triathlon, cars, LA [letter]

Hiya Moses!

Unfortunately I'm not free next Saturday, but please tell me more about the dance event!

This past April, I've finally joined a triathlon club. I've been on two group rides around the Los Altos/Palo Alto area, with each ride being approximately 32-34 miles. The people in the club are very friendly to beginners, and they made sure to check my gear and explain some basic safety principles of group riding (i.e. not overlapping tires). To be honest, I thought I was an okay rider, but these people were super fit and fast! Even as I fell behind, they made sure to pause and regroup every so often along the route. Towards the last five miles of my first ride, I was slowing down considerably out of exhaustion, but one of the riders was kind enough to ride directly in front of me to give me a draft (by decreasing the air resistance). I used to complain about South Bay being a kind of tech purgatory with nothing to do, but riding through the rolling hills and shaded woods while admiring the horses and farmland (in such close proximity to industry and urban civilization) made me more appreciative.. 

In addition to biking, I've dipped my toes into open water swimming, which I am very enthusiastic about. So far I've only swam in the Foster City lagoon, but something about bobbing about in cold water with no sight of the bottom or restrictions in the form of lane lines or walls is very peaceful. I hope to join other open water swims in Aquatic Park (SF) and Santa Cruz once I become more experienced.

Though I haven't registered for any races yet, my goal is to start out with a sprint distance this year, perhaps at the one hosted by Cal Triathlon. It is motivating to see people be fit and take care of their health! My friend lightly teased me about cardio being my hobby, but I think having small amounts of pain and endorphins in a controlled environment is satisfying.

Two weekends ago, I hung out separately with two old friends from high school. I went with the first friend to watch Monkey Man, which I had heard about on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. One of my favorite sequences of the film was of a pickpocketed wallet traversing from a woman's purse, to a fake beggar's wheelchair, to a shopkeeper's back store room, to a child's backpack, etcetera etcetera, all in a continuous flow of motion until dropping into Dev Patel's waiting hands. The fight scenes reminded me of Stephen Chow's martial arts movies, and once I dropped my expectations of a complex plot, I accepted the straightforwardness of Dev Patel's revenge mission. I definitely missed a lot of Indian cultural context (I think there were clips of real life civil unrest / political corruption), and I didn't understand why people at the temple were outcasts until reading the movie's Wikipedia page afterwards. But, it was an entertaining watch overall, and "better than John Wick" according to my friend. 

As for my second friend, he used to live across the street before moving out. While he came over to water his parent's plants, I noticed that he had bought an old 1991 Toyota MR2. Shamelessly, I asked if I could drive it and he agreed. It was my first time driving a "sports car" and the noise coming from the rear engine was a bit jarring at first. However, the clutch was surprisingly shorter than the Corolla's, which made shifting gears a lot quicker. The MR2 also had cute pop-up headlights, a T-top roof, and my friend had modified the steering wheel to be detachable. It was actually really fun to drive, and I can see the appeal of having a hobby car. Coincidentally, my first friend had recently purchased an old car for fun as well, and hopefully I can drive it too >:D My grand plan is to drive my friends around in the Corolla and convince them to get more unique manual cars so I can try them out for fun…

This past weekend, I went on a road trip with college friends to LA! We drove down Friday afternoon, and I think those 6 hours spent in the car were my favorite moments of the entire trip. Something about taking PTO on a Friday afternoon and relishing the freedom of not being at work is very delicious. Anyways, we had a Spotify jam session in which I was introduced to Muse, and now I am a fan of "Won't Stand Down". I'm not usually a fan of bass-heavy songs, but when the bass is melodic I can understand the urge to head-bang. 

The main motivation for visiting LA was to attend the Los Angeles Times Book Festival at USC, but we ended up adding a bunch of other activities. Some highlights include being disappointed at how tasty the Erewhon smoothie was (we split a single smoothie four ways, but went back the next day for another), visiting a jimjilbang in Ktown, sipping tea at a very aesthetically pleasing teahouse in the Arts District, and watching Hazbin Hotel in the AirBnB late at night. 

I also took some film pictures, which are still stuck on my camera, but I will share them when developed!

I'm almost done with Boys in the Boat, and I will start Dune soon after having borrowed a copy from Vivian.

Please tell me about how you've been doing!

how to write an essay [SAD MOTH CH. 3]

I realized that the ratio of angsty musings to productive information on this blog is quite skewed. To convince myself in the future that I did have other thoughts and life events, the next few blogs will recap some travel and career reflections.

Nevertheless, I've been putting off this final chapter of SAD MOTH since the end of 2023, in hopes that there was an alternative ending in store. Given that there are a few exciting events coming up, I wanted to clear the backlog of experiences I have yet to write about, so here we go 😀

In general, I prefer beginnings over endings. Whether in movies, books, trips, or semesters, the infinite branching of possibilities at the start feels much less claustrophobic than the movement of a chip down the Plinko board, hurtling towards a singular outcome. Even in essays, when tasked with writing a conclusion, I wondered why the reader didn't pay close enough attention during the body.

 

Thus, this present task of trying to summarize how I imploded a friendship is one that I've kept on the back burner for a while.

~~~

While drafting speaker notes on how to empathetically (but concisely) conclude our friendship, I recognized that the main theme was grief over a connection of the past. The act of trying to explain to a person what they have meant to you over the past decade or so of knowing them was actually really embarrassing and frustrating. Embarrassing to the point where I wanted to flee the unfolding social disaster, but could not, since I was perpetrating said disaster. Frustrating to the point where I wanted to cry when words to communicate the full context of the situation failed to come (not unlike a toddler I suppose). So much for preparing notes.

It was mortifying to tell a friend that they should leave first because I didn't think I could be the one to walk away. With an awkward pat on the back, we shook hands and saluted to the end of a friendship. 

~~~

And as quickly as things escalated, it ended just like that. I remember crying, feeling annoyed at crying, and trying to rationalize my tears to a stop. Sometimes, a masochistic urge would arise to wallow in the emotion like picking a scab. Given that this was, realistically, a situation of low existential threat, the fact that I've mulled over this hour long interaction for almost half a year is just alskdfjlsdkj. 

A variety of things were subject to grief: the loss of an adolescent best friendship, the casting away of an easy balance of talking about everything and nothing at all (what a cliche). It was a slow realization over many years that I wanted to talk more about somethings rather than nothings, and even actually do things rather than just talk. I can see how "random small stuff" can be synonymous with the trivial or quotidian, but whether I shared milestones or blurry pictures of cars, the fact that they were sent to you first was not random. 

 

If I were to be more objective, I can see how the diode of information flowed one way, but not much in the opposite direction. I can also see the break point occurring many years earlier had digital communication not enabled this configuration of friendship.

Anyhoo, a nice brew of injured pride, rejection, indulgent lamentation, and eventual acceptance had been captured from the atmosphere and petrified in this SAD MOTH chapter, as we hope to do with carbon dioxide within stone. 

While the jury is still out on whether this will solve climate change, at least I have some breathing room for what is to come.