Drinking a lot of wine last Saturday night at what I thought was the end of my illness was not a smart move — my immune system probably felt like frontline troops betrayed by friendly fire, and by Sunday night I began feeling the stirrings of a new illness.
The return of the seasonal haze — caused by intentional forest fires in Indonesia — certainly hasn’t helped my throat and nasal membranes. It’s looking to get worse in the coming weeks, but one pretty side effect is a rather cinematic bloom over the city lights at night.
Look at the daytime haze, and this is “moderate”
I thus spent most of the week laid up in various poses, moving between states of aching, coughing, and mucusation. So there’s really not much more to report this week, but let me wring this diaristic serviette dry anyway; let me lean heavy on the word press’s crank with my phlegmatic body.
One of my sad meals was a can of baked beans in tomato sauce, eaten cold out of the can. But instead of the usual Heinz, I decided to try regional brand Ayam’s slightly cheaper rendition, and learnt that the version I’m used to (less sweet, with vinegar) is called an “English recipe” in their world. The verdict: pretty good and I dare say indistinguishable from Heinz’s without a direct comparison. Caveat: I was sick.
This new bean acquisition was part of a larger canned food stockpiling effort that I embarked on after reading some doomsaying posts such as this one from The Guardian. Coincidentally, I learnt shortly afterwards that James had also started doing the same. That made me wonder what vegetarians stockpile, because my pantry is mainly filled with sardines, tuna, chicken, and pork products. I got my answer on Saturday when I saw him for Peishan’s birthday celebration: lots of bean-like stuff such as lentils and chickpeas. In any case, we’re not prepping on any meaningful scale — the goal would be to avoid being caught out by a sudden food shortage, for maybe a week at best. After that, the attractiveness of survival in that world probably drops off quite steeply.
Oh, I also found and enjoyed this video on the history of everyone’s favorite canned meat, Spam. As a lifelong aficionado of the ‘spiced ham’, I already knew many of these facts, but did not know that its main ingredient, pork shoulder, was considered a cheap off-cut back when the product was being developed.
I finished reading all 1,600 virtual pages of Reamde within a week, and it was an absolute blast. A very bingeable book, and one that I realize underlines a trend in my recent media habits. A couple of months ago, I was reading and playing a lot of detective and murder mysteries. Right now it seems I’m on a techno-thriller and espionage kick.
After finishing Tiny Bookshop last week, I started playing Jack Move, an indie cyberpunk RPG with very nice modern pixel art graphics. It’s currently on sale at a tremendous discount for the Nintendo Switch, so take a look.
I also bought 007 First Light for the PS5 (20% off sale) but haven’t gotten around to starting on it yet. My hopes are high not just because of the developers’ pedigree (IO Interactive, of the Hitman games), but because in making a game about James Bond as a junior agent, focused on spectacular action set pieces, they seem to have also made a game that looks like Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies.
The best spy thing of all has been Seasons 1 and 2 of The Agency, which I just finished over the weekend. Michael Fassbender is in top form throughout as a ‘magically’ charismatic manipulator in the CIA, slipping between accents and allegiances as he tries to navigate an ever-expanding web of complications. I also loved Saura Lightfoot-Leon’s turn as Daniela Morata/Acosta, a rookie agent sent on a dangerous undercover mission — a setup I alluded to as a ‘less stupid Lioness’ a few weeks ago. I liked that the show spends time looking at the psychology of the people who sign up for this job, all carrying some marvelous, self-destructive defect that makes them head towards things others run away from.
You know who else had a secret identity and was persecuted when he went public? That’s right, I’m talking about the original sleeper agent. We went to see the new production of his story, Jesus Christ Superstar, on its last day at the Marina Bay Sands. Tickets were bought impulsively and spontaneously by Kim, and we had a good time despite some of that rock music being quite dated now in not the best way. It was also consistently over 95dB during the fuller songs, so we used our AirPods Pro in Transparency mode to provide hearing protection while maintaining audio quality. They are super handy, and I’ll never attend a show without them.
As of September 1, Apple entered a new era. It’s hard to believe that Tim Cook’s been CEO for 15 years already, and I wonder if that’s because his term was marked by many smaller ripples adding up, rather than big waves that shook the world and demanded attention. I look forward to seeing how things turn out with Ternus. As for the upcoming product event next week, I’m still doubtful I could commit to a first-generation folding iPhone without a telephoto lens. After getting used to having 200mm of reach on my iPhone 17 Pro Max, giving it up for a larger screen doesn’t sound like a great trade. Let’s see if they offer any novel use cases beyond “watch bigger videos”.
