sangsara.net

Tag: Health

  • Week 40.26

    Week 40.26

    • I went to Apple Orchard Road and tried the Beats 360 headphones. They’re not large enough for my head; case closed. Money saved.
    • My new Apple Watch likes to try cheering me up by telling me that my body is “Ready” to “Go For It” (I assume “It” is a marathon, a swim to the far side of Australia, or something equally implausible) and that I had excellent sleep the night before, but these science and sensor-backed statements simply don’t match my reality. I’m tired; I wish I could sleep more!
    • I just took a little break (after one paragraph, natch) and went on Instagram, where I saw a post that read “Anyone else turn 40 around the start of the pandemic and now blinked and you’re somehow 46 wondering what the hell just happened?” On one hand, that sentence perfectly captures the fatigue that you’d imagine comes with being abducted by aliens and losing six years of your life — at the very least, the weariness of having to catch up with a lot of missed information, which is what being alive in this time of AI feels like, always on the back foot with lots to learn — but on the other hand, it implies not knowing at all where the time went, which I can’t identify with. Oh I know where the time went. I remember it all perfectly well, but it plays in my mind like a timelapse — hundreds of days passing, the figure getting in and out of bed, the view outside the window gradually changing.
    • Armchair theory: maybe what’s caused this ‘blink and time passed’ effect for many is the combination of massive disruption followed by repetitive discomfort. This is different from repetitive boredom, where days are long and time moves slowly. With repetitive discomfort, you’re constantly insecure and stressed, so the mind protects itself by generating summaries and discarding the details. This sharp change, followed by pain you’d rather forget, dislodges you from whatever life you were living before, making it feel like a separate country.
    • I’m listening to Apple Music 1 and three Taylor Swift songs have played in a short period of time. Without checking, I’ve known it was her from the fact that all her recent music sounds the same. It’s hard to feel bad for a billionaire, but that’s an awful place for any creative person to be. It’s like she doesn’t listen to any other music, or won’t allow herself to appear influenced by anyone else. Lonely at the top, as they say, which is why you won’t find me there (among other obvious reasons)!
    • Kim and I met Mandy for dinner one night to mark her birthday, and we went to a wine-focused place called Fiasco which has taken over the spot where Kilo used to be, that weird little building out in the middle of nothing near Lavender. The food was all really good (I forgot to take pictures), and they’re doing some really interesting things with hanger steak and pork collar, the latter seasoned to resemble a very fancy charsiew.
    • In an example of culinary R&D jumping the shark, we ate at Surrey Hills over the weekend, where my mother-in-law’s corned beef hash came partially covered with a purple sweet potato foam. Needless to say, she did not appreciate the touch. The place purports to be Australian, and with her being Australian too, I tried to gaslight her into believing that it was an authentic Australian recipe that she’d somehow never heard about. Needless to say, I was not successful.
    • I finished PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid’s Curse, and found it a worthy sequel, arguably better than the first game in every way unless you want a spooky atmosphere. This one can’t be classified as horror at all. It’s a mystery adventure with supernatural elements so tame they’d elicit no more than a shrug from a timid baby. Like the first game, its story concerns Japanese history and legends that one might find a little boring, but you don’t have to read all the text in its menus.
    • Playing that game unwittingly prepared me for the film Inu-Oh (2021), which I’ve had in my library for years and suddenly decided to watch. From the opening scenes, it eerily echoed story points from PARANORMASIGHT, concerning the 12th-century Heike samurai clan, and their vengeful spirits said to linger across the land after they were wiped out. Inu-Oh is a wildly ambitious and stupendously well-animated musical that is let down by, well, its music. The concept is a fusion of traditional Japanese music with glam rock, and a main character starts playing his biwa one day like an electric guitar without any explanation. The visuals work, but the songs are poorly structured to modern ears, overly long, and basically repeat the same melodies while pages of historical narrative are sung over them. Imagine Billy Corgan’s worst material, stretched twice as long, and the lyrics are all about random days of Napoleon’s life, and you’ll begin to understand how it feels.
    • We finally saw Sentimental Value (2025) and wow it really deserves its Oscar and 95% Rotten Tomatoes score. The opening scene with the house, and the title card needle drop that follows it, was so good that my body felt compelled to stand up and applaud — I didn’t allow it, but that feeling went on for much of its running length. The train oner is a wonderful bit of technical showing off, and actually the whole film’s lush 35mm look just stunts on the pervasive digital signature of Netflix movies. Everyone is great in this, making art about how art both fucks you up and saves you — 4.5 stars.
    • Found time for a grab bag of other films too: Runner (2026) — not to be confused with Gal Gadot’s The Runner (2026), Good Boy (2025), Elle (2016), Grand Theft Hamlet (2024) — the one to watch out of all of these, a very human documentary about two out-of-work actors putting on a production of Hamlet inside the GTA Online videogame whilst stuck at home during the pandemic — Shelter (2026), and Tony (2026).
    • Singapore made headlines this week because of the launch of a new dating site by the government, currently in a pilot phase only open to civil servants. It’s called FirstDate, and matches people based on compatibility assumed from their responses to a questionnaire. The idea of a state-run service has amused observers, with some seeing it as a dystopian step towards arranged marriages by Big Brother, amongst other hot takes on this strategy to combat our falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR). History rhymes, of course, and older folks will remember the existence of the Social Development Unit (SDU) in the 1980s, a pre-digital precursor to this scheme, that was something of a government-run activities club to help rescue graduates from singlehood after being encouraged (by the same authorities) to optimize for good grades instead of dating during their teenage years.
    • But it’s hard for outsiders to decide if Singapore’s environment really does produce a special breed of hapless, rizzless forever-aloners, uniquely ill-equipped to find their own mates through empathy and communication, so Singapore’s own state-run media conglomerate is providing some data in the form of a new reality dating show called Wingman. The show’s format introduces an original element to the Love Island formula, namely that each contestant brings their own wingman/wingwoman to serve as hype men/women, espousing their good qualities so they don’t have to — a perfectly valid and brilliant tweak for Asian cultures where tooting your own horn unironically is a major ick. The contestants, in addition to a few Singaporeans, are a bunch of attractive 20-to-30-somethings from the Philippines and Thailand, all of whom resemble functioning young adults who can read social cues and body language, and interact normally with members of the opposite sex (there is no LGBTQ+ representation). There’s obviously a tilt towards extroversion, which you’d expect from people volunteering to be a dating show, but even correcting for that, there’s an intriguing, discernible difference between the Singaporeans and their SEAblings that’s best seen for yourself. Full episodes are available on YouTube. We binged all 10 so far in one night.
  • Week 7.26

