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Tag: Music

  • Week 33.24: A close call

    Week 33.24: A close call

    The last update almost became my final one, because I nearly died this week!

    We got the tragic news that a good friend’s dad had passed away (there have been so many cases of this lately), and as Kim is out of town, I was about to go down to the funeral wake for the both of us. I booked a Grab (local Uber-like) ride around a quarter-to-six, and headed down to meet him when it looked like he was close enough.

    As I approached the pick-up point, I saw the car approaching and waved at him, walking continuously down the stairs to the road as I watched him do a three-point turnaround to come at me from the right direction. But suddenly, instead of slowing down for me to get in, the car suddenly lurched forward at full speed. At this point, I was maybe at the very last step down, and the car was coming directly towards me instead of parallel, like you would when picking a passenger up.

    In that moment, my first thought was “is he trying to scare me, as some sort of joke?” This was followed by alarm as he was clearly not slowing down, and then a last-minute instinct to back away. The next thing I saw was the car slamming into the short wall beside the step I was just on, as I fell back on my ass. And then I was covered in debris, missing both shoes, and feeling pain beginning to spread through my legs as shock began setting in.

    I’m quite sure I was hit in the right knee at some point — there’s silver car paint on my jeans to prove it. I recall feeling my left foot being squeezed inside my shoe for just a fraction of a second before it slipped out, as my weight shifted backwards as I fell. Both shoes were later recovered underneath either side of the car. I was there at the point of impact, and then I wasn’t.

    Afterwards, an alternate memory emerged: the car may have hit the wall on the other side first, changing its trajectory towards me, but this initial impact would have dampened its speed. Perhaps my knee was only clipped by a part that was already damaged, explaining how I got a paint transfer without a broken kneecap.

    I remember people nearby running over after hearing the crash, yelling for an ambulance and the police to be called, telling me to stop trying to get up (I backed away from the car on my hands and tried to see if my legs were still unbroken), and to wait for help to arrive. A very kind man took off and came back with a cold can of Pocari Sweat for me; a neighbor I know came and kept me calm by talking things through; and the driver called for help.

    After trying unsuccessfully to call Kim, I took some photos and figured out that my legs were still attached, although moving my left ankle and right knee hurt. The police and paramedics arrived in about 10 minutes and checked me out. I was still shaking from the adrenaline and giving them too much detail, like apologizing that my feet were very sweaty right now as they peeled my socks off. They decided that I might have some fractures and would need to go to the hospital for scans as this was going to be in a police accident report.

    Side note: I don’t really know what happened yet. The driver claims he was trying to brake but the car didn’t respond. I overheard the police interviewing him and asking if there was any chance he mistook the pedals and accelerated instead. I suppose there will be an investigation.

    As I was being loaded into the ambulance, I heard the ominous approach of cars and imagined them crashing into us, and realized that this episode might end with a lasting, debilitating fear of going outside after I’d recovered. I anticipated PTSD, nightmares, and other new items to put in my therapy cart.

    What followed was a couple of hours waiting in the A&E/ER department of a general hospital, trying to joke with the orderlies, and getting x-rayed by about five young people at once who might have never done it before? But no complaints for me, everyone was incredibly nice and got me through it. The verdict, no major fractures (time will tell if there are hairline fractures, specifically two weeks of observation time), and I was lucky to get away with bruises and sprained ligaments.

    A tale of two ankles

    Amusingly, this care even extended to a small nick on my right ankle that was noted by the doctors. Although the pain was concentrated elsewhere, they promised they’d clean that “wound” and dress it for me before leaving. They did so fastidiously, washing it in antiseptic fluid and applying an antibiotic gel and bandage. Then I was also given a supply of said antiseptics and antibiotics to care for it at home. The bandage fell off after my shower and, despite being a delicate hypochondriac, I was happy to just slap a band-aid on it.

    The whole time, from when I was in the ambulance (intrusive thoughts wanting to say “amberlamps” out loud), until the next day, I kept hearing Kanye’s “Through The Wire” in my head, specifically the line “Look at how death missed his ass / Unbreakable, what you thought they’d call me Mr. Glass?” I really want to see M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (2024), by the way.

    Forty-eight hours later, the reality that I almost didn’t make it still feels surreal. I joked around a bit on Instagram and repeated the story to people who asked, but I don’t know what it means yet. The only nightmare I’ve had was about my malfunctioning air-conditioning unit at home—a small-potato problem in comparison. Part of me expected to emerge like Jeff Bridges in Fearless (1993), recklessly putting myself in risky situations with a newfound sense of invincibility. But then I remembered Final Destination (2000), where death stalks its survivors, biding its time for another strike. That thought put me off from celebrating my good fortune, and I’ve just been sitting on these thoughts since.

    I know that if I had arrived downstairs just a couple of seconds earlier, I would have made it down to the road level and been directly in the car’s path, with no wall beside me to stop it. All I had to do was take another step forward, and both legs and my pelvis would have been crushed between the car and the wall (which stands unscathed today). Bones would have shattered beyond repair, blood would be everywhere, everyone nearby would have passed out from the gore. If I survived that at all, the next few years would still be passed in immeasurable pain and I doubt I’d have the strength or will to keep going.

    What does it really mean to miss that outcome by half a meter? Probably nothing, right? Because we’re surrounded by chaos and death is always just a coin toss away? So I guess it might be back to normal life for me, sans new epiphanies. At least I hope, but when my foot feels better and I finally leave the house, I might find myself paralyzed with fear just trying to cross the street. I guess we’ll see.

    But I have come out of this with some practical advice, which I will now share with you.

    1. Always carry a power bank: When they said I’d have to go to the hospital and might only be discharged the next day, I wasn’t worried because I had my phone and enough power to get through a whole day. I used my phone for so much during this time: updating people, notifying Grab about the accident (1 star), paying the bill. You don’t want to worry about battery life. Bring a power bank with you everywhere. This tiny Anker one has an integrated USB-C port, supports fast charging, and a 5,000mAh capacity.
    2. Wear your shoes loose: It might not help if you’re hanging upside down by your sneakers, but my loose laces might have saved at least one foot from being crushed in the moment. I hope to one day see the dash cam footage of the crash, because how I ended up jumping back and leaving both shoes behind is a bit of a mystery.
    3. Play more video games: Let your kids play them too, because everyone should train their reflexes. When the moment comes, you don’t want to be the person who freezes up. You want jumping, running, dodging, and picking up gold coins to be second nature. Somebody asked me, “Why not sports instead of video games?” Hey, I’m trying to be inclusive here. Not everyone likes sports!
    4. Take more photos: Another thing you want to come naturally at moments like these is taking photos. As evidence, for later reference, or just for sharing a story. You can’t tell yourself to remember this only when something big happens. Just train the muscle so you’re always capturing.
    5. Don’t assume anything about cars: I really got complacent around cars, and you don’t appreciate how heavy and powerful and dangerous they are until one comes at you fast. I’m never jaywalking again with a car “safely in the distance”. Be alert more. You don’t need music in your ears all the time, either.

    ===

    I had some other stuff I wanted to talk about before this happened, but they seem small now so I’ll just mention two things.

    The Halide iPhone camera app got an update that shoots photos without any AI-ish processing. They call it “Process Zero“. The resulting aesthetic is much more in line with regular cameras, and how iPhone photos used to look years ago. We’ve flown too close to the sun now, and everything is too bright, so this nostalgic return to the limits of physical lenses and sensors comes with a welcome, natural look. The above and this post’s Featured Image at the top were taken with this mode, plus editing of the underlying RAW file.