But I saw a tweet saying Tim was asked what his legacy would be, and he answered neatly that a legacy is what others decide about you, not something you choose for yourself. Which got me thinking: I probably used to believe it was important to make good things and leave them behind to have had a worthwhile life. While I still think that’s a noble pursuit, history will happily separate you from your output if pushed. At best, people will now say ‘Annie Hall is a great movie’ or ‘Thriller is a solid album.’ The product doesn’t rescue the person’s reputation, it just stands on its own merits. It’s probably more important to try and be a good person than to write the great Singaporean novel.
Look Ma, no memorizing and switching apps and searching and clicking and switching back!
In any case, iOS 27 is going to be a huge upgrade for anyone with an eligible phone. I’ve been using Siri AI to answer my everyday questions during the beta period, and I’ll say again it’s good enough to replace whatever service you’re using now, e.g. Perplexity, ChatGPT. The fact that it’s more private than those other services should be reason enough. And last night when I came across an Instagram reel recommending a handful of albums (I get these quite often now), I just paused it and asked Siri to “Add this album to my Apple Music library”, and it did. These are tasks some of us maybe naively expected to be able to ask of our devices years ago, but soon learned to stop trying when they failed to understand, or suggested that they could ‘show us some web results’ instead. Well, now we get to unlearn all that and figure out where the new limits are.
The dentist frowned at the stains. “These have come back very quickly since your last cleaning”, she said. Well, I do drink a lot of black tea, like maybe three or four big mugs a day, I explained. “That will do it. If you see the inside of your mug getting stained, that’s happening to your teeth as well.” I don’t know why I never thought of that before. So now I have to either switch to green tea or alternate between mouthfuls of English Breakfast and plain water, because somehow even my Oral-B electric toothbrush isn’t scrubbing these out.
The contractor frowned at the stains. “We can try to do another round of waterproofing on the roof, but if the water seepage continues after that, you’ll either need to do PU injections in your ceiling or call in a structural engineer.” This temporary solution offered a glimmer of hope, but I’m not looking forward to having our ceilings hacked and drilled and molested if there truly is a structural issue.
Look, I’m in no way (in no way!) equating my troubles with those faced by the prisoners at Auschwitz, but as I read Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning this week, I found some comfort in his words — essentially perspectives from an explorer who traveled farther into human suffering than any of us will ever know in our lives, like a psychological astronaut… psychonaut? I cannot imagine going that deep into darkness and reemerging intact. But the human mind (or at least some) is incredibly resilient and/or adept at self-preservation. He writes of their return to society after the war:
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare.
I finished reading Gabrielle Zevin’s Young Jane Young. The only other book I’ve read of hers was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which I loved whole-heartedly, and I’m glad to report that this one was also a minor masterpiece. The subject matter (a political sex scandal) didn’t appeal much to me at all, but her characters, and their dialogue and humanity, were wonderfully handled. Movie trailer voice: “It’s a story about family, friendship, and second chances.” 5 stars, and it goes on my shelf.
The famous design process squiggle diagram
On Thursday I met some young entrepreneurs exploring product and service spaces that they might be able to play in, especially now that the availability of generative AI tools can amplify their talents. I came away impressed by how much drive they have, and was also reminded of how vital the quote-unquote design process can still be in an age where building happens in parallel with ideation. There’s so much value in “slowing down to speed up” in the early stages, as my friend Ted likes to say, and you can save not only time, but now tokens too, with more upfront research and problem selection before committing to code.
Kim and I had a choice between an ‘omakase’ yakitori dinner and a visit to Barrel: Story of Hibiki, which seems to be a Suntory-operated or at least Suntory-blessed restaurant that makes use of their Hibiki Harmony Japanese whisky in several recipes. I like yakitori fine, but associate it more with, I dunno, prices that aren’t S$280 a person before drinks?? So Barrel it was, and it was pretty great. Their simple vanilla ice-cream topped with a Hibiki-infused honey and Maldon salt might just be the best soft-serve I’ve ever had.
I passed a few hours playing Lumines Remastered, which has now been launched on mobile with controls that are quite usable. Friends will know that I consider Lumines to be one of my favorite game franchises, almost the equal of Tetris in its ingenuity, replayability, and ability to induce a blissful flow state. I’ve bought every one of these games multiple times, on every platform I can (Java featurephones, Symbian smartphones, iOS, Xbox 360, PSP, PS Vita, PS4/PS5, Switch). For S$9.98 (the first few levels are free), I can recommend the new iOS port if you’ve never played it before or don’t have access to a game console.
It was also Singapore’s 61st National Day over the weekend. This time, there were three songs instead of the usual one. I didn’t like any of them, and one in particular tried to strike an optimistic note but its titular refrain, “You’ll be okay”, works like a counterproductive doubt-caster. Like saying don’t think of an elephant. Were we not going to be okay? Why are you saying that?
It was a big week in proper music: my DOMi & JD BECK record arrived, and they announced two amazing things. 1) They’re coming to Singapore on Dec 1, and 2) there’s an instrumental version of the album coming soon. Those were both of my wishes to Jazz Santa. Thanks, JS, you’re the best.
