The Skytreader – Chad Estioco

The Frustrations of Bicycle Maintenance

Author’s Note: I desperately wanted the title of this post to make a reference to the famous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, one of the many books I have not yet read. But given the actual events I am going to relate, I felt it disingenuous to imply any relationship to the state of Zen. Hey, I may be a small blog, but this blogger has ethical standards!

A tranquil early morning sun, bright and warm as a fond memory, lit the grounds of the spacious Winterhude Stadtpark. Just less than a month ago I had my bike tires changed and it is with the accompanying Enthusiasm for New and Shiny Things that I set about exploring the sparsely-peopled grounds. A ride this early (and, frankly, even earlier) is something I have long since planned; unfortunately, given my predilections to staying up late, you will understand why I needed some extra motivation to even be riding here.

Again, I don’t really see myself as a cyclist—bikes are transport first, exercise second—but these new tires just improved my relationship to cycling. I immediately noticed that uphills are ever so slightly more bearable and I objectively became faster too. Just when I thought I would no longer get the satisfaction of breaking a personal record in Strava, I go ahead and improve my record in a particularly thrilling sector of my usual route by a stunning 10 seconds and that’s without even trying, on my very first ride with the new tires.

Of course, I might’ve also become fitter than last year. But I really want to think it’s the tires. After my elbow is well enough to ride my bike again, I wouldn’t even try to go fast in my stock tires as they were looking all the worse for wear.

It did not matter to me that only my tires (and, well, pedals) were new; I rode around the Stadtpark, maneuvering my way around dirt paths with hardly any worry. There were barely any people in the park this early in a Saturday and I could do laps to my heart’s content. My new tires—Schwalbe Marathon Plus—had been nothing but a pleasure and, at the moment, I knew I had quite a budget of rubber to burn through. Not that I had any particular need or desire to do so. I decide to descend towards the pond, a central feature of the park, and ride along the edge because it’s a beautiful morning so why not?

My mind focused on navigating the short but rough downwards incline, I notice flecks of shiny green in the dust: shards of a broken bottle. I panic, knowing they could cut my tires but it’s too late to change lines. I ride over the broken shards, prepared to dismount immediately if my tires deflate. Thankfully, they don’t. I let the downhill momentum exhaust itself before finally dismounting to inspect my tires.

Visually, they look fine. I squeeze on them, time honored test of whether you have a flat or not, and they are as firm as when I picked them up from the bike shop. They even survive the trip home and have no issue at all in my usual Thursday rides to my Kickboxing classes at Zanshin Dojo.

One thing I’ve made a point of in the last two years is to never waste the sun. As a newcomer in these northern latitudes who arrived in the transitory months between spring and summer, I found it nice, cordial, but odd, when coworkers would end meetings with the pleasantry, “Enjoy the sun”. Having lived in a tropical climate until then, it never occurred to me that in other latitudes, fall and winter can be depressingly dark.

I mean, I’ve read books. I’m not an idiot. But it still hits differently when you live what you’ve only read about.

Admittedly, this simple pleasantry has become an imposition lately, underlined by the pandemic lockdowns as well as the fact that Hamburg’s weather does not exactly make for ideal and pleasant summers, the kind that would make bards wax lyrical about beauty. So when the sun is bright and shining outside, you go out, no two ways about it.

And so it was the case the Saturday following my Stadtpark excursion. I did not really have any plans but the sun was ripe for a ride. So I get dressed down and go down to my apartment’s bike cellar to get my bike. I notice that my rear tire is flat. Not worrying as I have an air pump, let me just go get it.

I notice that it is flat big time.

I notice a big gash at the edge of the tire.

And just like that, my pleasant weather Saturday nonplans turned into a couple of hours in my apartment’s basement trying to rescue a damaged tire without the proper tools. This was an eventuality I should’ve prepared for but did not. I regularly watch GCN but, for all the enthusiasm and good will they project about biking, all their daily drivers cost four-figures in Euros, at least. Their video about changing your bike tire, for instance, tells viewers to use the quick-release lever on the wheel. My wheels, do not have quick release, Si. It would also tell you to press a button on your breaks to open them and give your wheel clearance. Yup, another thing my venerable but humble bike, The Adventure Time, does not have.

Note: I like GCN. Their content and explainers are welcoming and not condescending to any skill/interest level but Park Tools’ library of content has been far more useful for me. Park Tools’ channel covers what GCN lacks for as a consequence of their fancy schmancy Pinarello frames and Shimano group sets.

I know that the DIY mindset has a certain association towards sustainable and frugal living but one thing I find often overlooked in this movement is the fact that you still need a certain amount of capital to get started doing repairs on your own. Before you can use whatever is just lying around, you first need to have a few things (or more) lying around. There’s no pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Tools and spare parts don’t grow on trees.

If I may digress for a bit into the world of computers, this is what I found so puzzling about the design of the Raspberry Pi, especially the earlier editions. It featured solely an on-board HDMI display port which made it incompatible with any of the monitors I had access to in 2013, and I was already working in the industry by then. Sure you could use adaptors but, first, you need to find adaptors!

Maybe, the touted cost-efficiency of DIY repairs depends on the item you want to repair. A spool of thread and some needles to patch up a pair of jeans is very accessible, easy to learn/use, and, yes, leagues cheaper than buying a new pair of jeans but for basically anything beyond that, you’d need tools, spare parts, as well as some training, all of which have a considerable upfront cost. Not to mention, hurdling that barrier does not completely preclude the possibility of failure.

(Ironically, what I really like about Software Engineering is the relatively cheap cost of mistakes. You can’t CTRL+Z a Civil Engineering miscalculation.)

As such I have learned to repair things in the least invasive manner to begin with. The best fix in the world is the one that does not call for disassembly. Alternatively, why fix the hardware if you can compensate for it in software?

So imagine my dread at being faced with a repair task that is pure hardware and has no uninvasive option. That tire and inner tube would need to be replaced. Heck, the wheel itself needs to come off at least.

But first I needed tools.

