dinner. I took long walks around the neighborhood during sunset (this is on my dating profile), which during this time of the year would still be work hours.

You know that universal basic income (UBI) thing that was a hot topic back in 2020 (Yang Gang)? What I described in the previous paragraph is exactly what I would be doing if I didn’t have to worrying about basic sustenance. It’s perhaps not very productive towards society at large, but that’s the wrong premise. All that matters is that it’s productive towards me. Surely there are others with a different predilection (someone with the free time to go find the cure for cancer), one that UBI would allow to foster.

Since UBI remains mathematically untenable, it’s back to work today for 2025.

The Christmas ideal

As a first-generation Chinese immigrant of poverty (I think the incoming administration wants to ban people like our family from coming here), Christmas was never a thing. Firstly, it was not in our culture back then. Of course the corporations have managed to commercialized it in China now, so even my relatives over there wishes each other Merry Christmas on WeChat. I’m happy for the children, who get presents.

Secondly, our family was too poor to afford Christmas. Presents? Just be happy father is able to make enough per month to put food on the table. Contrarily, I don’t remember being jealous of fellow kids talking about presents and trips over the Christmas holidays. Granted, social media was not yet invented. I wasn’t able to see on TikTok how millions of other kids live so luckily and lavishly. Envy only materializes when you have something to compare to.

Because of this upbringing, Christmas is merely another day off for me. Which is just fine: I don’t have the financial burden that other people experience during the holidays. All the presents and wrapping materials cost money! Imagine going into credit card debt to fund a holiday deemed necessary by the cultural milieu. Imagine if your kids were never taught the expectations of Christmas presents.

It’s all rather wasteful, too. As we grow older, we come to truly know what we like and don’t like. That makes gift giving difficult because it’s rather easy to buy a thing that others accept out of politeness, but in truth it’s yet another piece of trash clogging up precious space at home. So you either have to toss it or donate it, and that takes time out of your days off. Never mind the decorations and packaging and go straight to (hopefully) recycling.

My ideal of a Christmas: hang out and eat. No presents, no over-the-top presentations.

Never in this economy

The well regarded aftermarket wheel company Apex Wheels is having a winter sale. Nothing like clearing out some inventory at year end to make the numbers look good. Today is Boxing Day, so go out there and buy buy buy, folks! It’s not like you didn’t just spent a small fortune on Christmas gifts. And then people complain about the cost of living being so high. Have you perhaps ever considered not buying anything?

I get it: the temptations are everywhere. 25 percent off for a set of wheels I’ve been eyeing is trebly enticing. It also coincides nicely with the fact the BMW M2 absolutely needs a new set of tires (this rainy season is going to be interesting if I delay). The timing is perfect. At least I’m not throwing away a perfectly good set of tires for the sake of making my car look different than factory. 10 years ago me would have done so, but thankfully I did not have much money back then.

What’s stopping me from hitting the checkout button on those Apex wheels is the lack of space. Where the heck am I going to store the original set of wheels? If I knew for sure I will be keeping the M2 forever, I would sell them. But because I am not prepared to do so, I must keep the stock wheels around just in case. Living in high-rent, low space San Francisco, I barely have enough room for my everyday. There’s simply no space for frivolities such as two sets of wheels for one car.

I can see now how public storage places are so numerous and popular. Customers are essentially paying rent for more space. It just so happens that space is detached from their main abode. I of course do not want to end up like that. Rent for the main abode is high enough as is!

Sad to say then I am not buying a second set of wheels.

Well, that shipped quickly

The Bay Area is experiencing its usual winter rainstorms. Two mornings ago I woke up to what seems like an overnight power outage. My white-noise machine (it really helps me sleep) was off, and the clock on the microwave was incorrect. (Internet connected microwave coming up?) So much for buried power lines in this subdivision! Could be worse: at least we didn’t break off into the Pacific Ocean.

The power outage did claim one casualty: the tiny dehumidifier in my bathroom. (I’m on the first level of a house, so it can get mighty humid.) As an avid practitioner of austerity, I initially cursed at this misfortune of having to spend money to replace the device. Then I realized the humidifier was a cheap unit I bought at Costco for like $25, three years ago. I’m surprised it lasted even this long, running all the time, 24/7.

Amazon to the rescue, right? There’s a Target within walking distance to me, but the dehumidifiers there are probably locked behind security glass. That’s what happens when you let thieves get away with crime. Stores’ preventive measures instead inconvenience law-abiding customers. Sorry, I can’t be inconvenienced, especially when Amazon is so convenient.

Because my Amazon-ordered (in the morning) replacement humidifier was delivered three hours later. Free same-day delivery, baby! On the week of Christmas, too. Surely the busiest delivery week of the year. Jeff Bezos and the folks at Amazon deserves all the billions for revolutionizing our shipping expectations. Those who complain of Amazon as this shady and evil corporation: are you willing to give up this convenience?

You get handsomely rewarded for providing a service/product that (a lot) people want. That’s how it should work in a civilized society.

Holiday parties

A friend of mine told me about her company’s holiday party. My reaction was that it’s kind of disgusting to have a holiday party the same year the employer laid off workers. It’s not quite to the level of “Let them eat cake”, but it’s close. Perhaps it’s my poverty upbringing talking: if you proclaim austerity, then all extravagance should be curtailed. It’s like the guy saying he is broke, yet orders foods on DoorDash everyday.

Are you though?

My employer also held a university-wide Christmas party, of which I did not attend. The optics of it is not great when just a month ago the university President declared a financial emergency. For sure the thousands of dollars to throw a party is pissing against the wind of labor costs. But that money is enough to save one course for the Spring semester. Wouldn’t that be more worth it?

Don’t bring up the argument of boosting morale. A holiday party is but a distraction if the employer cannot guarantee the employee’s future. You know how to best boost morale? Promise the workers there will be no further layoffs. What employees want most is security, not some trinkets gifted at a party. If the company really wants to spend the money, make it a lottery to give to one lucky employee.

That's not very nice

It’s not everyday you get woken up at 6:00 AM to a tornado warning. Actually, it’s the first of its kind ever in the recorded history of San Francisco. Though I wonder how far back that stretches. What did they do for alerts before the advent of the cellphone? The emergency sirens dating back to World War II, I suppose.

The tornado warning advised to “Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building.” Seeing that it was early Saturday morning, most of us were already indoors - asleep. Good news for me, my room is already the bottommost floor of the house. So what did I do with the warning? Sent a screenshot of it to my friend group-chat, and then promptly went back to sleep.

I think the proper thing to do was to get up and hunker down? I don’t see what difference it would make. If a tornado actually materializes in our vicinity, that in it of itself will promptly wake me back up. You know what? I now understand how folks in tornado and hurricane alleys refuse to heed warnings and stay put. Just like soldiers going into battle, you never think you would die. Despite the mathematical probability staring at the face.

Along with the tsunami warning from last week, it’s been a wild time for San Franciscans. Let’s hope it’s not one of those precursors to a giant earthquake. They’ve been telling us about the next big one since I was in elementary school - three decades ago.