    Our home internet speed was suffering, so I did some troubleshooting and discovered the thin fiber optic cable between modem and wall access point had been coiled too tightly, and was even bent in one spot. After straightening it out, speed tests jumped noticeably. I even got a full gigabit up and down to my iPhone on WiFi 6, not even 6E.

    Stay safe out there. With any luck, I’ll see you next week!

  • Week 32.24

    Week 32.24

    It was Kim’s birthday and to celebrate, we went out for some great yakiniku at a place called Yakiniquest (the name gets points for trying, I guess) where the service was great but the food was incredible. It was probably one of my Top 3 wagyu experiences, along with Matsusaka beef in Kyoto (we walked into an acclaimed, booked-out restaurant and were given a table that had just no-showed), and of course, Kobe beef in the delightful, jazz-adopting city of the same name.

    As an extra surprise, I orchestrated Cameo shoutouts from celebrities on two of the reality shows we unapologetically enjoy bingeing together: Below Deck Down Under, and Gogglebox. I put them on our media server and turned the TV on in the morning, telling her new special episodes had just dropped overnight. She bought it, and it was a fun moment.

    The rest of the week was spent in the tight embrace of the Apple Vision Pro’s dual loop band. One of the things I hoped to get out of being an early adopter of the AVP (both the product and the platform) was a closeness to this new spatial computing form as it germinates, to have a sense of “spatial nativeness” develop in my brain. A sense of its conventions and limits that would help me intuit how to navigate and create new experiences for it, should I ever want to. Which means always being on the lookout for new apps (both programs and applications) and trying them out.

    This week I spent time in a social app called inSpaze, built exclusively for the Vision Pro. As a result of that positioning, and the lack of current competition on the App Store, it’s become the de facto place to hang out and meet other Vision Pro owners to swap stories and recommendations. Try to imagine a cuter, visual Clubhouse, where you spend time in virtual living rooms you can decorate and personalize. In addition to chatting, you can look at photos and 3D models together, listen to music, and play card/board games.

    It’s worth pointing out that you don’t get a normal webcam view of each person, because you’re all wearing Vision Pros. So like all videoconferencing apps on the system, it uses Apple’s Personas: photorealistic avatars based on face scans you do when setting up your Vision Pro, that use its many sensors and cameras to mirror what your real eyes and face are doing.

    If joining a roomful of random strangers from around the world and jumping into whatever conversations they’ve got going on sounds like an introvert’s worst nightmare, that’s because it probably is. I did it anyway, and found it slightly thrilling but also chiller than expected. For one, the use of Personas creates psychological distance; it’s you, but it’s also more a puppet that looks like you. I commented on this and others agreed it made them feel safer.

    What struck me most, though, was how nice and welcoming the community feels, because we’re all early adopter nerds enthused to be sharing this novel experience. It reminds me of the internet when I was a teenager, where the thrill of meeting someone from across the world was pure and untainted by the danger and cynicism that later crept into online spaces. And of course, there’s the fact that a community gated behind a S$5,299 purchase is more likely to be well behaved.

    One nice touch that allows truly cross-border communications is the real-time translation that puts subtitles under each person speaking. In the daytime here, I’ve met a lot of Chinese speakers, and this feature has helped me to follow some conversations I otherwise wouldn’t have.

    It was during one of these afternoon sessions that I met one of the key people behind the app, and we got to talking about their opportunity, business model, and product that got me thinking more about the challenges that smaller developers are facing with this new platform. It’s a well-reported fact by now that AVP sales are low by Apple’s standards. While that’s easily explained by the steep entry price and the challenge of defining a new product category, it still poses a chicken/egg dilemma for creators.

    Solo developers and very small teams doing this on the side can probably justify toying with small apps and selling them for a few dollars, but anyone building something ambitious on the level of a social network or massively multiplayer game, for a total addressable market in the low six-figures — AND having to bankroll it for the next couple of years while Apple works on the cheaper model and second generation Pro — is being asked to take on more risk.

    I have no doubt that Apple will persevere and iterate until this category succeeds, like they always do, so it’s not a question of whether Apple Vision has a future. It just needs to convince developers and their investors to stay faithful, and seed the demand. It’s going to be tricky, and I’d like to see Apple advertising hard for the next 18 months to keep spatial computing visible and galvanize the ecosystem. Even if people can’t find the means to buy the product, they should want to.

    As further proof of the magical, early-internet vibe, I logged into inSpaze early one morning and met a varied group of American users, including a hospital administrator and VR-obsessed truck driver. After many in the room logged off, I found myself speaking with a Canadian man who casually mentioned working with tech podcasting luminary Leo Laporte over a decade ago. As he continued, it dawned on me that he was Ray Maxwell, an 80-year-old polymath whose name I would often hear on Leo’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) network, where he once had his own podcast about aviation and various science topics.

    As a one-time avid listener of TWiT, I can’t overstate how starstruck I felt as Ray told me stories from his expansive career: time spent at McDonnell Aircraft in the 60s, adjacent to where the Gemini space capsules were being built; color science engineering at a company later acquired by Kodak, recommending SF stories by his friend (two-time Hugo award-winning author!?!?) Spider Robinson; and how he’s recently been into capturing spatial video for the Vision Pro.

    I recognize that the early days of any new frontier, team, or relationship are a special thrill that can’t be expected to last, so it’s up to us to maximize and enjoy every moment. Feel free to reach out if you’re getting into spatial computing and want to swap notes!

    ===

    Music

    It must be the peak of the summer release schedule, because so much new music has come out this week.

    The new Glass Animals album is one of those that starts with a banger and keeps the energy going until you’re five songs in and picking up your phone to check the tracklist in disbelief. It’s called I Love You So F*ing Much and it’s soaked through with space beats, vocoders, and addictive melodies.

    I knew they had a cult following before 2020’s Dreamland introduced them to everyone, but I foolishly never got deep into it because the phenomenally successful Heat Waves overshadowed every other song. On hindsight, that tune would have done the same on 99% of albums — it’s the longest charting song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. Now I’m excited to soon experience their two older albums for the first time, ZABA and How to Be a Human Being.

    ROLE MODEL is back and he’s shed his hipster-emo guise for a cowboy hat after breaking up with Emma Chamberlain (I just found out). Kansas Anymore is filled with the same lite and lovable pop earworms that I enjoyed on his last album, just a lil’ bit twangier.

    beabadoobee’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves is finally out, and I’ll admit that while I’ve liked all her past releases, none of them have ever made it into heavy rotation for me. I think this will be the one that does it. Early singles Ever Seen and Take A Bite were strong songs in her usual nostalgic 90s alt-rock style (with charming videos by her boyfriend, Jake Erland), but the newest one Beaches is perfect! In any of the last three decades, Beaches would have been an instant classic. She made it while working with Rick Rubin at his ‘Shangri-La’ studio in Malibu.

    Rick Rubin continues to fascinate me as a kind of guru or shaman of the music industry, somehow wielding enormous influence without any formal musical ability himself. He’s somehow able to hypnotize or imbue artists with the confidence to create their best work, just by sitting with them and giving feedback. He wrote a book about his creative process that some reviews call an essential bible, while others say it’s a collection of trite cliches. I suppose I’ll have to read it for myself soon.

