sangsara.net

Tag: Food

  • Week 18.24

    Week 18.24

    Last week marked the 200th installment of a blogging rhythm I wasn’t sure I could keep up for a year, let alone nearly four. I thank any readers I have, the makers of iA Writer, WordPress, and of course, my wife for graciously giving me space on Sunday mornings to engage in this act of reflection and blabbering.

    Except I’m not writing this on Sunday, no it’s currently Thursday and I’m getting a head start with some structure because we’ll be in Hong Kong for the weekend. It was a last-minute idea, driven by a primal craving for Chinese roast goose, a desire to escape the summer heatwave currently roasting all of SE Asia, and the realization that we won’t have a pocket of clear calendar space like this again for several months.

    I haven’t been back in the territory since May 2019, and so much has obviously happened since. Did you know that this very site was once blocked by the great Chinese firewall? I have no idea why, but I hope I don’t find myself unwelcome upon arrival. Anecdotally, I’ve heard the city doesn’t quite feel the same these days, and we’ve seen the numerous ChannelNewsAsia documentary features about people looking for fresh starts, emigrating to the UK and so on. But as an infrequent visitor with only superficial interactions to speak of, I don’t expect to sense any changes at all.

    What’s changed is that while I used to be excited about Hong Kong’s lack of sales tax and abundance of electronics and camera emporiums, not to mention official Apple Stores, those things are less interesting these days. I’ve got nothing on my shopping list (plus I’m in low-cost mode — see previous entries), I’m content with snapping photos on my iPhone and Ricoh GR III, and Singapore has so many Apple Stores these days I’ve started taking them for granted.

    (CW: some camera nerdery ahead)

    I am looking forward to photographing the city a little with Dmitri Novikov’s new camera app, Zerocam (in beta). The concept is an extremely simplified camera with one button; there’s not even a way to quickly look at the last photo you took. When you hit the shutter, a RAW image is captured with as little of the iPhone’s intelligent processing as possible, plus some specific settings that Novikov prefers (-0.5ev and some very light touch color grading, as far as I can tell), and then saved directly to a HEIF file.

    Unfortunately it only gives you photos at 12mp size, probably because third-party apps don’t have the option of 24mp and 24mp is a result of the computational photography processes that Zerocam avoids anyway. And while you can use Halide to capture similarly unprocessed photos (turn off “Enable Smartest Processing” in its settings), you can’t make it remember a lowered exposure setting between sessions.

    The intermediate solution I’ve landed on to retain 24mp files while getting better everyday photos is to set Apple’s stock camera app to remember a -0.7ev exposure, and tune Photographic Styles to -20 Tone and -7 Warmth. I really like the look of this “recipe” on iPhone 15, and it’s kinda like shooting with Highlight Priority exposure and the Negative Film effect on a Ricoh GR III (which I’ll also be doing).

    Actually in HK now:

    We’ve chosen a wet and gloomy weekend to stop by. Our flight was delayed by 2.5 hours, I suspect because of turbulent conditions at HK International Airport around our original arrival time. Just two days earlier, some Cathay Pacific passengers were tossed around and couldn’t land for six hours, with the descriptions of a vomit and scream-filled cabin in the news fulfilling the conditions of a personal nightmare.

    I take back a little of what I said — things do feel somewhat different. The city is grubbier than I remember; prices are higher and some people must be struggling to get by (well, HK isn’t alone in this); and there’s a hint of economic decline in the many empty shop units with ‘For Lease’ signs up.

    One tool that’s been super helpful all week has been the Arc Search app on iOS, which added a voice mode that you can assign to the Action Button on iPhone 15 Pros. When the app launched with an AI feature that summarizes search queries on custom-generated webpages, I was wary of this “browser that browses for you” concept, which gives users few reasons to visit the underlying pages being mined (thereby ruining the web), but maybe they’ve made some changes since. It’s easier to click through to the sources.

    I’ve been using it to answer questions like “what interesting art exhibitions are on in HK right now?” and it performs some light research, and I do end up visiting the linked websites for further details like location and pricing. It’s effectively a better way to present search results (albeit with the same bias and ranking concerns as search results). I hope iOS 18’s AI overhaul will see similar utility coming to Siri and Safari. Perhaps this is where the rumored Gemini partnership with Google comes in.