I already had a small 15mm wrench that I tried to use on my pedals a while back, for unrelated reasons. I bought it because it was cheap but unfortunately, this taught me the hard way what makes good tools. Small and cheap meant little to no leverage. I was unable to remove my pedals with it.

So I needed a wrench with sufficient leverage.

And speaking of levers, apparently there’s a very special type of tool called tire levers that you use to unseat a bike tire from the rim. I also needed that and I managed to order this small item from a local bike shop online that very night. This provided me with some comfort in my distress because I don’t remember seeing this tool in any of the bike shops I occasionally visit.

Naturally, tools are useless without the spare parts. I needed to buy tires and inner tubes. Despite the premature failure of the Schwalbe Marathon Plus, I took the events to show that this particular tire managed almost 20km on borrowed time. That sounded like a nice feature so I decided to stick with it. Not to mention it would bother my meticulous self endlessly to run two different types of tire in my bike, let alone different brands.

The Sunday that followed was uneventful but for this exact reason I was annoyed. I have long since learned that there is no situation that I detest more than those in which I feel helpless. So long as I can struggle against something, I can find a certain peace, a certain satisfaction that my fate is not completely out of my hands.

Waiting is not a struggle.

Monday arrives. I visit this nearby bike shop for the first time because I am certain they have the exact tires I am looking for. I buy a pair of tires and a pair of inner tubes because I was certain I’m going to fuck up at least once. At this point, it also does not hurt to have spare supplies at hand.

Tuesday arrives. The tire levers I ordered online should arrive tomorrow. I visit BOC, perhaps the largest bike shop in Hamburg, and I finally get myself a pretty hefty wrench. If this does not remove the damn nut, I don’t know what will. I also see a set of tire levers and, despite having ordered a set already, I buy it anyway.

That turned out to be a good decision.

I return home and immediately my Feierabend is dedicated to replacing my rear tire.

It was frustrating.

I’ve already related how much I value my self-sufficiency in living as a stranger in a strange land. I take a certain pride every time I complete a conversation in German, no matter how short, no matter how imperfect I sounded, because like Python, I learned German more or less completely on my own. But for the first time, as I was in the common garden of my apartment trying to swallow my frustrations at reinserting the damn tire, I dearly wished I had someone to teach me.

It started to rain and the tire is still not properly seated. I hurriedly gathered all the separated parts and brought them back inside the basement. I already feel like I failed to take care of my belongings when I saw the tire damage last Saturday but now I have to leave The Adventure Time broken and vulnerable and in the basement’s darkness, no less. Undeterred, I decided to bring the half-finished tire upstairs inside my unit and continue working on it; thankfully, I had the good sense to clean off all the gunk in the gears before I even removed the damaged tires.

So, in my apartment, over a small makeshift work area of newspapers I picked up for unrelated reasons several weeks back, I continued my thankless toil. I have no idea how it eventually came to pass but sections, arcs, of the tire started to seat firmly on the rim. I get the idea to use my tire levers to help me in the process; this will turn out to be a mistake. But at least, in this Tuesday night, I have an accomplishment.

Behold, the first tire I ever attached myself. It’s the IKEA effect speaking, I am well aware, but what a beauty!

Inflated to a little over the minimum pressure required, I am satisfied with my handywork. I even still had time to go downstairs and reattach it properly to The Adventure Time. That night I slept with the peace of mind that I did not leave The Adventure Time in a vulnerable condition in a dark basement.

Now, English has this curious expression for disappointment, “to burst someone’s bubble” which sort of compares a person’s happiness to a bubble (or if you are J.K. Rowling, a balloon) the bursting of which is the equivalent of dismay.

The following morning, I go down to check on my bike on a whim. That Wednesday morning, my body still sore from yesterday’s exertions, the bubble was my bike’s rear inner tube and it burst overnight.

With the first stage of grief imposing itself on me in that cramped and dirty bike cellar, I tried to inflate it in vain. There is an audible exhaust of air; the tire would not even take form. I take a deep breath through my nose, the way we were taught to stay composed in Taekwondo. My lungs fill with air in a way my rear tire won’t. I exhale, my head clearing just a little bit. The faster I process my grief over this setback, the better it will be.

Wednesday is typically my grocery day for no particular reason than, well, it’s a pretty day to pay for things at the cashier. I would usually walk to the grocery at around 7PM (that’s 19:00 for you in European) be done in less than an hour and by around 8PM (or 20:00), I will be done sorting out my groceries, taking out my trash and I’ll be settling down to read a book or watch Netflix. But not today, no no no. Having done all my chores for the day, I pick up my orange toolbox and a LED lamp and proceeded to disassemble The Adventure Time once more.

This time I worked faster. I removed the inner tube and inspected the damage. The rupture wasn’t difficult to locate as it was exactly on the longitudinal fold of the tube, around a centimeter long deflated—a tell tale sign that I simply messed up my first attempt and pinched the tube between the tire and the rim. Knowledge from research suggests that this would commonly happen if you use tire levers to reseat the tire into the rim.

So this time, I perform this arduous task with a hard embargo on using my tire levers. It was still frustrating and took some time but, despite the restraint I exercised, I definitely accomplished the task faster this time around. I worked with the assurance that it can be done and I did not mess up the measurements of the spare parts I bought.

The rubber neatly attached, I proceeded to inflate it. I have no excuses for the decision that follows other than (a) I’m a software engineer, not a bike mechanic and (b) I am just tired at this point but I inflate my tire to just below the recommended pressure. I decided to attach it and leave it like so overnight, reasoning that if it does not burst until morning, there are no pinches and I will proceed to inflating it to the recommended pressure.

Thursday arrives, that one day in the week where I actually have a destination to bike to; it’s the usual day I attend Kickboxing lessons. Eager to see the results of my experiment, I go down to the bike cellar to see that the tire has, yet again, deflated.

