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Tag: Apple TV

  • Week 40.24: Singapore Design Week

    Week 40.24: Singapore Design Week

    “You’re really in your outdoor cat era”, said Nicolette, in response to my frequent excursions this week (I posted on IG Stories more this week than I have all year, because I realized they’re a convenient way to remind people that you’re alive). I also spent more time out of the apartment than I have in the past few months. I’ve had the freedom to go out early in the morning and do things all this while, but it took the threat of being deafened and annoyed by a neighbor’s renovations to actually make it happen. As it ticked closer to 9am each morning, I sensed the stirrings of men and machines on the other side of the wall, got my bag^ together and headed for the front door — see ya!

    ^ A quick word about said bag: I took the opportunity to get a new one for my upcoming sojourns in the out-there, and found this updated “2Way Utility Bag” from Uniqlo as part of their new lineup with creative director Clare Waight Keller (Givenchy, Chloé). It’s big enough for the stuff one needs to survive in a cafe, co-working space, or library all day: a laptop/iPad, umbrella, water bottle, power bank, camera, book, handheld fan, sunglasses^^, Nintendo Switch, or any of the things I’ve mentioned in recent weeks.

    ^^ A quick word about said sunglasses: I finally found a pair that fits my wide face and doesn’t slide down my low nose bridge. Admittedly I hadn’t tried Ray-Bans because the last pair I bought in Italy like, a decade ago, didn’t do so well on those two fronts and have gathered dust in a drawer. But Ray-Ban has since expanded their product catalog with inclusive new variants and I found some that fit. They resemble the classic Wayfarer model, but with some changes like flat lenses, and so are given a terrible product number (RB4391D) instead of a cool name. Oh and they’re made in China.

    As mentioned before, this period of domestic exile coincided with Singapore Design Week, which gave me enough things to do and see. On Tuesday, I paid S$130 to attend Day 1 of what was called the Design Futures Forum, which was noted by other attendees to have very little to do with futures exploration (many things discussed were of the present moment), and disappointingly never unpacked the business/social/political challenges that an audience of designers would be thinking about. I overheard someone say, “I could have read this in a designboom article.”

    For example, AI was a key topic as you’d expect in 2024, but presented with the breathlessness of a Forbes contributor piece from over a year ago; without offering contrarian viewpoints, sufficient interrogation of its costs and consequences, or thoughts on how its widespread use might be steered into balance with sustainable creative employment. The AI hype was pervasive, and if the audience played a drinking game triggered by every mention of it, the theater would have seen more vomit than the local ByteDance office. Some of the better speakers seemed to feel some responsibility to subvert the theme, and took genial pot shots at AI whenever they could. But I get it. We’re probably not the real audience for these events, and who knows what purposes they serve anyway? Me, I was only there to pass the time and meet old friends.

    The next day, I visited the Enabling Village, which is described as “the first inclusive community space in Singapore dedicated to integrating persons with disabilities in society”. On top of just wanting to see the place, I attended a series of presentations on projects with inclusive design elements, including some interesting work from Sony. They’ve made prototype musical instruments such as a finger-free saxophone that can be played by humming into a mouthpiece. Your voice gets turned into synthesized sax tones. I wish I could buy one, then my neighbors would be paid back in spades (j/k).

    There were also many free events and exhibits across town, and I filled pockets of time by dropping in on the ones around Orchard Road and the Bugis district. My favorite location was probably the Central National Library building which hosted some thoughtful and playful meditations on books and reading: from the physical aspects of holding spines and flipping pages, to sensorial explorations like how smelling different types of paper can evoke long-buried memories.

    It was my first time really checking out the Central Library, and it’s quite impressive. The reference section spans some five levels (from 7 to 11, I think), with the public lending library in the basement. Nearly every free seat was taken on a weekday afternoon, many by students of all ages who were… doing homework? I spotted someone doing math on the Humanities floor, so I guess it’s just an air-conditioned spot for some, nothing to do with the materials available.

    I wanted to read some poetry, and found a copy of the collected works of Philip Larkin, in the exact same paperback edition I had as a student. I sat with that for half an hour, next to some senior citizens who looked very much at home.

    Let’s loop back to Uniqlo: I half-joked on Instagram that one of the best design artifacts I saw whilst out exploring Singapore Design Week ‘24 was in fact Issue #11 of the free Uniqlo LifeWear magazine they give out in stores. It’s in both Japanese and English, with elements of Japanese editorial design and whimsical Monocle-esque illustrations. In addition to the expected fashion spreads of their products on models, there are also recipes, features about their global stores and the cities they’re in, and profiles of artists they collaborate with. I wish we had more brand publications like this, where there’s no distinction between making something nice for customers and trying to sell things. You can also read it online.

    On Thursday morning with some time to kill, I decided I’d best drop by the library@orchard to have a quick look before it closes down at the end of October for a lengthy renovation. It won’t be back until 2026, and the cynic in me thinks it won’t come back at all, much like how the Singapore Art Museum is now seemingly trapped in shipping port limbo, unable to return to its original downtown location because the land is now too valuable to allocate to the arts or whatever. I mentioned this before.

    Then I spent the afternoon with Peishan and Cien at an odd cafe that identifies as a co-working space — essentially you are welcome to sit there all day and leech off their power and WiFi, with no stated minimum purchase amount or anything. I don’t get the business model, but they’ve survived for years somehow. Perhaps it’s guilt based, because I ended spending twice as much in food and drink than the cost of a hot desk would be for an entire day.

    Media Activity

    I presume the other two got some work done, but I spent my cafe time clearing email newsletters and watching an episode of The Old Man, a 7-part TV series from 2021 that I didn’t know existed until recently. It stars Jeff Bridges as an aged CIA agent in hiding whose past catches up with him (I know, I know! But I’ll always make time for a set up like this), and the first two episodes were directed by Jon Watts (Wolfs, Spider-Man: Homecoming). The whole thing is so well executed that I wish it was longer. I’m told the second season, running now, has lost the plot. But trust me, if you like spy stories at all, you’ll want to see the first.

