We arrived in Tokyo after dark and headed to a nearby supermarket for apartment essentials: toilet roll, hand soap, face towels, etc. Supermarkets here open till 11 p.m. or midnight, which I did not expect. We’ve been seeing more 24-hour supermarkets back home as well, so maybe that’s just how people shop now (or how late people work now).
The domestic produce here is, unsurprisingly, beautiful and better than anything you can easily find in Singapore. Prices range from a little more to a GTFOutta here more. I mean, look at those tomatoes. We’ve also been eating some lovely strawberries from a random fruit stand near Gakugei-daigaku station.
My foray into videography was short-lived. After just a day, I’ve gone back to just taking photos. It’s too much work to break in the habit of filming scenes with camera moves and multiple angles whenever something interesting appears.
We ducked into a used records store that carried both CDs and vinyls, and for a short while, I entertained the thought of getting a new CD player to put my teenage collection back into service. If I can find a nice-looking one that supports AirPlay (ha) to our HomePods, then I might. Why hasn’t anyone made an all-in-one, retro revival-ready CD/cassette/LP player with decent quality? They’d make a killing.
Sleep eluded me for two nights. It was the combination of a smaller bed, snoring, and variable room temperature while we figured out the settings. Things got better once I busted out my Loop Quiet II earplugs. They’re well worth the $20-odd bucks.
AccuWeather shows the city has a constant dry air advisory in effect. That’s certainly true in our apartment when the heating is on, and now we’re going to buy a cheap humidifier from 3 Coins (aka ¥300), a Daiso-esque home goods chain that has some really nice products like a 3-in-1 iPhone/Apple Watch/AirPods charging stand and even transparent Switch Pro-style controllers for about S$26. It’s funny that in Singapore I’m constantly dehumidifying, and here it’s just the opposite.
It’s not really that cold. Between 0° and 11° is fine by me, but 15° and sunny would obviously be ideal.
There’s a longstanding idea/stereotype that the Japanese diet is low on vegetables, and I suppose historically that might have been true, with most of it in pickled form? Sean and Cien were just here too, and they’d read that people keep their toilet businesses running smoothly with the help of probiotic milk drinks. Specifically, this Meiji R1 product (or Yakult). We bought some; the verdict’s still out. Meanwhile, trying to get a healthy dose of mealtime fiber with vegetable ramen, side salads, and shredded cabbage, and honestly, the prevalence of vegetables is no different from what I’m used to.
We had dinner at a yakitori restaurant featured in a video on the Japan By Food YouTube channel, and all the local diners were ordering raw chicken tataki, which funnily was not on the English menu given to tourists. But one hot dish we ordered, chicken neck shu mai, came with pink bits of effectively raw meat inside. When in Rome…
It was meant to snow on Sunday, but that didn’t end up happening. We made it out on foot to a nice coffee shop (apparently a branch of a Sydney business), and then spent the morning in the Hokusai museum looking at a small slice of his insane output over 90 years. He apparently produced over 30,000 works, including woodblock prints, sketches, and paintings. I remember having a poster of The Great Wave in my university bedroom way back when (like many of you, I imagine), so it was nice to see the “real thing”.
I’ve used my Ricoh GR III and iPhone cameras probably an equal amount. The former in JPEG-only mode, with the factory Positive Film settings (not to be confused with zeroing each setting; there is actually a “recipe” that they ship with), and the latter in ProRAW. I misspoke last week when it came to the Nitro app. It’s still too buggy, and I couldn’t bring myself to pay for it in this state so I’ve gone back to the developer’s previous app, RAW Power. It’s very good, and with my soon-to-be-released color film LUTs and tone mapping disabled, the iPhone can honestly look like a proper camera. Apple’s default look is… realistic but not romantic.
Our long #youngstar programming nightmare is over. About two years ago, Michael and I noticed that the aforementioned Apple Music playlist had veered from its Japanese roots and presented differently to international users. The English picks were mediocre, and not edgy or innovative in line with the playlist’s stated purpose. And then it fell into a memory hole and wasn’t updated for months. Well, the localization experiment is over! I’m now seeing the Japanese version here in the Singapore ‘store’. Good on you, Apple Music editors.