    Week 7.26

    One of my irrational fears that hasn’t gone away with growing older is that of going to the dentist. I’ve put it off over and over, and was pretty sure I’d make it last year but didn’t. I’ve done my best to handle things at home, even flossing daily which they always say you should do but I’m convinced no one actually does. This week I finally made an appointment to go, and it wasn’t as bad as I feared. They did find a cavity that needs patching up, but the appointment for that is only in a couple of months.

    One thing that felt off was a recommendation that I get a certain procedure done — not only because I’d like to avoid pain wherever possible, but because it was prescribed before they’d even looked in my mouth. I’d only just said that it was my first visit in a while, and they said ‘okay you should get this done’.

    Because it’s 2026, I uploaded my x-rays to Gemini 3 Pro for a second opinion. It analyzed the scans confidently (but of course) and told me the same things, but in even greater detail. It did not think the procedure was necessary, and gave me clarifying questions to ask the dentist next time. When it comes to a nervous person like me, it provided a better experience than a human dentist could because it was available to answer my many more follow-up questions, at all hours. This longer “consultation” made me feel better, although I’m well aware that taking medical advice from a machine that just says things isn’t the smartest move. But I know people do and will because it’s really easy, and so once again I’m saying this is really dangerous territory.

    Why am I using Gemini so much, and what happened to Claude? Google decided to play dirty, I guess. They’re offering three months of their Pro AI plan (essentially Google One with 2TB of storage + access to Gemini Pro, Nano Banana Pro, and Veo) at a 90% discount. That’s about S$2.80 a month. These models are all so incredibly close in raw performance, that for someone like me who’s not using them for coding, the main differences are down to tone, character, and perhaps ethical alignment. I’m already sold on Claude for text-based work, but I thought I should spend some time getting a feel for how Gemini differs. Especially since it’s going to be at the heart of Apple’s AI features at some point this year.

    Friend and former colleague Rob is back in town for Chinese New Year. I thought I’d last seen him maybe two or three years ago, but it’s actually somehow been closer to four. The quickening pace of time’s slipping through the fingers at this age is alarming. The last time he was around, I’d just printed off some stickers of my Misery Men drawings and given him one. I had just gone back to work after my brief sabbatical. We were still wearing masks indoors (as seen in the linked post’s featured photo). Is there a German word for how relationships can pause and park themselves outside of regular time, so that four years feels like so much less?

    A few of us met up for craft beers and Thai food on Sunday, with the reminiscing and catching up going past midnight. Here’s a privacy-preserving photo-turned-courtroom sketch made with Gemini’s help.

