Blog

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

Regularly scheduled programming

Is it okay to not have any future plans? I was stumped to think of any recently while talking with a coworker about what work will look like in a few years’ time. I’m at a happy equilibrium right now, and don’t really have any desire to see any of it change. The plan is to keep doing what I am doing and be content with it.

For the longest time it’s been chasing after cars. But that sort of ended once I bought (and sold) the 911 GT3. That car is the zenith of what I can realistically afford and would want to own. The next rung above is decidedly unobtainable (Lexus LF-A remains a dream). So I’m done pining for the next car to buy. I’m completely happy with the BMW M2 and can see myself driving it for a very long time (it’s parked 90 percent of the time, sadly).

I don’t want work to change either. I like where I am at: just senior enough to make decent money, but not too high in a position where I’d have to worry about work even during the off hours (I prefer to take vacations without checking work email). It would be nice to earn more money (always!), but as with anything in life, there are trade offs. More money, whether in the form of a higher rung up the current ladder or switching to another job, surely comes with more responsibility and stress.

I’m fine with not having that. For now.

Let’s not talk about buying a house in the San Francisco Bay Area with a non-tech salary. Dual-income can swing it, but I still feel like paying such inflated prices simply for the privilege of living in this region is not money well spent. There’s also the question of me finding that second income to pair up with. I have no current desire to test the dating waters.

The status quo is quite okay. Ambition and goals will grow organically, rather than dreaming up something to aim for.

No Porsche until the weekend

The problem with having your weekend car stored many miles from where you live is that you can’t do anything to it during the work week. Even as parts arrive and you’re eager to slap them on or make repairs, you’re prevented from doing so because getting to the car itself is supremely time-consuming (could easily become a two-hour round trip, in my case). So you have to be patient and wait for the weekend to arrive, which is easier said than done no matter how much you love your job.

It’s just another part of the car enthusiast disease.

I don’t really pine for much these days - trying to be anti-materialistic and all, but a place to live with proper garage space to park the 911 is low-key at the very top of the goals list. Indeed there are days I feel frustrated I can’t even lay eyes my car because it’s stored so far away, especially one I paid so much money for. What it must be like for people to take their morning coffee in the garage while starring at their beloved machine and studying the lines. That’s a feeling I rather like to find out for myself in this lifetime.

However, to bring up housing in San Francisco is to invite despair; buying property anywhere near the city would mean I’d have to sell the 911 - I can’t have both. There may come a time I will have to make that decision, but as of right now I’m keen to hold onto the car for as long as possible. Because selling it means I’d be forsaking amortizing the value of the taxes paid when I bought the car - you don’t recoup that on a sale. I can stomach regular depreciation that any vehicle has, but a five-figure tax bill? I’d like to draw quite a bit more utility out of that than a mere few years of ownership.

I’ve bought my dream car, though it seems I did it backwards because usually you’d want an appropriate living situation first. That said, following the typical is so boring; that’s the story I’m telling myself, anyways.

I don’t often go downtown, but when I do…

First of the year

Hello, friends, and welcome to the first blog post of 2020. As it is per usual, I’ve been away on holiday back home in China to start the year, therefore it’s not really until the middle of January that the new year officially begins for me. That’s not a complaint; I quite like having the two weeks’ time to decompress and meditate over the game plan for 2020, and I’m incredibly lucky to be afforded such leisurely opportunities to do so. Most people only get Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off, and that’s it.

Indeed, heading home to Guangzhou allows me plenty of time to think things over because being back at a familiar place meant I’m not busy doing the typical touristy stuff when I travel to other countries. The pace is decidedly slower, and the primary goal actually is to see family and eat lots of Cantonese food that I can’t get back in the States. Plus, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, the Internet as I personally know it is largely blocked off when I’m inside the country. Due to the protest in Hong Kong, the Chinese government have even targeted VPN services, meaning my usual route of bypassing the censors was mostly ineffective.

I barely got my end of 2019 reflection piece in, with the photographs taking forever to upload under VPN speeds. Yes, Squarespace and any website hosted on the platform is blocked in China.