I was looking through my archives to see what happened this time last year and found that I did a fun “music awards” post in late December, which I don’t have the energy for this time around. However, I can pick three personal favorites.
Song of the year: Not Like Us — Watching the Kendrick and Drake beef unfold in real time while on vacation in Hong Kong, waking up each morning to hear yet another song released while we slept, and then having this incredible, perfect banger drop at the end? It was a great time to be alive.
Album of the year: It’s a tie between Audrey Nuna’s TRENCH and Maggie Rogers’ Don’t Forget Me. Audrey stretched the fuck out of her sound in the most creative manner possible, to the point that Apple Music classifies the album not as Hip-Hop, but Indie Pop. Like a great Kanye album, it’s filled with little moments that anyone else would have turned into whole songs — this is an album of sonic riches and solid vibes. In contrast, Maggie’s is a streamlined, quickly recorded distillation of everything that makes her great, without extraneous electronic production or gimmicks. Just ten great songs with a band. I must have played it a dozen times when it came out.
A playlist
While I didn’t get around to making my customary “best of the year” playlist (usually titled Listening Remembering 20xx), I did finish compiling BLixTape #5, which is a bunch of songs I enjoyed between June and December. Taken along with the previous installment, it gives a similar picture, although not strictly made up of songs released in 2024.
Girl, so confusing featuring lorde — Charli xcx & Lorde
Eusexua — FKA twigs
We Are Making Out — Mura Masa & yeule
Scumbag — ROLE MODEL
Creatures in Heaven — Glass Animals
Petco — Cassandra Jenkins
In The Living Room — Maggie Rogers
Beaches — beabadoobee
So Glad You Made It — Fantastic Cat
Empty Spaces — Eliot Bronson
Our Town — Iris DeMent
Lately — Fiona Apple
Kaze Wo Atsumete — Happy End
Fear When You Fly — Cleo Sol
Wildfires — Sault
Darlin’ — Jean Dawson
This Is Who I Am (From “The Day of Tomorrow”) — Celeste
Free Fallin’ (feat. Kina Grannis) — Imaginary Future
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Japan, again
We got back from Langkawi on Monday and immediately started to stress about our upcoming trip to Japan, which has only been a foggy plan to hang out in Tokyo and eat a lot of curry rice, at least on my part. We’ve at least confirmed where we’re going to stay: a sort of serviced apartment unit that’s twice the size of a regular hotel room, for less money. How’s that possible? There’ll be no housekeeping, and the location isn’t as convenient as the hotel we were considering (but still within core Tokyo and walking distance to bus and train stations).
Since I don’t have any pressing need to return when Kim does, I plan on staying on a little longer on my own. Maybe another 10 days, which should be enough time to crawl every floor of Yodobashi Camera and drink my weight in highballs. Who am I kidding? It’ll be the middle of winter and I’ll probably stay in bed with my Switch and watch Japanese daytime TV.
People sometimes say it feels like I go to Japan a lot, but honestly it’s only every three years or so, on average. This will be the longest vacation of my life, and I’ll finally be like one of those people I’m always meeting who say unbelievable, envy-inducing things like, “I visit Tokyo three or four times a year, just to shop and eat”, and that casually tossed-out favorite: “Oh, I was just in Tokyo for a month”.
I’m looking forward to visiting the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Meguro, among many others. We gave it a miss the last time around, so it’s been at least six years since we visited. The same goes for the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno, and the National Art Center, Tokyo.
Pure photographic exhibitions seem like a rarity here, so when we heard one was on now at the National Museum of Singapore, it became the plan for the second day of the new year. Amazônia, by Sebastião Salgado, is one of the best uses I’ve seen of the basement gallery space at the National Museum (usually turned into a linear maze with temporary walls). This time, it’s an open space with loose walls created by the photographs themselves. The show is a mix of these large, suspended landscape prints and smaller, intimate portraits of Amazonian tribes, some of them still living by their ancient ways and getting odd facial piercings that most modern-world deviants wouldn’t emulate.
