It seems like there’s always something wrong, and I feel like it’s one problem after another these days. The same night as my near-death experience (previously on…), I came home to find that our bedroom’s air-conditioning had died instead. It would put out only semi-cool air, then just regular air, in a cycle that lasted all night. The next day, I dragged a standing fan into the room to make things a little more livable. A few nights later, when Kim returned from Australia, we started to sleep in the living room where the air-conditioning still works.
What followed was a series of visits by different servicemen, each finding something legitimately “wrong” but none ultimately solving the problem. There was the simple fact that the unit was clogged and dirty — despite another company just having “cleaned” it two months ago. They did a regular wash (S$66), but had to return on Wednesday for a deep chemical overhaul (S$150), and a washing of the outdoor compressors ($50). When that didn’t solve it, it was discovered that the outdoor compressor was flashing an error message, and the entire power PCB (printed circuit board) needed replacement ($711.50). FWIW it’s a Mitsubishi Starmex system; future buyers beware.
One week later, and the problem still hasn’t been addressed, and we’re still sleeping in the living room.
I need to mention how this has lived in my head as a much bigger problem than it objectively is. After getting home from the hospital, I just wanted to lie in bed and have everything be absolutely NORMAL. To have no outstanding problems in the world — just being in a state of calm to mentally recover. But immediately, something was wrong in the home, a psychological intrusion in my metaphorical safest space. This has just made me an anxious freak all week, feeling low and spiraling into worst-case scenarios. Like, what if they find there’s a problem with the piping in the walls and need to hack them out in our bedroom? What if this is going to cost even more money than what’s already been spent? I do believe this is all likely in the coming week.
Another source of anxiety is the actual repair visits themselves: not only is there cleaning up to do after (which I couldn’t really with a foot injury), but our compressor units are installed outside the bedroom window, over a fragile “roof” that probably can’t take a person’s full weight. To work on them, a technician has to climb out (one even did it without safety gear) and stand precariously on a tiny parapet, dangerously close to either tumbling into our living room or down several storeys. At work, seeing all the things that can go wrong is my superpower, but it’s not a useful one to have right now.
On the bright side, my foot is much better already, and I’m able to walk normally enough to go out for short periods. I expect I’ll be back to normal in another week. Whenever the feelings of doom reach a critical point, I remember that I’m actually alive and uninjured, and a lack of air-conditioning rarely (but not never) kills anyone, and then I get a spiritual HP reset. I just need to think like that all the time and take it easy.
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Once I was able to hobble well enough, we went to see Trap (2024), which lived up to my expectations of a fun little outing. As of right now, Shyamalan’s second wind as a maker of tight little B-films based on killer elevator pitches is looking pretty sustainable, and I’m hoping for many more. Next, I’m gonna finish watching the final season of Servant, his series on Apple TV+.
We also had time for a quick lunch with Uma of Goggler Malaysia, a media criticism outlet after my own heart that I encourage checking out even if you, like me, have nothing to do with Malaysia on a regular basis. They do a fun podcast and publish spot-on film and television reviews. We talked about his new Apple Vision Pro and I outed myself as someone who’s never seen any of the Godfather films. But I’ve taken the first step: buying the entire trilogy on the US iTunes Store at the current sale price of US$9.99. I’m planning to watch it in the AVP’s Cinema environment someday soon.
Finally, we visited the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum (Tanjong Pagar Distripark) with Cien, Peishan, and James. I say finally because this visit has been postponed three times on account of our various illnesses and accidents. Unfortunately I was not moved by anything, and it felt like a series of science experiments crammed into a small soulless space that lends no gravitas or beauty to an artist’s work.
I remember the original SAM fondly, and hope the museum will move back into its former space off Orchard Road although that’s looking more unlikely. The news can sugarcoat it all they like, but calling a remote concrete slab beside a container port ’eminently suited for contemporary arts purposes’ is a stretch. I’d love to see the so-called ‘positive feedback from visitors’ they’re receiving. Art doesn’t belong out somewhere you need shuttle buses for people to encounter it. The museum’s rightful place is wherever ordinary people are already going.
Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Your curious journey’ at SAMThese were from an Indonesian pop art collection at Gajah Gallery
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.
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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”.
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I spent almost all of Monday installing Windows XP on my iPad and MacBook using the newly approvedUTM 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.
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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”).
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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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I’ve got the time on my hands now to make plentiful use of it.
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!
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.
His 2024 tour had just one Asian stop, here, before heading to several Australian cities. We decided to splurge on S$300 tickets late last year for the one-night-only show on June 14. After all, when are you ever going to see Jerry Seinfeld again? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list opportunity.
And he was pretty good! I can’t believe he’s 70 and still working the circuit. Although the face says he’s aged, the material suggests he’s still the same unserious, childish complainer we love. Some bits on modern subjects like AI and smartphone addiction screamed ‘boomer!’, but his timeless takes on marriage, the lack of innovation at the Sun-Maid Raisin Company, and putting old dish sponges out of their misery, were solid gold.
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I attended an inspiring memorial service for my uncle, who passed away a few weeks ago. It was a large and well-attended affair, on account of him having been a prominent member of the local medical community.
Relatives are usually these distant figures we only see during Chinese New Year reunions. But under the surface, there’s a lifetime of stories we never hear, and it’s a pity. If not for the history lesson and stories that his son shared, I would never have known about how he was born in China 90 years ago, arrived in Singapore at the age of 10, suffered tragedy at the hands of the Japanese, and became an award-winning multihyphenate equally accomplished in matters of art and science. That generation really was built different; the risks they took seem unreal when compared to our modern lives (but tbh they couldn’t handle a zillion social notifications destroying their mental health either).
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It was WWDC week and while I don’t have to comment on Apple stuff, I kinda always do, so let’s keep traditions alive. They unveiled a slew of software features coming to every platform, and I was most excited to see that Journal, Notes, and Freeform are still being improved and haven’t become forgotten hobbies. As a word-centric computer user, they’re the ones I rely on most — the Math Notes demo on iPad was super cool but I couldn’t begin to use it.
I’m not convinced the Photos app redesign was necessary or an improvement for most users. Its single-page design seems like a conceptual simplification that might add more complexity in real-life use. I haven’t lived with it yet, so I hope I’m wrong.
I’m convinced Messages will continue to absorb all popular chat features until it eventually catches up to where Telegram was about four years ago. And that’s all it needs to do, really.
They announced that Apple Vision Pro will finally be sold outside the US, with Singapore as one of the first countries to get it, alongside Japan and China. Wow, that’s a hell of an upgrade to our starting lineup position. Back in Week 5, I correctly predicted that the global rollout would start in June, but I also said that the product would see annual updates — the consensus on tech Twitter now is that there won’t be a new model until 2026. Which… makes me think that I could get one after all? Getting two years of use out of a S$5,500 device is a lot more palatable than getting just one. Once you add the cost of AppleCare+ (S$749), a travel case (S$299), and prescription inserts/contact lenses though. Hmm.
On Apple Intelligence: I was happy to see them begin by laying out their design principles (we do this on a lot of my projects, but they are rarely communicated to the public), which are critical for this particularly suspicious and misunderstood technology, for which Apple needs to differentiate their approach and model. Some, like Google, already have access to your data but can’t be trusted not to monetize it with ad targeting. Others, like OpenAI, may only have what data you choose to share but can’t be trusted not to train their models on it. Apple is unique in that it doesn’t seem to want to do either.
Finally, we’re getting a smarter Siri that’s an actual agent, i.e. able to string together various tasks in pursuit of a goal, and take action on behalf of users. So much for the Rabbit and all that bullshit. Doing as much locally as possible is the only responsible way to do AI agents. And Apple’s private cloud compute solution, which looks to be yet another privacy engineering breakthrough, is probably the second-best way.
The image generation stuff was probably the most contentious part. I’ve seen upset takes from artists but no one can put this stuff back in the bottle. The only way to stop AI art is a full-scale public revolt, and that requires everyone getting a good look at it first. It’s the four packs of cigarettes your dad forces you to smoke after he catches you sneaking one. When we’re all tired of seeing gross AI styles, human-created art might be appropriately valued.
