Tag: Exhibitions

Week 18.26
We had a pretty good week in Tokyo and are now back with painful foot and leg muscles that haven’t been worked this hard in a while. There was one notable moment of weakness where a decision was made to take a taxi back to Ginza from Meguro, rather than deal with the evening crush in the train system. Surprisingly, it was only about S$30 — one more sign of prices equalizing between Singapore and Japan. You may have seen the same reports I have on the rising cost of living there, and how convenience store onigiri now starts around the ¥200 mark, nearly twice what it was a few years ago. But while the onigiri in Japan may soon cost nearly as much as the versions we get in Singapore 7-Elevens, the two are still incomparable in terms of quality.

No surprises here, but alcohol continues to be significantly more affordable than in Singapore. I posted a picture on my Instagram of Buffalo Trace bourbon (750ml) going for about S$25 in Meidi-Ya, a nice supermarket. That’s about a third of the price you’ll find in Singapore, if you can even find Buffalo Trace at retail. I’m beginning to form an alcohol and lifestyle arbitrage theory that says if one earns in dollars AND drinks enough, it may make financial sense to live half of each year in Japan.

Maybe one could sell an apartment in Singapore and fund two small apartments, one in Tokyo and the other in Thailand or Australia (depending on said value of initial apartment). Australia’s reverse seasons might make it possible to live in a perpetual fall/winter state, with an occasional summer when you get too depressed.

Or when your skin gets too dry. I’m no good at moisturizing, so after just a week I’m beginning to feel my skin noticeably drier. However I’d take lotion any day over the stifling >80% humidity and gloominess that greeted us upon return. Apparently it rained most of the week we were gone; the kind of tropical heat that makes you feel sweaty in every crevice. “Why do we live here again?”, I asked Kim on the way home. Oh right, zero capital gains tax and responsible governance.

It’s also been a week since I touched my MacBook so I may have broken the app development habit. I just have one tiny improvement I need to make to Crumbs now that I’ve used it to log my locations on this trip…