    I also found myself enthusiastically nodding along to Killer Mike’s new album, entitled Songs For Sinners And Saints by “Michael & The Mighty Midnight Revival”. It’s loaded with funky beats, soulful playing, gospel choirs, and some very sharp rapping.

    It’s safe to come out now. The Smashing Pumpkins have finished releasing their three-part concept rock opera, whatever it was called. They’re now back with a proper album that promises the good old guitar-driven songs they were loved for back in the day. It’s called… er, Aghori Mhori Mei, a title that doesn’t inspire any confidence that Billy Corgan is back on his meds. My god, the edgelordism is only accelerating with age! Here are some lyrics chosen at random: “Milk such blood / To fare thee lost from all but way / And awaken the sea I light / Our slumbers save the sleep / Wherefore we climb…” Kerrang has given it 4/5, at least. I kinda enjoyed it on a musical level but wasn’t listening closely. I’ll keep trying.

    Vultures 2 came out and I didn’t even know. I think I tapped through to Kanye’s artist page in Apple Music just on a whim and was surprised to see it at the top. Nobody wants to support him anymore with all the shit he pulls, but he’s probably better off with no one knowing about this album, if my two playthroughs so far are any indication. It’s a shoddy mess, with some songs having the seeds of greatness in them, but just withered and stunted on the vine. North West features on one song again: the awful “Bomb”, which has her repeating level 1 Duolingo Japanese phrases like “ohaiyo gozaimasu, konnichiwa” over a truly busted beat. According to one recent IG post, he’s still ‘updating it daily’ on streaming platforms so maybe check back in a few months to hear the album’s final form. Or don’t.

  • Week 30.24

    Week 30.24

    An enduring memory/scar I have from my university days is watching a documentary on the UK’s Channel 4 called Fat Girls and Feeders. It was about women who were extremely overweight (the term ‘morbidly obese’ may not be strong enough), to the point of being completely dependent on others for everything, and the (non-fat) men who liked and kept them that way. These women were immobile prisoners, either confined to bed or needing support to get around their homes, which were fitted with handlebars and accessibility fixtures everywhere. It was a saddening story of abuse and sadism in the guise of a consensual kink.

    But why am I mentioning this? Well, the week got off to an awful start with Kim slipping at home and pulling/spraining/tearing a leg muscle, badly enough that she couldn’t put any weight on it without wincing. So she’s spent the last six days lying in bed resting and icing it, and I’ve been the nursemaid and caregiver helping her to the bathroom, making dinner, fetching water, just being on call for whatever. And having gone through this, let me just say! Those feeder guys are really sick if they find this fun!

    Thankfully, the swelling has gone down and the pain is moderating. She can now get up and walk around slowly on her own, but sitting in certain positions still hurts. It’ll probably be a few more weeks before life gets back to normal, but this was an eye-opening preview of elderly life and if we don’t make it rich enough to afford the best AI robocare, then I hope I die before I get old.

    ===

    • 📺 We’ve been watching Netflix’s new Japanese reality series, The Boyfriend. I’d hoped it would be a spiritual successor to my beloved Terrace House, only with gay men, but it doesn’t quite capture the essence of what made TH great. Perhaps because of what happened with TH, the commentary panel here never goes too hard on the ‘contestants’, but more than that, I think it’s just a different sort of show. Terrace House was more about watching young people learning to live together and develop over a longer period, whereas The Boyfriend is overtly about “finding love” and takes place over just a few weeks.
    • 📺 We also resumed and finished Season 8 of Below Deck after a break of several months. My usual complaints about Captain Lee’s leadership apply: he’s not hands-on at all, communication is poor, and his boundaries/consequences aren’t clear and can’t be taken seriously. However, because this season took place in Feb–Mar 2020, just as Covid was brewing, seeing the crew get increasingly ominous updates from family abroad and ultimately being shut down two charters early makes for an interesting document of a very strange time.
    • 📺 The season finale of Apple TV+’s true crime/courtroom drama Presumed Innocent came out on Wednesday, and I think they stuck the landing. It’s one of the better shows on the service, and has apparently been renewed for a second season, which I assume will feature a completely new story and setting, in the manner of True Detective.
    • 📺 I’ve started on Season 1 of The Big Door Prize, also on Apple TV+, and think it’s rather good. It’s about a small town that receives a mysterious machine that tells you what your potential is, and soon everyone is reevaluating their lives and having crises. But it’s also a comedy with surprising emotional depth.
    • 🎬 I watched the seminal short film La Jetée (1962) on MUBI and immediately thought, ‘Oh this is quite like 12 Monkeys’, and unfortunately saw its twist ending coming. I wrote “√12 Monkeys” on Letterboxd, thinking I was very clever. Then I looked it up and hey, 12 Monkeys was explicitly inspired by La Jetée, so that makes sense. Despite that, it’s a must-watch because the form of it (a slideshow of black and white stills with a voiceover) is ingenious and works so well to create a slippery narrative vehicle: is this all a document? A memory? An oral story passed around in a broken future? —4 stars.
    • 🎬 I also watched The Bat Woman (1968), a truly terrible B-movie, only because it was due to leave MUBI. It reminded me of some schlocky sci-fi Singaporean films from the 60s that I’ve seen at film festivals; the acting is either hammy or wooden, the special effects are often just literal toys, and the story is a nonsensical farce. A rich lady solves crimes as Batwoman, which is also her Lucha wrestling persona (I suppose to sidestep any copyright claims), and helps the police catch a mad scientist who is trying to breed a fishman monster. It ends with a sexist joke: Batwoman, in her civilian clothes celebrating victory with two male partners, screams and hides upon seeing a mouse while the men laugh. —1.5 stars.
    • 🦻 Very little music was played this week, but I enjoyed a run-through of Jesse Malin’s first album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction, in preparation for Silver Patron Saints, the tribute album due out in September to raise awareness and funds for his recovery. It will feature covers by Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Bleachers, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr., Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello, The Wallflowers, Spoon, and many more.
    • Oh I nearly forgot! XG released Something Ain’t Right, the first single from their second mini-album (out 8 Nov) and it’s another banger!
  • Week 29.24

    Week 29.24

    I managed to go a whole week without visiting the Apple Store.

    We did visit a new branch of Go! KBBQ at Bukit Timah Plaza; the original on Amoy Street is perpetually busy and comes recommended by the Korean community (so I’m told), and even has its own aging room in the back with a viewing window. The new one lacks the aging room but IS in an aging suburban mall, which increases your chances of getting a table. We overestimated as usual, and ordered a 690g set of pork belly, neck, and jowl. They do the cooking for you — there are illustrated STOP! signs telling you not to even attempt it yourself — and everything was perfect.

    ===

    I was saddened by the passing of another senior relative, aged 86, apparently from heart failure. The shock was compounded by the fact that I had just seen him a few weeks ago for the first time in years, at another uncle’s memorial, and he looked in great health. I remember him for hosting some of the more enjoyable Chinese New Year get-togethers of my childhood, where I learnt to play blackjack at the dinner table together with adults, spinning the lazy Susan around to draw cards off the pile, sweeping the pot (ashtray) of coins into my arms after winning a big hand, then experiencing the pain of losing everything — great preparation for the Terra Luna collapse decades later.

