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Tag: Singapore

  • Week 13.21

    It was a four-day work week but things were so hectic it didnā€™t feel like one at all. We took Monday off and went to check out Carne, the new-in-town burger joint thatā€™s been getting the hype treatment on account of its ties to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in France. Regretfully, it was only good and not great. Maybe because we had the new chimichurri burger exclusive to Singapore, which didnā€™t really leave the beef any room to impress. Maybe theyā€™re still sorting out kinks. Maybe Iā€™m a pleb. The disappointment reminded me of how everyone else loved Omakase Burger but I just couldnā€™t understand why. Iā€™ll give them another chance many months from now.

    Afterwards, with the afternoon wide open, we decided to visit the zoo and use our ā€œSingapore ReDiscoversā€ vouchers ā€” S$100 government stimulus checks aimed at boosting domestic tourism. It had been a long while since I last visited, and the layout resembled nothing in memory. We spent about three hours wandering about in very sunny, humid conditions, but it was a pretty relaxing change from the everyday (animal captivity notwithstanding). On reflection, it was also a welcome break from the usual weekday routine of staring at screens. Maybe thatā€™s the role overseas holidays really played, back when they could be taken: looking at new things, in the absence of screens, when one would normally be at work. Do this more!

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    We ended the week getting a beer by the Singapore River, which was a lot quieter than it used to be. Brewerkz, for one, is doing a quarter of the business it would have on a Sunday evening in the past, if not less. Which was unexpected; many restaurants and bars in town look to be doing very well these days. Maybe the riverside area relied too much on expats, and some of them have gone home.

    ===

    Iā€™m revisiting the records of Duke Ellington and Lester Young, two musicians I had on heavy rotation in my teens and 20s and then hardly played in recent times. I started with pretty mellow late night jazz tastes and then found comfort in frenetic discordance. That seems like such a long time ago, and putting them on now has that retro-transportative quality you sometimes get with music or scents if youā€™re lucky. Itā€™s also fantastic that I am able to hear them in much higher quality today than I did back when a pair of PC speakers was what I played everything on.

    Oh, remember those integrated ā€œmini hi-fisā€ you would buy at the department store? I just looked some up and theyā€™re still a thing! Sony makes a few, ranging from garish LED-equipped ones they must think appeal to the teens who grew up on Michael Bayā€™s Transformers, to sleeker units that might be silver-painted plastic if theyā€™re anything like what I grew up with. But hey, Iā€™d be delighted if you can get a good sounding system at those prices. For about the same price as Sonos units, these support Bluetooth/AirPlay with the added benefit of CD/DVD playback that one of Sonyā€™s copywriters has absolutely no illusions about.

    ===

    I mostly read Saifedean Ammousā€™s The Bitcoin Standard in a day, with a bit of skimming. Itā€™s a 10-chapter book that doesnā€™t get into Bitcoin until about Chapter 8, which is not the structure I would have chosen, but the long set-up is a pretty good primer on money and the history of gold as a currency.

    Not having paid any attention during my economics classes (I failed), there were some ideas here I found interesting. Namely the connections between having a stable, global monetary standard and people having longer time horizons (or lower time preferences, as theyā€™re called here) with which to approach their work and lives. He links the economic stability of the gold standard era to people investing in longer-term bets, which resulted in some of human historyā€™s most significant advances in art and science, higher functioning family units, and even the preservation of world peace (up until WWI). Itā€™s probably obvious to anyone whoā€™s studied it, but Iā€™d never considered the systemic effects of pegging a few currencies to a precious metal that way before.

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    I read a tweet that said itā€™s not working hard that causes burnout. Teams can apparently burn out working normal hours on things that donā€™t feel worthwhile. I wonder if thereā€™s a leisure equivalent of burn out, when you realize your hobbies are a waste of time. What happens then?