At this point, replacing my rear tire has transformed from a challenging little DIY excursion into an imposing Sisyphean task. My body is weary and my mind is frustrated. Once more, as yesterday, I give in to the sweeping wave of denial, my mind even venturing as far as exploring the possibility that it is, after all, not my fault. Perhaps dictated more by desperate delusions than sound reason, I tried to inflate my tire, as I did yesterday.

And what do you know, this time it actually holds air! Unlike yesterday, the tire actually takes form at least for a few seconds. There was a distinct jet of air emanating from it—it was still not rideworthy—but this was definitely an improvement over yesterday. When you are desperate, you take your wins no matter what form they take.

Thus I found myself with a crucial decision to make: do I attempt another inner tube replacement and risk riding that to Zanshin Dojo that same day or should I go to Kickboxing class by other means, heck maybe even cancel for the week?

There is probably an Economics or a Game Theory textbook somewhere using this exact scenario as an example of risk evaluation. So far I have proven to be a shitty mechanic and it is unwise to take a 9km ride on a bike repaired by someone with my track record. This does not seem to be a hard choice to perform rationally.

Alas, you are reading my blog, not an Economics or a Game Theory textbook. I have so far outlined how a series of suboptimal decisions has lead me to this predicament, this holistic exhaustion, starting with choosing a travel line across a downward slope. What’s another suboptimal decision in this story?

This is how I ended up dedicating a portion of my lunch time that day buying inner tubes from that nearby bike shop I went to last Monday. I buy not one, not two, but four spare inner tubes. I disassemble my bike once more, this time setting it aside in a convenient nook in the basement as I take the wheel to my apartment.

Our tale nears its end and I don’t want to give the false impression that I facilitated the decisive turn of the plot by myself. Again, this blogger has ethical standards. Tutorials from GCN and Park Tools having failed me, I ask YouTube’s search as if it is human, “how to avoid pinching inner tube”, which, for all the clout this blog can give a link, has lead me to this video from a certain Tony Marchand which suggested that (a) I powder the inner tube before I place it in and (b) a check to perform before I inflate the tire to minimize the probability of a pinch flat.

This time, my body has already synthesized a technique for the nail-bleeding task of reseating the tire to the rim; the whole process took me maybe 40 minutes, an indisputable improvement over my first attempt last Tuesday. The tire neatly fitted, I performed the test Tony Marchand’s video suggested. Passing that, I then proceeded to inflate my tire, this time with no half measures.

Satisfied that it is already well within the recommended operating pressure, I proceed to test it even further. Through all the disappointments, I was just thankful my mistakes manifested while the bike was at rest and not while I was riding it; QA Testing could quite literally save me another accident. So I bounce the inflated tire off my floor several times. I squeeze it, hit it lightly with a knife-hand chop. I let it stand in a corner for a few hours before I finally re-attach it to The Adventure Time.

Back in high school, one of our teachers has remarked that our class had a tendency to perform a dry run test simultaneously with the first (and only) performance of a class production. In line with my belief that everything is practice until it isn’t, I pack my bags for my Kickboxing class as The Adventure Time waited in the basement.

With a little over half an hour to go, the lines distinguishing a dry run test and a first outing blur once more as it did all those times in high school. I lightly kick the rear tire for luck before I mounted The Adventure Time. The first few moments were nothing but tense. So far, it has held my weight. That is encouraging.

“I am not Lewis Hamilton,” I repeatedly tell myself as I pedal. It has become a sort of mantra which I believed would save me another inconvenient accident and especially so today. On red lights I try to glance at my rear tire, noting every bit of deformation, especially on the part where it made contact with the road.

Pressing my brakes for a terminal stop in front of Zanshin Dojo’s makeshift outdoor gym, the tire I replaced has just survived its first 4.5km. And it’s still looking great.

Coda

It is Friday. Yesterday’s Kickboxing went fine except that I could definitely feel my exertions even for the most basic of techniques (writing this in retrospect, this is definitely the exhaustion from the whole week showing itself). I could at least take pride that I pushed through even when I was gassing out; you don’t improve from easy sessions.

I am standing in front of a DHL Packetstation. I scan this small note I just retrieved from my mailbox. For some mysterious reason, DHL could not deliver the tire levers I ordered online to my doorstep. So here I am, trying to sign my name on a cheap unresponsive touchscreen interface.

Though tired and without a goal in mind, I decide to ride out. It’s what cyclists would call a recovery ride. I have another purpose in mind though: despite having survived the back-and-forth trip yesterday (and has even broken the record set by its predecessor by 2 seconds, again without me even trying), I am still not quite confident with my work’s reliability. I reason that it had better fail in a controlled environment, rather than be caught by surprise when I least expect it to.

I ride to that nearby park where, last year, I observed the Comet Neowise. It has gravelly paths, comparable to those at Winterhude Stadtpark. I do a couple of laps and notice that the rear brake feels different. I wouldn’t classify it a hazard—I still get to a complete stop—but the bite is weaker than I remember. I make a mental note to learn how rim brakes work.

Still tired but satisfied, I ride back home. It is cloudy, portentous, perhaps, of next week’s weather. But through the clouds, a beautiful sunset just couldn’t hide itself.

Stars and Friends

The year is 2015. A handful of months fresh from a change of jobs that was, safe to say, not planned as thoroughly as I would have preferred, I (along with my sister who tagged along) joined a curious crew into the beautiful beach of Puerto Galera. This small vacation was both a temporary respite from the sweltering summer heat and an item of curiosity off a pipe dream bucket list. For as long as I’ve started taking an interest in photography I’ve always looked up at the night sky wanting to capture what my eyes saw and maybe even more.

Fast forward to 2018, a trip/adventure that I thought I would only make once has been a more-often-than-annual reason to take vacation leaves. I’ve met some very interesting people, some of them even became friends that I wanted to personally say goodbye to, given my then-looming departure for Germany. I have photographed the beautiful sight of a galactic core from the vantage point of a fringe planet several times—might as well be countless, considering that I thought I would only see this once, maybe twice.