    Due to a contagious illness at my parents’ place, I attended the wake alone and discovered a massive 9-storey building in Woodlands with multi-faith halls and columbarium facilities. The majority of these that I’ve attended have been at Singapore Casket in the Lavender district, a much humbler affair. Woodlands Memorial feels modern, which is to say efficient, cookie-cutter, and almost soulless. That joke is nowhere as distasteful as the marketing position I found on one of their posters: “Singapore’s premier one-stop afterlife venue”.

    ===

    I spent almost all of Monday installing Windows XP on my iPad and MacBook using the newly approved UTM SE app from the App Store. The goal was to play an old Windows game that I have fond memories of: High Seas Solitaire. It’s really not much to look at, and the entire package weighs in at under 800kb. Published by ZapSpot, the game was part of a series of ad-supported titles that make Flappy Bird look like a big-budget production.

    But in the early 2000s, I was stuck in a dreary clerical job that involved juggling Microsoft Excel and Access, stacks of official papers, and a cabinet full of file binders. High Seas Solitaire was on my Win95-powered computer, and it might as well have contained an entire 3D metaverse. When I found the above gameplay video on YouTube, I was shocked at how much detail my nostalgic brain had invented: I remembered a calming nautical world with ocean sounds, a creaking wooden ship, and seagulls flying overhead. In reality, the game has like four SFX clips that it plays at various times and that’s it.

    I’ve forgotten the exact rules, but it wasn’t your standard solitaire game. You had to match cards that added up to 14, but pairs could also be matched, I think? It was just very satisfying to complete, and easy enough to do that a few times during each lunch break. I haven’t found any game based on the same mechanics since, but I dream about it.

    Alas, while I managed to get Windows up and running, the game itself would not run. This led me to install VMware and try other online emulators, repeatedly install Windows, and even create CD-ROM images containing the game file for the virtual machines to mount. But each time, the game wouldn’t get past the loading screen. Finally, I asked Ci’en if she would try running it on her PC, and when even that didn’t work, I threw the whole project out of the window. Small comfort: perhaps even if I had succeeded, the CrowdStrike BSoD debacle this week might have wiped out my VM.

    When I’m rich, I’ll bankroll the creation of a new, truly immersive version for visionOS.

    ===

    I watched two video essays from the Digging The Greats YouTube channel which usually focuses on music history and song breakdowns, but these were about an “experiment” where the host tries to only listen to music off an iPod for a month. He deletes streaming apps on his phone, commits to use aux cables for in-car listening, and eventually goes down a rabbit hole where he also quits social media and starts using a dedicated digital camera and prints photos in lieu of Instagram (why? It’s not as if he was using Instagram to take the photos).

    This sort of modern tech consequence confluence happens over and over throughout the videos. He says this experiment changed his life and his whole outlook on music, especially regarding the influence of algorithms. Because he has an iPod with finite storage and no internet connection, he has to make choices about what music to buy and load onto it; he can’t just rely on an omnifarious cloud library. Thus he makes it into a whole personality: he introduces the idea into his everyday conversations and asks musicians and DJs he meets for music recommendations. He thinks ahead about what music he’s going to listen to. And music takes up even more space in his mind (if that were even possible).

    None of these benefits actually required an iPod! He could have conducted the same experiment on his iPhone with some self-discipline, e.g. only listening to music downloaded offline, which can only be done at home near a laptop. But the iPod is a physical object that makes limitations tangible and the experiment is a construct that reminds you of a goal — these sorts of things are great for creativity and focus. It’s the intentionality and “mode setting” of what he’s doing that’s producing the results. And this is something we can and should all practice from time to time.

    A few years back, I committed to taking only black-and-white photos for an entire month. I can now identify that period very easily when scrolling through my photo library. It was an exciting, liberating, and frustrating exercise all at once that forced more conscious decisions and felt like I was working with new gear (sans the expense). When you keep a mission like that at the front of your mind, you look out for interesting photos everywhere, which is why so many people take their favorite photos on holiday.

    The same applies to writing (“I will blog every week”), music (“I will write an entire album in one key”), or anything that gives you joy (“Let’s do an Arnie movie marathon this weekend”).

    ===

    Media activity

    • 💿 Apropos of the above: I listened to that new Travis album during a long cab ride and it was okay but didn’t make a huge impression. I considered deleting it, but then thought, “if I’d bought this on CD years ago, I’d listen to it at least a few more times, and the songs would probably stick in my head and years later I might even be thrilled to hear one of them come on somewhere in public”. That’s how my relationships with many of my favorite albums began anyway. This endless queue of options and dopamine-driven consumption pattern is not good for culture.
    • 🎮 Ghostopia Season 1 continues to be an intriguing journey on the Nintendo Switch. It reminds me a little of Doki Doki Literature Club, not in content but in manner: layers of subversion and unexpected metaphorical depth under cuteness and comedy. I will be sad when it’s over (soon).
    • 🎬 The following were all watched on MUBI.
    • Saw a Tsai Ming Jiang short, The Night (2021), which is nothing more than a series of still camera takes of nocturnal Hong Kong street scenes. The bright, digital-looking aesthetic resists the traditional romantic notion of Hong Kong as a neon-soaked, tattered metropolis. It’s dirty, yet cold and empty. Perhaps that was the point, but it did nothing for me. 1 star.
    • Saw One More Time with Feeling (2016), the first of the two Nick Cave films by Andrew Dominik. The inconsistent use of black-and-white footage upsets me. I probably should have watched this before This Much I Know to be True, but coming off that one I’m feeling that Dominik has a limited approach to getting things out of Cave, and when you hear him in the background asking questions, he can barely articulate them, sometimes letting his fumbling interrupt Cave’s train of thought, and that to me is an awful shame. He and the film crew also seem to greatly irritate Cave, which sadly continues in the sequel. They’re also transparently making a film, not a documentary, directing naturalistic actions to be repeated so they can be shot on the 3D camera. 3.5 stars.
    • Saw 24 City (2008), another pseudo-documentary, this time about the closure of a long-running factory in China. As you may have heard, the scale of these operations makes them cities in themselves, with the children of workers attending school within their walls and identifying more as ‘of the factory’ than the communities around them. There are interviews with real people recounting their lifelong experiences at the factory, including some devastatingly emotional stories, interspersed with actors being interviewed as characters for reasons unexplained. This dilutes the effect and makes it hard to stay invested as you never know when you’re being ‘lied to’. One scene has the legendary Joan Chen playing a factory worker who grew up with the nickname “Little Flower” because of her resemblance to a character in a film played by Joan Chen. I mean, that’s some genius casting but also too much. 3 stars.
    • 🛣️ I also rewatched David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and ended up writing a longer review, below:

    This film made a huge impression on me as a teenager, the early scene with the Mystery Man’s wide-eyed mask of a face staring spookily at Bill Pullman like Ryuk the ‘shinigami’ in Death Note — so grotesque and caked in unearthly tones that I remember it as employing special effects, but no, it was just Robert Blake’s face — talking to him from both sides of a phone call, surreal and inexplicable just like much of this entire film, it scarred me deep.

    It seemed like a shockwave of audacity to have a main character morph into another person completely without any satisfying followup, just rolling into a new story completely. I remembered that, but mostly forgot the ending where the two halves converge. Making sense wasn’t the point anyway, it was a vibe. It’s jazz cinema.