But I don’t think Apple is on this exact mission, so I was surprised at the examples they chose to showcase. The Genmoji of a surfing dinosaur looked terribly similar to Meta’s own AI chat stickers in style and quality (cheap). But being able to create Genmojis and illustration-style images for documents all across the OS, for free, is no doubt a big deal. I think many people will generate their first AI images with Apple Intelligence.
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Media activity:
I just finished R.F. Kuang’s Babel and loved every page. If you’re into university-set adventures, deep dives into language and literature, the aftershocks of British colonialism, and tales of the Chinese diaspora, this one’s for you. I had no idea that she also wrote Yellowface, which I’ve heard many people rave about. Props to Kuang, she gets a lot more out of being Chinese than me. 5/5 stars.
Bought Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name for S$31 on PlayStation’s summer sale, and immediately started playing it. I thought I’d had enough of this series for awhile, but I’m six hours in and having so much more fun than in the preceding game. Part of it is even set in the same Yokohama map as Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but running around here is so much better without the annoying turn-based combat. Recommended if you like absurd storylines played with the straightest of faces.
Started watching Constellations on Apple TV+, which has sadly been canceled after one season. The first two episodes lean into a space horror vibe which had me seriously tense, but it’s lightened up a bit now in episode three. Recommended for fans of Noomi Rapace, Dead Space, sci-fi mysteries.
Watched A Quiet Place Part II and was let down because I remember enjoying the first one, but this sequel is a much lesser use of mostly the same ingredients. Plus that annoying post-apocalyptic trope about how the human survivors are worse than the monsters. PUHLEASE. 1.5/5 stars.
Watched Hit Man on Netflix, the first Richard Linklater film I’ve caught in years. It kept me guessing (and I had a lot of wrong guesses where it was heading), and has a lot of fun with the concept. Glen Powell is going to be a huge star, isn’t he? 4/5 stars.
Alex Garland’s Civil War was like most of his films: plenty to look at, not much to say. It shows what a civil war in the US might look like, but doesn’t care to fill anything in, mirroring the photojournalists it follows. Early on, Kirsten Dunst says “we just shoot the pictures, others can ask why”, or something to that effect. Well, isn’t that convenient for you, Alex Garland. 2.5/5 stars.
Discovered the band Fantastic Cat after seeing a vertical video somewhere of them inviting Adam Duritz of Counting Crows to be on their new song. It may have been a clip of the video for the song, actually. Following that I checked out Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat and really enjoy its pre-my-birth country rock sound. A quick internet search revealed that they’re a supergroup of four singer-songwriters that I unfortunately have never heard of.
Am listening to Charli XCX’s very popular new album, BRAT, and it might be her best work yet. I’m also listening to A.G. Cook’s new Britpop album and since he produced half of her album, it can get confusing.
Have also been following the drama of Taylor Swift allegedly releasing numerous editions of her albums on the eve of other female artists’ album releases to block them from the top spot on charts. She apparently tried it with Billie Eilish’s album, and now she’s done it to Charli with a UK-only release of two new editions of The Tortured Poets Department, each with different demos or live versions tacked on. She’s free to defend the throne but there are apparently 34 different versions of that album out now. Even The Guardian has weighed in and declared Charli the winner on artistic grounds. This releasing of multiple variants to milk fans feels gross to me. Back in my day, musicians just released one version of an album (okay, plus maybe a Japan-only one with bonus tracks) and it had to fend for itself on the charts for years!
During a chat on Good Friday — a public holiday here that I’d always assumed was less common than Easter Monday, but it turns out that’s not the case! — I realized Michael was in the middle of his workday in Tokyo and I was probably being a distraction. Our conversation started with him asking what I knew about Ethereum these days, and ended with how scaling leadership and quality in large organizations is hard, which might be related topics when you think about it. When a blockchain becomes too costly and congested, the solution is to spin off nimble L2 side-chains, just like how companies try to establish secret skunkworks teams that operate outside the rules. Both of these are an admission that we’re really bad at handling complexity.