And to my friends and coworkers, I’ve become that guy with one eye always at the night sky, who can be excused from immediate replies if there’s a super moon on the horizon, and who, with a bulky telescope, prove the science schoolbooks correct. Mars is red. Venus is beautiful. Saturn has a ring. Jupiter has spots, streaks, and satellites.

I remember in January of 2018 when a rare and curious phenomenon graced the Philippines: not only was it a super moon, it was also a total lunar eclipse. It was, of course, something I would not ever miss. What I did not count on was my reputation preceding me at work. In a few Facebook messages, Abie has persuaded me to organize a viewing for anyone else interested in the office.

Despite my aversion to coordinating logistics for just almost anything1, from a heap of inputs and suggestions, I’ve managed to scrap together a workable plan and conveyed those spur-of-the-moment schemes into instructions people could follow.

The night of the eclipse, the taxi we booked was unfortunately stuck in traffic so we had to walk to where he was to save time. On the radio the news broadcast covered the eclipse as it started to take place. We finally arrived at the park about an hour or less away before totality. It was crowded and festive in the pleasant January evening air; we might as well be shooting a music video for Toploader’s Dancing in the Moonlight.

After finding the group of my coworkers who have arrived earlier I prepared to mount my binoculars to my tripod. I remember saying out loud to no one in particular, “I am not prepared for this”.

“For the eclipse?” asked Aser.

“Emotionally,” I clarified.

This will sound kitschy as a German garden gnome but seeing the moon in shades of red is like seeing your lover on your wedding day2. You already know she’s beautiful but seeing her made up and extra pretty just for this one day is sweet intoxicating infatuation all over again.

As I expected, a crowd of strangers queued up to have a look through my binoculars. I normally tend to introversion but I love sharing and talking about things that make me wonder and smile and even more so when my audience appreciates why I am in awe and wonder. Needless to say, I think this passion for the sights of dark and clear skies is something I managed to convey that night.

Uncharacteristic of me, I did not get to take a lot of pictures that night. The reason being, this was still several months before I bought the compact A6000. By then I only had the A35; though already small for its time, it just doesn’t compare to the new generation.

Moving to Germany, I knew that I would leave more than just my astrocamping gear behind but also friends and this loose collection of acquaintances that’s become an astronomy family/club to me.

Still, you can strip a man of all his astrophotography gear but you can’t strip a man of his passion and resourcefulness. One of the first photos I took after arriving in Hamburg is, predictably, of a beautiful spring night sky.

That’s taken without a tripod and in the still-bitter cold of a Northern German June night. Not bad I would say. Not at all.

Hamburg, for all its virtues, is just not ideal for astronomical observations, unfortunately. In the spring/summer when the skies have slightly better odds of being clear, the days are long. In the autumn/winter, when the nights are an imposing presence even over people’s moods, the weather is cloudy at best.

Still, you make do with the circumstances. Experience so far suggests that spring is the best time for observations in Hamburg. For all the bad things that transpired last year, there were two astronomical events that I was able to observe.

The first is the conjunction of the lovely Venus with my favorite asterism, the Pleiades.

This was taken from my apartment’s window, blown up and post-processed from a 50mm f2.8 shot. I did not use a tripod and this would not have been possible if my unit’s heater was not directly under the window.

The second one was harder to observe and not only because of cloudy Hamburg nights. It was also fainter and the lines of sight from my apartment did not afford a direct view into this beauty. For what it’s worth it was visible for far longer as it was no mere coincidental conjunction of sky lights—though I only actively tracked it for almost a week . But for the whole time it was visible, it was also “moving” at least faster than usual for celestial objects.

I am talking, of course, about the Comet Neowise.

Hunting Neowise in late July meant that I had to take some very late-night (or early-morning, depending on how you want to frame things) bike rides. And then staying out in the cold night alone in a dark Stadtpark Eimsbüttel, with only my hoodie jacket. I even feared that I might be mistaken as a vagrant, and would have to explain myself in German (“Herr Polizei…leider habe ich kein Deutsch genug für eine Erklärung.”) but then what vagrant has an interchangeable-lens mirrorless digital camera and a bike with a smartphone for GPS guidance?3

That Neowise moved across the skies4 also meant that each night I tried to shoot/observe it, I first had to track it, a task that ate into the precious little hours of darkness—not to mention the precious few minutes of cloud clearance—that I had. In the picture I took above, you can already see the clouds creeping up on my view. I planned to take proper long exposures of this—I even borrowed a tripod from work—but I just never had enough time. Thankfully, I can stabilize myself pretty well and the A6000’s sensor is fantastic at low light to say the least.5

It’s not the picture I envisioned I would take but it’s something. At least until Neowise returns after roughly 7000 years.

In the midst of perhaps my busiest spell so far in my current job, another lunar eclipse happened in the Philippines last Wednesday. I wasn’t even aware of it; the first time it was brought to my attention was while my family was attempting to set-up and use Koopman-Hevelius, the German Equatorial Mount Telescope that I left in the Philippines.

I was actually rather indifferent to missing an opportunity to witness a lunar eclipse. Perhaps to my mind I had bigger fish to fry in the form of the tasks queued up at me at work; the past couple of weeks hasn’t exactly been smooth-sailing and a timely long weekend has been my only opportunity to decompress.

Imagine my surprise upon seeing a message from a friend telling me they took a picture of the eclipse for me, because I wasn’t there, and sorry they only had a phone, none of the fancy gear I might be used to. A touching gesture as much as it was unexpected. In the crazy reality that’s started in 2020, it’s also quite a nostalgic reminder of times gone by.

I subscribe to the idea that people won’t remember you for what you said but for how you made them feel. That’s why I always try to acknowledge even the smallest gestures of kindness. From a random “Hi” while I’m queued up at the grocery cashier with a heavily-bandaged left arm pushing my grocery cart to taking a picture of an eclipse so that I can see it even if I wasn’t there. They are all very appreciated and I want you to know, you lifted up my mood.

Here’s to the kindness of friends and of strangers, who are just friends we haven’t made yet.