    I don’t think I had much early exposure to challenging art and I was making up for it through a phase into which Lost Highway fit perfectly, like William Burrough’s cut-up texts and visual poems like the Qatsi series: peering into randomness for meaningful patterns, meditating on nonsense to glimpse truth. Maybe even more than the film itself, I was really into the soundtrack, which featured David Bowie right in the middle of his Outside/Earthling era (which is where I started with him), the Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, The Smashing Pumpkins. Teenager catnip. Was it also the first time I heard Antonio Carlos Jobim? Maybe!

    Rewatching it now over two decades later, I expected to understand things at a deeper level, but maybe I’m just a boring old guy now or got stupider because all I can focus on is how ugly or sloppy things are from a craft perspective: Pullman’s tacky LA apartment with odd furniture, the awkward fight scene between Pete and Andy that ends with a forehead embedded in a glass table, the VHS look. Sure, I have theories about what it’s all about but come on, who casts Gary Busey as a caring dad? It’s all corny af. The cinematic vocabulary hasn’t aged well and the once-cool cyclical timeline where the end is the beginning is the end isn’t mind-blowing anymore, just lame. Marilyn Manson’s inclusion in a snuff porn excerpt isn’t edgy, it’s enabling a sex offender. The Mystery Man has lost all menace and looks pathetic in his white makeup; I bet I could take him. Yeah I’m boring now. 3 stars.

  • Week 28.24

    Week 28.24

    My weekly ‘Going to the Apple Store’ streak continued on Monday when I accompanied my dad for his demo of the Vision Pro. Rather than use my unit with an imprecise fit, I thought it’d be better for him to get the proper experience, and sure enough, he had completely different strap and light seal sizes from mine. He’s had some experience with immersive headsets, mainly from flying his FPV drone and other vehicles, but in terms of interacting with spatial UIs and XR objects this was a first. He came away very impressed, apart from the usual complaints (weight, price). He wasn’t planning to buy one going in, but I wonder if he’s thinking about it now.

    Aside: One hobby I’ve been meaning to play around with in the Vision Pro is sculpture, which is much more intuitive (read: idiot friendly) to do in 3D space with your hands than on an iPad with a Pencil. There’s just not a great app for it that I’ve found yet, although it’s possible at a blobby sort of level in AirDraw — Finger Paint, so I’m starting there.

    If Apple still made their AirPort wireless networking hubs (many smart people still say to this day that discontinuing them was a strategic error), I might have had cause to visit a store again next week. Since they don’t, I bought a set of TP-Link WiFi mesh routers instead and set them up over the weekend. One of the power adapters was faulty out of the box, but fortunately our old system’s were compatible, so that’s sorted.

    Aside: There was a tense moment on Friday night when a ‘pop’ was heard just before the power cut out in one section of the home. It turned out a wall-connected USB charging hub had burnt out, fortunately without damaging anything. It was a Lencent brand 65W GaN thing that I bought off Amazon Prime last October, with a 4.6-star rating. I was complacent to attribute trust based on its Amazon profile rather than my own knowledge — I’d never heard of Lencent and haven’t since — and won’t be making that mistake again. It’s only slightly more reputable Chinese brands from here on out!

    FWIW I’ve had mixed experiences with Anker, but they’re probably the best/safest from a brand equity perspective. I’ve also seen a lot of people using Ugreen products. I have a charger and a couple of cables from them, but their website has typos like you’d find in a phishing email.

    Our old pre-COVID system was WiFi 5, and we had nearly 30 internet-enabled devices on it, which I think might have contributed to recent connectivity issues. I have bored Kim to tears with explanations and theories all week, so I’ll spare you. In short, I spent $400 I hadn’t budgeted for to upgrade us to a WiFi 6E mesh that claims to have self-learning AI and support for 200 devices. The app is miles better than our old Netgear Orbi’s, letting you configure nearly everything from your phone — it’s bizarro world over at TP-Link because the web-based admin panel has nearly no settings. Anyway, we’re future ready and could move up to 2Gbps internet when our current contract expires.

    ===

    • 🎮 I’m still checking into Zenless Zone Zero daily to claim log-in rewards and farm materials. I’m observing that this routine is actually a barrier to getting more stuck into proper games. Devious.
    • 🎮 Nevertheless, started on a charming and well-written visual novel about the afterlife called Ghostpia: Season 1, on the Nintendo Switch. I saw launch ads for it during our last trip to Japan and bought the global release late last year, but I’m only starting it now. I think it’s pronounced Ghost-o-pia in Japan, and the name implies “ghost town”, like the Latin topos for place, as in utopia. It’s the rare visual novel that doesn’t ever feel like it’s wasting time or insulting your intelligence.
    • 📺 Started watching Sunny, Apple TV+’s new show starring Rashida Jones and a robot that kinda looks like a Pepper 2.0. It’s an A24 production, set in a surreal other-universe Japan that feels like a variant of the world in Severance. Such an odd vibe, which I suppose adds to the “nothing is what it seems” mystery here. She’s an American expat whose Japanese engineer husband and son supposedly died in an accident, leaving her an advanced AI robot to figure things out with.
    • 📺 Absolutely thrilled that Jinny’s Kitchen has returned for a second season on Amazon Prime Video, sending Korean celebrities to run a restaurant in Iceland this time. Like before, each episode is essentially a two-hour movie, and there’s something about this formula that makes even the most mundane moments (restocking a fridge, taking orders, dicing vegetables) so watchable. Other reality shows can only dream of including this much detail on a weekly basis without losing an audience.
    • 🎬 Saw In the Realm of the Senses (1976) on MUBI despite warnings from Nic not to watch it. Is it uncomfortably, unbelievably graphic? Yes. It’s also a very powerful and competently made film based on a bananas true story. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Heroes of the East (1978) next, a classic Shaw Brothers kungfu flick by Lau Kar-Leung starring Gordon Liu, both in top form. It’s actually a cross-cultural martial arts romcom, with action scenes so good I don’t think we know how to do them anymore. One of the best I’ve seen, up there with Dirty Ho (1979). 4.5 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Friends and Strangers (2021), a very enjoyable indie Australian film. Gorgeous photography, care evident in every shot. The story meanders and discharges detail wherever it feels like it, leaving so much off screen, and the result is “dreamy”? Aside from the Australian identity crises, I was surprised it felt a bit like Singapore, where everyone knows someone you know, and nobody has figured out what life’s about. I much preferred the first half with Emma Diaz in it; the second felt like a portrait of bumbling male incompetence that no one needs to see more of, really. 4 stars.
    • 🎬 Saw Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) and wasn’t as disappointed as I expected to be! It took a little warming up to, but Eddie Murphy looks like he’s having fun again and that’s enough for me. 3 stars.
    • 🎬 If you’re in the mood for a mellow drama shot entirely on an actual luxury cruise ship on an actual voyage, Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk (2020) has got you. Meryl Streep, Gemma Chan, Candice Bergen! Oh it’s about a writer trying to write a sequel to her best work, and catching up with two old friends she hasn’t seen in decades. 3.5 stars.
    • 🎬 I also really enjoyed Upgraded (2024), an Amazon Prime Video original romcom about the art world starring Camila Mendes, Marisa Tomei, and Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Anthony Head). It’s derivative AND fun! 3.5 stars.
    • 🎧 Tons of new music this week but I haven’t had time to hear Eminem, Cigarettes After Sex, Tori Amos, or Travis yet. I’ve heard Griff’s debut album, Vertigo (polished pop from Sigrid’s side of the aisle), and Clairo’s Charm (a lush, beautiful vintage sound).
  • Week 27.24

    Week 27.24

    This Fourth of July, I eagerly awaited the launch of Zenless Zone Zero, the new action-gacha-anime game from the Singapore-based, Chinese-owned developer HoYoverse (also known as MiHoYo).