I put the long weekend to good use by sitting down to do some adulting with a semi-thorough look at finances, lifestyle, and possible futures. The process that works best for me is one I only realized later in life (and often forget and have to rediscover again): thinking aloud in writing. It looks like a long bullet list, occasional paragraphs, and maybe a table in Apple Notes.
As I formed a loose decision-making framework, I asked ChatGPT to think it through with me and find any gaps in my logic or assumptions. It justified its monthly fee by calling out things I had failed to consider on more than one occasion. By the time a picture emerged, I was in disbelief. When did I start spending (or expecting to spend) so much? What idiot signed up for so many monthly subscriptions? Shockingly, ChatGPT did not suggest that I cancel it.
It was at this point that my daily Co—Star notification popped up with an enigmatic line: “Shatter your old intellectual loops.” Hmm! What could that mean? “What you do with your money is your choice,” the detailed horoscope reassured me. While I don’t believe in this stuff, I respect how it can add randomness to one’s internal monologues. Harder still to do is read from the other perspective and see if it still says what you want to hear. It seemed to pass the sniff test this time.
>> Sidenote: I’ve found myself using ChatGPT less lately because Perplexity is so damned convenient. It beats ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot (née Bing) for combining AI and search to answer questions. Arc Search is alright if you have a “web research” kinda job to be done, but if I just want to ask “What is X?”, Perplexity is fast and offers sources and links for further reading. A big part of this convenience is the availability of widgets and Lock Screen complications on iOS. Yes, I do know this shit is destroying the web and I hope somebody stops/solves it soon. Still, I need answers!
After making some progress, I went out for a walk that felt great despite the insane heat and humidity we’ve been experiencing over the past few weeks. It’s impossible to step out and not immediately be sweaty; in fact you’ve probably been sweating indoors already. Strangely, at one point, with nothing nearby except water on one side of me and a forested patch on the other, I felt waves of cool air blowing past me, close to the ground. This continued for several good minutes, and it felt like when someone leaves the door to an air-conditioned room open and it flows out. Perhaps it was so hot above that even air just 1ºC cooler coming off the river felt remarkable? I thought to myself, “Am I injured and bleeding out? How is it cold?”
Speaking of sudden shifts in temperature and bleeding, are we really ‘still early’ when more than one person in a week starts a conversation about crypto? I had drink plans the evening before Good Friday, which made for a Pleasant Thursday, and a lot of the chat was about NFTs and memecoins. I have shifted my stance on the latter from ‘not touching that nonsense’ to ‘everybody needs a little casino time’, and so currently own some “Jeo Boden” coin, a little “Dog Wif Hat”, and as of yesterday, some “Costco Hot Dog”. The last one is funny and so might do very well: you know how their hot dogs are famously pegged at $1.50 no matter what the economy does? Well the coin is about 9 cents now, and the idea is that it’ll pump to hit $1.50, because it must! (Disclaimer: I’m in for insignificant amounts of money, please don’t go nuts.)
My overall outlook on web3 has moderated a little since the last cycle and can probably be summed up like this: We know Computing is good, we’re quite sure Decentralization is good, and we’ve seen interesting ideas around Tokenization, but all the “crypto” solutions built on those three ideas today have got something wonky and unstable about them. It’s hard to see most alts having any lasting value.
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Media activity:
We’re halfway through Season 2 of Below Deck Down Under (SPOILER) and the infamous sexual assault incident that was kinda viral on Twitter when it happened has now happened. Awful stuff, and I think Laura’s reaction afterwards was just as bad. I’m glad that was taken care of. Captain Jason is the goat.
I’ve been watching a little Jujutsu Kaisen after seeing an incredible fight scene clip online. This was a shonen show I’d long ago decided I didn’t care for, like Demon Slayer and all that shit, but seeing the quality of animation in that clip changed my mind. Sadly, I think it was actually from the movie, and the regular TV show hasn’t gone that hard yet. I think I’m up to episode 10 and I’ll keep at it.