  • Week 7.21

    • It was Chinese New Year this week. Some of us at work did a little side project for it in our spare time. We try to make little things we can send to our global sister studios in the network, sort of like greeting cards. For Christmas we made a playlist. This time, we made Choose Your Own Reunion at CNYdinner.com, a sort of game where you have to plan your familyā€™s reunion dinner menu or face the wrath of a cute old Chinese grandma.
    • If you get to the end, you can access a credits screen showing the people involved. I wrote some of grandmaā€™s nastier comments, but they volunteered and drew all the art, designed the screens, and built the damned thing all on their own time. Theyā€™re treasures.
    • In real life, itā€™s the first time in my memory there hasnā€™t been a Chinese New Year reunion dinner, save for those student years I was away. A year ago, we had our usual large family affair at a restaurant and mentioned the new virus that might be like another SARS. At the time, no one was saying you needed a mask unless you already felt ill and wanted to protect others. It was hard then to imagine an employer telling everyone not to come in. It was implausible that leisure travel could come to a standstill, or that buffet-style dining would be forbidden. Unthinkable that millions would die, although the numbers are hard to comprehend here where weā€™ve been relatively lucky.
    • As callous as it sounds, when things escalated with lockdowns and working from home in the following weeks and months, I was excited by the newness of the terror and change. I think that sustained my energy for many months while others became depressed and worn down by everything.
    • A year later, I think itā€™s finally catching up to me. Iā€™m feeling like itā€™s time to slow down before I come to a complete stop not of my own accord. It would be much harder to get moving again from zero. Iā€™m so tired these days. I think I need new terror, or wonder, or sleep.
    • I also got into the closed beta for Dispo 2.0, which Iā€™ve been excited for since I heard it was being made. Iā€™ll put my thoughts in a separate post, but you can follow me on there as ā€œbleeā€ if you want.

  • Week 6.21

    • Been feeling pretty crap, so it was good that we went out and got me some air this week. Early in the week we visited the Gardens By the Bay at night, to errā€¦ see some dahlias. Apparently theyā€™re a thing appropriate to the Chinese New Year season. The iPhone 12 Proā€™s night mode and ProRAW came in pretty handy.
    • Sunday was a day for some exhibitions. Somehow, Iā€™d never been (or canā€™t remember having been) to the Gillman Barracks ā€œart precinctā€ ā€” donā€™t ask me what makes a precinct versus a district or development. In any case, old British-era army barracks turned into galleries.
    • Having been stuck at home or familiar places for most of the last few months, my cameras havenā€™t been getting much use. The Leica CL was selected for this particular excursion and boy is it a joy to use; mostly because I shoot in Program Mode and donā€™t have to fiddle very much.
    • I didnā€™t listen to music for many days. I got into Clubhouse thanks to a kind mutual named Brian Li on Twitter, and spent many hours just listening to people talk in various irritating ways that reminded me of being on conference calls. But at least now I can leave at will and pick the subject matter.
    • Most of my Clubhouse time has been spent in crypto-related rooms, and if you follow any of it, last week was a fairly interesting period. Various DeFi assets rose by a large factor, and then the week closed with Michael Saylor/Microstrategyā€™s annual World.Now conference which was aimed at helping other corporations ā€˜connect their balance sheets to the Bitcoin networkā€™. Oh yeah, and Elon Musk toyed around with Dogecoin and lots of people bought it (itā€™s now technically the next week and Tesla just declared a $1.5bn investment which has sent the BTC price to $44,000).
    • A revelation: the more time I spend reading articles, watching YouTube videos, and listening to Clubhouse conversations about crypto, the more I understand what itā€™s like to be radicalized online. Thereā€™s a gradual envelopment into a new worldview that quickly becomes the default. And when you start to read something that argues the opposite, you want to close the window. Catchy phrases that embody the core philosophies spring forth in your head in response to triggers you hear (e.g. going to the moon, hardest money in the world, stack sats). You canā€™t imagine what itā€™d be like to not believe. Of course things will play out this way! How is it so many people canā€™t see the future when itā€™s right in front of them?