    Media activity

    • I finished watching all 48 episodes of The Apothecary Diaries anime series on Netflix. It’s about an unusually educated girl, raised in a red light district, who gets kidnapped and sold to the imperial palace as an indentured maid where she gets to flex her skill with poisons and medicines. It’s set in a fictional country resembling China in the Tang Dynasty. Nothing about this should appeal to me, but it was one of the more enjoyable low-stakes shows I’ve seen recently.
    • I still haven’t finished reading Sleeping Dogs. But I did finish playing The Hokkaido Serial Murder Case a few weeks ago but forgot to say so. As a faithful remake of a retro game, it can’t be blamed for some of the dated gameplay. The art could definitely be better though — it would be a fine game for $20, but unfortunately is priced at $44.99.
    • It’s been a year since we were in Tokyo and I bought the Japanese supernatural murder mystery game Paranormasight, largely because it was set in the Ryogoku/Sumida district where our apartment was. In last week’s Nintendo Direct, a sequel was announced and so I decided it was finally time to get started on the original. It’s turned out to be quite good, with a dynamic visual presentation that goes beyond the usual VN style of talking figures in front of different backgrounds. The gameplay is constantly breaking the fourth wall as well: one challenge where you die after hearing a cursed sound is solved by going into settings and turning the volume down.
    • While feeling stressed out about the dentist, I played Jusant on the PS5. It’s a beautiful, dialogue-free game where you slowly climb a massive mountain and put together what happened to the people who used to live on it. It was fairly quick to finish and now I’m curious about Cairn, another game about scaling a mountain, albeit more realistic about the physical difficulties involved. Jusant’s nameless hero is practically superhuman and his arms are way too skinny for the insane amount of climbing he has to do.
  • Week 49.25

    Week 49.25

    • Canned sardines are my latest obsession. Before you imagine those fancy imported ones from Portugal with the beautifully illustrated tins, costing $20, no — not yet. And honestly, even the $10 ones in the photo are aspirational. But you know how you’re meant to eat two servings of oily fish a week for the Omega-3 heart health benefits? I thought I’d try to do a better job of that, and ended up falling in love with the convenience and versatility of little fish in tomato sauce or extra virgin olive oil. I’ve been having them on their own, on toast, with pasta and a little pesto, whatever. I even joined the r/cannedsardines subreddit, where other weirdos discuss them all day.
    • It was during a chance conversation with my parents that I learnt these healthy fish (including kippers and mackerel) are very high in purine and can lead to gout flare ups. Sure enough, search Reddit and you’ll find many canned fish enjoyers suddenly finding themselves in excruciating foot pain after eating three tins a day. To stay on the safe side, I’ve sadly started to restrict myself to two, maybe three servings a week.
    • Japan-based writer and walking influencer Craig Mod occasionally does “pop-up newsletters” to accompany his projects — say, a cross-country trek. He walks and takes photos during the day, then writes and posts these thoughtful, downright literary journal entries at night. Once the walk is over, the newsletter ends. I sign up for them but don’t read them as they come in because, like delicious sardines you savor, they’re too good to have to rush or get through. This week I finally read his last series from back in October, titled Between Two Mountains. Because it’s now over, the only ways to find them are his members-only archives, or having someone forward you the emails. I recommend subscribing to one of his more regular newsletters anyway, and you’ll be notified the next time a pop-up begins.
    • I read Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money which is notable for being a personal finance book that doesn’t belabor its points. There are 20 individual “learnings” that he wants to pass on, and some take up as little as a couple of pages. His latest book, The Art of Spending Money looks to fill a gap in a market where many pages are devoted to helping people build good saving habits, but not as many on what healthy spending looks like. Unfortunately, it’s fully booked out at the library and I’m 1,110th in line.
    • It’s taken me from Week 31.25 till now to go from owning a copy of Donkey Kong Bananza to playing it. It’s supposedly by the same team that made Super Mario Odyssey, and like that game it’s charming, delightful, and perfectly tuned for fun over frustration. I’m surprised at how easy it is, but that’s not a complaint at all. There are no 30-minute boss fights here. Nothing overstays its welcome, much like the book I just mentioned. I was alone on Sunday afternoon and started playing at 2pm — it was 6pm before I managed to tear myself away.
    • Bugonia is out for home viewing and I watched its ending sequence again because I loved it so much. No spoilers, but it utilizes Marlene Dietrich’s cover of Where Have All The Flowers Gone to brilliant and satisfying effect. I’ve known the song for a while (since Massive Attack referenced it on their Mezzanine album, probably) but never thought about what it says until this particular incarnation. It’s been in my head all week.
    • Did you know Norah Jones has a podcast called Playing Along (YouTube)? It’s a simple concept: she has different musical guests come in each week (recently Sarah McLachlan, Alessia Cara, Sam Smith) and they chat and play together in the studio. The conversations are super interesting for anyone who loves music because you get to hear discussions about technique and inspiration from people at the highest levels of their craft. This is what every artist has had the opportunity to do with the internet for the past two decades, but I can’t think of many who have! Apple Music artist-hosted shows are probably the closest thing, but they’re very radio like.
    • Speaking of people at the highest levels, I hereby record for posterity that two interesting executive departures from Apple were announced this week, John Giannandrea and Alan Dye, which prompted Michael and I to hop on a call and yap about it for a couple of hours.
    • So it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas album has been pinned to the top of my Apple Music list where I can play it on every HomePod across the apartment — all is well.
  • Week 45.25

    Week 45.25

    I spoke too soon. Jinxed it. Stupidly counted my chicks. By which I mean I had another vertigo episode out of nowhere after thinking I was safe. It came just from tilting my head down to look at something, and suddenly it felt like the floor fell out from under me. I immediately put my head back, and it only lasted like half a minute, but it was enough to burst my bubble of security that maybe the earlier incident was a one-off.