    ===

    Media activity:

    • I started on a new Jack Reacher book: Night School. It’s what I do when I can’t decide what to read next.
    • I’ve been watching the new-ish MF Ghost anime, which is a sort of sequel to Initial D. Some people seem to think it’s an insult to the original show, but I wouldn’t know — I might watch it after this? It’s got a funny premise: in a future Japan, electric vehicles are the norm and gas-powered cars are only allowed in a special racing tournament called MFG. But drifting has become a lost art! Enter Kanata Rivington, a hafu born in England who trained under a master who I presume is the main protagonist of Initial D, returning to Japan for the first time to find his lost father and school a nation on how to burn rubber while chucking a uey.
    • The Japanese saxophonist Sadao Watanabe is back with a new album at the insane age of 91. It’s called Peace, and I’m digging it. Speaking of, I first heard him as a child digging through my dad’s music collection.
    • I’m also loving Tigers Blood, by Waxahatchee, which I discovered on Pitchfork’s list of The Best Music of 2024 So Far. I’m aware that Anna Wintour fired a bunch of people from Pitchfork and it’s supposedly not the site it used to be, but this is a great pick. They say: “Recommended if you like — Indie-country; Sheryl Crow; Gillian Welch; that Brad Cook Sound; MJ Lenderman showing up; catchin’ skinks down by the creek; ice cream stand off the highway; letting your legs dangle off a pier”.
    • What a week in rap battle history! The beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar has been giving us explosive drama and incredible diss tracks, sometimes more than one a day, and Kendrick’s the winner in my book but honestly I’m afraid just watching it unfold. It feels like someone’s going to get shot or jailed as a result of this.

    Oh one more thing! The Cannes Lions Festival announced the shortlisting juries for 2024’s awards, and I’m pleased to share that I’m on the panel for the Brand Experience & Activation Lions. That should keep me occupied for the next few weeks.

  • Week 12.24

    Week 12.24

    If you’re reading this on the web, you might notice that this site is now running WordPress’s new ‘Twenty Twenty Four’ theme, with a more traditional blog-like homepage (it has a sidebar) linking to single-column post pages. Navigation remains unchanged, but typography and minor details are improved.

    I’m happier with this than I was with the blocky grid of last year’s ‘Twenty Twenty Three’ theme, because this comes with the freedom to put up shorter posts without Titles or Featured Images. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth on microblogging here, or having all tweets mirrored here, but it’s never stuck. But at least I have the option again, especially since I haven’t properly posted on Twitter in a year and most people I want to follow are still scattered across Threads, Bluesky, Nostr, and Mastodon.

    ===

    We celebrated a little life milestone this week with a nature walk, a “Gold Class” viewing of Dune Part Two, a nice bottle of French Malbec, and a perfect Canadian pork chop with a side of the butteriest mashed potatoes. A mix of simple and simpler pleasures.

    I’ll expand: We were recently in New Zealand, and took a couple of walks in nature reserves. I’ve never bothered to attempt the same in Singapore because it’s ridiculously hot, but visiting the Rifle Range Nature Park in West Singapore was interesting for the stark contrast offered versus our recent experiences. Every step on its paths is sure footed by design; suspended walkways take you through the forest without trampling plants, and they’re so convenient all the monkeys we saw were using them as well, rather than walking in the dirt. You get the sense that everything is regularly inspected and all dangers have been scrubbed. It reflects the usual criticism of Singapore being a theme park, which is only a problem because living in a safe environment breeds complacency. At several points on the easiest routes at Te Mata Park in New Zealand, slipping off a path and tumbling into a ravine was a genuine possibility. I wonder what other metaphorical tumbles Singaporean life has not prepared me for.

    The new Dune is as superb as all reviews have indicated, and I could not imagine rating it any less than 5 stars in Letterboxd. The art direction and photography are flawless, and it looks twice as expensive as it is. Never once while watching did my brain check out and think, “oh, that’s CGI”. The only change I would dare suggest is Austin Butler’s casting, as he’s not anywhere as menacing as the movie treats him. His character is already a nepo baby who just enjoys killing defenseless slaves and servants, and Butler didn’t bring the presence to suggest he’s also one of the most dangerous people in a universe full of freaks.