ROLE MODEL also released his new album, Chuck Timely & The Hourglass, which is transparently about being a pretty fuckboi who’s now nearing 30 and still single while all his friends are getting married, and I love it. The sound is fantastic, a sort of alt-Americana piano rock from the good old days of Springsteen, Petty, and Fleetwood Mac.
Also, a new album from The Mountain Goats! Days is classic stuff, with better production values than ever, and a Weezer-like song about touring with the band Candlebox that has what it takes to be a hit single.
But the highest highlight for me has been Tricky’s new album, which I put off listening to for a few weeks. I said to myself I needed to hear it “in the right conditions” but really I think I was afraid it would suck. I ended up putting it on while on the train. It does not suck. It does not suck so hard! It’s as good as anything he put out after the first two albums of his career. Pitchfork points out that when Maxinquaye dropped in 1995, few would’ve bet on Tricky still making records three decades later — yet here he is, having outlasted Portishead (Third came out in 2008) and Massive Attack (16 years without an album), turning out what they call “a record of pointed modern blues that suggests an artist still driven to create.”
Home issues, like a roof leak that I need to resolve with the building people, have been attacking my mental health this past week. I’ve spent too many waking and dreaming hours on them already, so I won’t get into it further apart from this record for posterity. Hopefully things will improve.
While browsing YouTube, I came across a Rick Beato interview with DOMi & JD BECK, whose 2022 alt-jazz album Not Tight I quite enjoyed. Now, I’d assumed that they had just disappeared, swallowed up by an industry that doesn’t have time for esoteric styles, so seeing them pop up was a surprise — I didn’t dare to believe it meant new music was coming. I started watching and was sucked in for the whole hour, and indeed there was a new album set to launch the next day. I decided right then and there to buy a signed copy on vinyl from the Blue Note online store. Shipping cost $31 USD but I was so keen, nothing was going to stop me.
The album WHO ASKED? is now out on streaming, and reactions are mixed. Complaints fall into two categories: technical and musical. They recorded and produced most of it themselves, with little experience, and many think the sound was compromised — muddy, distorted drums, and a very busy mix. Musically, it’s also a very challenging suite with a lot going on: orchestral instruments alongside their frenetic playing, loads of counterpoint, and switching time signatures. Plus, they sing on nearly every track, versus providing only harmony on one song off the last album.
Personally I find the Dolby Atmos mix on Apple Music to sound better, with better separation, and think of the whole vibe as a deliberate choice. They mention in the Beato interview that the vinyl mix was shipped earlier (same with Rosalia’s LUX) and has a more hi-fi sound with less bass. Musically it might be too early to call, but I like it and think it sounds exactly like what you get when you let two prodigies make music that interests them. Their live performances online were always better to me than the cuts on the first album, and that may be the case again here. I’ll drop a few links below to get you started if you’ve never heard them.
After joyously listening to music all afternoon, I loaded up the short film The Non-Actor on MUBI, starring Victoria Pedretti and Maya Hawke, which turned out to be about a woman who’s going deaf. Well, it’s not just about that, it’s also a lesbian/yuri story, but it made me think a bit about losing my hearing and how this might be my last decade before it starts to deteriorate. Imagine never hearing your favorite songs the same way ever again; the instruments slowly fading out or disappearing. I’d be inconsolable.
I also finished reading my 37th book of the year: Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize. It’s also yuri, and this author has actually written manga. Although I’d seen numerous mentions of the book online, I started reading without knowing anything beyond what the title suggests. Turns out it’s a metafictional work that pretends to be a new translation of a little-known post-war novel based on a true story — despite being a completely new work of fiction. Ultimately it’s about colonialism’s effects on Taiwanese culture, Japan’s actions during WWII (there are notably several translated Taiwanese novels about this period, which I may read someday), female relationships, translation, and food. 4 stars.
My current favorite camera app, Analogue, got a big v1.5 update this week. I’ve preferred this for the last few months because of their unique approach: instead of using Bayer RAW capture to get more natural (less HDR processed) results from the iPhone’s camera sensor, they use a video pipeline — taking screengrabs in Apple LOG, which allows them to get really beautiful, softer images that you can apply LUTs to (including Fujifilm’s official film simulation LUTs in F-Log). Well, what does the new update add? Don’t laugh, but it’s Bayer RAW capture. However, unlike every other camera app such as Halide, Lampa, and NoFusion, Analogue merges the use of Bayer RAW with their innovative processing approach, meaning those Fuji film sims continue to work on top of sharper, native 4:3 photos. If none of that made any sense to you, the plain English is that this is your best alternative to the default camera app.
Sushiro is helping to break this Japanese sausage brand into the local market, and the sushi dog was their chosen vehicle.
I finished reading The Refusal of Work and immediately afterwards saw that Pope Leo had published an encyclical (first time encountering this word) on AI that included some of the anti-work sentiments I’d just read about. I found the following in this tweet:
Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them.