  • Week 1.21

    • Happy new year to you! We celebrated NYE by staying home and having all the food in the freezer that needed finishing. And then to make up for it, we went out the next day for a nice maki sushi and sake dinner at a place called Rappu where they donā€™t take reservations and you have to show up at 5:30pm before they open or end up waiting over an hour in line.
    • Itā€™s the wet and cold ā€œseasonā€ here now in Singapore, which usually only lasts a couple of weeks, not nearly long enough to enjoy the unusual daytime temperatures of 22Āŗā€“25ĀŗC ā€” in the past, when one had to commute to work, it could be a pain in the ass for traffic, especially in areas that were prone to flooding (or ponding, as the government prefers to call the phenomenon on account of it not being enough to wash away people or property), but now itā€™s just wonderful if youā€™re going to stay indoors and read.
    • My annual vacation plans this week were postponed into January, so Iā€™m looking forward to staying indoors and reading a whole lot next week. Iā€™m currently in the middle of Cory Doctorowā€™s Walkaway and not very compelled to keep going. Maybe Iā€™llā€¦ walk away and find something else.
    • Just 5 days left to decide whether or not to return my AirPods Max. I notice less that theyā€™re heavy and tight, so maybe theyā€™ve opened up a bit or Iā€™m just getting used to the pain. The larger soundstage and sub-bass emphasis definitely makes them more fun to listen to than the plain old AirPods Pro, and I think Iā€™d be sad if I went back to the Sony WH1000XM4. But when I think about what I could do with the refund, and realize they cost about the same as a new iPad Air, I question how sad. That said, what I really want is the new A14X iPad Pro which wonā€™t be out for a few months yet, so I may as well keep the headphones. Well played, Tim Apple.
    • Last week I mentioned listening to finance-related podcasts. That has now expanded to include YouTube videos and podcasts that get published as YouTube videos, so my algorithmic homepage is really a mess right now. Dogs! Game trailers! Camera reviews! Macroeconomics!
    • For a few weeks now, Iā€™d stopped watching the news and was largely ignorant of how daily COVID numbers have been progressing elsewhere in the world. This week I started paying attention again and all the headlines still sound like they did six months ago! Highest ever numbers, new waves, new lockdowns, but everyone seems committed to pretending that economies will be fine in the end. Iā€™m wondering when the markets will start showing it, and where concerned citizens should keep their money. Out of curiosity, I checked the latest batch of Singapore Savings Bonds today, and theyā€™re offering an astoundingly low 0.9% average annual interest over 10 years. Two years ago, it was 2%.
    • Iā€™ve been playing Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered on the Nintendo Switch. The original game came out 10 years ago, and it was a much harder time to be alive, in that there was no rewind feature if you tackled the corner wrong, and bumping CPU-driven cars barely slowed them down, but getting bumped by them meant that you were fucked. As I drive down these subconsciously familiar tracks again and again and arrgggh again, Iā€™m reminded that we early millennials have got the tenacity to be the greatest generation if we tried. Maybe not the reflexes anymore, nor the time to waste, but at least the dogged determination! In theory!

  • Week 41.20

    • Some weeks donā€™t feel like very much at all, even if they kept you busy at time. Taking stock on a Sunday and realizing this is a bit like how your brain sorts experiences into Keep/Forget piles while you sleep, I think. Many things happened, few of them really mattered. Forward, onward.
    • Iā€™ve now twice experienced cocktail bars that are taking reservations and then telling you youā€™ve got between 90ā€“120 mins before they turn your table over to the next group. This is definitely new to pandemic times and odd to me. If youā€™re sitting down at 8pm with some friends, youā€™re just getting started at 90 mins, and very likely to spend a lot more in the 90 minutes after that.
    • I think itā€™s related to the current regulation that says they have to stop serving alcohol at 10:30pm. I thought restaurants had to stop serving in general, so we can all go home and drive the chances of spreading infections down just that little bit more, but no! They can keep on serving you food and dessert into the night; itā€™s just alcohol that has to stop at 10:30pm. Donā€™t get it. On the other hand, thereā€™s a business opportunity here to just run very nice pop-up mocktail bars that feel like proper nice bars to have a chat, for people who are already well buzzed and ahead by the time 10:30 comes about.
    • I just bought Cocktail Party, an iPhone cocktail recipe app that hooked me by having a generous attitude. I was searching for some info and came across their website, which has all the recipes out there in the open. If you want the convenience of an app, and the ability to enter what ingredients you have so they can tell you what drinks you might make next, you drop $4 USD. I did it without a second thought, which I RARELY do. I just really liked their business model and approach.
    • I think this may be related to a certain emotional state Iā€™m in after having watched all 10 episodes in the first season of Ted Lasso (Apple TV+). Everything about this show repelled me when I scrolled by it in the catalog: the fact that itā€™s an American comedy sitcom, that it involves football (soccer), the name that says nothing, his mustache, the promise of being a feel-good something. But @hondanhon rated it on Twitter a few days ago, calling it ā€œa hundred thousand dollars of therapy that every person needsā€ and ā€œa striking show for our timeā€. Now after bingeing the whole thing in a night and a morning, I concur. Theyā€™ve succeeded in crafting an uplifting show that doesnā€™t make you want to gag, around a positive hero who tries harder than anyone possibly could ā€” but inspiringly so.
    • I must mention the release of Gimme Some Truth, a new compilation of John Lennonā€™s ā€œgreatest hitsā€ on the occasion of his 80th birthday. I spent the weekend playing it any time music was desired, and they simultaneously donā€™t make them like this anymore and didnā€™t back then either. The whole affair has been completely remixed and remastered from the original tapes, on all-analog equipment to boot. It sounds impeccable: so much cleaner than the recordings we already had, and some people will have the pleasure of playing Blu-Ray audio discs with Dolby Atmos. I donā€™t know why Apple Music doesnā€™t provide surround mixes of select albums that work with the new spatial audio feature of the AirPods Pro. Anyway, read about the album (JohnLennon.com) and give it a listen (Apple Music).