And, as a matter of fact, it was Abie’s job to coordinate events. As usual I’m just your humble but well-paid software engineer. [↩]
Not that I have ever married. In this simile I am relying on Hollywood’s depictions of marriage. [↩]
A vagrant who just robbed a better-off citizen, that’s what! I apologize for my sense of humor. [↩]
Let’s not be physics-pedantic with the definition of movement here, okay? [↩]
And I never really updated the firmware so I don’t have to worry about the dreaded star-eater algorithm. [↩]

Schnee und Schade

February 6. Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf.

For the first time in about a week, my left elbow felt stable and secure. True, the arm was bandaged firmly to a cast but for the first time since the anaesthesia from Thursday wore off, I can truly say I feel no pain.

I was even optimistic I could be discharged soon. Maybe even tomorrow. And I was eager about it too; due to a gross miscalculation of my independence and recovery capabilities, I haven’t taken a proper bath since I got here. Thank goodness face masks are in fashion.

Of course, I knew that I still have to be extremely careful. Getting myself in this situation was already inconvenient enough. Overexerting during the long recovery process would be an even bigger setback.

In my phone I scrolled through a Trello list of things I wanted to do in Europe, plans for travels that have, of course, been put on hold by a global pandemic. A handful of activities in Hamburg—Asian restaurants, mostly—has been tagged as “POST COVID19”. I estimated that Germany would’ve reopened by the time I’m fully recovered. By then I could ride my bike once more.

And so I looked forward to that. It was motivation to hit my recovery milestones.

January 30. Beautifallage, pun intended.

Carefully, I start pedaling, making sure to regulate my speed. It’s the cycling equivalent of watching your step over shaky ground, except, should your footing give on shaky ground, a clever shift of body weight could yet help you. On a bike I pretty much have no idea how to adapt should I slip other than to fall gracefully; while most of my martial arts training is focused on striking, I’m no stranger to the concept of break-fall.

Note: Even with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m not sure how advisable a break-fall over ice is. All I can say is, do not expect it to be as effective as performed in training over padded ground.

After a few meters covered, a few crossings without issue, I gained confidence in my ride. Though still riding slow, I considered the snow crushed by my bike wheels as my contribution to de-icing the sidewalks of Hamburg. I didn’t plan to cover such a long distance; I planned only to spend some outdoors winter time in that beautiful autumn park near my apartment.

Of course, writing about it in retrospect, with a surgical scar for a souvenir across my left elbow, it just seems careless. But at the time I was really curious how it would feel to bike through snow. And it’s not as if it was a completely ignorant move from me either; I made sure to slightly deflate my tires for better grip, the one common advice in all the “biking on snow” articles I’ve read.

To anyone who somehow got here looking for advice on how to bike on snow, here’s mine:

Don’t.

Anyway, returning to my story, after spending a few hours enjoying snow like the first timer I am and slightly fearing frostbite, I decide one final glory lap around the beautiful park, a lap I’ve done numerous times already that day. Except this time, with the small bit of urgency on my mind, I forgot my embargo on speed.

I suddenly found myself flying from my bike. It wasn’t your usual fall; it all happened so fast. I rolled on the snow and somehow felt my left arm go wrong, for lack of a better term.

The only comparison I could come up with was an F1 driver misjudging the wet track on slick tires by a just an inch or two, sending them literally flying out of race contention. Or maybe I’m just making myself sound more heroic after the fact.

The first thing I realized, with a touch of irony, was the surge of adrenaline throughout my body, therefore taking care of my slight fear of frostbite.

So there I was, ass on the snow, perhaps three meters away from my bike. Though I wore a heavy winter coat, I could tell my left arm has rotated in a way left arms are not supposed to rotate. My brain went into a half-confused state. I remember being so sure that I must be bleeding, but the snow wasn’t red, ergo I wasn’t bleeding. Still I wanted to raise my left arm higher than my heart, except that I can’t move it. I must’ve broken a bone and maybe it even tore through my skin, and therefore I should be bleeding.

Thankfully, I wasn’t. It was merely a dislocation though I had to wait in the hospital to get properly patched-up and tested. Thankful as I am for a more-than-decent emergency response system as well as medical insurance, that day I realized why hospitals are such frustrating experiences.

If your case is not serious, they will not prioritize you and you will wait. And if they are prioritizing you…let’s just say it is not the best day of your life.

I have never been more thankful for being made to wait.

Which brings us back to present day. My arm is well but I still hugely over-estimated my recovery capabilities. I managed to keep my proudly-valued independence throughout but I still can’t completely extend my left arm. I can play the guitar though. And draw; I am right-handed.

With Germany currently battling a third wave of this global pandemic, it feels like playing a waiting game in multiple fronts. Waiting for my arm’s complete recovery as I perform my therapy exercises regularly. Waiting for my turn to get a vaccine. Waiting for everyone else to get a vaccine so life can return to normal.

In truth I have very contradicting feelings about the whole situation. On one hand the prospect is just bleak but on the other hand it gives me ample time to recover properly—I’m not missing out on anything. I’m not impatient in that respect.

It’s been quite a boon for my art too. Part of the circumstances why I bought a Wacom tablet is this “lockdown art project” I came up with where I’m basically illustrating stories I wrote. But having a concrete goal meant that I kept to a small collection of tools and techniques that achieves my goal, helps me produce the images I want, in more or less the style I envisioned. It didn’t leave much room for experimentation.

But thanks to having almost nothing else to do, I had time and enough ennui to actually learn the vast arsenal I had at my disposal, thanks to software. For example, with Krita I can add a dimension to my sketches I didn’t have previously. Not just that I am no longer constrained to grays of pencil lead, I can even emulate the texture of other media such as charcoals without making a huge mess.

A couple of notes:

Yes, I have previously tried charcoal in real life. I didn’t like it. Too broad, couldn’t get details in. Not to mention too fragile and expensive—traits that are never complementary in a product. I’m pretty sure I was using it wrong but I have neither the time nor the teacher to teach me properly
I know I could’ve escaped the monotony of gray in real-life sketches by using—wait for it—colored pencils (genius!) but colored pencils are simply a different experience from your typical Steadtler 3B. They are harder to erase, and that’s just the start of it.