    According to the online literature, recurrences are common with BPPV, and it’s just something you have to learn to live with and manage. Some lingering unsteadiness followed for the next couple of days, which is annoying but survivable. I’m mostly worried that I’ll get a bad case of it on a plane at some point, because pressure changes can apparently trigger it.

    PSA if you also have this: it seems people with vitamin D deficiencies are more susceptible. So I’m going to be more religious about taking supplements and see if that helps.

    ===

    For the second time in two weeks, I decided to break my weekday lunch routine by going further out to a Sushiro, followed by a little cafe reading time. Eating alone in a walled-off solo dining booth sounds sad and lonely but is surprisingly cozy; just ask Japan.

    Later, I came across a Reddit thread discussing local restaurants and when Sushiro came up, someone replied “if you’re in Bangkok, try it there — it’s a world of difference in quality, price, and size.” Well then! That’s something I’ll be in a position to verify next week because I’m actually going to be in Bangkok for several days (hence the airplane vertigo worries, pray for me).

    My itinerary as a traveling husband is still quite open — while Kim’s at work I’m planning to check out this new mall with a rooftop park, visit some exhibitions, and watch Predator: Badlands in a cinema superior to anything we have in Singapore. And depending on how I feel, maybe even stay in with my iPad and enjoy the very nice hotel for a bit.

    ===

    Speaking of touchscreen devices, I’ve been waiting for the full reveal of the Anbernic DS handheld emulation console, and now that it’s up for pre-order, my excitement has been considerably reduced. Enthusiasts online have been disappointed by the choice of a weak processor which, when paired with an Android OS, means it’ll struggle to run any 3DS games and maybe even some DS games. I’m not up to speed on DS emulation, but I’ll take their word for it that things could be much better here.

    The original DS Lite was my favorite handheld of all time because of its minimal clamshell design, which also housed its tiny stylus. The Anbernic DS does not include that critical feature. What’s the point of recreating the DS if you have a separate, chunky stylus to carry about and lose?

    Anbernic has also earned a reputation for releasing improved variants shortly after launching new products. So I’m hoping we’ll see a faster, more polished version out in six months. Wake me up when that comes out.

    ===

    Media activity:

    • I’m reading Wraith, which is Book 1 in the Convergence War series. It’s shaping up to be a fun if not-so-elegant “assemble a team and go on a big space adventure” action story. I’d recommend it if you’re looking for a palate cleanser in between more challenging fare.
    • I started watching the popular Apothecary Diaries anime series that Netflix has been aggressively pushing, and it’s not bad! Essentially a medical procedural set in ancient China, with other dramatic hooks like a super-competent main character who wants to stay invisible but can’t help stepping in to fix things, plus royal court politics.
    • After watching The Woman in Cabin 10 last week, we looked for more murder stories on boats and started on Death and Other Details (a murder on a cruise ship) before finding out it was canceled after one season. Still, it’s been okay and stars Mandy Patinkin as the detective.
    • If you’d asked me about Death and Other Details a few days ago, I might have said it was “pretty good”. But after watching the first two episodes of Apple TV’s new tentpole series, Pluribus, the bar is now insanely high. Don’t read anything about it, not even Hideo Kojima’s reaction tweet, just go straight into watching it on the nicest screen you can find. Based on what I’ve seen so far, this is looking like the kind of show I’ll think about long after it’s over.
  • Week 44.25

    Week 44.25

    I saw a doctor about last week’s vertigo episode, and they concurred with my internet research that it was most likely a case of BPPV. Apparently, it really does “just happen” to anyone and they see quite a few cases of it. I was told to watch my salt intake and blood pressure, and see if the vertigo occurs “too often”, which might indicate a need for further scans.

    The doctor was surprised when I explained that we’d performed the Epley maneuver at home with a YouTube video, and said that it was probably what they’d be doing for me now if I’d still had symptoms. I didn’t explain that it had essentially been an AI consultation, because I didn’t want to get lectured about how they can be wrong. Not saying it’s a good idea, but it helped until I could get an appointment with a real doctor.

    After the doctor’s visit, I decided to have breakfast at Starbucks, a thing I used to do too often when I went in to the office. But in light of the advice I’d just been given about eating less sodium and watching my blood pressure, I opted for an egg white wrap instead of the rosemary chicken croissant that I really wanted, and it was unsatisfying. Is that what I have to look forward to now in old age? Just healthy compromises and remembering the good old days of eating crap?

    As if eating in revenge, we had a huge dinner with Alex at a place called “La Vache!” the following night. They run a simple concept: S$68/person for a salad, ribeye steak, and unlimited French fries. Cocktails are S$26 and pretty substantial. There are also desserts if you have room, including gelato from Messina down the road. Reader, I had a lot of fries and thereby a lot of sodium. So much so I’ve spent the rest of the week trying to up my water intake to make up for it.

    ===

    The MOFT brand iPhone case I got a few weeks ago has been impressing me so much with its soft material and quality construction that I blinked and found that I’ve now bought more products in their MagSafe-compatible lineup.