    Another 5-star film for us this week was Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (2023), which won a Best Actor award at Cannes last year for Koji Yakusho’s nearly wordless performance. I enjoyed it tremendously as a loving tribute to the city of Tokyo and its toilets (really), a meditation on repetition and routine, an ode to proud and purposeful work, and a parable about how avoiding the messiness of life might obscure living itself. The soundtrack is a Gen X dream. Visually, it’s filled with beautiful everyday moments so mundane as to be overlooked by most of us going about our daily busyness. The way all its themes and music choices come together in the film’s final minutes is worth half a star alone.

    Continuing the theme of Japanese films about appreciating life, we watched Living (2022), the transposed-to-England remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952). I’ve never seen the original, but it’s now high on my list. Bill Nighy is fantastic in the role of a civil servant who learns he’s dying and wonders what it’s all about, and plays his deconstruction with impressive vulnerability. I looked at the trailer for Ikiru afterwards, and while Takashi Shimura’s performance in the same role is regarded as iconic, it was a little theatrical and may not have aged as well.

    Anyhow, the message in both these films is timeless: stop working so hard at meaningless things, smell the roses (or watch the shadows cast by leaves — ‘komorebi’ in Japanese, as the end credits of Perfect Days tells us), and make a difference to another human being’s life.

    Take a little forest bathing break with this video I captured.

    ===

    Additional media activity:

    • We finished Season 1 of Below Deck Down Under at last, and I was glad to learn that Captain Jason and Chief Stew Aesha return for Season 2, which we now must see. The leadership and teamwork these two have put Captain Lee and Kate of the mainline series to bottomless shame.
    • The new Call of Duty mobile version of Warzone has finally come out, after being delayed for about a year. As a somewhat devoted player of the original Call of Duty Mobile title, I’ve been waiting with very high expectations for this. Unfortunately, the launch has been a bit of a dud, with many complaints from the worldwide community. For one, Android devices seem incapable of running it well. On my iPhone 15 Pro Max, it runs at peak performance and the graphics are truly console quality; I was running around maps that I knew instinctively, but my brain was exploding from how different and detailed everything looked. Sadly, the phone runs hot and it drained the better part of my battery in maybe an hour. I’ll wait to see if they improve anything before calling it quits.
    • The new Kacey Musgraves album, Deeper Well, is not bad at all. It even has a song called Anime Eyes which drops a line about a “Miyazaki sky”. Very weird times we live in.
    • I started using a new social app that tries to be a Letterboxd for music: Musicboard. Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically log/scrobble your listening activity, so rating music and broadcasting your taste is a manual affair. You also can’t start playing an album directly in Apple Music from within the app — it only supports Spotify at the moment.

  • Week 11.24

    Week 11.24

    Kim was away for work this week so that meant a return to pandemic routine for me: I worked from home every day, mostly staying in our ‘office’ room hopping on calls, flopping from chair to couch, picking up my Playdate* to kill a minute here and there, scrolling feeds (#WhereIsKateMiddleton), and mostly eating simple, low-cost, not entirely healthy meals.

    I did, however, pay attention to the bottle of olive oil in our kitchen, which is now past its best-before date, and looked into what a good replacement would be. In the process, I watched some YouTube videos on the supposed benefits of having two or more tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil a day, which can be summed up as reducing your risk of dying from several awful diseases by up to 19%. One video made a case for buying the better stuff thusly: imagine you’re visiting a friend’s home; you’d typically bring along a bottle of wine that costs between $20–30 (people who show up empty handed are so weird, right!?), which will be drunk within the first hour and followed by the opening of another bottle, and maybe another — that’s fair and normal, so why is it so hard to pay the same amount for a bottle of olive oil that you’ll use for months?

    That sold me, and I’m pledging to only use quality oil from now on. I was already aware of most of these benefits and how seed oils are comparatively terrible, but the comparison to a bottle of wine really hit it home for me and I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t spend a few extra bucks for tastier, healthier stuff if they could. Pro tip: try drinking a spoonful on its own, and see how much of that prickly, peppery sensation you get in the back of your throat. That’s a sign of the polyphenol content, which gives the antioxidant effects you want.

    At nights I accomplished shockingly little of the movie marathoning I’d imagined for my bachelor week. I saw two episodes of Red Queen on Amazon Prime Video, a series based on a “Spanish literary phenomenon” involving a woman with an IQ of 242 who helps the police catch serial killers in between psychotic episodes. And that’s about it? The rest of my viewing time was spent on YouTube watching Bloomberg, CNBC, and video podcasts over lunch.