I suppose it makes sense for the Catholic Church to attack a core tenet of protestant belief. But I find it impossible these days to disagree with the idea that working hard and making money isn’t the thing that defines us as human beings. By that logic, we can let AI have the jobs — work justifies their existence, but not ours. What we need is meaning outside of work (and maybe religion).
I’m now in the middle of David Pogue’s new encyclopedic record of Apple: The First 50 Years, still during the Steve Jobs era. I think it’s a good way to get ready for this year’s WWDC, which will be Tim Cook’s last as CEO before handing it over to John Ternus in the fall. The one thing I’ve taken away so far is that many of the conventions we now enjoy were slapped together by borderline burnt-out teams during hellish crunch periods. Apple’s best years were built on sleep deprivation, divorces, and denigration from their leader. He, of course, paid dearly too. Pogue’s book is the first I’ve seen to draw a faint line between the turnaround year of 1997, when Jobs himself was stressed to his limits and suffered kidney stones, and the eventual pancreatic cancer that would kill him.
But there’s a great part where Apple’s board tries to convince Jobs to stay on as permanent CEO during his iCEO (interim CEO) period, offering him a million Apple shares and six million more as options. Jobs maintained during this period that he had no wish to stay on, because he was just beginning to enjoy time with his family and running Pixar, saying, “This is not about money, I have more money than I’ve ever wanted in my life.” It’s a bit of a tragedy that he eventually changed his mind and gave so much of the rest of his life to Apple.
One of the people I used to listen to on my iPod was Sonny Rollins, who passed away this week at the age of 95 (NYT gift article). I think the first time I really took notice of his music was with the recording of his 9/11 concert, which I probably got from eMusic at the time. It amazed me then how he played with such strength at the age of nearly 80, so it’s no surprise he lived that long and only put the saxophone down a few years ago. I’ve been putting his music on all week.
Side note: I just discovered eMusic is still around?? I discovered a lot of great music in my college days through their subscription plan, where I think I got like 40 tracks to download as MP3s each month. It was like having a budget to buy only two CDs, so you had to choose wisely. Those iPod days were great, and we cherished the ability to carry our entire music collections around. Now we “carry” nearly all recorded music around and don’t appreciate it as much.
I’m still holding out on paying for “real” AI model access and making do with free DeepSeek for coding. It really works! I added a new Custom mode to Window Box that lets you pop in any YouTube video URL to use as a background scene. So you’re no longer limited to the three mostly static backdrops I made; thousands of live camera streams are fair game. The alignment and perspective may not match exactly, but hey, you get to see moving people and scenery. Here’s one in Venice, and one of Tokyo Station (above), if you need examples to try out.
Generating code isn’t the only thing you can do for free. I popped by an IKEA for lunch on a weekday and stumbled onto what must be a hack that every retiree knows: you can hang out at the air-conditioned cafeteria for ages and the drinks cost nothing. The place was packed with seniors. When I tried to pay the 50-cent asking price of my coffee (not pictured), I was told that it’s free for members. What’s crazier is that the cups are refillable. So I ended up sitting there reading for an hour instead of going to a Starbucks like I’d planned. Between two mediocre ultra dark-roasted coffees that taste like ashtrays, I’d pick the one that doesn’t cost $5.
Speaking of food prices, I’ve noticed something alarming recently. The country is running out of sardines in extra virgin olive oil. Leading regional brand, Ayam, only has sardines in tomato sauce — their premium varieties are out of stock everywhere. I’ve checked this across online and physical supermarkets and it’s the same story. There are a few cans of King Oscar still out there, but not many. Shelves are actually empty! NTUC FairPrice has John West brand brisling in EVOO but I can’t recommend them on account of their mushiness. I suppose it’s down to the rising cost of ingredients or shipping difficulties due to war. Hopefully temporary, but I’ve started a stockpile just in case.
I’m now at the age where annual medical exams are strongly advised. Everyone around me knows someone whose life’s been upended (or worse) by a serious health issue. As much as it sucks to find out, finding out too late is worse. We went for ours this week and are waiting for results, fingers crossed.
I’m now also at the age where lame jokes come naturally, so when the nurse asked, “You have about five drinks on average a week? What do you like to drink?”, I replied, “What do you have?” The nurse laughed harder than expected so I’m guessing the clinic doesn’t get many patients masking anxiety with comedy.
They’ll probably come back and tell me I’ve got hypertension, because I definitely felt my blood pressure spiking on Saturday when Kim agreed to give It Takes Two another go on the Switch. For the uninitiated, it’s a co-op game where a married couple on the verge of divorce magically get turned into a pair of their daughter’s wooden dolls in the shed, and need to make their way back into the main house to get her help. But in order to make the journey, they’ll need to — you guessed it — work together. As a couples conflict simulator, it’s super effective. There are many videos online showing one player (usually male) getting frustrated as their partners (usually female) struggle with the hand-eye coordination required to get through the platforming sections, dying over and over. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun, and we surprisingly played for about three hours before calling it a day.
