Useless Advice

In order to get a shiny inkhaven pin, I am forced to submit to writing an advice post. The problem is that I don't know how to do anything useful. Luckily, it turns out this isn't a problem at all: here are 3 useless things you can learn to achieve an optimal life. 

1. How to get from my old job to the pizza place

At my second job out of college I was working at a design studio next to victory square in Vancouver. There was a pizza place about a 7 minute walk away that sold slices for $1.25. There was actually a better pizza place next door to it that charged $1.50, but it is a testament to my priorities at the time that I always chose the cheaper spot. I would walk every single work day to buy 2 slices of pizza, and would eat them on the walk back. A perfect, elegant solution to the problem of requiring food to live that had a minimal impact on my work day—ideally I could also use the walking time to brainstorm.

The location of the pizza place was 2 blocks southwest, and 3 blocks northwest. At each intersection you hit either a walk sign or a red light. If you hit a walk sign, you just walk. But if you hit a red light, you have a choice to either wait at the light, or turn and travel the other direction. Each intersection gives you some imperfect information: perhaps the light just changed, for example.

If you hit the edge of one axis of travel (aka you've already travelled 2 blocks southwest) then the choice is removed: you have no option other than to wait at the light.

There are basically 2 principles to achieving the optimal route. One is that you should always try to keep moving—every step is a step closer to that delicious pizza (they also sold samosas)—and the other is that optionality is a resource that you must defend.

2. How to get a seat on the NYC subway

I hate standing and I love to lounge, so snagging a seat is critical. Sometimes the ride would last for an hour and a half each way: in a seated position I could perfectly immerse myself in phone games (like out there, where you have to mine resources from planets to survive in space). But even on short rides I was probably overly keen because I realized that it was a competitive game, and I love to win.

The first approach to win the game is to not have to play. NYC subways sometimes enter a condition called "fat train skinny train", which is where a train becomes so overloaded with people that it's slowed down, and a mostly empty train is trapped directly behind it. If you recognize that this is happening, the optimal thing is to wait an extra 2 minutes to take the luxuriously underfilled skinny train. But if it's an empty car on an otherwise full train, that probably means someone shit in it or something.

But let's say you're on a train with no seats. Here's how the game is played. The first step is to pick your standing position. Your goal is to use your body to block other people’s access to potential seats, and to guide the seated riders to take certain exits like a sheep dog. This means you need to identify the other players, and marks that look like they might stand. This involves getting good at identifying body language, like the fidget someone makes just as they are approaching their stop, and growing eyes in the back of your head.

If you care more than other people, then you are sure to achieve victory.

3. How to spend the least amount of time possible on the clipper ferry

I used to live on Vancouver island 3 hours north of Victoria, BC and work in Seattle. I had to make the trip over to Seattle every 3 weeks. I would take a bus down to Victoria and then take the clipper ferry over into Seattle which would take another ~3 hours.

The clipper annoyingly likes to pretend that it's an airline, forcing you to sit through safety demonstrations by the stewardess equivalents and stay seated the whole trip, but luckily they don't have assigned seating.

The goal is to get the seat closest to the door so you can be the first one off the boat. Who gives a shit about the views, whales are just not that interesting. Being the first off the boat lets you enter border security with no line, potentially saving you a half hour of waiting around. 

The trick to scoring this coveted seat and being first off the boat is to be the first person on the boat. The trick here is to obtain a clipper card. This is a punch card that lets you earn one free trip out of every 10 or something. I didn't really care about this aspect because I was expensing the trips anyways, but the card also lets you board before other passengers. You still need to wait for the preboard and the first class ticket holders to go, but luckily nobody knows that you're competing for the exit spot so it's usually still free.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this was an essay about me giving you advice.