New York City (1987)

In the Summer of 1987, I worked in New York City, doing data entry for a printing company (Automatech Graphics Corporation). This was the Summer after my freshman year in college. I took the PATH train from Journal Square into New York City. I then got off at the 9th Street PATH station and walked to the company's office on 770 Broadway.

At that PATH stop on 9th street, if you looked South down Avenue of the Americas you could see the World Trade Center. Heading East on 9th to the office, the walk was only a half mile. On Broadway, there was a corner store that made breakfast sandwiches. I sometimes treated myself to a bagel and an orange soda. I ate it outside if I was early, then walked into the office where I stayed until lunch.

Lunch is hazy in my memories. I do not think I brought lunch. More likely, I would have walked outside and grabbed a pizza or a hot dog. There may have been a vending machine in the office, but I no longer remember. Later that Summer I found a nearby diner called Silver Spurs, and they had delicious cheeseburgers for super cheap. I went there a lot.

I became comfortable walking around the area. Even though lunch was a strict 45 minutes, I remember walking a few blocks to the Strand Bookstore, and visiting record stores on St Marks Place. I could have even walked to Washington Square Park. Sometimes my friends would meet me in New York after work. It was the Big Apple after all.

I walked this commute using Google Maps' Street Views recently. New York City has changed so much since 1987, but this virtual walk looked roughly the same. The trees on 9th Street, the fancy-looking apartments, the large brownstones, the car garages, 5th Avenue. In Street Views, you can select older images, and by going to 2013 I could see Silver Spurs. (It's now a coffee place.)

The last time I was in Jersey City, I walked from the PATH station in Journal Square to our old house. Maybe the next time I visit I'll take it to 9th Street and take a walk around!

My Left Hand

I am a right-handed person. My wife is a left-handed person.

Because of this, I have become a little more sensitive to the nature of being left-handed. When you're left-handed, you angle for the left side of the dinner table. There is also the need to have appropriate scissors. You also must think about how to arrange the buttons on your computer mouse. Lots of small things to consider.

One of my favorite books is Joe Perry's biography "Rocks", about his life as Aerosmith's lead guitarist. He plays right handed, but one of the things he reveals in the book is that he is left-handed, so learning the guitar was an exercise in flying upside-down for him. I wonder how his learning would have changed if he started with a left-handed guitar?

I also remember a golf tournament many years ago. Tiger Woods was in jail, his ball against some brush. He wasn't able to take a normal stance, but to the announcers' amazement, Tiger turned the club upside down and took a left-handed shot. It made sense that he would know how to do this as there are some professional baseball players that can bat from either side of the plate.

As for me, I make an effort to use my left hand when I think I have a choice. For example, I will try to open a bottle of pills or reach into a cupboard for a mug with my left hand. It's a small thing, but I feel some solidarity with left-handed people. Both sides of my brain gets some usage when I spread the work like this, and that's got to be a good thing.

Thunder Road

The Bruce Springsteen movie is in theaters and it prompted me to listen to my favorite Bruce Springsteen song: "Thunder Road", from his majestic 1975 "Born to Run" album. The song is a timeless beauty to me, and I can remember when I first heard it (circa 1982-1986).

In high school, I attended retreats led by the priests at my all-boys Catholic school. These retreats were held in a large house in Sea Bright, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore. My memories of the retreats are mostly dim except for that one morning someone put on this album (vinyl).

A fellow student flipped through the albums at that retreat house and announced "Bruce!" He cued up the first song and Thunder Road began, filling me instantly with its lyrical imagery. Mary's dress swaying, skeleton graves burning, and the exhortation to let the wind blow back your hair.

I've loved that song ever since. Recently I've come to enjoy the version he did with Melissa Etheridge. In that rehearsal he said "there's no chorus" (presumably to arrange the duet). There's just a bunch of lyrics was his lament, and she said "But they're really good lyrics!" Absolutely.

My Book's Anniversary

Earlier in the year, I experienced a remarkable moment. I was in the library, browsing computer books when to my great delight I saw the book I wrote on the shelf! It was a momentous occasion for me.

Ten years ago to the month my book was published and sent out into the world. It's okay if you missed it. It is a technical book, and it's for a technical audience. Still, I'm proud of it, and back then I thought the publisher would distribute the book to every bookstore and library.

I spent several months of 2015 and 2016 looking for my book among the new computer books in every random bookstore and library. I never spotted it. I knew people were buying it, because after a few months I began to receive very modest royalty checks. But I longed to see it on the shelves.

Eventually I stopped looking for it. The royalty checks were enough evidence, I suppose. And I am grateful for the money from the book (though it's only a fraction of my current salary). An author I know told me that the secret to making real money with books is to write more than one!