    The Snap Phone Tripod Wallet folds out into an adjustable stand that could be useful for anyone needing to shoot photos, make video calls, or watch media handsfree. Like I said, I’m barely conscious of why/how I bought these things, because that doesn’t describe me. I suppose I’ll just have to become a content creator then! It also holds up to 2 cards, although in hindsight I should have gone with the thinner version that doesn’t.

    That’s because a few days later, I also ordered their Snap Field Wallet which holds 8 cards and even some folded bills, coins, and a SIM card tool. There’s a version of this that includes a built-in stand, but I decided against it since I already have the “tripod” for stand-related needs.

    Happily, this shopping spree concludes my search for a new minimal wallet to replace my worn and aging Bellroy. Every bearable option I’ve found has been over S$120, and because carrying a wallet is such an antiquated concept for me these days with everything on the phone, I wasn’t thrilled to spend the money. But the MOFT Field Wallet’s low price and novel origami design made for an easier and less risky decision. It’ll mainly stay in my bag, but the option of attaching via MagSafe is a nice bonus.

    ===

    I haven’t seen many films lately, so this week was a corrective period. I saw a Korean arthouse film on MUBI that I don’t regret but can’t recommend, called Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), and a more mainstream Korean thriller called The Old Woman With the Knife (2025). The titular trifecta was pure coincidence, but I also saw the new Keira Knightley vehicle, The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025). None of the above are really worth your limited time on Earth, if we’re being honest.

    Usually, whenever a three-hour film pops up in the queue, I push it down to the bottom. But this time when I saw Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995) was leaving Netflix, it seemed like a sign to just sit down and do it. I can’t believe I waited so long though, because it’s something of a masterpiece despite the gangland tropes, and I don’t normally even like these kind of stories.

    I subscribed to Disney+ Premium to watch Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) in 3D on the Vision Pro, another three-hour movie. While the story isn’t worth the time, the immersive experience and quirky filmmaking tech was absolutely worth my money. My Letterboxd review: “The story of a Saturday morning cartoon with the technical complexity and execution of a space mission. Big failure on the part of our entire species that we can’t produce a director who can do both parts equally well. Not a film I want to see again.”

    As an example of how this is a film that you can’t really watch traditionally, it constantly switches between 24fps and 48fps shots, often within a single scene. It feels like a videogame, where you’re watching a cinematic cutscene and then it suddenly transitions into ultra-smooth gameplay. The 3D also pops in HDR clarity on the Vision Pro, where it would be dimmer on an IMAX screen. Sitting at home with Disney+ in a headset is oddly the definitive way to experience James Cameron’s shallow deep sea epic, which probably wasn’t what he envisioned.

    I swore I wouldn’t read or watch any of the Dan Brown/Robert Langdon stories, but it’s been almost 20 years so I put The Da Vinci Code (2006, only 149 mins) on one night and it wasn’t terrible. It helps that it’s a Ron Howard film, and I think I might actually see the next two films, Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016), before they leave Netflix. There was also some positive press for the new Dan Brown book in this series, The Secret of Secrets, so I’ve added it to my reading list. Younger me would be so disappointed.

    ===

    It wasn’t just me that visited the doctor this week — I brought my 2021 iPad Pro (M1) down to the Apple Store over the weekend. When the Apple Genius came up to me and asked, “So what’s wrong with your iPad?”, I answered “It‘s just old.” For a while now, I’ve suspected it of falling short of Apple’s promised “all-day battery life”, but sending it in for a replacement felt like such a hassle that I kept putting it off.

    Because this iPad model doesn’t report battery health in Settings, I figured it was easily below 80% capacity, and was prepared to pay maybe $120–150 for a new battery. So they ran their diagnostics app on it, and told me it’s actually at 86%. Huh. That’s pretty good for 4.5 years! I asked how much it would cost to replace anyway, and was told just shy of S$200, but it would be a full unit swap rather than just a new battery.

    If the battery health had been 70%, I would probably have paid the money and then had to use this for at least another two years. But at 86%, I can probably make this work for another year and then see what the new models look like. So by building a product that actually ages well, Apple has… increased the likelihood of me upgrading even sooner. That’s the 4D chess game that Tim Cook plays, folks.

  • Week 43.25

    Week 43.25

    Vertigo (1958) is a great film, because Hitchcock was a master. It’s also the title of a mediocre stadium rock song, because I love hating on U2.

    Unfortunately, vertigo is also something I experienced for the first time this week — I’m fairly sure I jinxed myself at some point earlier this year by saying out loud “I don’t have any problems”. It hit me on Friday night in the form of extreme dizziness and nausea, and even the walk to bed to sleep it off was difficult without support. It got better the next morning with the help of something called the Epley Maneuver, which I found online.

    Asking around, I discovered that this is a more common human experience than you’d think, with several people I know having suffered episodes. Some of them had dizziness lasting days, and yet it’s strangely not discussed like, all the time? From what I can tell, it’s probably something called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), where calcium deposits in your inner ear become dislodged and move around, screwing with your balance. I’ll be seeing a doctor next week to confirm it, but in any case there’s no known cure and it might keep happening for the rest of my life. It’s crazy that so many are just quietly living with this.