  • Week 33.20

    • Thanks to a series of early mornings this week, I donā€™t think Iā€™ve felt very rested, despite my quantified self apps saying Iā€™ve spent about the same amount of time in bed as usual. One of the things that usually happens when I have an early morning call or meeting is that I donā€™t trust my alarms and dream all night that Iā€™ve overslept, and keep waking up. This happens before flights as well, so Iā€™m just really terrible at anything that starts before, oh, 9:30am?
    • Monday was a public holiday on account of National Day here, our 55th anniversary of independence. Having to work on a holiday doesnā€™t happen too often, but it did this time on account of a regional project, but Iā€™m planning to take the day later this month and get a long weekend to catch up on some reading.
    • I only managed a few more chapters of This Is How You Lose the Time War this week, but they were exquisite chapters. I love when you can sense the author having a load of fun.
    • National Day is usually marked by a military parade and a quasi-musical show performed at a stadium, broadcast live on TV. This year, they rolled the tanks and hardware out on neighborhood streets across the country so everyone could have a look from their windows (were they aware this is not usually a welcome sight, or that some countries have a real problem with this now? Iā€™ll never know), and the weird song and dance bits were just beamed from a stage somewhere. Watching this live is usually quite cringey, but I leave it on in the background every year just to feel a little connected.
    • On Thursday, I went back to the office for the first time in five months, to pick up some mail and stuff in my locker (a fistful of cables and adapters, my SNES Classic Mini, whisky, stationery). There was no one around except for security, but itā€™s being cleaned regularly and all the lights were on, so it was like visiting a museum exhibit of life before COVID-19; everything on my desk perfectly preserved just as Iā€™d left it. It brought back memories of the day we left, not knowing at the time how long weā€™d be away but certainly not imagining itā€™d be five months either. As I left, it was hard not to imagine it being the last time ever.
    • After that, I met up with a few colleagues for a pre-arranged visit to one of our usual bars in the area, since weā€™re now allowed to meet in groups of five and take our masks off for the purposes of eating. Which was initially surreal to be doing again in person, but very nice for a change.
    • Probably contributing to my feeling worn out were a few more social events, all delightful but so unusual these days. At one, there was an interesting conversation about how the music industry works these days, given that the host currently works at a publisher. I said that I used to think about record labels a whole lot more in the old days of physical products where I could read liner notes. Then, labels acted as a layer of curation and were effectively brands that stood for certain tastes or movements. The move to digital definitely changed the commerce around music, but I think the loss of liner notes was an underappreciated strategic blunder. iTunes tried to offer digital booklets for awhile but the take-up was low, and so today Iā€™d be surprised if kids could even name two major labels.
    • I think people who donā€™t consciously try to discover new music either still rely on radio or just tap on curated playlists from their streaming service of choice (probably Spotify, given that it has a free tier). Those who donā€™t regard music as just background noise probably remember and consciously choose their favorite playlists, which are now clearly brands in their own right, like RapCaviar. And given that there are so many of them, in different states of being maintained by their editors/algorithms, it kinda makes sense to not only share songs and albums with friends, but also playlists.
    • I donā€™t use Spotify anymore, but thatā€™s a rant for another time. While writing this, I searched my own blog to see if Iā€™d ever mentioned it, but found this instead on the then-rumored Beats acquisition by Apple. I thought theyā€™d extend the iTunes brand to include streaming music, but they chose to start over. Around these parts, most people I know still donā€™t understand what the Apple Music offer is about, or how it relates to iTunes.
    • While working, I often just put Apple Musicā€™s Pure Jazz radio station on, but sometimes I like the BEATstrumentals playlist, which is their version of ChilledCowā€™s lofi hip hop beats to study/relax to. One recent discovery is Pop Deluxe, a playlist which describes itself as featuring artists who are ā€œleft-of-center, under the radar ā€¦ popā€™s modern vanguardā€. In other words: catchy stuff hip people donā€™t have to make excuses for liking.
    • Two weeks ago I was listening to The Sunset Tree as a sort of throwback album. This week it was Bleachersā€™ Gone Now. Big melodies, saxophones, heartfelt anthemic chorusesā€¦ another all-time fave.