    Wolfs (2024) is now out on Apple TV+ and I enjoyed it just fine. For me, seeing George Clooney play a spiritual reboot of Winston Wolf, the fixer from Pulp Fiction (1994), is such a treat that it overrides other parts of the film being predictable or “small scale”. There’s also undeniable chemistry between him and Brad Pitt, who does that thing where he goes from smug, unlikable asshole to an alright guy after all, right before your eyes. Too bad he can’t do that with his real family. 4 stars.

    I finished The Book of Elsewhere, a sci-fi/fantasy (really, I think it’s both) novel by China Mieville and Keanu Reeves. It was extremely enjoyable while sounding in many places like a thesaurus was devoured in the writing of it. Once you get past some of the “awkward” use of big words when smaller ones would do, the rest of the writing is good, and occasionally becomes deliciously unhinged. Phrases literally collide with one another and tumble down pages like experimental poetry in some places. Elsewhere, Mieville (I assume) manages to replicate the dreamlike quality of visual storytelling — this story first appeared in a comicbook series entitled BRZRKR, by Reeves and Matt Kindt — and narrates the immortal protagonist’s violent fugue states and how he experiences passing from death to rebirth with some of the most Class-A, Colombian-grade stream-of-consciousness I’ve ever seen.

  • Week 35.24

    Week 35.24

    First, an update on last week’s air conditioning saga. During another service visit, the professionals confirmed what my online research had suggested: a malfunctioning thermistor was the reason for inconsistent cooling. To test it out, they swapped sensors between two indoor units, and now that the cause has been confirmed after a couple of days, they have to come back yet again to replace the broken one (S$161).

    Shortly after, I was coincidentally served this cocky tweet about how “reasonably smart” people with internet access can now challenge an expert about their specific problems, because 1) the information is out there, and 2) the customer has more invested in the outcome than the vendor. For the record I tried hard not to preemptively suggest it to the experts, but when they diagnosed a ‘thermistor problem,’ I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

    New house problem: We found a dead cockroach and it’s been bugging me. I made a poll on Instagram Stories and asked how many people have seen a roach in their homes in the past year, and was surprised the results were pretty much 50-50 (n=29). It might be down to how many people have apartments with integrated rubbish chutes or face open-air corridors. In any case, there’s always something wrong and I need the universe to give me a break or better mental health.

    ===

    I joined my first-ever book club after hearing about it from some folks I met in inSpaze. They meet in the app for an hour every week, and have what I assume is a typical book club discussion if not for the fact that (nearly) everyone is in a Vision Pro.

    They’ve just started on a new book, Guy Immega’s Super-Earth Mother, which I couldn’t find in the library’s catalog and had to buy off the Kobo store. The title is my least favorite part, as it could turn some readers off. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did, but I ended up finishing it in just a couple of days. I was later chastised for this, as we’re supposed to be reading it together over three weeks.

    It’s about a billionaire’s mission to send an ark of human DNA across the universe in the care of an AI (Mother-9), and how its efforts to colonize other planets goes. That premise immediately reminded me of the back-half of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, but this is a very different effort. I think I described it in my Goodreads review as “a compact and accessible space epic”.

    What’s making this extra special is that one participant is a friend of the author’s, and they’ve been filling us in on little Easter eggs and references to real-life experiences. There’s also a chance that Mr. Immega might join us for a short Q&A in a later session.

    This external push to read broke my summer reading block. I had stalled on Neal Stephenson’s Interface for months, but after finishing Super-Earth Mother, I breezed through another hundred pages and am enjoying it immensely.

    Kim’s pretty old Kindle Paperwhite finally died, and I got her a new Kobo Clara BW (she declined the Color model, which I still think was an extra $30 worth spending), which is a very nice and slender reader in person. I am now envious of its USB-C charging and Dark Mode support, and am trying to stop myself from buying a Libra Color to replace my first-gen Libra. At over S$300 dollars, even if I’ve read 100 free books on mine so far (I haven’t), I’d still have paid $3/book for the sheer utility of an e-ink screen, which seems silly to me because one can read perfectly well on an iPhone. Or a Vision Pro, even.

    I tried that, btw. Having giant floating pages in front of you is actually not terrible. And in doing so I hit upon another realization about the Vision Pro. Photographers are always saying that you should print your photos to appreciate them, at as large a size as you can, but how many of us really do? Most photos end up being seen on phones, and maybe laptop-sized screens. But now there’s a way to view our favorite shots at wall size and have a gallery-scale experience at home. And, I suspect, discover more flaws and limitations that will push us towards buying better gear. It’s tragic how much of the last decade we documented in piddly 12mp photos because iPhones were more convenient than dedicated cameras. Ugh!

    ===

    Media activity

    • We caught up on Sunny. This is a show that, on paper, seemed designed to light up my neurons. Robotics, AI, a Japanese setting, a “darkly comedic” mystery, a story about clashing cultures, an A24 production. But it’s not for me at all. I came across the above clip on how causality, consequence, and coherence (my terms) are essential in telling a story people can care about, and sadly Sunny fails to adhere to those rules.
    • But also on Apple TV+ is Pachinko, which has just returned for its second season, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first two episodes out now. I understand that it’s one of the most popular shows on the service, and I hope it finds an even wider audience.
    • The consensus online seems to be that Apple TV+ is full of great shows that people just aren’t discovering, and Bad Monkey is one of them. Again, I think the show’s title is the weakest link here, and you should be giving it a chance. Vince Vaughn does his thing, the dialogue crackles, and things move with causality, consequence, and coherence. It also kicks off with the discovery of a severed body part.
    • We rewatched Twister (1996) and then saw Twisters (2024). The original is an actual classic, directed by Jan de Bont (who also did Speed), and features a team of tornado chasers with actual, palpable camaraderie. You feel like you’re going along on an adventure with them, and part of that happens because the script bakes in ample downtime where they strategize, tell war stories while eating steak and eggs, and hang out in motels overnight. The sequel is almost embarrassing in how it tries to check a series of “mirror the original” boxes — there’s the in-over-their-head outsider whose terror is played for comedy, the traumatic past weighing on the female lead’s motivations, her magical gut feel that can predict weather better than the science-dependent nerds. But despite all that, it can’t reproduce the magic. Still, as a standalone movie, Twisters is not all bad, and Glen Powell is definitely becoming one of the most likable and bankable men in Hollywood. 4 and 3.5 stars respectively.
    • We also watched Office Space (1999), which I realize I’ve never really seen properly at all. It’s an anti-work masterpiece, with many themes and grievances that seem to be reemerging today. Sure, it came out around the time of The Matrix, when rebellion against cubicle offices was at its peak, but I can’t recall many films in the past ten years that have so strongly espoused quitting your dumb job, burning your workplace to the ground, and finding purpose somewhere else. 4 stars.
    • Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin (2004) was leaving MUBI, so I decided I’d better see it. Boy, what a downer. I looked at reviews on Letterboxd and here are some excerpts from the positive ones: “This is a flawless film, but don’t watch it.” “This is not a movie I should’ve watched.” “I will never recover from this.” “What if I just walked into oncoming traffic”. 4 stars from me, but I tried not to think about it too hard. It might be a 4.5.
    • Also leaving MUBI was the French film Summer Hours by Olivier Assayas. It’s a quiet and beautiful story about the familial unraveling that happens when a parent dies and there is ‘bric-a-brac’ to be split up and hard discussions to be had. Sad subject matter, but nowhere approaching the rock buttom of Mysterious Skin’s tragedy. Also 4 stars.
    • I tried again to start watching Assayas’s Irma Vep TV series, but various interruptions have stopped me from finishing the first episode. I know it’s not a straightforward remake of the original film, but Alicia Vikander’s character is so different from Maggie Cheung’s that I’m intrigued to see what he’s trying to say about her/them/filmmaking with this new take.