    Have I been self-diagnosing with the help of AI? Maybe? I did just sign up for Claude Pro after all, which I’ve mentioned finding more agreeable than ChatGPT. I made vibe-coded two little apps before being laid low: a primitive prototype of my long-gestating stealth game, Cat Creeper, and a tool for my book club to figure out how many chapters of any given book we should read in the coming week. That one is called Book Splitter, and I offer it here for any book clubs out there with a similar need to figure out stopping points conveniently near chapter breaks.

    It’s been a unique experience using Claude’s impressive capabilities alongside reading Asimov’s I, Robot, which foresaw many of our modern discourse around AI safety, and The Optimist at the same time, which has finally begun to chronicle some of Sam Altman’s questionable and unethical moves both at OpenAI and in his private life. The sections detailing his gaslighty, ungenerous, and cruel interactions with his sister Annie ironically reminded me of reading about Steve Jobs’s treatment of his daughter Lisa, in her memoir Small Fry.

    I just passed the part where Dario Amodei and other employees left to start Anthropic. Just as I try to avoid Meta and Google products because of their comparatively weaker stance on privacy versus Apple, it makes sense that some prefer Anthropic over OpenAI for a more cautious approach to AI.

    ===

    My mother-in-law stayed with us this week, which meant getting the newspaper in for her because that’s how some people still get their news. I was shocked to see how thin the physical Straits Times is these days — almost completely devoid of advertising, and on the whole maybe having 20% of the heft I remember from the 90s. It’s also S$1.10 now, up from the 50 to 80 cents I thought it was. Still, it was kinda nice (nostalgic) to sit at the dining table and read the paper in the morning.

    It was also the week where my favorite retro-game-hunting IRL streamer, 4amlaundry, went on a 5-day trip to Kansai, checking out thrift stores and exploring Osaka and Nara. I didn’t want to miss watching it live, so I tried explaining the whole concept of streamers to said mother-in-law, and got her to watch him with me for awhile on the TV, the whole time silently praying that he wouldn’t go look at the display cases of half-naked anime figurines that he sometimes checks out in those stores.

    Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and instead we watched him walk down countryside roads, eat at chain restaurants, and get knocked down by the aggressive deer in Nara. All of that made for some good conversation, so if you get the chance to introduce an elder to Twitch, it’s not the worst idea if you can avoid the NSFW aspects.

    Speaking of shows that you would hope won’t be awkward to watch with your parents or in-laws BUT ACTUALLY ARE, add the latest season of The Diplomat to the list. There’s a lot of cursing (I kinda expected that), and some sex scenes that maybe the producers thought were hot and their audience wanted, but are so unnecessary and desperate that they come across as unintentional comedy. Apart from that, it’s still a fun series that leans into unrealistic political drama, with some unexpectedly good writing (for a Netflix show). Just watch it on your own.

    ===

    I somehow forgot to mention the slate of new Apple products announced last week: M5-powered iPad Pros, a 14” basic MacBook Pro, and a spec-bumped Apple Vision Pro. The product lineup is designed to lead you to the conclusion that you should buy everything, because how do you choose between an 11” and 13” iPad Pro, and a 14” MacBook Pro?

    The 11” iPad size is portable for couch use, but the 13” becomes an advanced desk computer for creative work when paired with the Magic Keyboard and Pencil Pro. But if you’re going to be using it while deskbound, why not get a MacBook Pro with 24 hours of battery life (versus just 10 on the iPad), and the possibility of running local AI models and all kinds of other software that isn’t allowed on iPad?

    Making things harder is the fact that a 13” iPad Pro with accessories costs more than an “equivalent” 14” MacBook Pro, and they’re too costly for an average user like me to justify buying both. So the final decision was to hold out a little longer with my current M1-generation gear, and see what upgrades the 13” iPad Air gets next year — hopefully an M4 or M5 processor, ProMotion, and the aluminum Magic Keyboard currently exclusive to iPad Pro models.

    But bringing the M5 to the Apple Vision Pro makes it a better system to use and own for the next two years, while we wait for the next big leap forward in miniaturization. However as a casual user who only clocks a few hours a week, I couldn’t see myself upgrading for a faster chip alone. The more compelling improvement is a new “Dual Knit Band” that comes as standard, which sorta combines the previous Solo Knit Band and Dual Loop Band into one much-improved design.

    The best part is that this new band is also available as a standalone accessory, so I ordered one immediately for my first-gen AVP. It’s simply a marvel of engineering and feels incredibly premium. The build quality is off the charts, and the Fit Dial they’ve created to independently adjust both the back and top straps might be the most Apple-y thing they’ve shipped on an accessory since the Stainless Link Bracelet for the original Apple Watch.

    Thanks to this more comfortable and ergonomic band, I’d planned to spend more time with the AVP this week, until the vertigo and unusual weekly routine got in the way. Not gonna lie, my first thought during the vertigo attack, after “What if this never goes away and I’m disabled for life?” was “Does this mean I can’t use the Vision Pro anymore?”

