Category Archives: economics

Solo (VFR) flight to Oceano, CA

Feb 17, 2020.

It has been five months since I got my private pilot license! The winter wasn't offering many good days to go up and enjoy the freshness of the air. Finally, spring is here and unlike last year, it doesn't rain much this time. I haven't done much flying since last Nov (only two trips to Monterey?), and I couldn't wait to have a great (long) weekend to go further. This time, I go all the way south to see the closest airport to the beach -- Oceano, CA (L52).

When I work up and checked the weather this morning around 8:30 am, to my surprise, the fog covered the entire path from Palo Alto to Paso Robles. I could fly down the coast, but what if I cannot land in Oceano? I could only fly VFR (and I don't want to fly when I cannot see anything...I am not commuting. Seeing the landscape is part of the joy of flying by myself). I decided to wait a few hours, and it finally cleared up around 10am. Well, by the time I was in the air, it was already 12pm, but at least, I knew it would be clear all the way and remain clear for my night landing. I haven't done a night landing forever. The Marina layer that covers Bay Area is challenging.

On the way to Oceano, I flew inland most of the time. After Paso Robles, I decided to check out high way 58 and the Carrizo Plain National Monument area. It could be really pretty if the flowers are blooming. However, despite the hills were green, there was no visible trace of flowers in my sight. I headed directly to Oceano after that. Sorry to confuse traffic control (Oakland Center and Santa Barbara Approach...I guess I was on their boundary).

Too early for the flower carpet

The entire flight was very smooth, until close to Oceano. I was wowing the beauty of the beach, the ocean, and the airport, then some turbulence called my attention back. Okay, I guess I need to control the airplane first and land safely...There's enough time to enjoy the beauty of the sight after I land.

Most of the time, after I land somewhere, I need to find a crew car (thanks Monterey!) or a rental car to get around. When I was planning for the flight last night, someone said that I wouldn't need a car in Oceano. Really? Aren't airports always far away from the towns? When I got close to the airport, yea, of course I won't need a car. When I was flying down wind, I was literally flying on top of the beach. I didn't expect it to be this close.

The airport is just right next to the beach!

Because of the detour to the mountains, I ended up spending about 1.5+ hours for the entire flight, even with ~15 knots tailwind. Well, I was really hungry, so although I really wanted to see the beach, I decided to get some food first. After lunch, I finally had the energy to go for a long walk. On the maps, it said "Oceano Dunes SVRA". I was wondering, what's special about the beach? Soon I founded it out that people could drive their normal cars inside of the state park! That's just crazy.

Driveway on the sand
Blowing the sands like a little kid, at Oceano Dunes

After a two hours walk, I went back to my plane. Some flowers are already blooming, e.g. California poppy, though I am still waiting for the season to see them dominate the entire hill. California sunshine is always on the healing side. Just a little bit out of the bay (i.e. 1.5-hour flight), I can find so many beautiful places for a day adventure.

On the way back, I flew along the coast until Monterey, then directly to San Carlos. I was using autopilot all the way until I disengaged it near the silicon valley (where I had to manually control the plane). It was after sunset, and it took me 1.5 hours again due to headwind. Luckily, I could spare my hands and take some pictures. Traffic wasn't busy after sunset...NorCar approach was quiet with only some commercial airliners' traffic, and they flew IFR 😉

Monterey city light after sunset
Santa Cruz city light after sunset
South Bay light at night

Back to San Carlos, and then home. It's a long day but I was well rested mentally. One more achievement -- I remembered to open and close VFR flight plans both ways!

Flight route -- outbound

My Second 600 KM

Ever since I first drove 600 KM in a day by myself, I never tried to drive that long again. Finally, it happened. Last weekend I had to drive 600 KM, for the second time in life.

The route was a loop starting from San Jose, then Monterey, then through 17 mile to Carmel, then down south to Big Sur and Hearst Castle, and finally drive back via 101.

Screen Shot 2016-02-29 at 10.53.52 PMWe were fortune enough to see the fog disappears in 17 mile. Everything happened in a sudden; dynamic.

DSC04474Then a front page photo of the famous tree in 17 mile.

DSC04553We saw three happy (or scared) rabbits... near the concrete bridge.

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Sharp cliff and sapphire blue sea.

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Sunset Near the Hearst Castle.

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Random Discovery from the City Lights, San Francisco

Having heard about the City Lights bookstore for a while, finally I got an idle afternoon to check out this cultural place. It was impressive that how the store encouraged people to read -- signs saying "have a seat + read a book" were everywhere.

I went to the poetry room and found a seat in the corner. The room was very quite in the afternoon with a ray of sunshine coming in through the window. Everything was just perfect to have a seat and read. So I picked a book randomly and started to read. I was expecting to read a poetry book but it turned out that the book was actually about Afghanistan -- stories about Afghanistan behind a collection of lansays. The name of the book was I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan.

I was more interested in reading and feeling the stories. To be honest, I only had limited knowledge of the middle east (or the West Asia), in spite of a fortunate trip to Israel this summer. When thinking about Afghanistan, my reactions were the American-Taliban war, withdrawal of American armies from Afghanistan, and some pieces of memories on the sharp contrast of Afghanistan in 50 years ago v.s. today. The book records some real stories in Afghanistan -- sex, rape, slave, war, marriage, family, exchange, education. Some brutal stories happened simply because people had no other choice. A vivid example is women's roles in a family. In the early days, women were responsible for bringing drinkable water to the family, and at that time they used containers like jugs to carry water from rivers to their houses. Recently, some families started to dig deep well to extract water directly from the underground so women no longer had to go out and carry water back. The interesting part was that because of the risk of rape and kidnap, women were not allowed to go out if not necessary, then it became hard for young girls to meet young boys. As a result, young people had fewer chances to meet each other. This side effect makes it harder to judge whether that technology improvement was good or bad; however, the wide applications of Internet (e.g. facebook) have significantly and positively impacted people's lives, as this lansay shows.

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Continue reading

about GDP

Happen to see this:

In nominal terms — the most appropriate measure when judging an economy’s global impact — India’s output is one-fifth that of China’s. India makes up a mere 2.5 per cent of global GDP against a hefty 13.5 per cent for China. If China grew at 5 per cent annually, it would add an Indian-sized economy to its already hefty output in less than four years. Saying India can match this is like saying a mouse can pull a tractor.

Then quickly checked China's GDP data...almost doubled since 6 years ago? (2009-2015). It is not just the math thing... not only add another India, China has already added another Japan-size economy. But wait, what does GDP mean for everyone?

That's like the question I had when I was wandering in streets in Tel Aviv...How should we account for economic growth? Especially for a big and quite unbalanced economy like China. My generation is not feeling stable -- so many people have to leave their hometowns to make a life either in Big Three (Beijing or Shanghai or Guangzhou/Shenzhen). Given another decade, how much worse could it even be?

Also wait... when US was at 10T China was not even 2T (2002)... now China/US is 10/17. Who can conclude that India cannot grow like China?