    Featured photo (top): A superb dinner we had at Beyond The Dough on Arab Street. It’s one of those places that brings obsessive Japanese craft to traditional pizza. They are amusingly two doors down from a Domino’s outlet.

  • Week 34.24

    Week 34.24

    It seems like there’s always something wrong, and I feel like it’s one problem after another these days. The same night as my near-death experience (previously on…), I came home to find that our bedroom’s air-conditioning had died instead. It would put out only semi-cool air, then just regular air, in a cycle that lasted all night. The next day, I dragged a standing fan into the room to make things a little more livable. A few nights later, when Kim returned from Australia, we started to sleep in the living room where the air-conditioning still works.

    What followed was a series of visits by different servicemen, each finding something legitimately “wrong” but none ultimately solving the problem. There was the simple fact that the unit was clogged and dirty — despite another company just having “cleaned” it two months ago. They did a regular wash (S$66), but had to return on Wednesday for a deep chemical overhaul (S$150), and a washing of the outdoor compressors ($50). When that didn’t solve it, it was discovered that the outdoor compressor was flashing an error message, and the entire power PCB (printed circuit board) needed replacement ($711.50). FWIW it’s a Mitsubishi Starmex system; future buyers beware.

    One week later, and the problem still hasn’t been addressed, and we’re still sleeping in the living room.

    I need to mention how this has lived in my head as a much bigger problem than it objectively is. After getting home from the hospital, I just wanted to lie in bed and have everything be absolutely NORMAL. To have no outstanding problems in the world — just being in a state of calm to mentally recover. But immediately, something was wrong in the home, a psychological intrusion in my metaphorical safest space. This has just made me an anxious freak all week, feeling low and spiraling into worst-case scenarios. Like, what if they find there’s a problem with the piping in the walls and need to hack them out in our bedroom? What if this is going to cost even more money than what’s already been spent? I do believe this is all likely in the coming week.

    Another source of anxiety is the actual repair visits themselves: not only is there cleaning up to do after (which I couldn’t really with a foot injury), but our compressor units are installed outside the bedroom window, over a fragile “roof” that probably can’t take a person’s full weight. To work on them, a technician has to climb out (one even did it without safety gear) and stand precariously on a tiny parapet, dangerously close to either tumbling into our living room or down several storeys. At work, seeing all the things that can go wrong is my superpower, but it’s not a useful one to have right now.

    On the bright side, my foot is much better already, and I’m able to walk normally enough to go out for short periods. I expect I’ll be back to normal in another week. Whenever the feelings of doom reach a critical point, I remember that I’m actually alive and uninjured, and a lack of air-conditioning rarely (but not never) kills anyone, and then I get a spiritual HP reset. I just need to think like that all the time and take it easy.

    ===

    Once I was able to hobble well enough, we went to see Trap (2024), which lived up to my expectations of a fun little outing. As of right now, Shyamalan’s second wind as a maker of tight little B-films based on killer elevator pitches is looking pretty sustainable, and I’m hoping for many more. Next, I’m gonna finish watching the final season of Servant, his series on Apple TV+.

    We also had time for a quick lunch with Uma of Goggler Malaysia, a media criticism outlet after my own heart that I encourage checking out even if you, like me, have nothing to do with Malaysia on a regular basis. They do a fun podcast and publish spot-on film and television reviews. We talked about his new Apple Vision Pro and I outed myself as someone who’s never seen any of the Godfather films. But I’ve taken the first step: buying the entire trilogy on the US iTunes Store at the current sale price of US$9.99. I’m planning to watch it in the AVP’s Cinema environment someday soon.

    Finally, we visited the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum (Tanjong Pagar Distripark) with Cien, Peishan, and James. I say finally because this visit has been postponed three times on account of our various illnesses and accidents. Unfortunately I was not moved by anything, and it felt like a series of science experiments crammed into a small soulless space that lends no gravitas or beauty to an artist’s work.

    I remember the original SAM fondly, and hope the museum will move back into its former space off Orchard Road although that’s looking more unlikely. The news can sugarcoat it all they like, but calling a remote concrete slab beside a container port ’eminently suited for contemporary arts purposes’ is a stretch. I’d love to see the so-called ‘positive feedback from visitors’ they’re receiving. Art doesn’t belong out somewhere you need shuttle buses for people to encounter it. The museum’s rightful place is wherever ordinary people are already going.

    Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Your curious journey’ at SAM
    These were from an Indonesian pop art collection at Gajah Gallery
  • Week 30.24

    Week 30.24

    An enduring memory/scar I have from my university days is watching a documentary on the UK’s Channel 4 called Fat Girls and Feeders. It was about women who were extremely overweight (the term ‘morbidly obese’ may not be strong enough), to the point of being completely dependent on others for everything, and the (non-fat) men who liked and kept them that way. These women were immobile prisoners, either confined to bed or needing support to get around their homes, which were fitted with handlebars and accessibility fixtures everywhere. It was a saddening story of abuse and sadism in the guise of a consensual kink.

