chinese satellites / [routines and updates]
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Election anxiety and fear, post-election disinformation, COVID spiking again, successful vaccine trial news, a new president-elect… There’s been a lot going on. But also there hasn’t been a lot going on. Most of my days (other than that lovely week in Utah) look something like this:
8:30am - Wake up, eat breakfast, drink some tea, start working
12:00pm - Eat lunch, which is usually lentil stew, sourdough toast, or a sandwich
3:30pm - Break from work to go for a 3-7mi bike ride, depending on how I’m feeling
6:00pm - Make dinner
9:00pm - Read and meditate
10:45pm - Sleep
The days blend together, which has been the common theme of COVID life. I have kind of forgotten what it’s like to go eat at a restaurant, go to a concert, or walk through a crowd. More than ever, I feel like it is the small things in life that make each day interesting. Some small wins of late:
I can ride bike rollers without any support now. I still feel like dying after ~5 mins but that’s still progress.
I learned of lot of interesting food/grocery facts from The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr. It was a was a fascinating micro-history and analysis of the current food system and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about a system that is critical to our daily lives.
I’m really happy with the film photos from the last few months. It was my first time shooting Lomo 800 film for my personal documentary photography. I’m not as familiar with the unique characteristics of Lomo 800 compared to Fuji C200 (which has been my go-to for years now), but I thought they came out pretty well! Not as happy with my Ektar shots in the Mamiya 7, but haven’t found a medium format film that I really like (maybe Portra 800?)
It’s no longer 90-110 degrees every day which has been the best thing ever.
Kiss the Ground was an at-times-interesting, at-times-questionable documentary on regenerative farming. I think it could’ve gone without some of the celebrity cameos, but the concept of regenerative farms is worth spreading and it’s exciting to see more mainstream media sources providing climate solution documentaries to the public.
Sadly, I found Ken Liu’s second collection of short stories to be pretty disappointing. There were a few that had the magic of The Paper Menagerie, but others lacked human character. It felt like he was too caught up in the technological aspects of the stories that the individual characters generally fell flat. The ones that were good, however, were lovely.
The Orange Farmers Market has amazing giant $6 loaves of fresh sourdough and fall flavored pluots.
Moment made a filter for pack film! Fuji FP-100c was my favorite film while it was still manufactured. I remember cars slowing down to stare at me on Memorial Drive as I held a giant Polaroid Land 250 to my face on a detour from classes. There’s a sample shot from the RTRO app at the end of the post. Pack film tends to be muddy looking and underexposed and moody but for some reason I really liked it. It’s cool that Moment made a filter for it since I didn’t think it was a particularly popular film format.
We attached a hitch and bike rack to Gari! Took some borrowed car ramps, 3/8” socket wrenches, and a lot of time figuring out how to remove stubborn exhaust hangers and it’s still unclear if we did it properly, but here we are. Can’t wait to bike the Santa Ana River Trail.
reflection question
What is something you want to work into your routine?