Some things I remember doing:
- I met Michael for lunch on Monday, and like a good friend he brought me to a Sapporo soup curry joint in Yotsuya. There’s always the risk of splashing and curry stains with soup curry, but I think he exaggerated the mess he made because I’ve seen people come into the office with far worse. I think we ended up talking for two hours, and we didn’t even get around to John Ternus and rumors about upcoming products.
- Kim came out to meet me later and since we were already in the area, we decided to walk down to see the iconic steps featured in Your Name (2016). I cannot believe it’s been 10 years, by the way.
- At the National Film Archive of Japan, which I might be visiting for the third time, we saw a small showing of Japanese film poster art. It was excellent, and just ¥250 including the permanent exhibition. I instantly recognized two of the earlier posters: Philip Glass’s score for Koyaanisqatsi (1984) was the inspiration for some of the music in my DataDeck project, and I just watched Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) last week on MUBI.
- We bought advance tickets to the Ron Mueck show at Mori Art Museum, his first showing in Japan in over 15 years iirc, which was a refreshingly tight collection of 11 sculptures. Some of his work is massive, like In Bed, and the level of detail is so astounding you can easily spend over an hour just looking at them.
- I say refreshingly because there’s a tendency for exhibitions to pack so much in that your mind just goes numb. That’s what tends to happen when I visit the National Art Center in Roppongi. Still, I love the idea of a building with massive exhibition halls that are regularly rented out by “amateur” art and photography groups showing off their members’ works. I think having such a venue fertilizes the hobbyist landscape and reinforces the value of art. Singapore would do well to have more such places and encourage a forward-looking, arts-attuned society instead of, say, building yet another temple to our origin story.
- The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Meguro is still one of the best. I’ve missed it the past few times we were in town, but there’s nothing like looking at great photos after too many paintings. The free exhibits at Fujifilm Square in Roppongi are also consistently excellent, even as their product lineup becomes more ossified and oversold.
- We also visited the Snoopy Museum Tokyo in Machida which I will freely admit was a highlight for me. It’s the only official one outside of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, CA, and a very well-designed facility — exactly the right size, with something for all ages. When I told Michael we were going, he remarked that it was interesting how relevant and popular Peanuts remains, compared to the likes of Garfield (no shade). I said it was because of how much storytelling latitude it has built in, in no small part thanks to Snoopy’s flights of fancy. Whereas Garfield is reducible to a few things, like a love of lasagna and a hatred of Mondays. To which he observed how it’s weird Garfield hates Mondays at all, because he’s a cat without a job. He just says he hates them to be relatable!
- Did you know that it was only after 20 years of the Peanuts comic strip that Snoopy stopped walking on all fours like a normal dog and started becoming the odd character he is? I learnt that off a little fact card at the museum, where Schulz is quoted as saying “It was one of the best things I ever did.”
- I’m more of a cold shower and cold anything kinda guy, and my heat tolerance is very poor. Like some of the hotels we’ve stayed at before, the one we booked this time had a sento, a hot public bath, and after being urged to by Kim I thought I might as well try it. It was fine. Going by how it appears in film, I thought maybe people stayed in the water for quite awhile, but I was ready to get out after 10 minutes, and it seemed the same for other people. Funnily, one guy said goodbye to his wife as she went to the women’s side, and then spent 15 minutes washing himself in the stalls and never even got into the water. Maybe he was another anti-hot tub guy who just got tired of saying no and pretended to do it. Like those salarymen who get fired but don’t tell their families and sit in parks all day with their briefcases.
- Speaking of the hotel, I’d initially booked us into the same hotel I stayed at back in 2012 when I went with a couple of colleagues from Sweden and the US. The day before our trip, we looked at recent photos online and decided it was probably not sufficiently well maintained, and booked a nicer place nearby. Free cancellations on Hotels.com are a fantastic feature. The new hotel was great, and although our corner room was billed as having 30 sqm of space — an almost suspicious amount for central Tokyo — a lot of it was used for a hallway area. Nevertheless, it was useful for keeping our suitcases out of the way and for the drying of umbrellas. I would definitely stay there again.
- We had a nice walk through Yoyogi park and Kim used one of the famous transparent toilets. Despite having already conquered public nudity with the sento, I did not experience them myself (there was someone waiting and I didn’t need to go).
- We were on our way to a coffee shop in Ginza one morning when we spied a line of people waiting to get into a tendon restaurant when it was due to open at 11am. Following the Singaporean/Lemming instinct of letting social signals decide what to eat, we abandoned our plan and joined the crowd. It was very good, foreigner friendly, and great value. ¥1,600 for a large bowl with conger eel, two shrimp, a squid/clam mix, half-cooked egg, shishito pepper, and seaweed.
- Will told me about the Creative Museum Tokyo in Kyobashi, so we stopped by for the Sorayama retrospective that’s currently on. You may know him through his work designing the first Sony AIBO, and the cover art for Aerosmith’s Just Push Play. His work isn’t for everyone, but I loved how this guy just loved drawing naked female robots, did it all his life to the point of mastery, and now brands like Dior are just dying to collaborate with him. No selling out on his part, the dude just loves his gynoids.