  • Week 28.20

    • I was wondering what book to read after Cryptonomicon and fell back into the easy, brainless comfort of another Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. This time it was #16, The Affair. It stands out for being a prequel to all the others, written in the first person. Now that Iā€™m done, I think my next book will be some kind of SF.
    • We have a baker across the street who does pricy (and good) pies, tarts, cakes, and various breads out of his little shop. And since weā€™re home 99% of the time now, Iā€™ve been trying to buy more things from the neighborhood, hyperlocal spending and all that. The bakery especially, since they donā€™t sell on delivery services. That said, my mother is in the habit of making the 20-minute trip to buy their quiches (not to see me!) This week I started buying big slices of cake as after-dinner treats. No danger of the pandemic weight gain reversing soon.
    • Yesterday was polling day in the local elections, and we were given an afternoon window of about two hours to show up, line up, have our temperatures taken, IDs scanned, and our votes cast. There were bottlenecks in the morning, and stories of old people struggling to put on mandatory plastic gloves after having their hands sprayed with alcohol ā€” how nobody in the Elections Department tested this and realized it would be impossible to do quickly, I donā€™t know. By noon, the gloves were optional. By the time we voted, the entire process was over in 60 seconds and we were headed home.
    • I caved and installed the first(!) public beta for iOS 14 on my primary phone, which I use for both work and personal purposes. I filed an Apple Music bug within the first 30 minutes, and noticed a few other issues like how the OS think itā€™s using 90GB of free space for ā€œOtherā€ temp files. According to Reddit, this is widespread but doesnā€™t actually mean my phone is full, so, okay. Itā€™s surprisingly stable otherwise.
    • The way I organize my home screens has evolved over the years, particularly after folders were added, but itā€™s been simple: the first page is for apps Iā€™m likely to need often, the second page is for all my camera and photo-editing apps, and the third is for games. The fourth is where junk goes. Now that there are large widgets vying for real estate (the Files widget can take up the room of 16 icons!), and an App Library where youā€™re meant to keep all but the most immediately needed icons, Iā€™m having to rethink the whole approach and get comfortable with a totally different model. Of course, no one is forcing me to use widgets or change my ways, but Iā€™ll take the opportunity to maintain some neuroplasticity.
    • A friend told me last year about services that let you gain interest on your cryptocurrency holdings, but they were small UK companies and I didnā€™t particularly feel like going through the trouble at the time. The premise is sensible though, if not free of risk. If youā€™re going to be holding currency in any form, you donā€™t want it stagnating and not earning interest of some sort. These companies will loan out your capital to others, and in return you get interest rates ranging from 4ā€“8% per annum. Which is stunning compared to any traditional savings account, and makes one wonder how high the risk is. But if youā€™ve got money in crypto to begin with, whatā€™s a little more risk? It seems this has now become a ā€œmainstreamā€ offering at several exchanges and so Iā€™ve decided to give it a go with what little I have. Perhaps Iā€™ll regret it.
  • Singapore Gets An Apple Store

    Singapore Gets An Apple Store

    Finally.

    After years of waiting, Singapore got its own Apple Store on Orchard Road (where else?) in May of 2017.

    Iā€™ve been in the ecosystem for about 14 years now, and getting good sales service and support from third-party resellers has been consistently hard. Back when Funan the IT Mall was still around, there were a few small shops that knew what they were doing with Macs, but for the most part, the bigger chains gave people bad advice, installed RAM chips facing the wrong way, and stocked some pretty abysmal accessories at outrageous prices. Apple Retail have done all of the above on a bad day, too, Iā€™m sure, but at least they’re held to higher standards.

    The two-level store follows the recent round of store designs by Norman Foster, with lots of large indoor plants and round headphone stands on the far end. You get upstairs via a symmetrical pair of spiral staircases cut into cool stone walls on either side; no glass staircases or elevators here. I read in some press release that the materials are meant to echo the Apple Park campusā€™s design language, which I guess is … fine.

    Processed with VSCO with kp8 preset

    While itā€™s nice to have a place to buy devices and ā€œfeel part of a communityā€ with the new Today At Apple events, I think the main benefit of having this here is going to be accessible, proper customer support in the city. Iā€™ve been down to industrial parks way too many times to get my iPhone looked at in the past, and itā€™s not fun.

     

    A word about my current setup, for future reference: Iā€™ve not bought a new Mac in 7 years. The current iMac struggles along and is only used once every couple of months to do the things only a Mac can do for arbitrary reasons. I get most of my work done on a MacBook Pro supplied by the company, but for personal use, my iPhone and a couple of iPad Pros do everything I need or have time for. The 12.9ā€ version gets a lot of use as a desk-bound typing machine and a bed-bound Netflix player, which is really underutilizing it, I know. The smaller one gets taken everywhere because of its size, and Iā€™m hoping for it to replace the MBP for a lot of little things at work like note taking and task management. Who wants to bring a big laptop home every night anyway?