    But why am I mentioning this? Well, the week got off to an awful start with Kim slipping at home and pulling/spraining/tearing a leg muscle, badly enough that she couldn’t put any weight on it without wincing. So she’s spent the last six days lying in bed resting and icing it, and I’ve been the nursemaid and caregiver helping her to the bathroom, making dinner, fetching water, just being on call for whatever. And having gone through this, let me just say! Those feeder guys are really sick if they find this fun!

    Thankfully, the swelling has gone down and the pain is moderating. She can now get up and walk around slowly on her own, but sitting in certain positions still hurts. It’ll probably be a few more weeks before life gets back to normal, but this was an eye-opening preview of elderly life and if we don’t make it rich enough to afford the best AI robocare, then I hope I die before I get old.

    ===

    • 📺 We’ve been watching Netflix’s new Japanese reality series, The Boyfriend. I’d hoped it would be a spiritual successor to my beloved Terrace House, only with gay men, but it doesn’t quite capture the essence of what made TH great. Perhaps because of what happened with TH, the commentary panel here never goes too hard on the ‘contestants’, but more than that, I think it’s just a different sort of show. Terrace House was more about watching young people learning to live together and develop over a longer period, whereas The Boyfriend is overtly about “finding love” and takes place over just a few weeks.
    • 📺 We also resumed and finished Season 8 of Below Deck after a break of several months. My usual complaints about Captain Lee’s leadership apply: he’s not hands-on at all, communication is poor, and his boundaries/consequences aren’t clear and can’t be taken seriously. However, because this season took place in Feb–Mar 2020, just as Covid was brewing, seeing the crew get increasingly ominous updates from family abroad and ultimately being shut down two charters early makes for an interesting document of a very strange time.
    • 📺 The season finale of Apple TV+’s true crime/courtroom drama Presumed Innocent came out on Wednesday, and I think they stuck the landing. It’s one of the better shows on the service, and has apparently been renewed for a second season, which I assume will feature a completely new story and setting, in the manner of True Detective.
    • 📺 I’ve started on Season 1 of The Big Door Prize, also on Apple TV+, and think it’s rather good. It’s about a small town that receives a mysterious machine that tells you what your potential is, and soon everyone is reevaluating their lives and having crises. But it’s also a comedy with surprising emotional depth.
    • 🎬 I watched the seminal short film La Jetée (1962) on MUBI and immediately thought, ‘Oh this is quite like 12 Monkeys’, and unfortunately saw its twist ending coming. I wrote “√12 Monkeys” on Letterboxd, thinking I was very clever. Then I looked it up and hey, 12 Monkeys was explicitly inspired by La Jetée, so that makes sense. Despite that, it’s a must-watch because the form of it (a slideshow of black and white stills with a voiceover) is ingenious and works so well to create a slippery narrative vehicle: is this all a document? A memory? An oral story passed around in a broken future? —4 stars.
    • 🎬 I also watched The Bat Woman (1968), a truly terrible B-movie, only because it was due to leave MUBI. It reminded me of some schlocky sci-fi Singaporean films from the 60s that I’ve seen at film festivals; the acting is either hammy or wooden, the special effects are often just literal toys, and the story is a nonsensical farce. A rich lady solves crimes as Batwoman, which is also her Lucha wrestling persona (I suppose to sidestep any copyright claims), and helps the police catch a mad scientist who is trying to breed a fishman monster. It ends with a sexist joke: Batwoman, in her civilian clothes celebrating victory with two male partners, screams and hides upon seeing a mouse while the men laugh. —1.5 stars.
    • 🦻 Very little music was played this week, but I enjoyed a run-through of Jesse Malin’s first album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction, in preparation for Silver Patron Saints, the tribute album due out in September to raise awareness and funds for his recovery. It will feature covers by Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Bleachers, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr., Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello, The Wallflowers, Spoon, and many more.
    • Oh I nearly forgot! XG released Something Ain’t Right, the first single from their second mini-album (out 8 Nov) and it’s another banger!
  • Week 28.24

    Week 28.24

    My weekly ‘Going to the Apple Store’ streak continued on Monday when I accompanied my dad for his demo of the Vision Pro. Rather than use my unit with an imprecise fit, I thought it’d be better for him to get the proper experience, and sure enough, he had completely different strap and light seal sizes from mine. He’s had some experience with immersive headsets, mainly from flying his FPV drone and other vehicles, but in terms of interacting with spatial UIs and XR objects this was a first. He came away very impressed, apart from the usual complaints (weight, price). He wasn’t planning to buy one going in, but I wonder if he’s thinking about it now.

    Aside: One hobby I’ve been meaning to play around with in the Vision Pro is sculpture, which is much more intuitive (read: idiot friendly) to do in 3D space with your hands than on an iPad with a Pencil. There’s just not a great app for it that I’ve found yet, although it’s possible at a blobby sort of level in AirDraw — Finger Paint, so I’m starting there.

    If Apple still made their AirPort wireless networking hubs (many smart people still say to this day that discontinuing them was a strategic error), I might have had cause to visit a store again next week. Since they don’t, I bought a set of TP-Link WiFi mesh routers instead and set them up over the weekend. One of the power adapters was faulty out of the box, but fortunately our old system’s were compatible, so that’s sorted.

    Aside: There was a tense moment on Friday night when a ‘pop’ was heard just before the power cut out in one section of the home. It turned out a wall-connected USB charging hub had burnt out, fortunately without damaging anything. It was a Lencent brand 65W GaN thing that I bought off Amazon Prime last October, with a 4.6-star rating. I was complacent to attribute trust based on its Amazon profile rather than my own knowledge — I’d never heard of Lencent and haven’t since — and won’t be making that mistake again. It’s only slightly more reputable Chinese brands from here on out!

    FWIW I’ve had mixed experiences with Anker, but they’re probably the best/safest from a brand equity perspective. I’ve also seen a lot of people using Ugreen products. I have a charger and a couple of cables from them, but their website has typos like you’d find in a phishing email.