Another thing you have to consider in real life is the paper. When you draw you are basically applying a layer of medium on the paper; add too much and it’s heavy, the medium could seep, even tear the paper. And when you erase, you are basically scraping the medium off the paper, and sometimes you scrape off fibers of the paper too; you can only erase so much.

Not to mention that art materials—high-quality paper among them—are quite expensive. It’s not really threatening my savings but I consider it quite wasteful to just pour money into this hobby when I’m not getting any financial value back from it. I might as well buy a Hasselblad camera.

But with software, the only real cost is my time and my patience. I can study different styles and try to execute it in a piece.

I can try a Sumi-e-inspired gothic watercolor and get it wrong as many times as I need to get a satisfactory result.

This wouldn’t have been possible with the small arsenal of brushes I’ve come to depend on. Simple as it looks, there was a lot of time spent on experimentation.

I can even feel daring and try out new palettes. Perhaps due to my extensive work with gray pencil, I noticed that my color choices tend to be dark. So, how about a vibrant portrait in false-chrome worthy of an ad campaign?

I think avant-garde is French for “I have no idea what I’m doing”.

Which, just to bring this post to a close, kind of sums up my current situation. I really don’t have plans or an idea what to do next other than wait. One day at a time until my path crosses normal again.

Avant-garde. Au revoir. Bis dann.

Hopefully Not the Same Procedure as 2020

I’m not usually one to make grand new year’s resolutions. The past few years, my resolutions took the form of “read a difficult book this year”. Difficult being defined as (a) lengthy and (b) not my usual fare. With this “system” I’ve managed to read:

(2016) Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. I’ve wanted to read this since I heard about it in college. It’s an extremely unusual book with lots of eureka moments for me. Maybe Hofstadter’s enthusiasm is really just infectious. This is a book whose pronouncements on artificial intelligence was just way off but I would nonetheless still recommend for introductory insight and intuitive explainers for some pretty abstract math. And more! As Hofstadter will tell you, this isn’t a Math or a Computer Science book. He has a very specific topic in mind—which I think is a fair assessment of his own work—but this book is really just unusual in that it touches on a lot of things.
(2017) A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking. Fun fact: my copy is a volume combining the two books inside a single cover, in glossy color print. I got this from the Manila International Book Fair back in 2012 (yep the same book fair that triggered this post). Sat on my shelf for five years before I worked through it. Shows you the extent of my tsundoku.
(2018-2019) A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton. I’ve always been fascinated with maps and always been fascinated with looking at history through unusual, maybe even mundane, objects. This book just called out to me. As you see around this time, I’ve failed to keep up with my goal of finishing a difficult book within the calendar year. Not sure what happened, but I could guess. I even brought this book with me to Germany.
(2019-2020) The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. My introduction to The Campbellian Hero’s Journey was from internet discussions about Po the Kung Fu Panda. This book is a dense treatise, and though frequently cited in literary analysis, I’ve found it to be more anthropological than literary. To be honest, I’m not too convinced with Campbell’s thesis here—as a matter of style he’s not as scientific as I’d want him to be; for example, he doesn’t try to address how his theory can be falsified. But I still recommend this not just because it will give you context in a lot of contemporary discussions about literature (including films, TV shows, etc., not just written stories), but also because I think Campbell is actually on to something, despite the lack of rigor on his methodology, and he offers an interesting insight into the human psyche. I finished this book this year while in social distancing mode.

So, I don’t really have a book this year that would qualify, unless maybe I start tackling German texts. And actually, I have! I’ve been reading Das Labyrinth des Fauns, Cornelia Funke’s adaptation of the acclaimed Guillermo del Toro movie. This story is just great, I don’t even notice it’s not in English, in either medium (recall: the del Toro movie was a Spanish production).

Oh, I’ve also made a few more traditional resolutions.

2019, definitely influenced by my plans to leave for Germany, I started journaling. I even wished for a fancy journal notebook from our office exchange gift.
2020, I resolved to be more focused. To be very honest, I didn’t do that well on this resolution. If it’s any consolation, the Wacom tablet kinda helped me make up for it, scored goals in the dying minutes, if you will. The past few days (if not the last few weeks of 2020, when I already had my Wacom) I’ve absolutely nerd sniped myself into digital painting. I’ve figured out that my learning style relies heavily on experimentation. That’s why I’ve so far had a hard time, experimenting with the art lessons I’ve been learning from Youtube (like, color theory, anatomy-grounded figures). Erasing is easy, yes, but not always clean, which sucks if you’re trying to get a lot of things right. Digital painting is still a lot of effort but it’s more convenient. I feel like I’m back in school. I’ve been doing a lot of things that apply the things I learn but I’m not really producing anything remotely portfolio-worthy—exactly how I felt during my Computer Science undergrad.

So what’s it for this year? I should definitely continue to be more focused but that also means I should really stick to a strict sleep cycle regimen, something I find hard to do during the gloriously long days of summer (there’s a lot more to this statement but it’s probably a blog post of its own).

Maybe be more creative, be more fearless in my creative endeavors. If you need to churn out a thousand crappy things to create one good thing, then let’s churn through one thousand crappy things with an indomitable spirit. In fact, I have an art project I’ve been working on lately, also what prompted me that I might need a Wacom tablet for this one. Maybe you can argue this project is a coping strategy for all the 2020 distancing, but also, it’s not surprising if you know me as well as I do. So whatever. I don’t care what people say, let’s just do it!

And oh, it’s new year. This Neil Gaiman quote definitely fits. Calligraphed by yours truly, circa 12/29/2018, Speedball with Higgins ink on Canson watercolor paper.

Einzelgängerkeit

Alternatively titled, “How to Stop Yourself From Climbing Walls in a Lockdown”.

So, Germany finds itself in the midst of yet another lockdown, though to be honest, it’s all pretty much the same to me. The option to work from home has been on the table ever since this whole pandemic started. I’ve always worn my face mask, always kept physical distance, and only rarely ate out, even in the distant pre-Corona era.