  • Week 41.25

    Week 41.25

    • The results from last week’s health screening came back clear of all major issues, so I’ll sleep soundly on that front for a little while at least! The only note was that I could cut back a little on the carbs and saturated fats, which makes me wonder what I’ve done differently since the last test. Could it be… that I was eating more healthily when I went to the office more often? Those downtown mall lunches were more expensive than the kopitiam/hawker fare I get more frequently now, but I didn’t expect them to be healthier. I’ll have to look into this a little more.
    • It’s no secret that one of the more reliable indicators we’re in a frothy bull market is a rising number of people mistakenly believing they can quit their jobs and live off day trading, and while that wasn’t my plan, I’ve certainly done a touch of it this year. What can I say? Gambling is fun! But then Trump declared another tariff war on China this Friday, troubling markets and triggering major liquidations on some altcoins. I know it was bad out there because my feeds were full of people urging others not to kill themselves. The coming week is probably going to be a very interesting one on Bloomberg, which I expect to have on the TV in the background all day.
    • That is, if the internet is even working. Our ISP has been struggling with at least two outages this week during waking/working hours. The connection is down right now as I write this bit on Saturday evening, which is surely an unpopular time for the net to go down. I’ll bet someone’s been called in to reboot a server rack somewhere right now. In times like these, I’m thankful for my irrationally large mobile data plan and our local NAS media server. There’s some kind of strategic error being made by governments here. Centralizing all the angry-mob-placating media on the cloud where it can go down in the middle of a crisis? The kind where you tell people to stay indoors and wait? I’ll bet DVDs actually played a role in maintaining law and order in the old days.
    • Speaking of shutting down a digital grid, I had the opportunity to see the new Tron: Ares film with Brian the night it premiered and had a great time despite Jared Leto taking the titular role. It’s not a franchise that aims to make sense, or be scrutinized for narrative integrity — it’s about the neon lights, banging electronic music, and videogame-ish eye candy, and this new one delivered on all counts. I can’t even get mad; it really is just a good time as long as the volume’s way up.
    • Quick aside: I’ve been using Claude more than ChatGPT recently to give it a fair shake, mostly spurred by curiosity after their recent marketing campaign, and honestly? The outputs seem more insightful, more strategic, and it’s a better writer. It feels more my speed, and I’m a new fan.
    • Still on the topic of digital networks, I got roped into helping start and moderate an online alumni group for the design agency I used to be part of, and we quietly launched it this week. What set this one workplace apart was the feeling of being a truly connected team where, for a brief period in time, absent any territorial agendas or business borders, people could share knowledge across (and even move freely around) the different global offices. And it’s been really nice to see many people say as they join the #introductions channel on our Slack that it remains the best job they ever had. Where does it go from here? I think that depends on how many atypically extroverted designers we can get to foster some sort of social infrastructure.
    • Coincidentally, I met one of those ex-colleagues for an overdue breakfast: our first intern and proper employee in Singapore, who’s also a regular reader of this blog. Hi Xin! I hadn’t seen her in a year, so even after 90 minutes of catching up it still felt like there was lots we didn’t get into. Anyway, you wouldn’t have known it was a random weekday morning from the line waiting to get into the suburban cafe/bakery we chose. Every table was occupied by both foreign and local-looking unemployed bums alike, all enjoying $28 breakfast plates and $18 slices of toasted sourdough topped with avocado. We’re constantly being told local restaurants are barely hanging on, but then you see the brunch scam still going strong and it’s like wha…?
    • More counterdata was encountered while celebrating a very belated birthday dinner for Kim at Cudo, a South-American-ish sort of restaurant in the Amoy Street area. It was fully packed out (albeit on a Friday night), and I highly recommend them on account of solid tropical cocktails (Bourbon! Coconut! Pineapple!), a really nice selection of starters (Romaine lettuce with blue cheese and anchovies; warm crab queso with tortilla chips; truffley torched yellowtail), and even better mains (wagyu rump; chorizo and ricotta pasta) at pretty palatable prices.
    • I can afford this baller dining-out lifestyle because I saved a ton of money on the Amazon Prime sales this week (yup it’s #girlmath). I bought replacement razor blades, a physical copy of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, dental floss, a 1TB microSD Express card (finally!) for my Switch 2, protein bars, LED bulbs, LEUCHTTURM1917 notebooks, and a lifetime supply of Uni-ball Jetstream RT pens — only the best pens ever according to The Wirecutter.
    • I wasn’t planning to get any of this stuff soon — they’re all things I might have bought eventually. Like the 1TB card to replace the 256GB one in my Switch 2, for example, which I thought I’d upgrade to in maybe a year’s time. This made me realize that on top of driving impulse purchases, these sale events are actually about pulling forward purchases and recording future sales today to juice numbers (at slightly lower margins). Businesses are valued based on expected profits, individuals buy based on expected needs, and I guess I’ve been binging carbs and fat based on expected hunger!
  • Week 17.25