Media Activity
We finished the second season of Shrinking, the lovable Apple TV+ series that probably does therapy more of a disservice than it intends to. Harrison Ford actually gives a shit here (unlike his other cash grabs), and it’s some of his best work. Recommended.
I saw two films involving (false?) choices behind doors.
Sliding Doors (1998) is a film I bought on a pirated VCD like 25 years ago and never got around to watching. I imagined it to be a slick 90s rom-com, but it comes in with slightly low-budget vibes. Maybe Gwyneth wasn’t a big star yet? There’s some slightly clumsy editing, and some shots don’t work. But you can feel the writer/director’s passion for this story coming through, and it’s an alright weekend film. 3 stars.
Heretic (2024) is the latest installment of Hugh Grant playing against rom-com type, and it seems to be an immensely popular career move. I largely enjoyed the film, which is part-horror, part-media history and religious lecture. That is, up until the ending. 2.5 stars.
It’s the end of another year. The events of last December feel far away, but the summer feels like yesterday.
I’ve spent the last four days on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, which I might have visited at some point in the distant past; too distant to remember at all. While others in the family entourage have been jet skiing and kayaking, I’ve been making use of the new Kobo Clara Color that I got as a Christmas present and reading in the shade. It’s still bright enough that I’ve managed to get an indirect sunburn/tan.
The Clara is a nice change from my first-generation, black-and-white Libra H2O, not just because of the color screen (which admittedly only shows up in the menus and book covers), but also the smaller and handier form factor that fits in almost any bag, and even some pockets. You wouldn’t know from looking at it, but it’s almost the exact same height as an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Plus, USB-C charging. I never thought I’d become one of those people who cite USB-C support as a critical feature, but it’s happened.
Aside: I finally got a Labubu as part of a Christmas gift from Kim, and as Sara texted me in shock a while back, its fur truly is “very soft” to the touch. She got it through a connection in Thailand, where it was purchased from a shop that specializes in accessories and clothing for these things?! So mine came with a hat (with a hole for its ears to poke through), and a toy camera that actually produces shutter sounds and flashing lights.
After reading reviews of the new color-enabled Kobos, I was worried that the reportedly fuzzier screens would bother me, but thankfully I can barely see any issues in terms of resolution. Black-and-white text is still rendered at 300dpi and looks sharp enough in daylight. The only drawback of the E Ink Kaleido 3 screen technology compared to Carta is reduced contrast in dimmer environments. It looks like black-on-gray rather than black-on-greenish-almost-white. But with the use of the front light above 50% brightness, it’s a non-issue.
Thanks to this break and the 1.5-hour flight over, I was able to finally finish reading Butter after at least two months of dilly-dallying. Despite being about a serial killer, food, and Japanese culture, I cannot recommend it. The story is mostly a bore, and the writing/translation mostly consists of straightforward “[name] did this, and then did that” and “‘blah blah blah’, [name] mumbled to themselves” sort of sentences. I find this to be true of many Japanese books in English, so I wonder if it’s an artifact of what’s popular in modern Japanese fiction or a translation process that is too rigid.
Whatever the case, it was an immense joy and relief to read the colorful and personable prose of Prayer for the Crown-Shy afterwards; it simply felt like being able to breathe again after a long spell underwater. It’s a nice little sequel to Psalm for the Wild-Built that only took an hour or two to get through, and then I read Book #24 in the Jack Reacher series: Blue Moon. It was the final book that Lee Child wrote on his own, and from here on out, they are all collaborations with his son, if I’m remembering correctly. I believe the plan was for said son to take over the franchise, but then Dad decided he wasn’t ready after all and got involved again, which is such a Miyazaki thing to do.
In any case, it’s one of the better Reacher books, with a cast of ad hoc ex-military partners joining him for one time only, and an interesting strategic problem to solve (not just a crooked sheriff in a small town). And by solve, I mean murder his way out of. Reacher is a certified psychopath in this story, executing more people than I can keep track of.