Speaking of things women do differently, I watched this video essay on the rise of gambling-related activities and industries, and learnt that blind box sales are overwhelmingly driven by female buyers. Supposedly, the data bears out that women prefer to get their dopamine fixes from such lower-risk, collection-and-completion-oriented activities with a community element. I definitely have never felt especially compelled to buy more than a couple of any given gacha or blind box toy. It says men prefer higher-stakes competitive play, “go big or go home” style, or what you’d recognize as traditional gambling. The point is, businesses really know our buttons and they are pushing them every minute in the modern world.
Speaking of wasting money, it didn’t take long to realize that my plastic Beats case wasn’t suited to everyday use — not because it’s candy pink but because, like the iPhone it protects, it’s too smooth and hard to hold. It’s now my occasional fun case, but for other days when I want to use one at all, I’ve got the MOFT Snap Case MOVAS™ in “Misty Cove” colored “vegan leather”. Nevertheless, it feels significantly nicer: soft, textured, grippy, yet smooth enough to slide out of a pocket without turning it inside out. One additional benefit of vegan leather over the murdery kind is that it’s more stain/patina resistant. I would never have been able to risk this color with a cowhide case; it’d turn blue-black from my jeans in no time. Btw, when did we all agree to start calling PVC vegan leather? That’s quite the PR masterstroke by Big Plastic.
Last week, the Twitch streamer 4amlaundry once again attended the Tokyo Game Show and streamed hours of walking around the show floor. I missed it then, but watched some of the recording this week on YouTube. I was more excited when he decided to visit the Extinct Media Museum in Tokyo on Wednesday. It’s a private collection of old cameras, laptops, phones, and media devices like the Walkman/Discman, MP3 players and so on. This was on my list to visit back in February, but on the day I was meant to go, it got too cold and dark for the 15-minute walk over from Tokyo station and I decided to head home. Watching the POV stream felt like being there — except he was happy to touch all of those beautiful tech artifacts where I, the germophobe, would have declined.
I read a couple of books. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is one of those titles you always hear about, but I never actually knew what it was about. I thought it was some inspirational crap like ‘Hey God, it’s Whoever, Are You Listening’, or ‘The Five People You Meet in Purgatory’ or whatever. It turned out to be about an intellectually disabled man who’s turned into a genius in a science experiment. It was also more powerful than I expected because it’s presented entirely as journal entries by the man himself, so the reader experiences his increasing intelligence and widening awareness of his position firsthand.
Another book was Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, which has been getting mentioned a lot on account of being nominated for the Booker Prize this year and for being too painfully truthful a look at millennials, and our devotion to living through trends, cool hunting, digital nomadism, performative wokeness, and mediocre aesthetics. Here’s the New Yorker’s article about Perfection, which makes me want to read the Georges Perec book that inspired it. Me? I loved it, but if I’d taken a few different turns — say, moved to Berlin — I’d probably feel personally attacked.
The week got off to a bad start when our three-year-old Dyson V12 vacuum cleaner stopped working. The motor cyclone made a pulsating noise and the error message “Airways Blocked” appeared on the little LED screen. Usually this means that you’ve got some ball of hair choking one of the attachments, or your filters need cleaning. I checked everything and knocked out so much dust that my palm hurt, but still no luck.
Our cleaner shared that another client had similar problems and paid about $150 for repair at a Dyson service center, and a Perplexity search corroborated that would be the starting point, depending on what needed to be fixed. It said complex replacements could take over three weeks! My first priority was to get it working asap, because I have no idea how people lived before vacuum cleaners were invented.
On a whim, I decided to check what a new vacuum cleaner would cost. The latest Dyson, the “V16 Animal” model is over S$1,100, and another V12 would be S$800. But the shocking thing is how crazy cheap the Chinese clones have gotten, ranging between S$80 (yes) and S$400. Xiaomi’s most powerful, the G20 Max, is only about S$320 and I’m sure it rivals our Dyson in capability and (I wouldn’t have thought so before this) longevity. I was beginning to think buying an entirely new Chinese vacuum for the price of a Dyson repair was a viable option.
Anyhow, I got an appointment at the service center for a couple of days later, and the staff’s instant opinion was that there wasn’t anything stuck further inside the cyclone unit, but it was an electronic or PCB (printed circuit board) issue. Meaning the entire main bit of the vacuum cleaner, minus battery and air filter, would need to be swapped out. Total cost: S$168. I believe this is simply the modern default for consumer electronics — don’t bother repairing or replacing one little component, give the customer a new unit and send the old one back for recycling (or disposal). It’s wasteful, but means the business doesn’t need to train frontline repair staff and the customer gets a “better” experience to boot.