The only difference to me are the reasons I have for biking. Whereas in the summer—with the temperate weather and considerably loose restrictions—I had an incentive, a destination to bike to more or less, I have no such thing in a lockdown. In fact, it is even a disincentive to go outside my apartment, even when the sun is just splendid.

Luckily, my interests are particularly suited for membership to the Couchpotato Verein. Aside from the handful of books that I’ve acquired since moving into Germany and my ever-growing Netflix watch list, I’ve also been improving my German (and learning French and Swedish), blogging a lot more than usual (this is the fifth post this year, infinitely more than last year which had none), as well as discovering some new toys to occupy my time.

I’ve figured out that the trick to keep me from climbing walls is to indulge my curiosity. One thing I really liked as I moved to Germany is just the sheer amount of new things I learned. There’s the typical cultural learnings that’s part of the trappings of moving to a new country but I also had to learn a lot of new things from my job1, learned new martial arts (still striking though), and, heck, even learned that I can cook. Yes, you read the last bit correctly.

Who would’ve thought making instant noodles at 2AM in the Hacker House is good practice to make stuff like this?

I have, of course, already told you about my bike. For bike enthusiasts it’s not such a jaw dropper but nonetheless this is the first bike I owned to have multiple gears (the last bike I “owned” was a BMX way back in elementary school). It’s relatively simple but I still enjoyed learning about how to use the gears, and learning about maintenance. That said, I still use my bike mainly for transportation and leisure, any exercise I derive from it is secondary.

I have, by the way, aptly named this beautiful bike The Adventure Time.

I kinda fancy that biking is my exercise to keep my road awareness on-point. I still don’t know if I would want to get a German/EU driver’s license; the public transport is good enough for me save for a few cases where I would just book a taxi. But boy do I miss the zen experience of a good, traffic-free road.

Like a bike, a guitar is something I’ve long planned to purchase but kept putting off. I’ve told myself that I will purchase one as soon as I’ve settled into an apartment that’s more or less permanent for me. And yet, I just never did. I was too busy with other things and my fingers are too shaky anyway from going to town on sandbags in my Monday Boxing classes.

That last excuse was naturally invalidated when Zanshin Dojo had to close due to the Coronasituation2. As luck would have it, the first Facebook Ad that would actually interest me is an advertisement for the absolutely beautiful Yamaha Silent Guitar.3

Hey sexy you’re going a bit too fast. We’ve known each other for a short while and you’re already on my bed.

Anyway, needless to say, I’m in love with this marvelous piece of engineering. For anyone who asks whether this is acoustic or electric, the answer is: yes. I have no idea and I don’t care. Such is love.

What’s really nifty about this is that I could plug my headphones in it and play with bass, treble, and reverb effects by turning knobs on it’s control panel. It will be dishonest to say I don’t find the user experience oddly sexual.

Also, as a corollary to this purchase, I have finally purchased noise-cancelling headphones for myself. For so long, I have been patiently mending the broken joint of my Sony MDR V55 and even adapting my usage to keep it serviceable as much as possible (the cans are still good, it’s really just the broken joint), largely due to sentimental value. But now I’ve purchased a Sony WH-1000XM3. I have no idea why I put off buying noise-cancelling headphones for this long4; listening to music with noise cancelling definitely counts for a religious experience.

Although to be honest, I’m not too confident with my guitar-playing skills. As such, I’ve never really splurged on it because I feel like my skills still can’t justify the expense. This is why the guitar I have in the Philippines is the least fancy of acoustic guitars; it doesn’t even have a built-in tuner! I could only justify this recent purchase because it is such a beautiful specimen of an instrument.

It’s this same austerity, the same high-standard I set for myself even when just self-learning, that I’ve put off buying a Wacom tablet for years. Ever since I’ve had my own disposable income to spend on my hobbies (computers, cameras, telescopes), I’ve contemplated getting a Wacom tablet. But same with my guitar, I fear my skills are not at that level where it can be said that I “deserve” a Wacom tablet.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a bad side-effect of my college education. It has ingrained in me the idea of “prerequisites”, that you can’t tackle an advanced topic (like digital art-making) if you haven’t passed the foundational class first (like basics of drawing on a paper). There is certainly some wisdom in arranging a curriculum as a directed acyclic graph but, outside the ivory walls of universities, life is just not so. Much of human progress is built by people who tried to do things before they were even certain they were ready.

I think higher education should somehow take this into account. I believe this will also address the perceived lack of creativity plaguing university graduates today. Boy won’t I make a good teacher.

Anyway! I’ve digressed too much. The point is I’ve finally decided to give myself at least a passing grade in Basics of Drawing on a Paper, and bought a Wacom Intuos M Pro tablet. It was also on a big discount for Black Friday. Are you seeing a pattern here?5

I’ve been with the Wacom Tablet for a few weeks now, enough for a few sketches. Cognizant of my own weaknesses, let me give you the museum treatment through my portfolio gallery!

For my very first digital painting I drew my dog Newton, here stiff and wondering how long must a good boy sit before you can call him a good boy? I drew it on GIMP, after an absolutely hair-tearing session trying to install Wacom drivers on my old-but-supposedly-still-supported Ubuntu 16.04.

After which I did a bit more research and came upon Krita. So I decided to give it a try for my next act which is…

Embrr! Also known as The World’s Most Disciplined Dog, here striking his most ~~dignified~~ dognified pose.