At the library, I pulled down my book and leafed through it. The technology in the book is something I use every day, and I know it much better now than ten years ago. The book is aimed for beginners, and I wonder if I could write for them now like I did back then.

I didn't spend much time with the book. There's only one section I reread, and that's the acknowledgements. I go right to the last paragraph where I thank my wife and daughter for their patience and love during the year I spent working on it. I would certainly write them in now like I did in 2015.

A Return to Golf

I played a real round of golf last week, after a long hiatus. It was just nine holes, but it counts! The last time I played any real golf was 2009. Somehow, since then, I drifted away from this sport. People have asked over the past years if I played, and I joked that I had retired from golf. But had I?

A few years ago, maybe even pre-COVID, the office landlord installed a golf simulator. This is where you hit a golf ball on a mat into a screen. A machine detects your club head speed and angle, and then projects the ball's flight path on the screen. It can simulate good shots as well as bad shots. After a few good hits I began to think I could still play this game.

Last year I went to a corporate event at a golf simulator last year. I had more fun than I expected. I had a few decent hits, and despite my horrible score, it really whet my appetite for playing again. Nothing beats seeing a well-struck golf ball in flight. The organizer said he'd try to do an outing at a real course and encouraged me to sign up. I said I'd think about it.

Last month that same person reminded me about the upcoming golf outing. We'd be outside, playing on a real course, using the low-pressure scramble format. I asked him if I could rent clubs at the course, and he said he had some random clubs I could borrow. I then jumped on Facebook Marketplace to find some golf shoes. For good measure, I went to a driving range to see if I could still hit.

My round last week was about what you'd expect after not playing several years. I lost probably four balls (three into the water), duffed several, and had precious few decent hits. But I wasn't discouraged. I relished being on a course again, playing this fine game. On the last hole, a par three, I hit a gorgeous tee-shot with a pitching wedge that landed just off the green. I think I'm back!

H-Mart

I live right next to an H-Mart, an Asian food supermarket. I could walk there, I live so close. I have ordered boba tea from this place with co-workers, but for the longest time I have not set foot inside, until this past weekend.

H-Mart is wild inside. Maybe it was all the labels with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. Maybe it was the distinctive odor of live seafood inside of display aquariums. I saw strange fruit and produce. I saw immense bags of uncooked rice (brown, white, jasmine, medium grain). These last items transported me to a scene growing up: emptying out a large bag of rice into an even larger container, the rice making a distinctive sound as it poured out of the bag.

As expected, I saw plenty of Asians walking around, their faces familiar to me, yet also unfamiliar. I thought about my own identity a bit. I am Asian, but that always felt too broad to me. I remember a co-worker telling me that India is a part of Asia (the Indian subcontinent), and I remember being surprised. I should have known this, and felt chagrined that I didn't.

I saw random Caucasians during my visit. Most looked completely at ease with all the options. A few looked like me: dazed with wonder. I thought about my own upbringing, and my own assimilation. Born in the Philippines, but raised entirely in the United States from the age of three. For my parents, their old home is an island nation in Southeast Asia. For me, my old home is Jersey City, New Jersey.

Walking around the H-Mart reminded me of this bit: if you're American, you cannot go to China and become Chinese, but if you're Chinese, you can come to America and become an American. I know this is true. 

Around the circumference of H-Mart were food stalls. I commit to revisiting these more closely, as there could be takeout options here. After all, I live so close!

Planking

A year ago I started doing planks. This is a back exercise in which you position yourself face-forward on the floor, lifting your entire body by your toes and elbows. When done right your back and legs are as straight as a plank. After a minute or two your abdomen and back will feel the strain from holding this pose.

Various people have talked to me about this exercise when I mention my occasional back spasms. Planks are easy to perform, but it took a long time to build up endurance. At first I could only hold the pose for 20 or 30 seconds. I eventually reached a minute. Today, I can hold the pose for a minute and a half. I try to plank at least once in the morning and once in the evening.

About six or seven months into this new routine I realized that my back spasms stopped happening. My spasms tend to be a sharp pain that immediately subsides into a tightened back. I have exercises that reduce the tightness, but my back is wrenched for days at a time. Sitting or getting up with a wrenched back can be painful. However, since planking, these have stopped.

I can only conclude that planking has been the difference in my back and core health. The core of your body governs the back but also your torso (abdominal muscles) and your hips. In other words: posture and mobility. I've stopped regularly doing push ups because I'd rather be rid of my back aches than to have well-defined triceps. I suppose I could do both. Maybe I will.

Bottom line: I recommend a planking routine for those with back aches.