Later, I went to have a look at the Xiaomi model in person, and it’s definitely uglier and clunkier, with the same downward dust receptacle ejection system as much older Dyson designs. I do like my V12 very much, I just don’t believe in it as much after this incident.
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I saw with some excitement that Puzzle Quest was being rereleased in an “Immortal Edition” for the Switch, with remastered visuals. It’s also out on other platforms. I played the original back in 2007 on my Nintendo DS and probably sank over 100 hours into it. It was probably the first game to combine Match-3 puzzling with an RPG storyline and character progression. To date, I haven’t played a better expression of this idea.
With regards to this new version, it’s been good so far. The UI looks gigantic going from a tiny handheld to a 65” TV, but the great thing about playing on Switch is that you have the touchscreen controls this genre was made for. I have yet to encounter any of the bugs that plagued the original release, but that’s no guarantee I won’t. If I recall correctly, sometimes moves wouldn’t register and you’d die despite technically winning. On one hand it made the game feel unfair, but glass-half-full people would call it extra challenge. The game was so fun, I was happy to play around these deficiencies.
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On Friday night we met Wen and Sarah for Mexican food at a place called Huevos, in New Bahru. I read awhile back that the retail complex was struggling but that was not the case that night; it was pretty loco. One fun memory that came up was a trip to Bintan we took together back in 2009 where Mandy sang John Mellencamp’s Hurts So Good in the pool so often that it became the theme song of that vacation. I went home that night and unearthed a video I made in iMovie from all the clips I shot, using that song as the soundtrack. The video quality, shot on my Panasonic LUMIX LX3, has held up incredibly well after all this time.
The next day, I ate at Shake Shack and made the double mistake of ordering a Tiramisu milkshake and finishing it even though I could have stopped halfway. It turns out that single serving had 850 calories and a whopping 90g of sugar — that’s 18 teaspoons of system-disrupting poison! For comparison, the single-patty Shackburger I also ate has only 550 calories. After learning all that, I didn’t have the heart to look up the side of fries I also ate. At this age, I don’t think the damage will ever be undone. I might have to start saving up for Ozempic.
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My Goodreads annual reading challenge has been completed with a vengeance, and currently stands at 40 books out of a targeted 24. The last few weeks have been made up of financial self-help material, including Nick Maggiulli’s The Wealth Ladder, which I also saw being featured on the shelves of a local Books Kinokuniya. I thought it worth mentioning because of how it lays out different strategies for people on different rungs of the so-called ladder of net worth: $1–10k, $10–100k, $100k–1M, and so on. It’s a very clear way to think about what actions and sacrifices are needed to get to the next level, and whether you’d even want to. There’s also some interesting data on how people at the higher levels distribute their money in completely different ways from us plebs.
I also read Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, an infuriatingly patchy story about time travel and searching for a father who’s gone missing in time and space. There are some novel ideas here that move the genre forward, some of them explained with a lot of (pseudo?)science and some only intriguingly hinted at. The post-time travel world that it builds is fundamentally illogical, and almost no effort is made to integrate it with a reader’s expectations — in other words, it kind of fails to hold together. However, the actual writing is occasionally brilliant. There are passages that collapse memory, description, and feeling — suddenly you’re thinking about your own childhood and watching it through the quantum bookshelf, like at the end of Interstellar (2014).
Speaking of movies, I rewatched the Wachowskis’ 2012 version of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas with my book club and it wasn’t as good as I remembered. Turns out both the book and film feel shakier on return. Anyhow, it was only 13 years ago, but there are race impersonation elements in this film that seem like transgressions today. Multiple white actors have their eyes taped up to play Asian characters. Halle Berry and Zhou Xun both have scenes where they play blue-eyed white women. The Korean characters speak English in a mix of other Asian accents. The only line that isn’t crossed is white people putting on blackface. Everything else seems to have gotten the green light.
It was a low-key week after those few days in Bangkok. There’s more travel lined up soon, so I figure it’s no bad thing to enjoy the quiet while I can. We had someone come by to look at a house issue that’s been worrying me, but the prognosis was that it’s not a big problem for now, and they’ll do some proactive repairs in the meantime. So I have to admit life’s pretty good.
When I first went to Bangkok back in March, I found the retail scene vibrant and thriving in a way that you don’t see in Singapore anymore, and this week there was a long and well-researched piece on CNA about how shopping in other SEA countries has made Singapore seem dull in comparison. It’s a rough situation because we’re short on both land and entrepreneurial spirit, which means a vicious circle of high rents and safe concepts. People like to blame greedy landlords, but I suspect they’re the same ones counting on retiring with their REIT and bank dividends. You can’t have one without the other.