    When Kim got back, we tried to make plans for Dune Part 2, but couldn’t find a time slot that worked, and did you know IMAX tickets are S$50 now? Even the nearest theater to us is charging nearly S$40 for their premium “Gold Class” seats, which gave me pause to wonder if we should just wait for it to come out on streaming.

    And then we watched Oppenheimer at home, on our nearly 10-year-old HDTV (that’s right, no 4K or HDR), which is totally not the way Nolan imagined. Despite the technical limitations of our screening, it was an extremely cinematic and immersive experience, and made me think some things are definitely worth the IMAX. So, maybe Dune next weekend.

    Music was just as neglected as the other arts, and the only new album I heard through was Ariana Grande’s latest: Eternal Sunshine. I didn’t register a single word, but it’s actually fantastic background R&B. That’s not a slight! It sounds good, doesn’t do anything crazy, and after a few more listens I’ll probably get into it for real.

    However, I am listening to Chick Corea’s Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (1968) as I write this, if you want something a little more challenging/rewarding.

  • Week 8.24

    Week 8.24

    We spent the last three days of our road trip in Auckland, returning the car to a desolate parking garage and then ordering an Uber from the side of the road with our luggage. When we got in, the driver confirmed “So you’re checking in to the Hilton? Not impressed with the parking lot?” which was low-key one of the best jokes that week.

    I already mentioned eating many burgers, but from our brief tour of restaurants across the North Island, it really seemed like New Zealand cuisine is made up of steaks, brisket, pork belly, oysters, fish and chips, and lamb chops. The renowned local beef is as amazing as you’d expect. As a tourist, this is nothing to complain about, but I’m certain I’d find the narrow range a little tiring if I lived there.

    There are local beers and many craft beers, but Heineken is held in strangely high regard; maybe a result of its relatively high price as an imported product. In Singapore, I’d say it’s on the second rung from the bottom above Tiger and Carlsberg for many people, a slightly better lager for not much more money. Anyway, the wine game is so strong it’s a wonder anyone drinks beer there (we did, though).

    I think Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films put New Zealand on the map more than anything else in the past century, but we passed on visiting the Hobbiton film set as neither of us are really fans — I sometimes explain that I hate fantasy settings because there’s no electricity and it’s just filthy people sitting around fires — but it wouldn’t be right to go all the way to NZ and not at least touch that iconic surface.

    So we booked a Weta Workshop tour in Auckland, which turned out to be part-theme park, part-showcase and gift shop. They’ve structured an experience around three fictional films their team supposedly worked on but didn’t get released, which provides a narrative device to show off their craft in conceptual world building, model making, special effects make up, and cinematography. It is not dissimilar to making a video game! You come up with the setting, the rules of the world, character designs, then get sculpting.

    Did you know? Weta worked on the Ghost in the Shell live-action film, making Scarlett Johansson’s silicone suit and other cyborg designs.

    Another highlight of our time there was a “Maori cultural experience” at the Auckland Museum and War Memorial, in which photos were allowed but discouraged, and so I don’t have any to share. There are several opportunities for tourists to see and engage with Maori culture, but when we looked at Tripadvisor reviews, it seemed like some are really commercialized dog and pony shows amounting to little more than cosplay theater, and we weren’t really keen on that.

    In contrast, the museum’s program is a 30-minute demonstration and explanation of some select rituals (which we would call “songs” or “dances”, but are really social instruments for building community, passing down knowledge, and so on) by a talented group of Maori people who apparently manage to hold day jobs in science and education on top of this. On top of preserving their ways, a focus of this experience was showing people from other cultures how easily histories like theirs are colonized and reduced. For example, clapping was not encouraged, because it turns their sharing into a performance, and simply because they don’t clap in their culture. I gave myself points for feeling icky about all the people fresh off their cruise ships clapping at the start, way before they were informed of this.

    I promised to share the AI-assisted itinerary of our trip, so here it is.

    The route we planned in Apple Freeform

    Day 1: Auckland to Wellington

    • Arrive in Auckland and catch a domestic flight to Wellington.
    • Evening in Wellington: Walk along the waterfront, find some dinner.