I started Netflix’s adaptation of Three Body Problem while Kim was out for a couple of nights. It’s much better than I’ve come to expect from Netflix, and it’s moving fast from my vague recollection of the first book (the only one of the series I read). I can see myself finishing it over the next few weeks.
I came across Adrianne Lenker’s new album, Bright Future, in my Apple Music recommendations and decided to hear it even though I couldn’t recall her name at all. It was really good, and if I had to say, it’s indie folk rock? Emotionally, although not so much musically, it reminded me of Gillian Welch’s Americana alt-country. Then Perplexity informed me that Lenker has a band called Big Thief, which sounded kinda familiar? Did I dismiss them out of hand at some point because I didn’t like the name? I put their debut album, Masterpiece, on during my aforementioned walk and was blown away.
If you’re reading this on the web, you might notice that this site is now running WordPress’s new ‘Twenty Twenty Four’ theme, with a more traditional blog-like homepage (it has a sidebar) linking to single-column post pages. Navigation remains unchanged, but typography and minor details are improved.
I’m happier with this than I was with the blocky grid of last year’s ‘Twenty Twenty Three’ theme, because this comes with the freedom to put up shorter posts without Titles or Featured Images. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth on microblogging here, or having all tweets mirrored here, but it’s never stuck. But at least I have the option again, especially since I haven’t properly posted on Twitter in a year and most people I want to follow are still scattered across Threads, Bluesky, Nostr, and Mastodon.
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We celebrated a little life milestone this week with a nature walk, a “Gold Class” viewing of Dune Part Two, a nice bottle of French Malbec, and a perfect Canadian pork chop with a side of the butteriest mashed potatoes. A mix of simple and simpler pleasures.
I’ll expand: We were recently in New Zealand, and took a couple of walks in nature reserves. I’ve never bothered to attempt the same in Singapore because it’s ridiculously hot, but visiting the Rifle Range Nature Park in West Singapore was interesting for the stark contrast offered versus our recent experiences. Every step on its paths is sure footed by design; suspended walkways take you through the forest without trampling plants, and they’re so convenient all the monkeys we saw were using them as well, rather than walking in the dirt. You get the sense that everything is regularly inspected and all dangers have been scrubbed. It reflects the usual criticism of Singapore being a theme park, which is only a problem because living in a safe environment breeds complacency. At several points on the easiest routes at Te Mata Park in New Zealand, slipping off a path and tumbling into a ravine was a genuine possibility. I wonder what other metaphorical tumbles Singaporean life has not prepared me for.
The new Dune is as superb as all reviews have indicated, and I could not imagine rating it any less than 5 stars in Letterboxd. The art direction and photography are flawless, and it looks twice as expensive as it is. Never once while watching did my brain check out and think, “oh, that’s CGI”. The only change I would dare suggest is Austin Butler’s casting, as he’s not anywhere as menacing as the movie treats him. His character is already a nepo baby who just enjoys killing defenseless slaves and servants, and Butler didn’t bring the presence to suggest he’s also one of the most dangerous people in a universe full of freaks.
Another 5-star film for us this week was Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (2023), which won a Best Actor award at Cannes last year for Koji Yakusho’s nearly wordless performance. I enjoyed it tremendously as a loving tribute to the city of Tokyo and its toilets (really), a meditation on repetition and routine, an ode to proud and purposeful work, and a parable about how avoiding the messiness of life might obscure living itself. The soundtrack is a Gen X dream. Visually, it’s filled with beautiful everyday moments so mundane as to be overlooked by most of us going about our daily busyness. The way all its themes and music choices come together in the film’s final minutes is worth half a star alone.
Continuing the theme of Japanese films about appreciating life, we watched Living (2022), the transposed-to-England remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952). I’ve never seen the original, but it’s now high on my list. Bill Nighy is fantastic in the role of a civil servant who learns he’s dying and wonders what it’s all about, and plays his deconstruction with impressive vulnerability. I looked at the trailer for Ikiru afterwards, and while Takashi Shimura’s performance in the same role is regarded as iconic, it was a little theatrical and may not have aged as well.