    Gamespot’s review noted that their smash hit Genshin Impact has grown too large as an open-world game to be effectively played on mobile, and is now best on consoles and PC. Their last game Honkai Star Rail was more mobile friendly in comparison, since it’s a turn-based combat game (yawn), and ZZZ comes in somewhere in between.

    It’s got fast-paced dodge and counter gameplay with a sizeable cast of playable characters — most of them needing to be ‘won’ through awful gacha mechanics that will bankrupt weak-willed fans (not me, I hope) — interspersed with pretty animated cutscenes, comic panels, talking head visual novel-style dialogue, Sokoban puzzles, and a charming town where you can shop, do fetch quests, and engage in all that RPG-lite fun.

    If I sound a bit skeptical, it’s because I think this could have been a great paid game instead of a cynical free-to-play profit machine. I’m actually having a great time with it so far, mostly playing on the PS5. Just on the basis of its modern (read: non-fantasy) theme and setting alone, I think I’ve finally found a live-service game I can get into. It’s extremely polished, mindless fun designed to please a certain kind of millennial nerd: the city of New Eridu celebrates film buffs (your character runs a video rental store), ramen lovers, gamers, hackers, and its whole vibe is techno-stylish yet cozy. Right now, you mainly do battle in a few repetitive environments, but if this game is half as successful as HoYoverse’s other titles, they’ll probably add a lot more over the next couple of years.

    The Fourth also brought the surprise release of Kendrick Lamar’s music video for Not Like Us, and the wait was worth it. What a victory lap, as if Drake’s grave wasn’t already bottoming out all the way to the earth’s core. It’s packed with visual jokes and callbacks to Drake’s lines/lies, memes, and other moments from this historic battle. Do they still give out MTV video music awards? Surely not, but if they did, this should win some. It should be Song of the Year at the Grammys.

    ===

    This week with Vision Pro

    Last week, I said that I’d gotten too narrow a light seal for my Apple Vision Pro and was due down at the store to swap it for a better fit. It’s been a minute since I visited Apple Orchard Road, and the space still looked as great as on its first day seven years ago. They’ve set the store up with a dedicated Vision Pro seated demo area, using the new curved couches and white demo tables as documented by Michael Steebler, Apple Retail historian extraordinaire.

    Since I don’t intend to move mine around much, I decided against the official Apple travel case (S$299), and found a great deal on the Spigen Klasden Pouch. It was somehow just S$62 on Amazon with free next-day Prime delivery. That’s a lot less than the $119 USD retail price on Spigen’s own site. I used that to bring my unit down for my appointment, and in the middle of my conversation with the specialist, a man interrupted to ask where I got my case! I looked at the Apple employee beside me and said, “Erm, I don’t think I can answer that within the Apple Store, but you should consider the official case; it’s a fine product!” 🤡 I need to stay in their good graces; I’ll be visiting again next week when I accompany my dad for his 30-minute demo.

    Over the weekend, I got one more Vision Pro accessory delivered, hopefully the last chunk of change I’ll need to spend on this thing: the ANNAPRO A1 Comfort Head Strap that I’ve seen several people on Twitter promoting. It’s meant to be used with the Solo Knit Band and fits over the “audio straps” on either side of the unit, creating a second load-bearing point on your forehead (as opposed to the Dual Loop Strap which sits at the top of your head). I’ve found that this removes almost all pressure from around your eyes and cheeks, as advertised, transferring it to your forehead instead. This isn’t a magic solution for the Vision Pro’s weight but it may be preferable for many people. After all, it’s a proven design similar to that of the PSVR headset. I’m gonna use it as my default for awhile and see how it goes.

    An app recommendation: I discovered that Longplay, which I’ve been using as a living room music controller on an old iPad, has been updated for visionOS. On top of using it as a music player in a window, you can enter an immersive mode that surrounds with a giant wall of your album covers to choose from. The screenshot above is blurry outside the focal point because of the Vision Pro’s foveated rendering, but rest assured when you’re using it, everything you look at is sharp and you never notice blurriness in your peripheral view.

    ===

    Media activity

    • I did a quick playthrough of Love On Leave on the Nintendo Switch, having bought it on sale a few months back. It’s a slightly ecchi visual novel that I only wanted because of its premise: a burned-out salaryman quits his job in the city and decides to take a two-week vacation in the countryside town where he spent some time as a child. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the inn he wanted to stay at is closed for the summer, so he has to live with three sisters who were his childhood friends instead. The eldest’s a momma type, the second is a tsundere martial arts type, and the youngest is a spoilt gamer/streamer college student. I spent most of my time fishing and farming.
    • We watched Lulu Wang’s miniseries, Expats, on Amazon Prime Video. It’s headlined by Nicole Kidman, based on a novel, and set in Hong Kong on the eve of the 2014 protests. I thought Wang did a fantastic job with The Farewell (2019), leaving the right amount of things said/unsaid for emotional impact, but this TV effort is a little clumsier. Still, overall worth seeing at just six episodes — the penultimate one is a film unto itself at 1hr 40mins, and spends time with the Filipino domestic workers who are only background characters up to that point. The show’s description tells you that it’s about three expat women (one white, one brown, one yellow) connected by a tragedy, and it’s so easy to forget that their helpers are technically expats too. 3 stars.
    • Rewatched Gravity (2013) in 3D with the Apple Vision Pro after buying it on sale for just $7 USD, and it was even better than I remembered it being a decade ago. And it was remarkable then; a miracle film with so much implied complexity that one can’t imagine how it was made. Yet, the movement is so simple and pure, the whole film is essentially a single continuous scene. Like Mad Max Fury Road, it doesn’t build or boil, it just goes hard from the start and doesn’t let up. 5 stars.
    • Saw This Much I Know to Be True (2022) on MUBI. It’s a concert film (but in a studio) + documentary about Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, working through their newer material — 2019’s Ghosteen and 2021’s CARNAGE — during the pandemic. A lot of it deals with the death of his son in 2015, and showcases Cave’s working relationship with Warren Ellis, who looks like an insane homeless math professor who wears nice suits and expensive watches. I especially liked one part where he describes them in the studio as producing loads of horrible stuff with occasional transcendent moments, “but they’re just snippets in an ocean of bullshit”. A perfect description of the creative process. 4 stars.
    • Saw Irma Vep (1996) on MUBI. Weird, funny, enchanting. I don’t think I’d ever seen young Maggie Cheung in a film before this, certainly not speaking English, and it’s something else. She’s magnetic, unbelievably apart from the world. You can feel it when she comes in frame for the first time; suddenly everyone else is a normal person and she’s clearly the movie star she’s supposed to be playing (herself). 4.5 stars.
    • While logging the above on Letterboxd, I discovered that Olivier Assayas made a TV sequel/reboot of Irma Vep in 2022, also titled Irma Vep. It stars Alicia Vikander and is apparently an unflinching assessment of his own failed marriage to Cheung after the original movie, and revisits its themes in the light of our current day disdain for cinema. But I could be wrong. It’s on my list to watch soon.
    • On Sunday we managed to see a hat trick of recent LGBTQ-themed movies!
    • It started with Challengers (2024): The ending is on some anime finishing move shit, you see it a mile away and they drew it out a little too long. Apart from that, this is the tennis romance drama the world has been needing. It’s also shot so so beautifully. 4.5 stars.
    • Then Love Lies Bleeding (2024): Damn, this movie does what it wants. Unfortunately half the time it wants to be a frustrating oversexual drama set in small town hell (you could set a Reacher novel here), but the other half is a beautiful drugged out fantasy I don’t really get but must respect. 3.5 stars.
    • The last one was All Of Us Strangers (2023), a film that Hideo Kojima raved about on Twitter, and after seeing it, I know why: it touches on two of his favorite themes. I won’t say the second one because it’s a spoiler, but the first is men’s butts. Those aside, the core of the film is a really interesting, beautiful narrative device for exploring loss and lost time, one I don’t think I’ve encountered before, handled softly and naturally with great performances (from one guy that looks like Harry Potter and another who looks like The Incredible Hulk, pre-transformation), and it really makes it worthwhile. 4 stars.
  • Week 26.24