    Day 2: Wellington

    • Visit Te Papa Tongarewa Museum for an insight into New Zealand’s history and culture.
    • Take the cable car to the Botanic Garden for city views.
    • Evening: Explore Cuba Street for its vibrant nightlife and culinary scene.
    • What we really did: Had cocktails at Elixir and dinner near the hotel.

    Day 3: Wellington to Martinborough (1.5 hour drive)

    Day 4: Martinborough to Havelock (3 hours drive)

    • Breakfast at one of the cafes in town
    • Depart Martinborough, taking State Highway 2.
    • Stop in the town of Masterton and visit the Awatoi art and history museum (this was an unplanned stop after we saw a billboard by the highway)
    • Stop at Pukaha National Wildlife Centre.
    • Dinner in Havelock North: there are some nice restaurants in the town center
    • Stay in Havelock North

    Day 5: Havelock and Napier

    • Walk/hike in Te Mata Park and drive to the peak.
    • Head into Napier for lunch at a vineyard: We had bookings for lunch and a tour at Church Road Winery.
    • Local seafood dinner in Napier (as mentioned last week, we chanced upon the annual Art Deco Festival).

    Day 6: Napier to Rotorua (3 hours drive)

    • Depart Napier for Rotorua
    • Stop in Taupo for lunch by the lake
    • Parasailing over Lake Taupo in the mid-afternoon -_-
    • Stop at Huka Falls
    • Continue to Rotorua (another hour, so you’ll arrive in the early evening)

    Day 7: Rotorua to Auckland (3 hour drive)

    • Drive to Whangamata
    • Stop at The Cider Factorie along the way for lunch (this was an unplanned stop but was great)
    • Stop at Hunua Falls
    • Arrive in Auckland in the evening, return car
    • Dinner along Princes Wharf

    Day 8: Auckland

    • Visit Weta Workshop for a tour
    • Go up the Sky Tower for panoramic city views (we got a combo Weta + Sky Tower ticket online)
    • Lose some money in the Sky City casino
    • Beer, wine, dinner

    Day 9: Auckland

    • Visit the Auckland War Memorial Museum for Maori and Pacific Islander artifacts. The Maori Cultural Experience (twice a day, book ahead) is highly recommended.
    • Shopping downtown
      OR
    • Full day: Take a ferry to Waiheke Island for more vineyards, beaches, and hiking trails.

    Day 10: Depart

    ===

    As always, returning to Singapore’s heat after a little time in a temperate climate was brutal. It’s one of the main reasons I would entertain the idea of moving away or owning a second property somewhere. It’s often said that a little sunshine and walking does wonders for your mood and helps people with depression, and I really did feel a lot less weight on me coming back with a watch tan after 10 days, but this weather is not made for walking. And so I expect this feeling will fade with the tan.

    Since coming back, we finished Season 7 of Below Deck, and I’ve just gone totally off Captain Lee and Kate now, formerly the least-bad people in that toxic stew of management hell/training that I’ve recommended people watch the show for in the past. We’ve now started on Below Deck Down Under, and the Australian captain there is a breath of fresh air. Where Captain Lee stayed in his bridge oblivious to the crew’s troubles with bullying and insubordination, this one is hands-on, leads by example, and even joins them for dinner (but wisely not clubbing) on the first night out. You already know he sees what’s going on, who doesn’t pull their weight, and knows how to address it. To top it all off, he’s hot and the interior girls can’t stop looking at him.

  • Week 7.24

    Week 7.24

    We landed in Auckland, New Zealand Monday morning and immediately flew down to Wellington, and we’ve been driving our way back north for the past few days. I’m currently writing this while sitting beside a Buddha’s head in a poolside garden, in a small new hotel outside of Rotorua.

    Four hours ago, I was parasailing above Lake Taupō in my usual urban uniform of jeans and a t-shirt — if you know me, you’ll know that I don’t sign up for even remotely dangerous things, especially over large bodies of water; in the cringey words of Below Deck repeat charter guest, Dean Slover, I said “homie don’t play that!” But Kim convinced me to, and we survived. They played Maroon 5 songs on the boat going out, and so by the time we were lifted some 50 meters in the air to float in blissful silence high above the town, I was having a good time. Lake Taupō is a volcanic caldera that’s nearly the same size as Singapore, but because it’s all flat you can just about see from one end to the other from up there. New Zealand challenges the city dweller’s sense of scale like all good nature vacations.