There’s quite a bit to unpack in here:

On the leftmost you see a photograph of an earlier (read: almost two years ago) attempt to draw Dognity. One of the reasons I finally transitioned to digital painting is that I don’t have a good scanner to publish my sketches online. They always need postprocessing to even look presentable. And somehow, I just can’t get it to look right.
A remarkable detail here is Embrr’s characterization. You will notice that in my attempt from two years ago (read: when the Lab was still a homie), I drew Embrr’s features kinda round—innocently boyish, you might say. Whereas in my most recent attempt, his bulk as a Labrador is definitely still there but the mass is more compact. Now, it so happens that I keep describing Embrr as The Biggest Puppy I Know (this is not sarcastic at all, unlike his other title as The World’s Most Disciplined Dog). I wonder if my perception of him as a Big Puppy made me subconsciously draw him with puppy-like features; in contrast, I haven’t seen him for almost two years now which might have grounded my perception better.
Lastly, as evidenced by this film roll of an image, this son of a bitch was tough to draw digitally because aside from being a Big Puppy, he is also a Borkin’ Shadow. At least with pencils on paper the subtle variations in tone comes for free naturally. Heck he even shines naturally thanks to the concentration of lead from, I think, 4B shades. It doesn’t help that this is the first I ever attempted with Krita, so add that to my adjustments. Anyway, it’s managed, lessons were learned and we can now proceed.

Despite being the Hacker House Dog for most of my stay in Kalibrr, Embrr is not actually the first of the Hacker House Dogs. Before Embrr, there was a couple of dogs, a couple in more ways than one. To keep the content of this blog PG-13 (I think I’ve already hit my quota with my guitar innuendos above), let’s just say that they are friends for always! Behold Einstein (the shih tzu) and Pi (the beagle), or, as I refer to the pair, PiEnstein.

Oddly, the richness and depth of Einstein’s fur was way easier to draw than Embrr’s simple, monochromatic coat. I obviously did not intend for this piece to be a “complete” scene as I present it here. But I was really pleased with the outcome that I just arranged it so.

Next up is Jake the Dog, a female cat, who has since just been affectionately referred to as Jakey. You would have to find Cassandra for the full story behind the confusing name. In my head I have Germanized it to Jakey von Katzendorf.

She was a stray rescue, with a kinked tail, and so we sometimes call her Pikachu. She’s also fat so when she sleeps, I call her Snorlax.

In case the name really bothers you, well, yes, I can confirm that she takes hers after the second protagonist of Adventure Time, whom I’ve also taken as my spirit guide. I didn’t have a hand in naming her though; it’s pure coincidence that our paths crossed.

Yep, it’s me, and yep that Jake the Dog.

At this point I think it’s a good idea to talk about how I evaluate my art skills:

My forté so far is portraits, though I’m far from a master. This developed from repeatedly drawing anime characters in elementary school, that being my original motivation. This style later progressed to more realism as I drew from newspaper clippings; I don’t have any of my work from this period (thank God?) but the blocky resolution of small clippings blown up to roughly A4 size didn’t do my lack of skill any favors. Of course, thankfully we soon had the internet—and later on even smartphones—which really helped me improve.
I particularly find the nose hard to draw as it’s not defined by clear outlines but rather by shadows. So I find that it depends a lot on the weight of your stroke. Or cheat with a different pencil grade.
The jawline is another pitfall; irregular and yet the shape of which could really make or break recognition of a portrait’s subject. Loomis heads help but I found it hard to adapt when the proportions start to differ (even with the method Loomis describes in his book). There is a surprising amount of ways a head can differ from these proportions.
I haven’t had the time to work in color a lot. Again, this is something I’ve been trying to work on through the years, especially when I started to add the pets to my repertoire. But there’s just more ways to mess up and harder to correct too. In this regard the Wacom is a realy game changer.
I still find it hard (though not impossible), to draw from memory. Or from moving subjects. One thing I would really like to do—especially here in Europe—is to just sit at some public plaza with a sketchbook and a pencil and draw people, draw scenes. I could try but the experience would be frustrating, I imagine.
The bulk of my work being more or less portraits, I haven’t really done a grand scene. I guess some of the skills I learned from photography, another hobby, would translate to composing scenes. But I have never even attempted it.

I’m hoping that with the Wacom, I could workaround (and even overcome) my weaknesses. It’s looking good so far. I have often wished, after judging that I’ve drawn an eye a bit too small in relation to the rest of the face, and yet at the same time already too detailed (what a nightmare!), that I could just select the eyes and scale as if in Photoshop. Doing exactly that for the first time in Krita just felt extremely satisfying.

Which brings me to the second part of my exhibit, portraits.

I’m currently working through some personal projects right now (which involves line art, lots of line art) so, unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to digitally redo a portrait I’ve drawn on paper; for such exactitude, Embrr would have to suffice for the meantime.

Nonetheless, here’s an example of a portrait I did earlier this year. I have been trying to develop a technique with a mechanical pencil.

Here’s my first human attempt at a portrait on Krita.

I was attempting for a less detailed style, with more emphasis on light. Almost impressionist. Unfortunately, having seen face-masked people for most of the past months does not help my weakness with noses and jawlines.

But actually, I should be thriving in an age of face masks; a pandemic should be a boon for my artistic career! It literally covers the parts of the face that I am not good at!

I find you can be friendly with just your eyes.

That’s it. If you’ve read this far thanks for staying with me. I think I wrote this blog entry just to prove to myself that I haven’t wasted my time in lock down. I would’ve wanted to add more images, more digital paintings, but I’m still working on them on top of other things.

Wait, actually, there’s another one…

Luna wishes everyone a Very Meowry Christmas. She also wants you to know that she has totally absolutely nothing to do with the fallen Christmas tree. She says you shouldn’t worry about the gifts rather just be thankful that she didn’t have to use one of her lives on that unfortunate incident.

Not unexpectedly; I’ll be lying to say I did not change jobs to learn new things, improve myself as a software engineer. [↩]
Yep, I’m writing it Germanstyle. [↩]
Alternatively, we could add this to the ever-growing, definitely less-than-scientific, list of Facebook’s Newsfeed Algorithm Displaying Prescient Powers. [↩]
Well, it was on sale for 100 EUR less, so there’s that. [↩]
Clue: I got my beautiful bike second-hand for a huge discount from a coworker who has resigned and left Hamburg. The beautiful guitar, while not exactly on sale, was listed some 100 EUR less than the Facebook ad lead me to believe. [↩]