    Week 26.24

    The week seemed to slip by with not too much to show for it until Friday, as I waited for the delivery of my Apple Vision Pro. I watched a couple of films, subscribed to the New York Times again, and made some plans for a personal creative project.

    In the meantime, I also made some memes for Instagram.

    I also resumed wearing contact lenses daily after years of relying on glasses, because I didn’t want the Zeiss lens inserts for Vison Pro. It will take a little adjustment; I definitely don’t miss the end-of-day dryness and irritation.

    Okay, so!

    The unboxing experience for this high-end device is suitably premium, despite being made from predominantly recyclable paper materials. You lift the cover — it releases with the usual deliberate, satisfying motion — and there it is, positioned as if on display in a museum, supported by a molded rest. All the accessories are neatly organized in a compartment underneath. There is an indulgent amount of unused space in this box; no squashing of the Vision Pro into egg carton cutouts like with some Sony products!

    A nice Quick Start book instead of the leaflet you get with iPhones

    Side note: I think I may have gotten measured for the wrong size of light seal (21W) as the sides feel narrower and less comfortable than 33W for me. I have an appointment at the Apple Store next week to hopefully get it swapped.

    First encounters

    I’ve already mentioned the magical and immersive experience of using it. Knowing that, it was still a shock when I ran the pre-installed Encounter Dinosaurs app (directed by Jon Favreau) for the first time.

    Some U.S. reviewers reported actually feeling the virtual butterfly land on their outstretched fingers at the start of the experience, to which I thought, “no way”. And yet when it happened to me, I swear I felt four distinct little pricks on my skin as its little legs shifted. That unfortunately primed me to feel what happened next even more acutely. The dinosaurs appeared on screen, with a fluidity and resolution that was greater than I expected, making the PS5 look like “video games”. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say they were lifelike.

    You are warned at the start that the animals can “see you” and will react to your actions. As the largest dinosaur stepped out of its frame and stalked towards me, towered over my seated body, then stared me in the face while exhaling through its nostrils, I felt my body go into a fight-or-flight mode. No joke. I started to sweat. I avoided making eye contact, and turned my head away hoping it would back off. The presence you feel is unbelievably tangible, and I know I will NOT be attempting any horror games in the future.

    Art of the future

    A much calmer experience I can recommend is Museas, which is a completely free journey through art history made by a single person (Miguel Garcia Gonzalez, who calls himself “a supply chain professional by day and spatial computing engineer by night”). You can see landmark artworks at phenomenal scale right in your home, or in “immersive environments”. These suddenly float your body in massive virtual spaces, surrounded by complementary imagery, with the original artwork in front of you. Think of them as frames, just 360º ones. For example, when viewing Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, you see a florid Japanese garden scene all around, while a narrator explains the artwork.

    I suspect they’ve used generative AI to create these descriptions of the artworks’ history and meaning, the voice that reads them (it sounds to me like the actor Jared Harris, who plays Hari Seldon in Foundation), as well as the 360º immersive scenes. If so, the technology has clearly allowed a single person to achieve something that feels professional beyond their means. The voice is natural and doesn’t feel off to me at all. The immersive environments aren’t perfect, but they’re for your peripheral vision — you’re meant to focus on the original art. The wall text is accurate as far as I can tell. Was this labor that could have paid the salaries of a few more people? In theory, but it’s more likely this project wouldn’t have gotten made at all without AI.

    When I think about you I shush myself

    Apart from these new experiences that weren’t possible before, I think the primary application of the Vision Pro for me will be a personal cinema hall. I sat down with the Theater app to watch Adam Lisagor’s 3D recording of John Gruber interviewing Apple executives Joz, Craig, and J.G. at WWDC (regular 2D recording here), and for nearly two hours I was immersed and focused in its virtual space, surrounded by faintly illuminated empty seats and aisles. I felt notifications come in on my wrist, my phone was across the room, and I ignored all of it the same way I would watching a film in a real theater.

    I think the Vision Pro is the antidote to the iPhone that some thought the Apple Watch would be. Turns out the answer to destroyed attention spans, multi-screening, and screen addiction wasn’t to make it easier to leave your phone in your pocket by redirecting things to a watch, it was the skeuomorphic recreation of a giant screen in a dark room. I think this is the ideal way to watch Important Films. And as nice as our new TV is, I don’t think it compares in visceral terms. Tradeoff: focus and immersion vs. comfort and the ability to drink beverages.

    Media activity

    • Finished watching Constellations starring Noomi Rapace on Apple TV+. Mild spoiler: I complained on Threads about the way it handled a plot device thusly: “Sci-fi shows where science-literate people find themselves trapped in parallel universes, and literally don’t know the words “parallel universe” to explain to other people what’s happening, please gtfo”
    • Season 3 of The Bear is out this weekend and like most people (I did a poll on Instagram), we’re getting through it. That first episode? Wow, really special television.
    • Saw Aloners (2021), a film that tackles modern nowhere lives built around go-nowhere jobs, where even if you meet people worth connecting with, your social muscles may already have atrophied too far. Starts strong but doesn’t land the character development at the end for me. Also: is this a chaotic opposite world version of Perfect Days? I said on Letterboxd: “Say less” is the unofficial motto of Korean arthouse cinema. 3/5 stars.
    • Saw Zero Fucks Given (2021). It follows a young woman escaping grief and complexity by going headfirst into the soul-sucking worker bee life of a budget airline attendant, taking each day as it comes, never looking a day ahead as much as she can help it. Lovely work, and Adele Exarchopoulos is a talent. 3.5 stars.
    • Saw Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Oast Lives (2010) through MUBI’s visionOS app, and I chose to watch it on the dark side of the moon. It was incredible to look up and see stars, look around and see a desolate rocky surface, and then at a giant floating screen ahead of me. The movie was also strange, unreal, and disorienting like being on the moon — it won a Palme d’Or when it came out, cynically I think because a Thai film like this was exotique. I enjoyed its atmosphere and ideas a lot, just not the stilted acting. 3.5 stars.
    • I don’t know where else to mention that I fulfilled a personal goal by minting a McDonalds Singapore NFT after Jose alerted me (with two hours to spare) that they were releasing a new Chicken McNuggets series. Their first release last year was of Grimace, and holders enjoy a stream of special perks. Interestingly, they are ‘soulbound’ NFTs, meaning they cannot be sold or transferred from the initial wallet that received them. Don’t ask me why McDonald’s Singapore is doing this (I doubt they do either), but I want it and I got it.
    • I’ve been long Camila Cabello since 2019 when I called her “possibly the most competent pop star and the new Rihanna”, but I have to admit I was nervous about her new album C,XOXO after recent racism accusations and piggybacking on Charli XCX’s party girl image and Brat aesthetic on social media. Thankfully, I’m on my third listen and it’s an enjoyable record apart from Drake appearing on two tracks (putting on his Jamaican accent, for chrissakes). She’s a big Drake defender, but even if she wanted to cut him after recent events, the album is only 32 minutes long and wouldn’t have survived it.
  • Week 25.24