    Since leaving Wellington, the road trip portion of the trip so far has been mostly measured in burgers, fish and chips, and winery stops, specifically in the Martinborough and Hawke’s Bay areas where the tastings have been revealing of each company’s nature: some overly commercial and strictly scripted, versus others more informal, just going on vibes the only way they know. I think the difference shows up in the wine, with wineries in the latter category being more playful with flavor, more likely to put better stuff in a low-priced lineup. But I would say that, as someone who’s now had a crash course in holding up his glass against the light to observe the color.

    I’m now lying in bed on Sunday evening having just finished the last leg of our driving tour, which took us to the famous Whangamata Beach bordering the Bay of Plenty, and Hunua Falls, where we did another little nature walk and met a nice dog and helped its owners get a photo together with their iPad. Old people really carry full-sized iPads around on hikes to use as large-screened cameras. Mind blown.

    A couple of observations on this road trip. So much roadkill! Easily a hundred little bundles of fur spotted spread across tarmac just today alone. Some decayed and washed away, little more than stains. Some still fresh, bloating, bleeding. We avoided making contact with all but a couple. A ritual evolved, mainly to stay alert but also out of pity for these bunnies or squirrels(?): upon spotting one, I would put my palms together and say “rest in peace”, and Kim would follow with “in all your pieces”.

    FM radio is still not a great experience; it’s a wonder how people survived on it for so long. Fortunately I had a lot of downloaded music on my iPhone, which also navigated us with offline maps. CarPlay is excellent, and Apple Maps was good enough for nearly every leg of the journey. We listened to Lorde’s albums, of course, as well as the Sunkissed Summer playlist she compiled on Apple Music, and other New Zealand legends like Bic Runga and Crowded House. At one point I put on some J Dilla but learnt that rhythmic music you can sort of nod and zone out to is NOT what a driver wants over long winding roads.

    As I mentioned last week, this itinerary was drawn up with ChatGPT and my custom GPT, AI-tinerary, but we had to fact-check everything and plot the route on a map before making bookings. It’s held up well so far, with a couple of impromptu detours and chance discoveries along the way. For one, we did not realize that while passing through Napier for one night that we’d be there for the Art Deco-obsessed city’s annual Art Deco Festival, the first one they’ve been able to hold since 2020. Vintage cars were out in force, there was a Warbirds air show, and a free concert on the beach. It was packed, every restaurant was booked out. We ended up eating dinner out of a food truck by the sea. I asked ChatGPT “what’s happening in Napier tonight?” and it confidently replied, “I couldn’t find any events tonight.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these tools truly are starting points and aids right now, and you must resist the idea that they are final answers.

    I’ll post the final version of our itinerary next week when we’re done, in case it helps anyone looking to do the same.

    All photos were taken by either a Ricoh GR III or iPhone 15 Pro Max. The extra 120mm equivalent reach of the iPhone came in very handy, but there’s no beating the image quality of the GR when it comes to landscapes. The light was so good that some photos taken with the Standard color profile, straight to JPEG, were surprisingly “finished” out of the camera. This year’s iPhone still wants to make everything bright and sharp, which fails to capture atmosphere and preserve highlights. I edited photos daily as quickly and lazily as possible, using RNI Films for most of it — at some point they added the ability to save edits on top of original files (non-destructively), which is a key consideration I look for in photo apps. I’ve also started using RAW Power again late in the trip, which is making me want to go back and redo some edits. Maybe on the flight home.

  • Week 4.24

    Week 4.24

    A little while ago, I learnt that an ex-colleague of mine has received a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and he’s only a few years older than me. Despite the fact that more “young” people seem to be getting cancer, it was still a deep shock because Tony was always incredibly fit and dedicated to his health. He’s been writing openly about his thoughts and experience on his Medium account, which I read before meeting him for lunch with some other former colleagues this week. It was tough seeing him in poorer shape, but true to his personal brand, he seemed extremely pragmatic and matter-of-fact about it all.

    We worked on the same team for about a year back in 2018, but were only on one project together as peers, leading design activities and client workshops together over a few months. I count myself fortunate to have had that experience, and learnt a lot from his confidence and wealth of technical knowledge when it came to UX matters — which was not my area of focus. Even then it was clear he had a knack for facing reality, and a passion for making sure the younger generation had their eyes open to the inequities of working life. Not always a popular topic, but life sucks. He mentioned that whenever he finds the strength these days, he works on his own design education materials that prepare students for non-ideal situations, and I thought that made perfect sense for him.