- At the above venue, I noticed the same phenomenon I saw many times over the week: a lot of people employed to do mindless, redundant work. Like standing at an obvious door to point you in a very obvious direction, or posted near a small bump telling you to mind your step. I hope that this is just what extra labor is deployed to do during downtimes, and that they actually have more to do most of the time, but I’m skeptical. Still, AI can’t take your job if your job wasn’t necessary in the first place!
- Some time was spent revisiting shops I tend to drop by every few years, like the Nintendo Store in Shibuya, or Village Vanguard in Shimokitazawa, or Tsutaya books at Daikanyama T-Site. The latter two are always fun because there’s so much stuff I would buy if I could teleport them home immediately. If I ever buy that Japanese apartment someday, I fear it might be filled to the edges with magazines and useless tchotchkes.
May 4, 2026
Week 47.25
- After listening to ROSALÍA so much last week, I decided I wanted to experience LUX closer to the reality it was conceived in. So I reinstalled Duolingo, which I haven’t touched since maybe 2017? After several days, I’m now at Level 9 in Spanish, whatever that means. The biggest obstacle to Español perfecto is my inability to roll my ‘R’s, which I will simply need to practice out loud until it clicks. I can only do this while alone because Kim tells me to please stop por el amor de dios.
- I met up with some old friends and acquaintances this week: one about to have their second child in the midst of questioning their career trajectory (aren’t we all?) and another who’s just come off living on a boat with their family for the past seven years, sailing from port to port in an unusual nautical retirement. Their youngest child practically grew up on water but will now have to stay in one place, join a normal school, and get accustomed to land life. In thinking about both situations, I reflected that personal freedom might be the most valuable asset to have when dealing with difficult times.
- Later, I mentioned the old D&D character alignment framework to Cien and Peishan, and how it related to our personalities which I thought were evenly spread across Lawful to Chaotic. It hadn’t crossed my mind that Chaotic was actually about valuing freedom, but it kinda is — freedom to follow your whims instead of rules and expectations?
- Then I visited the Artscience Museum on a weekday afternoon for a futurism exhibition called Another World Is Possible – a hopeful title promising alternative models for living, maybe even freedom from our current constraints. My expectations were high because it was yet another collaboration with ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) out of Melbourne. Alas, I left feeling rather annoyed and unfulfilled.
- The space itself is inadequate for multimedia shows. There’s not enough surface area, and the adjacent rooms without doors bleed sound into each other at an atrocious level. Near the end, there were some screens with a peaceful computer-generated nature scene meant for reflection, but all you can hear is music blaring from another video installation.
- But regarding the actual show, several of the items presented were clearly AI-generated slop, unlabeled. The wall text just says things like “12-minute audio/video presentation” or “14-inch giclée print.” I don’t want our institutions of culture to charge $20 for mediocre renderings one could Midjourney at home. Hard to feel like ‘another world is possible’ when the medium represents what’s wrong with the present one.
- Racism came up during my book club meeting this week, which gave me a chance to traumatize the Americans with “Darkie” toothpaste. It’s a brand that’s been ubiquitous in these parts since I was a kid. The name is bad enough, but they also put a minstrel on the box, highlighting the contrast between black skin and white teeth. It rebranded to “Darlie” at some point and made it somewhat arguable that the man wasn’t black, but we all know. It was only in late-2021 that its Chinese name changed from 黑人牙膏 “Black Person Toothpaste” to 好來 “Bright Future” (my translation). Reading the Wikipedia page, I was surprised to learn that it had a market share as high as 50% in Singapore in the 80s!
- But hey, cultural theft isn’t just about race. Kill Bill is getting a theatrical re-release next month — both volumes cut together with unseen footage into the 4hr 40min epic Tarantino originally intended. Maybe no cinema in Singapore will take it up, but this means there’s hope for an updated digital release at some point.
- That iconic siren when the camera zooms into Uma Thurman’s rage-filled eyes? Sampled from the Shaw Brothers film Five Fingers of Death aka King Boxer (1972), which I saw for the first time this week on MUBI. The Chinese title 天下第一拳 translates to “The Greatest Fist Under Heaven” — not “in the world” but “under heaven,” which is somehow more evocative and poetic.
- A bunch of these old Shaw Brothers wuxia flicks are leaving MUBI in the next few days so I’ll be on a little martial arts marathon in the coming week.
- And since we were talking about cultural appropriation last week (I’m cool with it), you know who else loves sampling kung-fu movies and helped Tarantino put the sound of Kill Bill together? That’s right, the RZA aka the Abbott, who resurfaced this week with the release of Japanese rapper Awich’s new album Okinawan Wuman, which he produced.
- Apart from a little cringey self-caricaturing from Awich — the usual “we say arigato” shit, not unlike Utada Hikaru singing “You’re easy breezy and I’m Japanesey” back in 2005 — it’s a solid album on first listen. Maybe I’m being too critical about someone trying to break into another market by dumbing down their own culture, but she’s already got the RZA in her corner. She doesn’t need to prove anything. Feel free to switch up languages and drop the most obscure Okinawan slang! ROSALÍA’s success has proven that you can trust listeners to find their way to you.
- Awich’s promotional video has a Japanese hip-hop expert explain, by way of establishing how monumental it is that RZA has produced this Japanese lady’s album, that the two most important acts in history were the Wu-Tang Clan and De La Soul. What good fortune for us, then, that this week saw the latter’s first new album in 9 years, Cabin In The Sky! We eating good, mi familia.
November 24, 2025
Week 33.23