The flight over was the only time I got to listen to any music, but I’ve been really enjoying the new album from Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, Missionary. The first single released was underwhelming and I thought this was going to be another forgettable collection from Snoop. But Dr. Dre isn’t just producing here, he’s on the mic too, and this work in general reminds me of his final solo album, Compton, which has honestly powered me through a few tough times. The D.R.E. absolutely still has it.
This episode is brought to you by our kind sponsors at Bullet Points™: Need to keep your rambling in check while covering a dozen mundane topics? That’s a job for Bullet Points™ — creating the illusion of order since forever!
After wanting a simple MagSafe silicone case for my iPhone for the past few weeks, I got an $18 Amazon deal for a neutral gray one from Elago, and it’s nearly perfect.
In addition to having more time for informational intake and mental meanderings, I’ll probably remember the latter half of this year for the half-hearted austerity drive that’s led me to drink tea over coffee on a daily basis. This week, the Yorkshire Gold tea caddy I bought during Black Friday sales arrived, prompting me to look up the history of the tea caddy. Back when tea was too valuable to leave with servants in the kitchen, rich folk kept it locked in ornate caddies in their living rooms. Today, I store $0.12 tea bags in a flimsy tin and call it progress.
I’ve been struggling to read Butter by Asako Yuzuki, which has apparently been named Waterstone’s book of the year. I’m only a third of the way through after several weeks, and while there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s a bit of a compelling nothingburger. Female journalist tries to interview female serial killer. Killer encourages her to show more interest in life’s pleasures, especially good butter, and journalist slowly starts to adopt killer’s worldview. I don’t want to quit more but I’ll need to move on soon.
Because my book club has decided to read the sequel to A Psalm for the Wild-Built over the next two weeks, and I can’t start it until I finish Butter. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy will probably only take four hours (the length of its audiobook, compared to Butter’s 17 hours), but I don’t like multitasking with books. I already have too many ongoing TV show and game narratives crowded in my brain.
This year’s Goodreads Reading Challenge is in the bag anyway, with 19 proper books + four volumes of the Sakamoto Days manga completed, smashing my goal of 12 books.
Popular media loves a (serial) killer. We recently finished the new The Day of the Jackal series starring Eddie Redmayne as the titular assassin that the show’s directorial choices strongly encourage you to root for. It’s excellent, and the musical director is clearly a millennial who shares my taste in the classics, from the first episode starting with Radiohead’s Everything In Its Right Place.
We’re now watching Cross on Amazon Prime Video, based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, where a detective with a PhD in psychology plays cat and mouse with a serial killer. I recommend it, but the show is extremely dark AND low contrast, like someone forgot the final step in processing the image. Reacher suffered from this too, but it’s worse here. Luckily, my Sony TV has a mode that dynamically adjusts for it.
I rediscovered the greatness of Domi and JD Beck this week when a random video of them performing on Japanese morning TV popped up on my YouTube feed. I then went down a rabbit hole of older videos, like this one of Domi jamming with other kids at Berklee, and this one of JD headlining a Zildjian session, and am now just in awe of their incredible, otherworldly talent.
On Monday, we went out to see a local production at the Capitol Theater, entitled Dim Sum Dollies® History of Singapore Sixty Sexy Years. It was definitely one of the musicals of all time.
The end-of-year digital game sales have begun, and I urge you to add Sayonara Wild Hearts to your collection if you haven’t already. This game is both a fantastic musical album and a great playable abstraction of going through heartbreak. It’s just $7.79 on Nintendo Switch and S$8.40 on Steam (40% off in both cases). I first played it on Apple Arcade back in 2019 as a launch title for the service, but these days it’s no longer available on mobile and the fate of publisher Annapurna Interactive is in question.