Italian Phrases I'm Memorizing

Ho una moglie e una figlia. Li amo molto ❤️

Sono americano ma sono nato nelle Filippine 🇵🇭

Caffè macchiato, per favore ☕️

Mi piace leggere 📚 e scrivere ✍🏼

È un Michelangelo 👨🏼‍🎨 o un Raffaello? 🎨

photo by tigerorchid

Put First Things First

I saw the Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in a used bookstore, and it made me smile. I read this book in the mid-90s and it certainly influenced how I thought about life and work. As time progressed, I have forgotten the seven habits but the one that stuck with me: "Put first things first."

In the chapter on this habit, he buckets all the things we have to do into four quadrants: 1) Urgent and important, 2) Not urgent but important, 3) Urgent but not important, and 4) Not urgent and not important. In the book he shows these quadrants on a square which has importance on the Y-axis and urgency on the X-axis.

I have always loved this idea. So much of our day feels driven by the urgent, and you have to decide what is important and what can wait. So much of our off-time is made up of unurgent and unimportant things. What gets left behind is Quadrant II: not urgent but important. 

Quadrant II is the sweet spot of long-term development. This category of work is hardly urgent, but applied to your life's goals, it is often terribly important. It's usually a preparatory step. You are acquiring some building block to help you get just a little further towards that big outcome.

The habit is titled "Put first things first", and this emphasizes prioritization. What is the first thing? If you want to reach big but distant goal, you have to do "the first thing." And yet it's often the easiest thing to set aside for something urgent in your face. By prioritizing an important but unurgent task, you prioritize your goal.

This is why I'll always applaud people who run marathons, finish their thesis, produce a work of art,  give a performance, or achieve some meaningful long-term goal. These are outcomes that do not come from out of nowhere. These outcomes require sustained time and effort in Quadrant II, and everyone recognizes the satisfaction that comes from that.

By Davidjcmorris - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Same Age We Are Now

I digitized a box of old photographs a few years ago. There is one set of photos of me attending my wife Jenn's graduation from a masters program. She was my girlfriend in those 1993 pictures. I have a shock of dark hair and we look so young. We'd be engaged a year later.

I showed these digitized photos to Jenn. Her mother was in a few of the pictures, and Jenn said "She's probably the same age we are now." That statement really struck me. All of a sudden, I felt like I could see the cycle of life, the edges of the wheel of time. 

Jenn's statement changed my frame of reference. Those old pictures now present another kind of understanding for me. Our parents were "old" in these pictures, but we are now their age. It's an insight that should not have surprised me. Relative time goes in both directions, and it makes me grateful to properly see that now.

Bare Handed Fall

The cold weather and heavy snow made a slippery obstacle course in our parking lot earlier this month. On my way to the car in the morning, I saw a patch of snow that looked walkable. I stepped on it and my foot instantly slipped and I began falling backwards. 

It felt like slow motion. I wore a book bag, but it started moving off my shoulders as I fell backwards. "That was really ice," I remember thinking. My right foot was up in the air, and my left foot soon followed it. My arms and hands started reaching behind me, ready to brace for the fall when I realized: "I'm not wearing my gloves!"

My hands hit the ground first. I was on my back, my book bag next to me. I rolled to my left, slowly stood up and gingerly stepped off the snow/ice. As I brushed away the dirt and snow on my coat and pants, I felt a sharpness in my hands. I looked and my right hand had several small cuts! It hurt a bit too.

I decided to go back inside and get my hand properly treated. Jenn patched up my hand, applying some expired bacitracin and covering my two larger cuts with bandages. Three weeks later, my hand is all healed up. I'm lucky the fall didn't cause any more damage. I think my heavy winter coat helped with that.

From that day though, I made sure to wear my gloves on the way to the car. I also avoided cutting across those snow patches. Taking a fall when you're older can be a big deal so I will be watching my step a little better!

Small number (7) of cuts on my hand

My 2024 Books and Movies

In 2024, I read 24 books (LibraryThing) and watched 48 movies (Letterboxd) (11 were rewatches).

My favorite book: The Age of Innocence. I still have not rewatched the movie, which my memory holds in high esteem, but the book is so evocative of the time (the gilded age of the 1870s) and the feelings. The Countess Elena Olenska and gentleman lawyer Newland Archer are such memorable characters. The book also includes a brief stop in Jersey City, which amazed me to see. Other favorites from last year: The Tetris Effect and American Prometheus.

My favorite movie: Mars Express. Sci-fi animation from France. Robots. Mars. And a hard-nosed detective. It's emotional, complex, and dense. Everything I like in a movie. Highly recommend this beauty. Other notable watches from last year: Flow and All That Jazz.

Some movies I watched from 2024