Doing my part for the restaurant scene, I ate out thrice this week and two were unhealthy affairs. A Singaporean sort of pub (al fresco) with Guinness and Thai food, and a Chinese hot pot restaurant picked for its amusing name, HIPPOT, that turned out to be one of those meals that goes down easy but feels awful after. Too much grease and heat. Note to self: make better choices!
The only thing I bought on the Amazon Prime Day sale was a book I’ve been wanting for a while, but the shipping cost is usually almost as much as the book itself. Thanks to the questionable economics of Amazon, shipping was free this time. The book is A Handheld History by Lost in Cult, and it covers the corner of gaming hardware that I have the most affection for: portable systems like the Game Boy and PSP. I suppose the smartphone is inadvertently part of that lineage; a stepchild or distant cousin. I don’t know when I’ll sit down to read it — paper books are just… inconvenient — but I look forward to that rainy afternoon.
I just finished reading The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry, a 1982 thriller about a hitman. The anniversary edition’s foreword was written by Michael Connelly, author of the Bosch series, which got me in the right mood. If you liked the recent Day of the Jackal TV series, this will likely do it for you. The killer is the sort that doesn’t look especially athletic or dangerous, in fact he has the kind of face people don’t remember, but he’s great at what he does and when he gets into a jam, you root for him to get out. There are three more in the series [Goodreads], so those are going on my list.
Evan mentioned to me the existence of an Amiibo emulator a few weeks back, and when I saw one show up on Reddit it nudged me into ordering a unit off AliXpress. It’s a small electronic device that you can program to mimic the NFC chips on various Nintendo Amiibo figures, which unlock benefits in certain games when held next to your Switch/Switch 2 console. As I am very much against the idea of making people waste money buying large amounts of unnecessary plastic crap to unlock software features built into the games they already own, I have no moral qualms about using one of these.
This doesn’t have Amiibo support, but I played and finished Caravan SandWitch this week on the Switch. Weird name that doesn’t tell you much, I know, but hey it’s French. It’s a chill little indie game about exploring a planet (inspired by the landscapes of Provence) in search of your missing sister, with strong anticapitalist vibes, and was mentioned in a recent NYT article about videogames with a Studio Ghibli-like aesthetic. I enjoyed it enough as a short adventure, but the English translation lets it down in some areas. It runs well enough on the Switch 2, but I think the frame rate will be choppy on a regular Switch. 3.5/5.0
Pulpy paperbacks and cozy games are good and all, but a great media diet needs something of substance, and thankfully MUBI delivered. They’re featuring a two-film collection by the director Shinji Somai on their front page, and I was floored by both of them. They’re linked by a shared theme of childhood summers marked by transformative upheavals — broken families, deaths, newfound freedoms — but also the building of friendships, independence, and memories that become strengths in adulthood.
Moving (1993) features an incredible performance by Tomoko Tabata who was probably 12 at the time; the kind of work that’s almost too good, too early — fortunately she’s still working in film and TV today. There are lines in this that hit so hard, and incredibly audacious and magical sequences that are as good as anything I’ve seen put on film.
Notably, the three titular child actors in The Friends (1994) never acted in anything again. Scrambled by emotion after the ending, I hastily wrote on Letterboxd: “A film doesn’t have any business being this good! I cried till my Face ID struggled. There are frames in this so beautiful they should be hung in the Louvre.” Both films are a 5/5 for me. Perhaps for the way they perfectly capture the haziness of childhood memories, the nostalgic look and air of that era, and the open-ended way that school holidays felt as you experienced them. Stuff we didn’t think would matter becomes what we remember most.
Kim was away for work again, so I mostly stayed in and spent more time with the Vision Pro. Apple’s new VIP video series that takes you to major sporting arenas doesn’t sound like my sort of thing on paper, but the first episode on Yankee Stadium was a surprisingly entertaining watch. The crowds feel real and the only thing missing was a closeup of a hot dog. It was filmed last June, I think, and feels like a document of a much saner time. There are still many more apps and videos I have yet to check out.
Back in the present, Trump’s wacky tariff rollout drama continued, with the latest being a series of takesies-backsies that is great news for Apple and other makers of computers and smartphones: exemption from whatever the crazy current rate is on imports from China. 125%? Or was it 155%? Everyone now expects the stock to surge on Monday’s open, but come on, none of these pronouncements stick or mean anything now. The best move might be to sell all US-based assets and spend the next year off-the-grid on a beach somewhere.
Starbucks has done a collaboration with Peanuts (that’s Peanuts × Starbucks, for readers who were here last week), and of all the merch they put out, it was a yellow stoneware mug that I liked the best. It features the whole gang sitting at a long table, with Snoopy dressed as a barista and serving up espressos in his latest persona, a corporate caffeine shill stupidly named “Joe Kind”. I like Snoopy, probably on account of being exposed to the Apple TV 4K’s wonderful Snoopy and Woodstock screensaver, so I’m turning a blind eye to this sacrilege. Anyway I received my mug in the mail this week and it’s my new teatime go-to.
