A Deeply Ominous Fog Covering Up The Bay Bridge

Hello from the other side of Halloween, and a pretty busy week at work (for the first time in quite a while!).

Yesterday a few friends decided to run a popup cafe out of their living room. I was voluntold to make matcha, but very few “customers” ordered matcha, so instead I ended up front-of-house taking orders. A surprisingly fun experience, even when it got chaotic, although that may be because I was waiting on patient friends-of-friends instead of strangers. (To my eternal shame, I somehow failed to have a service-facing jobs growing up, unless you count TAing students only a year or two younger.)

On a related note, I’ve finally dialed in my matcha latte recipe: 3g to 2oz 175°F water, whisk, add 1tbsp simple syrup if sweetening, then add 6oz of steamed (or, realistically, lightly frothed) milk. For matcha on its own, I prefer 1.5 - 2g matcha to 2oz water, drunk straight. (I updated my recipe as well.)

I’ve been getting a lot of recruiter emails these days — like 3+ a day. I find this alarming. Why are all these fly-by-night AI companies hiring so much? Are we at the height of the bubble? How many of these companies will still exist in a year, let alone 5 years? And how much of the economy are they going to evaporate in the meantime? It’s nice to be wanted (… somewhat; I do have to triage quite a bit more email than I used to), but it feels suspicious.

I’ve been seeing “ten pointless facts about me” go around, so in the IndieWeb spirit, here’s ten pointless facts about me:

Do you floss your teeth?

Of course, that’s one of my favourite pieces of advice.

Tea, coffee, or water?

I’m a tea snob — I just got back from the SF International Tea Festival! — but lately I’ve been drinking more coffee than tea, primarily out of an Aeropress. That probably started because decaf dark roast coffee can be pretty good, whereas decaffeinated tea is an abomination against nature and herbal teas are mostly just fine — so if I want a warm, caffeine-free drink, a decaf latte it is, and eventually I started to drink caffeinated coffee in the mornings as well. That said, ever since reading Keep Sharp, I’ve tried to stay well-hydrated, so I also sip a lot of water, usually from my beloved Zojirushi bottle, sometimes with DripDrop electrolyte powder.

The perhaps not-at-all interesting story of how I became a tea snob: my parents were always straight-black-coffee drinkers, which I never got the taste for; until very recently, I had a strong aversion to bitterness of any kind. But when I went to college, hoping to give up my two-Coke-can-a-day habit and start drinking Adult Drinks™️, I decided to make an effort to drink coffee — at Tim Hortons. So the first few months in Canada, I exclusively drank (cloyingly sweet) French vanillas from Timmies, before deciding they were kind of gross. I decided to give this foreign “tea” drink a chance (conveniently forgetting that my mother was/is a hardcore unsweetened iced tea drinker), and I liked it enough to keep drinking it and, eventually, become a snob.

Footwear preference?

Sneakers! Unless I’m running, in which case I wear Brooks (because I had a bad experience with Altra), or if I have to dress up, in which case I wear a pair of Dr Martens that don’t have the yellow stitching. I did recently buy a pair of Teva closed-toe sandals and Merrell hiking shoes, though, which I might start wearing more often.

Favourite dessert?

I’m a cookie boy — I used to request a cookie cake every year instead of a cake-cake (which are not good, sorry not sorry).

Though lately I’ve gotten a taste for pandan — a local bakery does coconut pandan mochis that I’m crazy for.

The first thing you do when you wake up?

If I slept without socks on, I put socks on. Otherwise, I give Rooibos a pat on the head.

Age you’d like to stick at?

Now seems fine! Although maybe I have slightly less energy than a year or two ago… so maybe 27-28 is more realistic.

How many hats do you own?

I have a beanie (aka toque) that I don’t have much use for in San Francisco, and a Puma ballcap that I rarely wore until recently, when I realized it’s actually kind of useful for running.

Describe the last photo you took?

A deeply ominous fog covering up the Bay Bridge, even though the rest of the sky is bright blue.

Worst TV show?

Most TV shows are pretty bad.

As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?

At some point I wanted to be an author. And for a long time I was certain I’d end up in the games industry in some form or another. But some part of me also wanted to be a Certified Tech Bro™️ working at Google, which I guess is the closest to what I actually ended up.