    Our old pre-COVID system was WiFi 5, and we had nearly 30 internet-enabled devices on it, which I think might have contributed to recent connectivity issues. I have bored Kim to tears with explanations and theories all week, so I’ll spare you. In short, I spent $400 I hadn’t budgeted for to upgrade us to a WiFi 6E mesh that claims to have self-learning AI and support for 200 devices. The app is miles better than our old Netgear Orbi’s, letting you configure nearly everything from your phone — it’s bizarro world over at TP-Link because the web-based admin panel has nearly no settings. Anyway, we’re future ready and could move up to 2Gbps internet when our current contract expires.

    ===

    • 🎮 I’m still checking into Zenless Zone Zero daily to claim log-in rewards and farm materials. I’m observing that this routine is actually a barrier to getting more stuck into proper games. Devious.
    • 🎮 Nevertheless, started on a charming and well-written visual novel about the afterlife called Ghostpia: Season 1, on the Nintendo Switch. I saw launch ads for it during our last trip to Japan and bought the global release late last year, but I’m only starting it now. I think it’s pronounced Ghost-o-pia in Japan, and the name implies “ghost town”, like the Latin topos for place, as in utopia. It’s the rare visual novel that doesn’t ever feel like it’s wasting time or insulting your intelligence.
    • 📺 Started watching Sunny, Apple TV+’s new show starring Rashida Jones and a robot that kinda looks like a Pepper 2.0. It’s an A24 production, set in a surreal other-universe Japan that feels like a variant of the world in Severance. Such an odd vibe, which I suppose adds to the “nothing is what it seems” mystery here. She’s an American expat whose Japanese engineer husband and son supposedly died in an accident, leaving her an advanced AI robot to figure things out with.
    • 📺 Absolutely thrilled that Jinny’s Kitchen has returned for a second season on Amazon Prime Video, sending Korean celebrities to run a restaurant in Iceland this time. Like before, each episode is essentially a two-hour movie, and there’s something about this formula that makes even the most mundane moments (restocking a fridge, taking orders, dicing vegetables) so watchable. Other reality shows can only dream of including this much detail on a weekly basis without losing an audience.
    • 🎬 Saw In the Realm of the Senses (1976) on MUBI despite warnings from Nic not to watch it. Is it uncomfortably, unbelievably graphic? Yes. It’s also a very powerful and competently made film based on a bananas true story. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Heroes of the East (1978) next, a classic Shaw Brothers kungfu flick by Lau Kar-Leung starring Gordon Liu, both in top form. It’s actually a cross-cultural martial arts romcom, with action scenes so good I don’t think we know how to do them anymore. One of the best I’ve seen, up there with Dirty Ho (1979). 4.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Friends and Strangers (2021), a very enjoyable indie Australian film. Gorgeous photography, care evident in every shot. The story meanders and discharges detail wherever it feels like it, leaving so much off screen, and the result is “dreamy”? Aside from the Australian identity crises, I was surprised it felt a bit like Singapore, where everyone knows someone you know, and nobody has figured out what life’s about. I much preferred the first half with Emma Diaz in it; the second felt like a portrait of bumbling male incompetence that no one needs to see more of, really. 4 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) and wasn’t as disappointed as I expected to be! It took a little warming up to, but Eddie Murphy looks like he’s having fun again and that’s enough for me. 3 stars.
    • 🎬 If you’re in the mood for a mellow drama shot entirely on an actual luxury cruise ship on an actual voyage, Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk (2020) has got you. Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Candice Bergen! Oh it’s about a writer trying to write a sequel to her best work, and catching up with two old friends she hasn’t seen in decades. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 I also really enjoyed Upgraded (2024), an Amazon Prime Video original romcom about the art world starring Camila Mendes, Marisa Tomei, and Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Anthony Head). It’s derivative AND fun! 3.5 stars.
    • 🎧 Tons of new music this week but I haven’t had time to hear Eminem, Cigarettes After Sex, Tori Amos, or Travis yet. I’ve heard Griff’s debut album, Vertigo (polished pop from Sigrid’s side of the aisle), and Clairo’s Charm (a lush, beautiful vintage sound).
  • Week 26.24

    Week 26.24

    The week seemed to slip by with not too much to show for it until Friday, as I waited for the delivery of my Apple Vision Pro. I watched a couple of films, subscribed to the New York Times again, and made some plans for a personal creative project.

    In the meantime, I also made some memes for Instagram.

    I also resumed wearing contact lenses daily after years of relying on glasses, because I didn’t want the Zeiss lens inserts for Vison Pro. It will take a little adjustment; I definitely don’t miss the end-of-day dryness and irritation.

    Okay, so!

    The unboxing experience for this high-end device is suitably premium, despite being made from predominantly recyclable paper materials. You lift the cover — it releases with the usual deliberate, satisfying motion — and there it is, positioned as if on display in a museum, supported by a molded rest. All the accessories are neatly organized in a compartment underneath. There is an indulgent amount of unused space in this box; no squashing of the Vision Pro into egg carton cutouts like with some Sony products!

    A nice Quick Start book instead of the leaflet you get with iPhones

    Side note: I think I may have gotten measured for the wrong size of light seal (21W) as the sides feel narrower and less comfortable than 33W for me. I have an appointment at the Apple Store next week to hopefully get it swapped.

    First encounters

    I’ve already mentioned the magical and immersive experience of using it. Knowing that, it was still a shock when I ran the pre-installed Encounter Dinosaurs app (directed by Jon Favreau) for the first time.

    Some U.S. reviewers reported actually feeling the virtual butterfly land on their outstretched fingers at the start of the experience, to which I thought, “no way”. And yet when it happened to me, I swear I felt four distinct little pricks on my skin as its little legs shifted. That unfortunately primed me to feel what happened next even more acutely. The dinosaurs appeared on screen, with a fluidity and resolution that was greater than I expected, making the PS5 look like “video games”. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say they were lifelike.

    You are warned at the start that the animals can “see you” and will react to your actions. As the largest dinosaur stepped out of its frame and stalked towards me, towered over my seated body, then stared me in the face while exhaling through its nostrils, I felt my body go into a fight-or-flight mode. No joke. I started to sweat. I avoided making eye contact, and turned my head away hoping it would back off. The presence you feel is unbelievably tangible, and I know I will NOT be attempting any horror games in the future.