I did go out fairly early on Saturday morning to go hang out with a bunch of coffee nerd ex-colleagues who spent more time messing around with grind sizes than I ever thought possible (my contribution was a bag of beans fresh from Ho Chi Minh). It was a good time, and the occasion gave me a novel writing prompt to try out, which brings to me to my latest ChatGPT-based hobby…
About two years ago, when we were just grappling with the GPT-3 model and what it could do, I spent quite a lot of time trying to get it to write passable poetry. The most successful approach I found was to provide it with a detailed character backstory and ask it to write from that person’s perspective, taking into account their preferred styles and word choices. I managed to eke out some genuinely good stanzas (imo), was moved and amazed, and then moved on to other experiments and forgot about it.
Until this week, that is, when I wondered how the latest models would fare given the same tasks. I put my old prompts together into a custom GPT, and asked for the first silly idea that came to mind: a poem about growing older but ironically becoming more attracted to cute things like Snoopy. It did an honestly good job with just that. Then I asked it to write one about the story of how he got his name — a true story: Charles Schulz’s mother daydreamed they’d buy a family dog when she recovered from cancer, but she never did — and the result was good enough to refine further. So I went back and forth on it with the bot (who I named Penrose), combined several attempts, intervened slightly, and here’s where we landed.
She Gave Him the Name
“If we ever get another dog,” she said, “we should call him Snoopy.”
It was a small thing, tucked between errands or waiting rooms, the kind of sentence you don’t expect to echo.
He was fifteen. Maybe he nodded. Maybe he carried it like lint in his pocket, forgotten until everything else was gone.
Years later, drawing alone in his studio, he gave the name to a dog who danced on rooftops, typed novels no one would read, stood in for joy and for all the feelings boys weren’t supposed to have.
Snoopy caught on. So did the quiet boy with no luck, the girl who loved too hard, the blanket dragged across the years. The world came to know them and needed their steady kindness.
Maybe that’s what it means to miss someone forever, to take the smallest thing they gave you and let it become the sky above everything you make.
And here’s one from another session where I asked it to identify a core human paradox and write something about it. It chose to explore how we want freedom but crave structure.
The Night I Rearranged the Furniture
I moved the couch against the other wall just to see if the room felt different. It didn’t. I stared at it like it had betrayed me, then moved it back.
It was past midnight. The kind of hour when you wonder if this version of your life is the one that sticks.
I opened the window to let in some air, but it was the same air as yesterday. Nothing new came through.
I thought about driving somewhere, but didn’t know what I’d be driving to. The gas tank was full. The fridge was full. I was full of something I couldn’t name.
They say people like me always want to leave, but never go far. We change the wallpaper. We cut our hair. We imagine new cities without maps.
The truth is, I love knowing where the forks are. I love the sound the radiator makes right before it kicks in. I love the old light switch that sticks unless you press it just right.
But still— some nights I crave an airport gate, a highway at dusk, a conversation in a town where no one knows what I used to be.
I don’t go. I just stay up too late and move the couch.
It feels unreal to have this tool for S$30/mo. I can ask it for poems about any random scenario or feeling, and it tends to throw out lines and images that catch me off guard. I’ve now taken to giving it things I half-wrote long ago and never finished, and it gives pretty good notes. An unexpected side effect of this is that I’m feeling more inspired myself, and now I’m asking it to give me prompts, and I’ll write things for it to review.
Here’s one I reworked this week.
He died in his 17th year
And flowers were laid by the side of the road Fit to be swept within just a fortnight
Parents kept his memory alive another thirty years, Until grief or emptiness took them too
I used to think we were made for more How clever bones and cells can seem
But a body is mostly waiting to be undone And our home keeps going around the sun While out there Nothing waits for no one
While I was messing with Penrose, OpenAI launched a new feature called “Memory”, where ChatGPT is able to reference all your past conversations across previously separate chats. The way they chose to showcase it was to suggest you let the AI describe you, the black mirror lighting up to reveal a camera was recording all along. I didn’t expect them to so transparently demonstrate how this technology is a more powerful, more dangerous profiling machine that anything Facebook or Google has ever put online, but I suspect they think there’s nothing we can do. I asked it to guess how I felt about certain topics, like Nolan’s Batman trilogy or the Fujifilm X100VI camera. It didn’t exactly read my mind but they were very educated guesses. Not very reassuring. It offered to guess other things like my favorite cocktail (it said Negroni; not my absolute favorite but one of them), my favorite beer (a Belgian saison; not even close), and my favorite band (Radiohead; they might be in second place).
This reminded me I was due another playthrough of OK Computer to keep my millennial card intact. It only gets better with time. I’ve also been listening to Counting Crows’ Hard Candy again recently. Some of those songs are the best that anyone or any AI will ever write.