I dusted off the PS5 to make use of my PS Plus subscription and decided to finally play a native PS5 game, since I’ve so far only played older games that were ported from the PS4, and had my socks and shoes blown off by Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. This game is an insane technical showcase for what the PS5 can do: thousands of particles flying everywhere, ray traced reflections, and massive, cinematic worlds that load instantly. Why have I squandered the potential of this machine for the last seven months?? If you have any recommendations for what to play next, especially if they’re in the PS Plus catalog, do let me know.
Last but not least, we went for Christmas dinner with the parents on Sunday night at one of my favorite buffets in town, and it’s made me aware I’ll have to watch my eating over the next couple of weeks.
Just 10 days to Christmas, and I finally got a sense of it happening through my first gift exchange and a couple of meetups. The first was with a few workplace alums, after one suggested to me that it would be nice if we all caught up (and so I ended up getting the job of organizing, which I bumbled through). It was nice after all, and I got to spend time with some people I hadn’t seen in years. The second was last night at a friend’s home that impressively decorated for the season, complete with a playlist of Christmas classics greeting us at the door. I think that was the moment it became real for me.
I brought my Leica D-Lux 7 out of hibernation this week for a few photos, mostly to put its aging battery to the test. It fits in my new Bellroy sling (the Ricoh GR III is still significantly smaller and lighter, albeit without a zoom lens), so I’m entertaining the thought of bringing it on our next holiday. Oh, that’s right. We’ve just booked a trip to Tokyo next year, wayyy behind the trend, but hopefully everyone’s had their fill of Japan by now and it’ll be less crowded when we get there. If I do need a spare battery, I’ll pick up the Panasonic equivalent model from Yodobashi Camera or something.
Another reason for the renewed interest was an update to the Leica FOTOS app (which connects to cameras) that came out this week. For the uninitiated, ‘Leica Looks’ are essentially a series of live filters that can be installed onto newer cameras. Owners of older models have been out of luck, but with this new update they can be retroactively applied in the app to any JPEG taken with a Leica camera. While trying it out, I discovered that photos I’ve been taking with the Leica LUX camera app also qualify as “taken with a Leica camera”, meaning you can apply these Looks to iPhone photos for free as well.
So far, I’ve been surprised by how well photos from its Micro Four-Thirds sensor have turned out, especially in daylight. Low light photos are quite smudgy/noisy if you elect to use an ISO value over 3200. I’m fortunate that Leica’s updated D-Lux 8 model this year was such a relative disappointment: a surface-level redesign of the camera’s body and UI without any improvements to the lens, sensor, or processor. It’s good news for me since an uncompelling update is money saved. Ignoring the PS5 I got in May, NOT upgrading stuff has been a bit of a theme this year. I don’t even covet Fuji’s X100VI camera one bit, maybe because it’s been so (artificially?) rare and overpriced.
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Our new broadband line was finally activated, and it’s resulted in a doubling of accessible bandwidth. In one speed test, I got over 1.1 Gbps (symmetrical) on my iPhone. At this point, our fleet of un-upgraded hardware is holding us back more than the network. In a couple of years, when every device in the house actually supports WiFi 7, I’ll upgrade the router and unlock the full 10Gbps that we currently have.
How little use am I making of this plentiful bandwidth? Well, listening to a lot of Apple Music Radio.
You probably missed this because it hardly made the headlines, but Apple Music doubled the number of their live, hosted radio stations from three to six. Apple Music Club, Chill, and Música Uno now join Apple Music 1, Hits, and Country. In a world where personalized, algorithmic stations/playlists are plentiful and pedestrian, I think these human-led stations are a wonderful zig to Spotify DJ’s zag.
Some of the best artists I’ve discovered this year were serendipitous encounters while listening to Zane Lowe, Rebecca Judd, Matt Wilkinson, or Dotty taking listeners through their latest picks on Apple Music 1. I think receiving and interacting with other people’s passion and opinions is a key part of the cultural experience of music, so these DJs play an important role that is growing ever smaller. It’s so good to see Apple Music expanding their Radio offering rather than shutting it down.
I used to have a Shortcut on my phone to launch Apple Music 1, but with these new stations it seemed time to build a quick launcher. Now, I can start live stations and my personalized stations from the Control Center, Today Screen, or even with the Action Button.