Anyhow, the message in both these films is timeless: stop working so hard at meaningless things, smell the roses (or watch the shadows cast by leaves — ‘komorebi’ in Japanese, as the end credits of Perfect Days tells us), and make a difference to another human being’s life.
Take a little forest bathing break with this video I captured.
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Additional media activity:
We finished Season 1 of Below Deck Down Under at last, and I was glad to learn that Captain Jason and Chief Stew Aesha return for Season 2, which we now must see. The leadership and teamwork these two have put Captain Lee and Kate of the mainline series to bottomless shame.
The new Call of Duty mobile version of Warzone has finally come out, after being delayed for about a year. As a somewhat devoted player of the original Call of Duty Mobile title, I’ve been waiting with very high expectations for this. Unfortunately, the launch has been a bit of a dud, with many complaints from the worldwide community. For one, Android devices seem incapable of running it well. On my iPhone 15 Pro Max, it runs at peak performance and the graphics are truly console quality; I was running around maps that I knew instinctively, but my brain was exploding from how different and detailed everything looked. Sadly, the phone runs hot and it drained the better part of my battery in maybe an hour. I’ll wait to see if they improve anything before calling it quits.
The new Kacey Musgraves album, Deeper Well, is not bad at all. It even has a song called Anime Eyes which drops a line about a “Miyazaki sky”. Very weird times we live in.
I started using a new social app that tries to be a Letterboxd for music: Musicboard. Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically log/scrobble your listening activity, so rating music and broadcasting your taste is a manual affair. You also can’t start playing an album directly in Apple Music from within the app — it only supports Spotify at the moment.
A little while ago, I learnt that an ex-colleague of mine has received a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and he’s only a few years older than me. Despite the fact that more “young” people seem to be getting cancer, it was still a deep shock because Tony was always incredibly fit and dedicated to his health. He’s been writing openly about his thoughts and experience on his Medium account, which I read before meeting him for lunch with some other former colleagues this week. It was tough seeing him in poorer shape, but true to his personal brand, he seemed extremely pragmatic and matter-of-fact about it all.
We worked on the same team for about a year back in 2018, but were only on one project together as peers, leading design activities and client workshops together over a few months. I count myself fortunate to have had that experience, and learnt a lot from his confidence and wealth of technical knowledge when it came to UX matters — which was not my area of focus. Even then it was clear he had a knack for facing reality, and a passion for making sure the younger generation had their eyes open to the inequities of working life. Not always a popular topic, but life sucks. He mentioned that whenever he finds the strength these days, he works on his own design education materials that prepare students for non-ideal situations, and I thought that made perfect sense for him.
Many of the things we talked about over lunch echoed other conversations I’ve been having with other friends. Maybe it’s the return of tech layoffs in the news, but negative sentiments seem as high as they were during Covid, with the questioning of boundaries and priorities taking place again. Tony understandably tried to impress upon us that some things aren’t worth having as regrets, and that we should make better choices while we still can. When I asked him what else he does now on days that aren’t lost to medical interventions, the answer was surprisingly similar to how I spent most of my year off work: reading, writing, and drawing.
Peishan shared this Guardian article about people with cancer who’ve found the clarity to spend their remaining time meaningfully, and I thought Mark Edmondson landed the point that some people have trouble getting: the work that gives you purpose today isn’t the only purpose you’ll have.
People (usually millennials) also mention the difficulty they have switching off from work. On a daily basis, but also when they go on vacation — taking half the holiday to get into holiday mode is a terrible inefficiency. I recall it took me months to unwind from a state of nearly burning out and to stop worrying about my “sabbatical ROI”. We should be like newer hybrid vehicles that can shut their engines down when idling at traffic lights and spring back to life quickly when needed, but instead us older cars only know how to burn gas all the time. I want to be a disused school bus just rusting in a field, bright yellow and unbothered.