All of that is to say, I had a lot of time to ruminate on what I want out of 2020, and I’ve narrowed it down into a key few items. First and foremost is to be kind, both to myself and others. My bouts with anxiety in much of 2019 stem from the inability to take the positive perspective to the things that are happening to me, and that corrupted how I see the outside world as well. It’s not a very nice mental place to be, always thinking the worse of situations, especially when they are outside my sphere of control.

The second item is to do only the things I’m passionate about. Life isn’t about ticking as much boxes as possible, but rather it’s ticking just the boxes that are truly important. If something no longer holds my eager interest, I will drop it immediately. This goes for books, podcasts; any activity, really. The point is to have experiences and tasks that are meaningful and matter to me on a personal level, and not something to do for the sake of doing - I’m not here to collect accomplishment trophies. In 2020 I want to read only good books, and not finish the most books.

The third item is to constantly keep focus to the absolute present, and try not to worry (too much) about what has happened in the past and what’s to come in the future. Detach. Easier said than done, obviously; it’s one of those daily practices that remains a work in progress for possibly a lifetime.

One foot in front of the other. Let’s go.

450 words per day

It’s been said that the Ernest Hemingway only wrote about the 450 words a day. I’m far too lazy to research whether he actually did do that or not (excellent journalism being done here), so I’m just going to take that at face value.

450 words a day isn’t all that much, isn’t it? My daily blog posts are about 400 words on average (shout-out to the built-in word counter in Microsoft Word), and they take about half an hour to write. Obviously I’m not penning a great American novel, only merely writing down what I’m currently musing on, so the amount of imagination and creativity required is significantly less than Mr. Hemingway.

Nevertheless, it’s still only about a page a day, and for the rest of the time Ernest gets to chill and hangout at his leisure. It’s no wonder he chose a tropical paradise like Cuba to live in. It’s hashtag goals, as the kids say these days: write for a few hours at most, then the rest of time drink coffee and smoke cigars to the heart’s content. What a super low-stress way to make a living; I bet he would’ve lived quite a bit longer, had Hemingway not committed suicide.

My ideal locale wouldn’t be a third-world country near the equator, but rather a cottage nestled in the hills and forests, somewhere in our northwest region. As I grow older I’ve really come to appreciate ultimate peace and silence. To attain that, being away from the cities is a must. As long as that cottage has a solid Internet connection, I can make a living doing creative freelance, or like Hemingway, write 450 words a day to someday form a novel.

The lesson here is that life is about consistency and solid habits over a long period. It’s rare and difficult to be a sudden viral sensation or hit something big overnight: good things take time to create, and it’s contingent on the creator to keep at it and coming back to it day after day, month after month. For sure on some days the progress will be excruciatingly slow, but even tiny bits of forward momentum, if done consistently, can compound into something great.

The other lesson is that this thing of ours is indeed marathon, not a sprint; don’t overwork yourself: be sure to take some time to enjoy being alive.

A man and his castle

When I was in my twenties, I was completely into the urban city life. Having grown up in one, I love the density, the hustle and bustle, and how accessible everything is. Living in secluded suburbia was just about the dullest thing imaginable; there would only be the house, and nothing else. Give me the city, and the all of the lights.

Presently in my thirties, and properly “adulting”, my perspective on that has been changing. These days, peace and quiet is what I’m after, and ultimately a castle to call my own. I don’t want to hear the busy sidewalks and too many cars driving by; I don’t want to fight with the crowds and wade the troubles parking; I don’t want to pay the high tax for living in one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

I want open spaces, and dead silence.

I want the proverbial cottage at the countryside.

Too crazy of a dream? Perhaps. The immediate and biggest concern is what the heck am I to do for money. I refuse to be amongst the masses who live far away from the urban core, yet still commute for hours every day back into the city for work. That’s a significant amount of precious time to be squandered on the road, even in these modern times of endless podcasts and super intelligent cruise-control.

But those people do the commute slog for a reason: the city has almost all the jobs. It wouldn’t be so prosperous and constantly full of new developments otherwise. No doubt they’d all rather work much closer to home, but deep in the heart of suburbia or rural counties, there are no high paying jobs.