    Art of the future

    A much calmer experience I can recommend is Museas, which is a completely free journey through art history made by a single person (Miguel Garcia Gonzalez, who calls himself “a supply chain professional by day and spatial computing engineer by night”). You can see landmark artworks at phenomenal scale right in your home, or in “immersive environments”. These suddenly float your body in massive virtual spaces, surrounded by complementary imagery, with the original artwork in front of you. Think of them as frames, just 360º ones. For example, when viewing Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, you see a florid Japanese garden scene all around, while a narrator explains the artwork.

    I suspect they’ve used generative AI to create these descriptions of the artworks’ history and meaning, the voice that reads them (it sounds to me like the actor Jared Harris, who plays Hari Seldon in Foundation), as well as the 360º immersive scenes. If so, the technology has clearly allowed a single person to achieve something that feels professional beyond their means. The voice is natural and doesn’t feel off to me at all. The immersive environments aren’t perfect, but they’re for your peripheral vision — you’re meant to focus on the original art. The wall text is accurate as far as I can tell. Was this labor that could have paid the salaries of a few more people? In theory, but it’s more likely this project wouldn’t have gotten made at all without AI.

    When I think about you I shush myself

    Apart from these new experiences that weren’t possible before, I think the primary application of the Vision Pro for me will be a personal cinema hall. I sat down with the Theater app to watch Adam Lisagor’s 3D recording of John Gruber interviewing Apple executives Joz, Craig, and J.G. at WWDC (regular 2D recording here), and for nearly two hours I was immersed and focused in its virtual space, surrounded by faintly illuminated empty seats and aisles. I felt notifications come in on my wrist, my phone was across the room, and I ignored all of it the same way I would watching a film in a real theater.

    I think the Vision Pro is the antidote to the iPhone that some thought the Apple Watch would be. Turns out the answer to destroyed attention spans, multi-screening, and screen addiction wasn’t to make it easier to leave your phone in your pocket by redirecting things to a watch, it was the skeuomorphic recreation of a giant screen in a dark room. I think this is the ideal way to watch Important Films. And as nice as our new TV is, I don’t think it compares in visceral terms. Tradeoff: focus and immersion vs. comfort and the ability to drink beverages.

    Media activity

    • Finished watching Constellations starring Noomi Rapace on Apple TV+. Mild spoiler: I complained on Threads about the way it handled a plot device thusly: “Sci-fi shows where science-literate people find themselves trapped in parallel universes, and literally don’t know the words “parallel universe” to explain to other people what’s happening, please gtfo”
    • Season 3 of The Bear is out this weekend and like most people (I did a poll on Instagram), we’re getting through it. That first episode? Wow, really special television.
    • Saw Aloners (2021), a film that tackles modern nowhere lives built around go-nowhere jobs, where even if you meet people worth connecting with, your social muscles may already have atrophied too far. Starts strong but doesn’t land the character development at the end for me. Also: is this a chaotic opposite world version of Perfect Days? I said on Letterboxd: “Say less” is the unofficial motto of Korean arthouse cinema. 3/5 stars.
    • Saw Zero Fucks Given (2021). It follows a young woman escaping grief and complexity by going headfirst into the soul-sucking worker bee life of a budget airline attendant, taking each day as it comes, never looking a day ahead as much as she can help it. Lovely work, and Adele Exarchopoulos is a talent. 3.5 stars.
    • Saw Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Oast Lives (2010) through MUBI’s visionOS app, and I chose to watch it on the dark side of the moon. It was incredible to look up and see stars, look around and see a desolate rocky surface, and then at a giant floating screen ahead of me. The movie was also strange, unreal, and disorienting like being on the moon — it won a Palme d’Or when it came out, cynically I think because a Thai film like this was exotique. I enjoyed its atmosphere and ideas a lot, just not the stilted acting. 3.5 stars.
    • I don’t know where else to mention that I fulfilled a personal goal by minting a McDonalds Singapore NFT after Jose alerted me (with two hours to spare) that they were releasing a new Chicken McNuggets series. Their first release last year was of Grimace, and holders enjoy a stream of special perks. Interestingly, they are ‘soulbound’ NFTs, meaning they cannot be sold or transferred from the initial wallet that received them. Don’t ask me why McDonald’s Singapore is doing this (I doubt they do either), but I want it and I got it.
    • I’ve been long Camila Cabello since 2019 when I called her “possibly the most competent pop star and the new Rihanna”, but I have to admit I was nervous about her new album C,XOXO after recent racism accusations and piggybacking on Charli XCX’s party girl image and Brat aesthetic on social media. Thankfully, I’m on my third listen and it’s an enjoyable record apart from Drake appearing on two tracks (putting on his Jamaican accent, for chrissakes). She’s a big Drake defender, but even if she wanted to cut him after recent events, the album is only 32 minutes long and wouldn’t have survived it.
  • Week 25.24

    Week 25.24

    Monday was Hari Raya Haji, a public holiday, and we took an early walk along the nearby ‘park connector’, which I guess is the local government term for “paths beside rivers and canals linking the city’s green spaces”. I must admit, I prefer evening walks over morning ones.

    Mornings are best spent slowly booting up with a hot cup of tea and maybe exploring some new music. Although I started drinking black tea as a way to save money and smooth out the coffee jitters, it’s become my preferred drink throughout the day. Seinfeld’s new set includes a bit where he dismisses tea as weak and tasteless (“I hate it!”), claiming coffee is the only drink that understands “they’re trying to kill me out there!” Inspired by the insight, I tried reintroducing coffee into my routine: one cup in the morning, followed by tea for the rest of the day. It didn’t take. I didn’t need it! Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe life doesn’t feel so painful right now. #blessed.

    One more thing about saving money to establish that I am trying, before we get to the next part where I might appear to not be: Kim found out that the restaurants under the Little Farms grocery brand offer wine at prices that seem like misprints in the menu. They’re essentially sold at the same retail prices you’ll find in the store. So we had a nice Malbec from Australia’s Gill Estate along with our dinner for S$35. That’s S$35 for the BOTTLE, not a glass. I think we’re going to be eating there a lot. (For comparison, I think the cheapest ones here typically start around S$60).

