PTO request

I guess the pandemic is truly over:I finally requested vacation time at work! The last two weeks of June will be the first time since the beginning of this COVID-19 mess that I’ll be taking time off. It coincides quite nicely with California’s plan to fully reopen on the June 15th. The possibilities are endless, even though there are no concrete plans as of this writing.

Given I still can’t yet visit Asian countries without a fortnight’s worth of quarantine, I really didn’t plan to take vacation this summer. Staying at home for two weeks just doesn’t have that much appeal to me. However, our manager is encouraging people to take time off. A friend of mine wants to go either up to the Pacific Northwest, or down south towards Los Angeles. So I figured why the heck not. Let’s see what those two weeks will develop into.

Difficult to say whether I will go back to traveling multiple times a year once everything truly goes back to normal. I rent a place now, so my disposable income isn’t what it used to be. Then again, I also don’t have a Porsche 911 GT3 to pay for and upkeep, so I reckon it all balances out. What will be weird is the first time I get back on an airplane. I wonder when I do fly again, if masks mandates will till a thing onboard. I’ll be wearing one for sure.

What I should do is take the BMW M2 on a road-trip. But have you seen the gas prices lately? The car does get around 25 miles to the gallon on the highway, so it shouldn’t be too bad taking it far away. The M2 could really use the miles. These days the only time I drive it is when I do my weekly grocery shopping, and visiting my parents across town. I am paying too much money for it to simply sit.

I think I’ll drive it somewhere far during some of the two weeks I have off in late June.

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Said grocery shopping.

To vacation or not

Summer is nearly upon us, and for those of us working in education, that means we can plan for some vacation time. 2020 was obviously a lost year, but with the vaccines proliferating nicely throughout the country, we can indeed entertain the thought of going away to places. Just recompense for being stuck at home for more than one year.

And it seems the proverbial floodgates have opened. My friend is heading off to Hawaii around Memorial Day, and the cost to rent a car is utterly extravagant relative to what it should be. Vaccinated people are planning to travel in droves, and prices for the touristy stuff are reflecting that demand. I haven’t checked, but I bet a plane ticket to Hawaii for the summer months is decently above average in price.

I’m in a conundrum, because while I do want to take vacation and travel somewhere, the places I want to go are all outside of America. I would love to go back to South Korea or Taiwan. Sadly, as of right now, traveling outside of this country is still prohibitive due to two-week quarantining requirements in most other countries. I only ever take two weeks of vacation at a time total, so I can’t spend all of that stuck in safety limbo.

The vacation I want to have is not a possibility, therefore should I even bother requesting time off this summer? I guess it would be prudent and healthy to take the time anyways even if I’m just staying home. It’s too early to say right now: if the aforementioned Asian countries relax their quarantine requirements in the coming months, I would definitely quickly make a change of plans.

But so would everyone else. I reckon traveling this year - especially outside of America - is going to be an expensive endeavor. Come on, guys, we make money now…

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To the right.

First

Hello, friends. Welcome to this side of 2021. Consider yourself lucky - as I do - if you’ve made it through the pandemic 2020 with your health and job intact. The onus is on us to give those that have lost plenty a helping hand. For example: those in a position to not really need the $600 stimulus check should donate it to a charity. Consider a local food bank, or the Barstool Fund.

Because I work in education, I got the week and a half between Christmas Eve and New Years Day off. The white-collar winter break, if you will. While it sucked that I couldn’t travel back home to China as it’s my usual during this time, it was still nice to have some solitude at home. The weather was rainy for the most part as well, which is just about the perfect backdrop for some quiet contemplation.

Of course, it seems to be impossible for me to do absolute nothing, even when I’m on vacation. I feel best when I’m productive, so over the winter break I kept on reading books and studying Korean for a few hours per day. I also wrote a personal reflection piece on 2020, and a December update to owning my BMW M2 Competition. Please kindly give those a read.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions anymore, preferring consistent processes and habits. Sometimes the end goal can overwhelm the brain into failed submission. A small daily habit is much more palatable. Read 100 books for the year seems like climbing Everest; read for a half hour every day is infinitely more doable. Let your daily habits compound, and by the end the year you might as well end up reading 100 books.