Our fridge is dying. After some eight years of dutifully cooling and freezing our food reserves, it’s losing its mind. Like a soldier left to survive too long in the jungle, it can’t tell right from wrong anymore, and it’s probably a threat to someone’s life. It started midweek when I decided to get some ice-cream and found the unopened tub mushy and soft to the touch. Ditto blocks of frozen salmon — uh oh, not a good sign.

I’ve realized in recent years that I get disproportionately upset when things go wrong in the household. They’re like waves rattling loose the stones in my psychological seawall; things at home simply need to be predictable, dependable, safe. Maybe it’s the result of some trauma. Maybe the outside world is just too much sometimes.

A new fridge has been viewed and paid for now, it will be roused from its Korean factory-induced slumber this Monday and loaded up with every surviving vegetable and condiment. I get images of them as war refugees lining up to get on a boat. They’re the tough ones, made of more shelf stable stuff. Pour one out for their fallen brothers: the spoils of war.

Do you know what new fridges cost these days? I certainly did not. I’m pretty sure our last one was under S$1,000, but they cost more now. Blame inflation, the chip shortage, whatever, but the ones under a grand now are the brands that probably don’t come to mind when you think refrigerators: Whirlpool, Electrolux, Sharp, and local OEM brands you wouldn’t think of at all. So now we’ll have our very first Samsung product, if you don’t count the displays and components they make for others.

Coupled with the so-called seasonal downturn in the markets now underway (supposedly the August and September months before a US election year tend to see significant corrections), there have been quite a few conversations about everyone feeling poor and worried. More than usual, anyway. I know one has to take a long view of these things, but the lack of bright spots is a little daunting.

CNA put out a two-part documentary on Singapore’s fiscal reserves, promising unprecedented access and interviews, which I found quite enlightening. There was a visit to a secret warehouse literally filled with tons of gold, and stories about how this war chest came into being from the early days of our independence. It had not occurred to me before that our reserves were used to weather the 2008 finance crisis and Covid without issuing more debt, a luxury most countries did not have. Nor that one of the reasons we’re able to enjoy such a low tax rate is that annual income from invested assets helps to offset spending on public infrastructure.

Here are the episodes on YouTube:

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I had fun this week with TikTok’s “Aged” filter, which is certainly not a new concept as far as apps are concerned, but it’s probably the most advanced execution yet. Through a blend of machine learning with harvested personal data from millions of non-consenting people and regular ol’ voodoo, it shows you what you’ll look like as a pensioner (should pension funds survive the financial end times). Some people have tested it on photos of celebrities when they were younger, and the aged photos reflect how they really look now, so… this is probably how you’ll turn out! Might as well get comfortable with it.

It turns out that old me will look kinda like one of my uncles, and I’ve been having fun recording aged videos in a wheezing voice and sending them to friends and colleagues.

Some of the other trending filters on TikTok are pretty sophisticated mini apps that involve a prompt box for generative AI. It takes a photo of you and will restyle it as a bronze statue, an anime girl, or whatever you ask it to do. They are also incredibly fast, compared to other generative AI image tools, which suggests Bytedance is burning some serious cash to power these models and gain AI mindshare.

I also came across a new product called BeFake that will try to take this one feature and turn it into an entire social media network based on posting creative generative AI selfies. It makes some sense — you don’t have to be camera ready (already a low bar with some of the beauty filters now available), and you can showcase wild ideas. Will this sweep the world only for people to get tired of unreality and swing back to finding “boring” posts interesting? Stranger things have happened.

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On Sunday we went to the ArtScience Museum (at the Marina Bay Sands) for a rare high-profile exhibition of digital art. Notes from the Ether says it’s focused on NFTs and AI, but it’s also got a lot of generative art that just happens to be encoded on blockchains. I was especially excited to see the inclusion of work by DEAFBEEF and Emily Xie (Memories of Qilin), and Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wist’s QQL project was also presented for anyone to play with.

Obviously this movement is in a weird sort of place at the moment. Valuations for most projects are as volatile as shitcoins, and a few “blue chip” projects like the ones displayed are more stable, but only about as much as bitcoin. Because NFT art is defined in large part by the medium, which is currently inseparable from talk of price and value, it’s hard to have a viewing experience divorced from these considerations. You don’t really visit a Monet exhibition and think about how much everything costs. Which is why the Open Editions I mentioned last week are interesting, and likewise with this event, which offers you a free NFT at the end. You get to co-create an artwork with an AI engine by uploading a photo of your own to be transformed, and it’s minted as a Tezos NFT if you’d like. I thought it was a very cool collectible to remember our visit by.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen more affordable tickets at this museum, just S$6 with a further 30% off if you sign up for a free “Sands Lifestyle” account, so there’s little excuse not to go if you’re remotely interested in this stuff.

Since we were already there, we also hopped into Sensory Odyssey: Into the Heart of Our Living World which pairs 8K video projections of natural scenes with immersive sounds and scents. In one space you’re smelling fresh air and damp earth in a rainforest, and in the next you’re underground with mole rats. It’s very cool, but ruined by small children being allowed to run loose in front of screens (can’t really be helped), and elderly museum staff loudly declaring that “this is a night savannah, very dark, no need to be scared!” (can be helped with training) in such a way that any illusion of being in a savannah is totally pierced — unless you’ve gone on a safari tour with a gaggle of Singaporean aunties, of course.

August 21, 2023
Vintage Poster Exhibition at ION Orchard

Came across an exhibition of beautiful vintage posters at ION Orchard last night. It’s on till tomorrow (Level 4, ION Art), and presented by a gallery from HK. If you want to own any of them, they’re between $1500-3000 from what I saw.

Picture This gallery

November 30, 2014