For me, the solution to that problem is the Internet, in the way of digital freelancing, or join a company that will allow work from home. With the cost of living ‘out in the sticks’ immensely less than metropolises, I wouldn’t even need to be earning as much as I do now for it to be sustainable. Besides, aside from cars (admittedly a big one), I’m not in the least materialistic about anything; I don’t need a huge salary to be absolutely content.

It’s definitely something to ponder about. I certainly cannot afford a house in or anywhere near San Francisco, so if I really want a place for myself – can’t live with the parents forever, no matter how Asian I am – I think I’ll have to get out from this city.

What if I hit the lottery?

I seldom play the lottery because rationality informs me the odds of winning are vanishingly minimal, and the money would otherwise be better served in an investment account. That’s precisely what I’ve been doing; volatility in the equities market these past few weeks notwithstanding. Investing in stocks is sort of like gambling: none of it is guaranteed, so in that way I don’t feel the need to buy lottery tickets or frequent Las Vegas casinos.

In the rare times when the lottery jackpot reaches stratospheric heights like last evening’s $1.6 billion in the Mega Millions, I'm inclined to buy in at the minimum. The odds haven’t changed of course, but the prize incentive is increased so dramatically that it’d feel rather stupid to not at least throw my hat into the proverbial ring. After all, the hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take". $40 million is life-changing indeed, but $1.6 billion is another life.

It’s always fun exercise to dream about exactly what you will do with that amount of money. I reckon the dopamine hit alone is worth squandering the two dollars required for one ticket. Plenty of people would probably quit their jobs, buy property somewhere to live, and follow their true passions. I’m certainly amongst that camp: if I hit the lottery I’d be a vagabonding photographer, with a focus on driving cars in spectacular locations, and write about it all on this website.

The question is, would I need to win a jackpot to do that?

Answer is a decided no. It doesn’t take an enormous sum to travel and write; get good enough I might even be decently paid for it. What the hypothetical lottery winning provides is absolute freedom: freedom from the obligations of a normal person. People aren’t keen to quit their jobs to chase a passion because they’ve got others dependent on their regular paychecks, be that a spouse, children, or a mortgage.

I currently have none of those obligations, and quite a bit saved up in the bank (again, last couple of weeks’ stock market notwithstanding). So what’s stopping me from going after my passion?

Just me.

I don’t suppose any of this is OSHA approved.

Financial goals stop the great

Last week I wrote about not letting fear stop the great: I shouldn't let worries of potential theft deter me from getting a motorcycle and enjoying it fully. But you know what does stop the great? Money.

For clarification, I've got enough money to purchase a bike many times over (hashtag not so humble brag). Rather it's my financial goals that is preventing me from dropping the few thousand dollars to procure a motorcycle. Currently I am actively saving up to purchase a 911 in a year's time, and with Porsche's pricing as it is, the car will cost dearly. Therefore all discretionary monetary resources I've got must attune to that objective first.

A motorcycle wouldn't be the first casualty: due to the tremendous need to store up money for the 911, I've had to delay other interests as well. I'm largely done with my Korean studies and had originally chose to learn the piano next, but the keyboard I want costs almost $2,000 dollars so that immediately tabled it for later. I've also stopped buying new camera gear: while I've been pining for a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for the longest time, $2,600 dollars for right now is better served towards the Porsche.

Travel plans for this year? There were none. I couldn't part with the cash to do so. Compared to 2017 where I four times took trips out of the country, the contrast is stark. These days I even try to not go out on weekends (not too difficult for a homebody like myself) because that would mean spending more money than necessary.

Extreme? Perhaps, but it's all dedicated to a singular goal: once I had decided to buy a 911, I knew many temporary sacrifices will have to be made. Such is the condition of being a rabid car enthusiast, though we all have our areas of fiscal extravagance, don't we? A friend of mine is planning to go see The Phantom of the Opera for a third time now that the tour has returned to San Francisco.

I bet he hasn't the need to perform austerity like I am. So lucky.