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I visited the Prix Pictet photo exhibition that’s part of Singapore Art Week (maybe it’ll be the only event I attend from this year’s edition) and found it beautiful but gosh it was mostly depressing. The theme was “Human” but it may as well have been “Human Suffering” — from communities devastated by the effects of mining and metal poisoning, to the plight of illegal refugees trekking 66 miles through jungle in search of better opportunities, they seemed to comment that there’s not much joy in being human these days. I joked halfway through that I hoped there would be a series of mundane birthday party photos at the end. There wasn’t.
Kim spent most of her week preparing an elaborate, successful Indian dinner from the Dishoom cookbook, but that’s really a story for her own weeknotes if they ever happen. The takeaway for me has been that, after seeing how the proverbial samosa is made, the Indian takeaways we usually get are probably quite unhealthy and we need to cut down.
Nintendo is having a January sale on the Switch eShop and I considered getting the remake of an apparent classic time loop visual novel, YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world, yes, that is its title. It’s apparently the spiritual forebear of games such as Steins;gate, but after watching a short gameplay video on YouTube, I decided that since life is too short, I really didn’t want to punish myself. An anime adaptation was made a few years ago, so I will simply watch that instead.
We are enjoying the new British police drama Criminal Record on Apple TV+. Peter Capaldi is really good in it, although all the police work and cornering of baddies with their secrets is carried out really incompetently.
Can you believe that The Smile dropped a new album a couple of days ago and I had to find out from YouTube instead of Apple Music? Seriously, I’m looking at my For You page and it’s not mentioned under New Releases. This music video, where the band plays a new song for an auditorium full of young children — most of them bewildered or bored out of their minds, but with a couple really into it — is such a simple and charming concept I can’t believe I can’t name another time it’s been done.
Greetings from beautiful Chiang Mai on this last day of the year. It’s my first time here, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. If anything, I’m kicking myself for not coming sooner — it’s currently a very cool and walkable 25°C at 11am, and temperatures go below 20°C in the evenings; Microsoft Copilot with Bing tells me it’s the safest city in SE Asia (wha?); and the food and coffee have been top notch so far.
We’ve also been to a cool cocktail bar with live jazz in a basement speakeasy-like space, and another “live house” with a mix of bands playing each night. Coming from Singapore where jazz clubs are a rarity, and almost exclusively the domain of old people, it’s been surprising to see many young people in attendance, although I can’t be sure they enjoy the bands. They seem to pay more attention and clap louder for the pop cover bands.
One amazing performer I heard was Joshua Lebofsky, originally from Canada, who sang and played a straight hour of jazz standards and pop interpretations on piano at The A Ter (theater). They were fantastically musical and soulful variations, and I was glad to be able to tell him so afterwards; sadly he hasn’t got a social media presence, but there’s an album from 2006 on Apple Music: Play A Little Prayer.
If we lived here, I would be a regular patron at these places for sure (especially at prices roughly half those back home). The non-existence of a vibrant jazz scene is such a shame for Singapore, because we have quite a few talented jazz players who end up being session musicians for mandopop performers most of the time, probably due to the economics of the music scene. I guess these are the third-order consequences of necessarily narrow education policies in our early years.
We also went on a walking street food tour and a cooking class at a small organic farm and school (where I was snapped in a farmer’s hat looking glum at having been dragged along, but ultimately it was a good time and the food was, like all of it, quite excellent). An intriguing culinary detail here is how Hainanese immigrants created their own localized chicken rice combining the steamed chicken with deep fried chicken cutlets and an entirely different chilli that’s dark and savory, with fermented soybeans and fish sauce?
Here are some photos, all from my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I made a new Darkroom preset to handle the light and scenery here, and I think it’s a versatile look I’ll probably be using for a long while. I’ll probably share it here next year after some fine tuning!
Anyway, Chiang Mai. Come by, it’s lovely enough to consider buying an apartment in, but I’ve only been here a couple of days.
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On the 45-minute minibus ride back from the farm last night, I managed to throw together my end-of-year playlist with some not-too-shabby transitions (I recommend turning crossfading on; 3 seconds). This is partly a diary of associated memories and partly what I’ll remember as the year’s best songs. This process usually takes much longer but everything came together on a stomach full of coconut curries and fresh herbs and spices they had us pound in a mortar ourselves.
sangsara.net 