    Many of the things we talked about over lunch echoed other conversations I’ve been having with other friends. Maybe it’s the return of tech layoffs in the news, but negative sentiments seem as high as they were during Covid, with the questioning of boundaries and priorities taking place again. Tony understandably tried to impress upon us that some things aren’t worth having as regrets, and that we should make better choices while we still can. When I asked him what else he does now on days that aren’t lost to medical interventions, the answer was surprisingly similar to how I spent most of my year off work: reading, writing, and drawing.

    Peishan shared this Guardian article about people with cancer who’ve found the clarity to spend their remaining time meaningfully, and I thought Mark Edmondson landed the point that some people have trouble getting: the work that gives you purpose today isn’t the only purpose you’ll have.

    People (usually millennials) also mention the difficulty they have switching off from work. On a daily basis, but also when they go on vacation — taking half the holiday to get into holiday mode is a terrible inefficiency. I recall it took me months to unwind from a state of nearly burning out and to stop worrying about my “sabbatical ROI”. We should be like newer hybrid vehicles that can shut their engines down when idling at traffic lights and spring back to life quickly when needed, but instead us older cars only know how to burn gas all the time. I want to be a disused school bus just rusting in a field, bright yellow and unbothered.

    ===

    • I visited the Prix Pictet photo exhibition that’s part of Singapore Art Week (maybe it’ll be the only event I attend from this year’s edition) and found it beautiful but gosh it was mostly depressing. The theme was “Human” but it may as well have been “Human Suffering” — from communities devastated by the effects of mining and metal poisoning, to the plight of illegal refugees trekking 66 miles through jungle in search of better opportunities, they seemed to comment that there’s not much joy in being human these days. I joked halfway through that I hoped there would be a series of mundane birthday party photos at the end. There wasn’t.
    • Kim spent most of her week preparing an elaborate, successful Indian dinner from the Dishoom cookbook, but that’s really a story for her own weeknotes if they ever happen. The takeaway for me has been that, after seeing how the proverbial samosa is made, the Indian takeaways we usually get are probably quite unhealthy and we need to cut down.
    • Nintendo is having a January sale on the Switch eShop and I considered getting the remake of an apparent classic time loop visual novel, YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world, yes, that is its title. It’s apparently the spiritual forebear of games such as Steins;gate, but after watching a short gameplay video on YouTube, I decided that since life is too short, I really didn’t want to punish myself. An anime adaptation was made a few years ago, so I will simply watch that instead.
    • We are enjoying the new British police drama Criminal Record on Apple TV+. Peter Capaldi is really good in it, although all the police work and cornering of baddies with their secrets is carried out really incompetently.
    • Can you believe that The Smile dropped a new album a couple of days ago and I had to find out from YouTube instead of Apple Music? Seriously, I’m looking at my For You page and it’s not mentioned under New Releases. This music video, where the band plays a new song for an auditorium full of young children — most of them bewildered or bored out of their minds, but with a couple really into it — is such a simple and charming concept I can’t believe I can’t name another time it’s been done.
  • Week 1.24

    Week 1.24

    Happy new year to observers of the Gregorian calendar. We watched the clock tick over on the banks of the Ping River in Chiang Mai, where an insane amount of fireworks were let off for easily 10 minutes. Only the noise cancellation of my AirPods Pro saved my hearing.

    I spent the next morning eating a massive buffet breakfast at the hotel (if I’m being honest, that’s one of my favorite kinds of breakfast setup, something I’ll probably mention again when I get around to making my second Breakfast zine — check out the first one here), where they had both the local signature curry noodle dish, khao soi, and an automated tangerine juicer that makes a fresh glass from at least six whole fruit with the push of a button.

    I never get to drink both OJ and coffee in the same morning unless on holiday, but the Thais have got it figured out. When we went out later to the Old Town area to visit a cafe, I tried a coffee recipe that’s apparently all the rage there now: an iced orange juice and Americano mashup which shouldn’t work but does.

    When it was finally time for lunch, I had a Japanese-style curry rice at a place called “Dirty Curry” inside of a stylish little hotel called Hotel Noir that we might consider next time. The curry played hard to get, taking its sweet time to arrive but was pretty great. Even my iPhone camera ate, because the photo came out looking incredible without any help.