    I actually made this

    I pre-ordered an Apple Vision Pro for launch day. I wish I could call it a casual treat but it’s a fairly large purchase; certainly the most I’ve spent on a single computer in my adult life, and probably equivalent in inflation-adjusted terms to the 33mhz 386-DX my parents bought us in the late 80s. This thing probably has a trillion times the processing power of that PC, not to mention 30x the display resolution, in each eye. It’s amazing the difference three decades makes!

    I’ll save further thoughts for when I get it, but right now I’m planning to use it primarily as a personal theater, perhaps as a larger display for my Mac, and am very excited to try new spatial applications and games as they come out. So many of the things coming to visionOS 2 feel like essential launch features that I may even install the beta.

    If you’re looking to justify one to yourself, feel free to copy my notes.

    1. It’s the first VR/XR headset I’ll be owning, and Apple’s entry into the category is a sign that it’s nearly ready for mainstream adoption. This is probably the moment to start paying attention to new experience possibilities, new interaction conventions, and new consequences for behavior and preferences. Any later might be too late.
    2. These early days of a new platform are the most exciting. Hopefully, we’ll see creators trying out new ideas and innovating in the app space. If Apple made cheaper development units available to select indie studios, this might be helped along. Maybe they are?
    3. The unconfirmed cheaper and lighter model is rumored to be targeting a late-2025 release, and a second-generation Pro model perhaps a year after. That’s at least 18 months where this will have no competition. And if waiting means missing out on two years of watching this potential revolution unfold, then it’s clear to me I don’t want to.
    4. I’ve got the time on my hands now to make plentiful use of it.
    5. As a paying subscriber to all Apple services currently available in my country, I’d be leaving value on the table if I DIDN’T have access to all the exclusive Apple Vision content that’s coming. There are spatially enabled games in Apple Arcade, and Immersive Video features on Apple TV+. It’s not a stretch that Apple Music might add 3D video content in the future. I know it was Amazon Music that hosted Kendrick’s ‘Pop Out’ live event this week, but imagine being in the front row for something like that on a pay-per-view livestream!
    6. I had the opportunity to see a little of Alicia Keys’ Rehearsal Room feature for Apple Vision and it sold me. Maybe people who’ve dabbled in VR for awhile won’t find it as impressive as I did, but the feeling of her presence five feet away was magical. Just like with the Nintendo 3DS, it’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

    Speaking of Alicia Keys, I came across the cast recording for Hell’s Kitchen, a new Broadway musical she’s created, loosely based on her life. It features many of her hits and has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards this year. All that, and yet the album on Apple Music was how I found out about it. Now I wish I could painlessly fly to New York to see it. And while actually being there would be best, I’d love a world where I could buy or rent a front-row seat recording with a double-tap of my fingers in Vision Pro.

    Check out these videos of the cast performing the reimagined versions of No One and If I Ain’t Got You.

    ===

    Media Activity:

    • I signed up for MUBI at last, so the quality and/or pretentiousness of my film viewing is about to go up. If you’d like a free 30-day membership, please use my referral link.
    • I started posting post-film impressions on Threads throughout the week as I go, but don’t worry, I’m pasting and expanding on them here on my own platform.
    • Saw Baby Assassins (2021) because Hideo Kojima raved about the movie series in a tweet, and I found it a fun take on the ol’ high school assassin girls trope; more about their friendship and trying to cope with adult life than the (well-executed) fighting. 4/5 stars.
    • I then saw Baby Assassins 2 Babies (2023) the next day and it was a perfect sequel. The best thing it does is develop the girls’ relationship with more unserious conversational set pieces that feel like Quentin Tarantino took a course in Japanese comedy. Can’t wait for the third one out this year. 4/5 stars.
    • Saw The First Slam Dunk (2022), which is an animated film based on the long-running series. I’ve only seen the first episode of the original anime on Netflix, and it looked like it was made in the early 90s. This film takes the quality bar up a million times with some of the best 3D CG anime I’ve seen. 3.5/5 stars.
    • Saw Tom Cruise’s The Mummy (2017), thinking that his star power would make it okay despite the negative things I’ve heard. It started quite strong but was so so bad. 1.5/5 stars.
    • Saw The Breakfast Club (1985) all the way through for the first time and enjoyed it! It clearly influenced many other films, memes, and popular culture’s depictions of that entire retro/80s-era of American high school life. 4/5 stars.
    • Caught The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) on its last day on MUBI, which is a real shame because more people should see it. Hardly wasting a single frame of its gorgeous, luminous 100-min runtime, this immersive drama set in 1950s Vietnam is simply a masterpiece. Yes, there’s workplace harassment and ant cruelty, but that attitude is why they don’t make them like this anymore! 4.5/5 stars.
    • We are enjoying Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+, where Jake Gyllenhaal plays the kind of creepy protagonist you don’t know whether to trust that he does so well.
    • My song of the week has to be the Lorde remix of Charli XCX’s girl, so confusing. It’s amazing to hear them communicating through a song, and Ella’s verse is probably the most vulnerable from a superstar in recent memory; in a league of its own compared to ahem generic confessional love songs by some people.
  • Week 24.24

    Week 24.24

    ✅ Saw Seinfeld live

    His 2024 tour had just one Asian stop, here, before heading to several Australian cities. We decided to splurge on S$300 tickets late last year for the one-night-only show on June 14. After all, when are you ever going to see Jerry Seinfeld again? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list opportunity.

    And he was pretty good! I can’t believe he’s 70 and still working the circuit. Although the face says he’s aged, the material suggests he’s still the same unserious, childish complainer we love. Some bits on modern subjects like AI and smartphone addiction screamed ‘boomer!’, but his timeless takes on marriage, the lack of innovation at the Sun-Maid Raisin Company, and putting old dish sponges out of their misery, were solid gold.

    ===

    I attended an inspiring memorial service for my uncle, who passed away a few weeks ago. It was a large and well-attended affair, on account of him having been a prominent member of the local medical community.

    Relatives are usually these distant figures we only see during Chinese New Year reunions. But under the surface, there’s a lifetime of stories we never hear, and it’s a pity. If not for the history lesson and stories that his son shared, I would never have known about how he was born in China 90 years ago, arrived in Singapore at the age of 10, suffered tragedy at the hands of the Japanese, and became an award-winning multihyphenate equally accomplished in matters of art and science. That generation really was built different; the risks they took seem unreal when compared to our modern lives (but tbh they couldn’t handle a zillion social notifications destroying their mental health either).