    Week 25.24

    Monday was Hari Raya Haji, a public holiday, and we took an early walk along the nearby ‘park connector’, which I guess is the local government term for “paths beside rivers and canals linking the city’s green spaces”. I must admit, I prefer evening walks over morning ones.

    Mornings are best spent slowly booting up with a hot cup of tea and maybe exploring some new music. Although I started drinking black tea as a way to save money and smooth out the coffee jitters, it’s become my preferred drink throughout the day. Seinfeld’s new set includes a bit where he dismisses tea as weak and tasteless (“I hate it!”), claiming coffee is the only drink that understands “they’re trying to kill me out there!” Inspired by the insight, I tried reintroducing coffee into my routine: one cup in the morning, followed by tea for the rest of the day. It didn’t take. I didn’t need it! Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe life doesn’t feel so painful right now. #blessed.

    One more thing about saving money to establish that I am trying, before we get to the next part where I might appear to not be: Kim found out that the restaurants under the Little Farms grocery brand offer wine at prices that seem like misprints in the menu. They’re essentially sold at the same retail prices you’ll find in the store. So we had a nice Malbec from Australia’s Gill Estate along with our dinner for S$35. That’s S$35 for the BOTTLE, not a glass. I think we’re going to be eating there a lot. (For comparison, I think the cheapest ones here typically start around S$60).

    I actually made this

    I pre-ordered an Apple Vision Pro for launch day. I wish I could call it a casual treat but it’s a fairly large purchase; certainly the most I’ve spent on a single computer in my adult life, and probably equivalent in inflation-adjusted terms to the 33mhz 386-DX my parents bought us in the late 80s. This thing probably has a trillion times the processing power of that PC, not to mention 30x the display resolution, in each eye. It’s amazing the difference three decades makes!

    I’ll save further thoughts for when I get it, but right now I’m planning to use it primarily as a personal theater, perhaps as a larger display for my Mac, and am very excited to try new spatial applications and games as they come out. So many of the things coming to visionOS 2 feel like essential launch features that I may even install the beta.

    If you’re looking to justify one to yourself, feel free to copy my notes.

    1. It’s the first VR/XR headset I’ll be owning, and Apple’s entry into the category is a sign that it’s nearly ready for mainstream adoption. This is probably the moment to start paying attention to new experience possibilities, new interaction conventions, and new consequences for behavior and preferences. Any later might be too late.
    2. These early days of a new platform are the most exciting. Hopefully, we’ll see creators trying out new ideas and innovating in the app space. If Apple made cheaper development units available to select indie studios, this might be helped along. Maybe they are?
    3. The unconfirmed cheaper and lighter model is rumored to be targeting a late-2025 release, and a second-generation Pro model perhaps a year after. That’s at least 18 months where this will have no competition. And if waiting means missing out on two years of watching this potential revolution unfold, then it’s clear to me I don’t want to.
    4. I’ve got the time on my hands now to make plentiful use of it.
    5. As a paying subscriber to all Apple services currently available in my country, I’d be leaving value on the table if I DIDN’T have access to all the exclusive Apple Vision content that’s coming. There are spatially enabled games in Apple Arcade, and Immersive Video features on Apple TV+. It’s not a stretch that Apple Music might add 3D video content in the future. I know it was Amazon Music that hosted Kendrick’s ‘Pop Out’ live event this week, but imagine being in the front row for something like that on a pay-per-view livestream!
    6. I had the opportunity to see a little of Alicia Keys’ Rehearsal Room feature for Apple Vision and it sold me. Maybe people who’ve dabbled in VR for awhile won’t find it as impressive as I did, but the feeling of her presence five feet away was magical. Just like with the Nintendo 3DS, it’s one of those things you have to see to believe.

    Speaking of Alicia Keys, I came across the cast recording for Hell’s Kitchen, a new Broadway musical she’s created, loosely based on her life. It features many of her hits and has been nominated for 13 Tony Awards this year. All that, and yet the album on Apple Music was how I found out about it. Now I wish I could painlessly fly to New York to see it. And while actually being there would be best, I’d love a world where I could buy or rent a front-row seat recording with a double-tap of my fingers in Vision Pro.

    Check out these videos of the cast performing the reimagined versions of No One and If I Ain’t Got You.

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    Media Activity:

    • I signed up for MUBI at last, so the quality and/or pretentiousness of my film viewing is about to go up. If you’d like a free 30-day membership, please use my referral link.
    • I started posting post-film impressions on Threads throughout the week as I go, but don’t worry, I’m pasting and expanding on them here on my own platform.
    • Saw Baby Assassins (2021) because Hideo Kojima raved about the movie series in a tweet, and I found it a fun take on the ol’ high school assassin girls trope; more about their friendship and trying to cope with adult life than the (well-executed) fighting. 4/5 stars.
    • I then saw Baby Assassins 2 Babies (2023) the next day and it was a perfect sequel. The best thing it does is develop the girls’ relationship with more unserious conversational set pieces that feel like Quentin Tarantino took a course in Japanese comedy. Can’t wait for the third one out this year. 4/5 stars.
    • Saw The First Slam Dunk (2022), which is an animated film based on the long-running series. I’ve only seen the first episode of the original anime on Netflix, and it looked like it was made in the early 90s. This film takes the quality bar up a million times with some of the best 3D CG anime I’ve seen. 3.5/5 stars.
    • Saw Tom Cruise’s The Mummy (2017), thinking that his star power would make it okay despite the negative things I’ve heard. It started quite strong but was so so bad. 1.5/5 stars.
    • Saw The Breakfast Club (1985) all the way through for the first time and enjoyed it! It clearly influenced many other films, memes, and popular culture’s depictions of that entire retro/80s-era of American high school life. 4/5 stars.
    • Caught The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) on its last day on MUBI, which is a real shame because more people should see it. Hardly wasting a single frame of its gorgeous, luminous 100-min runtime, this immersive drama set in 1950s Vietnam is simply a masterpiece. Yes, there’s workplace harassment and ant cruelty, but that attitude is why they don’t make them like this anymore! 4.5/5 stars.
    • We are enjoying Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+, where Jake Gyllenhaal plays the kind of creepy protagonist you don’t know whether to trust that he does so well.
    • My song of the week has to be the Lorde remix of Charli XCX’s girl, so confusing. It’s amazing to hear them communicating through a song, and Ella’s verse is probably the most vulnerable from a superstar in recent memory; in a league of its own compared to ahem generic confessional love songs by some people.