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iOS 18.2 came out of beta, with new Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji and Image Playground. They are okay for a bit of fun, but definitely won’t cause any artists or illustrators to become unemployed. It’s interesting to ask if they ever will, because Apple could certainly get the models there with time, even with fully on-device inference, so it’s just a question of intention. But I don’t think there are any brakes on this train and every company is onboard, they’ve just bought different tickets.
I’ll try for a shorter bullet point update this week.
It’s hard to believe we’re already done with the first week of December. Every year, I say Christmas crept up on me and I don’t feel it coming at all. Now I accept that it’s just the nature of Christmas in the tropics (without winter), and if I don’t surround myself with visual signifiers of the season, the mind forgets what the body doesn’t feel.
Nintendo released Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete, the offline, self-contained, definitive version of their mobile AC game, and I decided to buy it after all. I played the live service version briefly when it came out, but soon decided I didn’t like the in-app purchase model. This is much better. So much better, in fact, that I have spent several hours this weekend fishing and harvesting fruit.
The game was actually mentioned in my first-ever weekly post back in July 2020. After 7 years of iteration, it now feels like a massive game with tons of content (clothing and furniture to buy and craft) and new functionality bolted on. Currently, it’s snowing in the world and the seasonal events have got my campsite decorated with sleighs and piles of gifts and I’m wearing a reindeer hat… and dare I say? It kind of feels like Christmas is coming.
If you’re playing too, add me to your world with the Camper Card below! I believe it’s just a one-way thing, and we won’t get to interact for real since there are no servers involved. And don’t forget, the game is half price now and will go up to $20 at the end of January 2025.
We collected our Zeiss Optical Inserts for Vision Pro (prescription lenses that click in magnetically), and the setup experience was pretty cool. The device detects that they’re in, and makes you redo the eye setup process. Then it registers the new lenses on your profile by having you look at a QR code printed inside the box. Given that my contact lenses are “weaker” than my regular glasses, I’m now seeing everything in the Vision Pro with even more clarity than I was before.
Leica fixed a deal-breaking bug in Leica LUX where your preference of ProRAW or HEIF file format wasn’t remembered between sessions. They also fixed some other small things that bothered me but aren’t worth mentioning. This makes it a viable camera app for everyday use because it gets you HEIF files with the gentler/less sharpened look of shooting in ProRAW. Plus you can choose a “Leica Look” color profile to start from, and non-destructively try others or revert to the underlying original photo afterwards. I like it enough to put a shortcut on my Lock Screen.
Our home broadband plan was up for renewal, and I got a call from the company to that effect. They wanted me to give the last 4 digits of my national ID number over the phone for verification before they would even tell me anything. “How do I verify you’re really from the company?”, I asked. “Can you tell me something you know about me?”, I offered, to which they said “We can’t share any customer information”, and agreed when I asked if I was just supposed to trust them. I said that didn’t work for me, and so they could just send me whatever special offers they wanted via email instead.
The offer was fine, and I decided to stick with them for another two years because it’s the best price I’ve seen anywhere. And as a bonus, we’ll be getting an upgrade to a 10gbps line. We’ll only be utilizing a maximum of 2.5gbps though, because that’s the maximum supported wired input on the WiFi 6E router I just got a few months ago.
Renovation noises at home continued, and someone lodged a complaint with the housing board against our new neighbor’s contractors. It wasn’t us, but I can see how this might not be the warm welcome anyone would hope for. There are also reports from other residents that they’ve been seeing ceiling leaks during the recent storms, and mysteriously, these are people lower down in the building! Fingers crossed this doesn’t grow to affect us, because I can’t take any more drama.
One noisy afternoon, I decided to finally pay a visit to my local library branch after talking about it for the last six months, and… it’s not much to write home about. Lots of retirees sitting around playing Pokémon Go and reading magazines. Afterwards I decided to eat at Yakiniku Like, a place that seems well designed for solo diners. I got my own little personal grill, and ate 200g of beef short plate with 300g of rice (and a huge mound of shredded cabbage) for a little over $20 and went home very happy.