    ===

    It was WWDC week and while I don’t have to comment on Apple stuff, I kinda always do, so let’s keep traditions alive. They unveiled a slew of software features coming to every platform, and I was most excited to see that Journal, Notes, and Freeform are still being improved and haven’t become forgotten hobbies. As a word-centric computer user, they’re the ones I rely on most — the Math Notes demo on iPad was super cool but I couldn’t begin to use it.

    I’m not convinced the Photos app redesign was necessary or an improvement for most users. Its single-page design seems like a conceptual simplification that might add more complexity in real-life use. I haven’t lived with it yet, so I hope I’m wrong.

    I’m convinced Messages will continue to absorb all popular chat features until it eventually catches up to where Telegram was about four years ago. And that’s all it needs to do, really.

    They announced that Apple Vision Pro will finally be sold outside the US, with Singapore as one of the first countries to get it, alongside Japan and China. Wow, that’s a hell of an upgrade to our starting lineup position. Back in Week 5, I correctly predicted that the global rollout would start in June, but I also said that the product would see annual updates — the consensus on tech Twitter now is that there won’t be a new model until 2026. Which… makes me think that I could get one after all? Getting two years of use out of a S$5,500 device is a lot more palatable than getting just one. Once you add the cost of AppleCare+ (S$749), a travel case (S$299), and prescription inserts/contact lenses though. Hmm.

    On Apple Intelligence: I was happy to see them begin by laying out their design principles (we do this on a lot of my projects, but they are rarely communicated to the public), which are critical for this particularly suspicious and misunderstood technology, for which Apple needs to differentiate their approach and model. Some, like Google, already have access to your data but can’t be trusted not to monetize it with ad targeting. Others, like OpenAI, may only have what data you choose to share but can’t be trusted not to train their models on it. Apple is unique in that it doesn’t seem to want to do either.

    Finally, we’re getting a smarter Siri that’s an actual agent, i.e. able to string together various tasks in pursuit of a goal, and take action on behalf of users. So much for the Rabbit and all that bullshit. Doing as much locally as possible is the only responsible way to do AI agents. And Apple’s private cloud compute solution, which looks to be yet another privacy engineering breakthrough, is probably the second-best way.

    The image generation stuff was probably the most contentious part. I’ve seen upset takes from artists but no one can put this stuff back in the bottle. The only way to stop AI art is a full-scale public revolt, and that requires everyone getting a good look at it first. It’s the four packs of cigarettes your dad forces you to smoke after he catches you sneaking one. When we’re all tired of seeing gross AI styles, human-created art might be appropriately valued.

    But I don’t think Apple is on this exact mission, so I was surprised at the examples they chose to showcase. The Genmoji of a surfing dinosaur looked terribly similar to Meta’s own AI chat stickers in style and quality (cheap). But being able to create Genmojis and illustration-style images for documents all across the OS, for free, is no doubt a big deal. I think many people will generate their first AI images with Apple Intelligence.

    ===

    Media activity:

    • I just finished R.F. Kuang’s Babel and loved every page. If you’re into university-set adventures, deep dives into language and literature, the aftershocks of British colonialism, and tales of the Chinese diaspora, this one’s for you. I had no idea that she also wrote Yellowface, which I’ve heard many people rave about. Props to Kuang, she gets a lot more out of being Chinese than me. 5/5 stars.
    • Bought Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name for S$31 on PlayStation’s summer sale, and immediately started playing it. I thought I’d had enough of this series for awhile, but I’m six hours in and having so much more fun than in the preceding game. Part of it is even set in the same Yokohama map as Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but running around here is so much better without the annoying turn-based combat. Recommended if you like absurd storylines played with the straightest of faces.
    • Started watching Constellations on Apple TV+, which has sadly been canceled after one season. The first two episodes lean into a space horror vibe which had me seriously tense, but it’s lightened up a bit now in episode three. Recommended for fans of Noomi Rapace, Dead Space, sci-fi mysteries.
    • Watched A Quiet Place Part II and was let down because I remember enjoying the first one, but this sequel is a much lesser use of mostly the same ingredients. Plus that annoying post-apocalyptic trope about how the human survivors are worse than the monsters. PUHLEASE. 1.5/5 stars.
    • Watched Hit Man on Netflix, the first Richard Linklater film I’ve caught in years. It kept me guessing (and I had a lot of wrong guesses where it was heading), and has a lot of fun with the concept. Glen Powell is going to be a huge star, isn’t he? 4/5 stars.
    • Alex Garland’s Civil War was like most of his films: plenty to look at, not much to say. It shows what a civil war in the US might look like, but doesn’t care to fill anything in, mirroring the photojournalists it follows. Early on, Kirsten Dunst says “we just shoot the pictures, others can ask why”, or something to that effect. Well, isn’t that convenient for you, Alex Garland. 2.5/5 stars.
    • Discovered the band Fantastic Cat after seeing a vertical video somewhere of them inviting Adam Duritz of Counting Crows to be on their new song. It may have been a clip of the video for the song, actually. Following that I checked out Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat and really enjoy its pre-my-birth country rock sound. A quick internet search revealed that they’re a supergroup of four singer-songwriters that I unfortunately have never heard of.
    • Am listening to Charli XCX’s very popular new album, BRAT, and it might be her best work yet. I’m also listening to A.G. Cook’s new Britpop album and since he produced half of her album, it can get confusing.
    • Have also been following the drama of Taylor Swift allegedly releasing numerous editions of her albums on the eve of other female artists’ album releases to block them from the top spot on charts. She apparently tried it with Billie Eilish’s album, and now she’s done it to Charli with a UK-only release of two new editions of The Tortured Poets Department, each with different demos or live versions tacked on. She’s free to defend the throne but there are apparently 34 different versions of that album out now. Even The Guardian has weighed in and declared Charli the winner on artistic grounds. This releasing of multiple variants to milk fans feels gross to me. Back in my day, musicians just released one version of an album (okay, plus maybe a Japan-only one with bonus tracks) and it had to fend for itself on the charts for years!