    Returning to reality on Tuesday night, we avoided thinking about work by starting to make plans for our next trip (in February, and before you say anything, this is the closest together I’ve ever had two holidays, and the idea of two holidays a year is already a historical anomaly for me). We had the flights booked awhile back but nothing more, so now we’re really running late with the hotels and other tickets.

    Sitting in front of the TV that night, we watched in disbelief as live images of JAL flight 516 almost crash landing at Haneda airport came in. Everyone’s been mentioning how Japan has not had much luck with 2024 so far; as if the New Year’s Day earthquake on the west coast wasn’t enough, the week’s headlines have mentioned a slashing incident on a train in Akihabara and another rail-related attempted murder just yesterday.

    I returned to work after two weeks away and was amazed at the diversity of human experience when a colleague mentioned how they had gotten bored of having time to themselves over the Christmas break. It boggles the leisurely creative mind. I had free time for a year and would take a hundred more if possible.

    But you know who else has had some time off recently and a lot to show for it? Why, the canceled and almost-forgotten singer-songwriter Ryan Adams who just dropped FIVE albums at once on streaming services! Longtime readers will know that I’ve been a huge fan of his work, for over two decades now if I do the math, and the data will probably show that I subconsciously listened to him a lot less over the last four years after he was accused of sexual misconduct and emotional abuse and retreated from view, occasionally dropping albums of half-hearted new material and experimental covers with little promotion.

    I haven’t really sorted out my stance on situations like this. Another blogger, Christopher Bradley, makes a case for reevaluating Adams here. He hasn’t committed any crimes — apparently the FBI looked into allegations of sexting with a minor and cleared him — apart from being a poor partner and maybe an awful human being in some aspects of his life. But who among us hasn’t? I still listen to Michael Jackson anyway, and anybody who says they can keep still when Billie Jean comes on is a damn liar.

    Anyway, two of Adams’s new albums are esoteric 80s punk rock-ish joints, one of them is a live version of his Prisoners album, and the last two are more his usual speed. I’ve read that Star Sign is the better one, so if you only check one out, I guess that should be it. I plan to work through all of them in the next few days, but on a first pass, Star Sign is quite alright. Because I don’t think any mature musician ever recaptures the energy and raw brilliance of their first few albums — a fact that’s probably best not to think about as a young artist — we tend to grade most on a curve over the years. Just keep the tunes catchy and the words not utterly trite, and we’ll still show up. Unless they get really shitty, like U2.

  • Zine: B’Fast

    I mentioned last week that I’d started making a zine about breakfast using AI tools to write all the text and make the pictures, leaving the final job of laying it out to my own (inexperienced) human hands.

    Well, here it is. It was a lot of fun to put together, and I got a crash course in print design while trying to evolve it from a word processor document into something a little more creative and fun. You can sort of see the gradual improvement from beginning to end, as things become a little neater and more coherent — much like the mind in the morning as you make your way through breakfast.

    I’d say the final content is 98% AI generated; I made some cuts and changed just a handful of specific phrases: in one place to avoid possible offense, and most of the others were in a poem at the end, to make it suck less.

    I did it with the help of my custom GPT: InstaZine, which I encourage you to check out if you want to do something like this. It will brainstorm a bunch of different article ideas for your approval, then write them in a range of different authorial voices, hopefully giving the final product more diversity and interest than if you just did it the normal way with ChatGPT.

    You can read the zine below in the embedded Issuu viewer, or download the PDF. Let me know how you like it!

    bfast-compressedDownload

    Some additional tips for using InstaZine: Start by telling it what the subject of the zine should be, and describe what it should be like if you know. Ask it to create a list of article ideas — it should suggest a bunch of titles with a short abstract of each one, usually with a fictional author’s name and some description of the style and approach it will take. If you’re happy with this list, you should copy it off to the side in your own notes and play these descriptions back to the GPT before asking it to write each one. The reason is… the context window still isn’t great with ChatGPT as of Dec 2023, and it won’t necessarily do a great job if you don’t remind it of the brief after 20 messages of writing other articles and generating the images for them. By default, it creates colorful minimalist illustrations suited for a certain kind of magazine I like, but you should override this with whatever style you want.