We went out for a much nicer dinner on Thursday, checking out Hayop on Jose’s recommendation. It’s affiliated with the Manam restaurant in Manila, a fact that only landed as I was looking at the menu — I ate there a couple of times back in 2019 when I was there for work. The prices here have been proportionately raised, but the food is nearly as good as I remembered, so that’s fair. I like Filipino food because it respects the power of pork fat.
Testing the Leica Lux app with these
It turns out that writing bullet points ≠ shorter updates when you’re a typer-yapper like me.
I wanted to binge an entire anime series in a week and decided to go with Summertime Rendering. It’s a time loop story that feels like a visual novel game adaptation, but actually started as a manga series. I was hoping more for sci-fi but it’s really a supernatural thing. At 25 episodes, it became a bit of a slog near the end as the multiple timelines became too convoluted to follow. Don’t really recommend.
Netflix released a new 6-part spy series called Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whislaw (aka Q in recent James Bond films, and the voice of Paddington). I was optimistic, but while it’s not as bad as most Netflix shows, it still suffers from the Marvel-ization of popular culture where any seriousness or suspense is immediately undercut by comic relief before it can mean anything. That’s not the only problem with it, but the result is a show that feels like background fodder for phone fiddling.
Months after the Katseye moment, we watched the Pop Star Academy show that shows their formation and training over two years. It was interesting to see non-Asian idols like Lexie chafe against unethical manipulation in light of HYBE’s recent troubles with NewJeans. I don’t think the industry’s current models will hold up well as talent starts to realize they hold the keys to their fandoms and can stream online on their own. It’s like K-Pop’s In Rainbows moment.
I also think HYBE made a strategic error in greenlighting this behind-the-scenes show with Netflix, and it’s translated into Katseye’s failure to take off with an international (beyond K-Pop) audience. Fans of J-Pop and K-Pop aren’t surprised to see the rough training and emotional abuse their idols go through, but people seeing that shit for the first time probably feel terrible about supporting the whole business, especially when adult music execs gleefully admit on camera that they fucked with the teenaged girls’ trust in each other to create more drama.
Yiwen shared her Spotify Wrapped on IG and I learnt about the artist known as Night Tempo, a self-proclaimed “retro culture curator” who puts out city pop-inflected music that sounds exactly like how the perfect night drive must feel. Check out his latest album, Connection on Apple Music.
For something less weeby and more eclectic, Jean Dawson’s new album Glimmer of God is worth a playthrough. I’m going to be putting the opening song Darlin’ on playlists for quite awhile, I’m sure.
ROSÉ’s debut album rosie dropped, and what I’ve heard so far sounds like competent pop with a teenaged guitar girl’s poetry notebook slant. That’s not a knock; it’s as satisfying a sub-genre as a sad man’s whiskey-soaked heartbreak blues. I’m still feeling good about my prediction that she’ll turn out to be the most musically interesting Blackpink alum.
It’s been a minute since I checked the National Gallery out, so I wasn’t sure what Peishan and I would find when we dropped by on Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately, there were some new SE Asian pieces either freshly out on rotation, or that I’d forgotten, and there was enough to see without having to shell out for the special exhibits.
There’s plenty of time to see them yet, as they don’t refresh things very often. I looked it up online later, and some of the stuff we saw will be on display for 3–4 more years. Apparently only 10% of the total collection (stored somewhere in Jurong) can be on display at any one time, so I don’t know why they rotate so infrequently. Show me more of the stuff before I die, dammit.
We went by because Peishan took the day off and we’d planned to have lunch nearby. It struck me that I haven’t been appreciating the privilege of my free time enough — I should be doing things like this on my own more often.
We saw a brilliant video artwork series of Thai farmers and villagers sitting on the ground out in the fields, contemplating large Western paintings set up in front of them, casually discussing what they saw. Just saying things like “The man is sleeping soundly. He looks happy because they’ve harvested so much food”. I wanted to stand there and watch it in its hour-long entirety when it struck me that there’s nothing stopping me from coming back another day to do that. To be one of those people who has a whole hour to spend sitting in front of one painting. So maybe I will!