I have no new habits to make for 2021; not yet, anyways. One mental goal I am working on this year is to truly ignore the opinion of others, to not give a crap what other people think. Too often I’ve let how I think others will react dictate my actions. This doesn’t mean I’m going to be a narcissistic asshole to people; the point is to be completely myself. I’m not going to restrict who am I and what I do just because I’m afraid what people will say.

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Most favored cat.

Post Thanksgiving

Hello, friends. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, socially-distanced, of course. Indeed I’ve written before that I don’t blame anyone for wanting to gather during the holidays, even under these dire COVID circumstances. Because it’s been a really rough year, and human beings are social animals (even for the introverted me). Certainly, the “right” thing to do would be to not gather at all, but we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place if every American did what was right far earlier during this pandemic.

We have to accept reality: people are going to get together for the holidays. Christmas season is next.

It comes down to how much risk you are willing to take, and amongst my friend group, we chose a short gathering for Thanksgiving, with the appropriate masks and precautions (my own family never celebrated Thanksgiving). We hung out for about an hour at a friend’s house, and then individually took home food to-go. Later on we joined a Zoom session as the replacement for chatting over the dinner table. It was the best we could do under the circumstances, and most importantly, everyone felt good about it instead of someone stressing they are taking an undue risk.

It’ll be fun to look back at the pictures from this year and laugh at how peculiar it all is. A moment in our lives that hopefully is an anomalous blip, rather than a new normal.

Celebrations aside, I took the entire Thanksgiving week off work, so it was nice to have some leisure time to recharge the mind and body batteries. At first I was hesitant to even take the days off because I can’t go anywhere for obvious reasons. Normally I’d be off to Asia for the week, or at least not stuck at home the entire time. Instead, the only difference from work in taking vacation during COVID is that I don’t have to follow the online work channels for eight hours out of the day.

That being said, the respite from work allowed me to get the last bit of things I need to completely finish the moving process that started almost a month ago. It’s always nice to able to go to IKEA on a weekday when there’s far less people, and I can flaneur through the showrooms unbothered by crowds.

There’s one more month to go on this crazy year. I am grateful that me and the people close to me are still healthy and gainfully employed. That’s all we can ask for.

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Barren racks.

I need a break from work

I’m very much looking forward to Thanksgiving, partly because I’m taking the entire week off from work. In requesting the time off from my supervisor, I realize it has been since the beginning of January I’ve actually taken vacation. It wasn’t that I did not have enough accrued time to take, it’s just that without anywhere specific to travel to - and saving up money for the next car - there was no reason to get away from work. Simply keep stacking up the time and save it for a later date.

But I’ve come to the realization that even a periodic staycation at home is a great positive towards well-being and absolutely crucial. I didn’t even know I can get burned out from work; I love my job and it’s the best thing to happen to me career wise, but going nearly a full year without a solid break turns out to be not the best of ideas. It’s good to switch out of the daily grind and routine for some mindless, unscheduled fun.

Whenever I return from traveling I always get renewed energy and enthusiasm towards work. The change in perspective for that week or two away keeps me grounded and grateful to have a career that enables me to take time off to travel to beautiful far-flung places. I think of the many people in jobs who don’t get vacation time or if they do aren’t paid for the days away. How lucky am I? Therefore when I go back to work I make sure to earn this privilege through my performance.

So what’s on the docket for Thanksgiving week? A bit of Fall cleaning is probably in order, given the state of things continually stacking up in my room. I will be attending the San Francisco International Auto Show for the first time in two years (travel plans prevented me from going, coincidently), and I’m excited to look at some new cars in close scrutiny. My brother is headed off to LA so I might commandeer his MK7.5 Golf GTI and finally get round to writing a review for it.

Most of all there will be lots of Red Dead Redemption 2 action in front of the television. I’ve purposely (and painfully) held off playing the critically-acclaimed title everyone is crazy over until I’ve got a large immutable chunk of free time. Thanksgiving week shall be that.

Not a break from work but rather a break during work.