    Week 17.25

    • When I discovered a fix for an annoying iOS photo date/time saving bug last month, it required a reset of all my phone’s settings. Which means that many of my apps still can’t send notifications or use my location — these are being restored ad hoc, as the apps only get to ask for permission whenever I reopen them.
    • As a consequence of this, it wasn’t until recently that I suddenly noticed I wasn’t getting the twice-daily ‘State of Mind’ check in reminders from Apple Health anymore, and went to turn them back on. These are quite useful for being able to look back and see how happy/depressed I was at any point in time, and it sucks that I now have a big hole in this dataset.
    • I’m taking this opportunity to change the way I approach this exercise: literally being more positive. For those unfamiliar with it, you’re meant to rate how you’re feeling from Very Unpleasant, Slightly Unpleasant, Neutral, and so on. I never used to go up all the way to “Very Pleasant”. Like, I could win a million dollars and wonder if even that warranted using such strong language. But now I’m giving myself permission to be more generous with my feelings. I can feel “Very Pleasant” more often and nothing will get broken.
    • In other recalibration news, I spent half a day in Numbers (Apple’s spreadsheet software) and did a personal annual report of sorts to inspect how I’ve been managing my money in the last year. Now that I have enough data, I was able to build some graphs and breakdowns of what a realistic budget looks like. I’ve always recorded my expenses on a daily basis with an app, but never crunched the numbers before; I was happy just knowing that I could. Naturally, now that I have, I wish I’d done it years ago.
    • At several points during the above activity, I wanted to upload my file into ChatGPT and have it analyze my spending patterns and offer up some money-saving strategies for me to consider. But of course, giving OpenAI that data would be a terrible idea. I wondered if Apple Intelligence in Numbers could do anything with it, but nope. It’s just the same old Writing Tools that make more sense in a word processor document than a spreadsheet.
    • I spent most of my time reading this week, although the temptation to jump on the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 bandwagon is very strong — at this point in time, it’s the highest-rated game of 2025 and the 13th best game of all time on the PS5. Maybe next week?
    • On top of finishing Broken Money as scheduled, I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and rated it just three stars on Goodreads. It’s absurd that one can even humble the great emperor with a thumbs down on the internet, but his journals are in dire need of an editor! Yes I know these were never meant to be published, but he repeats the same handful of principles over and over (which I largely agree with), and this could have been cut down to be a podcast or self-help PDF on Etsy?
    • I also read the second book in the Murderbot series, Artificial Condition, and found it even more fun than the first. At this point, I’m kinda desperate to watch the Apple TV+ show and not sure I can wait for weekly drops over the next few months.
    • While looking for a manga with some colored pages to try out on my Kobo Clara Color, I started reading the oddly titled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (trust me, there’s a mostly acceptable explanation for this), and enjoyed it enough to finish everything in a day. Unfortunately, while experiencing color on an ereader is real nice, the Clara’s screen is too small and I read most of it in black & white on my old Kobo Libra. Irony!
    • I’m now close to finishing Erik Olin Wright’s How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, not because I dare dream that this world could ever abandon capitalism, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some alternatives. I’ve now begun to think of capitalism and its systems as a spectrum rather than as absolutes.
    • Coincidentally, it’s election season here in Singapore and we go to the polls next Saturday. I’ve been watching the political rallies live-streamed on YouTube over the last few evenings, and have mostly been annoyed at the complaints and vague promises to do better (to say nothing of the insanity that sometimes shows through in racist, antivax, and xenophobic ad libs). Singapore already enjoys some of the best quality-of-life outcomes possible under a hybrid capitalist/social democracy, but it seems people want more. They want a hands-off government, but also want it to protect them from job-stealing AIs and foreigners. They want everyone to be paid more, but don’t want to spend more on services in return. It’s so exhausting.
    • I was looking to spend some money on a birthday present for myself since I’ve been such a good little budgeter, but the best thing I could find were these new Yashica Peanuts cameras featuring Snoopy, who I’m still kinda obsessed with. The idea was quickly abandoned because I do not need another digital camera, especially not an intentionally mediocre one.
    • Still in the mood for a photo-related splurge, I went back to the Lampa camera app (first mentioned last September), which got three new ‘film-inspired’ color profiles in a major update this week. That brings the number of available looks up to six, which better justifies the high asking price (S$40/yr or S$90/forever) which was previously out of the question. I’ve been using the free trial while looking for cheaper alternatives, but Lampa just does what it does so well.
    • In terms of UX design, it’s super focused and perfectly walks the line between too simple (Zerocam) and too complicated (almost every competitor I’ve looked at). There’s just enough control, and few enough options that you can actually make decisions. In that way, it out-Leicas the official Leica app, which does not have a great UI and asks for S$100/yr. Technically, it uses a bayer RAW image pipeline for more natural captures, keeps those RAW files so you can “redevelop” photos if you didn’t get the right filter or exposure the first time, AND deletes those RAWs automatically after 30 days to save space. Hats off to great work, but man, the cost is uncomfortably close to buying an actual Snoopy camera.