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My mother-in-law (who has no stomach for violence or misery) came to stay with us for a couple of days, which meant that I could only watch the family-friendly movies from my collection and MUBI watchlist. We started with Charade (1963), a classic I can’t believe I’d never seen before. Audrey Hepburn was a phenomenon — utterly faultless and impossible to look away from. With Cary Grant we’ve got our modern day version in George Clooney, but I don’t know who could ever be like Audrey.
We also watched Futura (2021), an Italian docu-feature where young people across the country were interviewed about their hopes and dreams. To me, it only reinforced the idea of Europe in decline, and yet maybe that’s… okay? What’s so bad about living in the shadow of a greater civilization and inhabiting what’s left of their magnificent buildings. Someone’s gotta do it.
And then a movie that has been so hyped up by everyone who’s seen it that there was little chance it would live up: Paddington (2014). Nicolette, whose cats we also visited this week (see below), was a major promoter and reckons it’s a five-star film. I gave it 3.5 but plan to watch the sequel soon—I think it’ll fare better now that my expectations are properly calibrated.
I was left to my own questionable watchlist on Thursday and Friday, which meant seeing Festen (1998), the first official ‘Dogme 95’ film (painful in its overall ugliness); Ema (2019), a dance-centric exploration of fucked up families and urban frustration starring Gael García Bernal and Mariana Di Girolamo as two assholes who adopt a kid; and In the Fade (2017), a German revenge story with Diane Kruger avenging her son being blown to bits by modern-day Nazis.
The absolute standout film of the week was So Long, My Son (2019), a Chinese language film by Wang Xiaoshuai with a three-hour running time. It follows two families over a period of three decades, living with tragedy and being tossed around by the rapid, true-story evolution of Chinese society. I expected the time to pass slowly but everything was handled with such authenticity and emotional power that I hardly noticed.
On TV, we caught up on season 2 of Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow rap competition reality show, and none of the contestants are really standing out the way Flawless Real Talk and D-Smoke did in the first season. It looks like Netflix decided to cheap out and rush the audition process, basically only holding one in Atlanta whereas S1 held them in three cities. So it never feels like you’re seeing the very best talent the streets have to offer.
The main effect of watching the show so far has been an increased desire to play Kendrick Lamar’s new GNX album on repeat. It also made look up Old Man Saxon from S1, so was delighted to find that he released a new EP and single recently.
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It was Thanksgiving week in the US, and trust me I tried to find a Black Friday deal that I wanted to spend on, but the only things I’ve bought for myself on Amazon were cheap alkaline batteries from Japan (the Verbatim brand is alive and well there!) and several boxes of Yorkshire Gold tea.
It feels weird, spending hours online and hardly finding anything I want to buy. On Sunday we spent a few hours at the Paragon mall for some Christmas shopping and I found myself a new 6L Venture Sling by Bellroy. It was cheaper than the online Black Friday price, but only because they wanted S$16 for shipping.
I also considered this 4L Everything Sling from Moment, but I think it’s too small to be the Goldilocks bag I need. I have Uniqlo’s round mini shoulder bag like 98% of the world, but need something between that and a laptop messenger/backpack. Just enough to bring around some combination of e-reader, Switch, camera, power bank, umbrella, JisuLife fan, and water bottle.
The only things left might be digital game purchases that I might have time to play in December, such as Metaphor: ReFantazio, the latest masterpiece from the director of the Persona games, or Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
While the Persona games are undeniable masterpieces, they’re also looooong. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit down and finish a game in one sitting, so that’s what I did with Thank Goodness You’re Here, which is published by Panic Inc. (Untitled Goose Game, Firewatch). It’s a cartoony comedic platformer set in Northern England, filled with authentic accents, dialects, and small-town imagery — what you’d expect from a British company named Coal Supper. I highly recommend it, especially if you can find it on sale during the holiday season.
sangsara.net 