You son of a beach, I'm in

I am officially in on the Waymo app. I can now hail a fully autonomous car to take me anywhere (?) in San Francisco. Bad news for me is unlike the early invitees, rides are no longer free. But, I am excited to see what it is all about. Hopefully there won’t be any crashing into emergency vehicles. There definitely will not be any sex.

Can we trust computers fully? This morning, my Apple Watch did its hourly thing of reminding me to stand up. Problem is: I was already standing for the past 20 minutes! Kind of disappointed it wasn’t completely foolproof to detect that. I guess the Apple Watch doesn’t use a proximity sensor to gauge how far it is from the floor? That makes sense, actually. Otherwise, you can fake standing by sitting on a bar stool.

Pilots trust autopilot programs on airplanes, and by transitive properly, so do we as passengers. Obviously, there are way less airplanes in the sky compared to cars on the road. Also, there aren’t pedestrians and other objects to potentially run into.

I think the so called robotaxis are perfect for the introverts like myself. I almost never (want to) talk to the UBER driver, and always sit in the back passenger space. (Are there UBER drivers out there using two-door coupes?) With robotaxis, even the subtle pressure of making conversation with the driver will be gone! It is a completely silent car ride - there’s nobody else but me. I would totally watch a Youtube video during a Waymo ride, if I weren’t prone to carsickness.

Will I get annoyed at how strictly a Waymo ride follows the rules of the road? Example: everybody’s going 10 above, while the robotaxi is pegged to the speed limit. Unlike a human driver taxi, there isn’t (yet?) a financial incentive for a robotaxi to get to the destination as quickly as possible.

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The glow up.

The perfect bus timing

Today after the work was one of those scarce and magical occasions where the bus came right as I arrived to the waiting area. Then at the transfer point the second bus also came right as I alighted the first one. I got home in record time, nearly as fast as it did driving.  

So I've been doing the commute via public transport thing for nearly two weeks now, and I've got to say it's been going really smoothly. I'm lucky that while the bus can get crowded sometimes, it isn't the insanity that one of my friends have to deal with in which daily his bus is so full he's usually squeezed-in right next to the exit doors. If I had to deal with that everyday I would've never sold my car. 

Indeed taking the bus have increased my total commute time by half hour to an hour, which is not ideal, though I claw back the lost productivity by tightening up my social media usage when I am at home. As soon as I get home from work I immediately attack the rest of my daily to-do list, where before when I drove I'd spend way too much time browsing twitter before I get a move on. 

A big positive in using public transportation is that I listen through so many useful podcasts - in peace. Not needing to concentrate on driving stuck in traffic and avoiding idiot drivers frees my mind and calms me down. I honestly don't mind the extra time it takes to get to work because I arrive with a better mental state, rather than still pissed off the asshole in the Nissan Altima cut me off. 

It's almost always an Altima. 

To the back of the bus.