- “Quiet luxury is new age minimalism,” Elle magazine wrote. “It’s less austere than minimalism but more polished than ‘normcore,’” said Vogue.
A $1,700 merino sweater, a $300 t-shirt? Thankfully, I never knew luxury. -
The Journey, Mary Oliver
Sometimes, reading poetry helps soothe me. Especially when the universe throws you something incomprehensible. -
The Internet Isn’t Meant To Be So Small
I wonder how many of us miss the internet as it was in the late 90s. Perhaps if you are a Gen Z, this weird version of the internet that we all love to hate is the only version you know. And you have very little expectations of it being a tool for discovery, just a place for you to build your brand, game the algorithm, spread your truth… -
‘Washington’ or ‘DC’? Social Media Erupts After Associated Press Picks a Side
I don’t understand how people stop calling it Washington DC. There is a whole state on the West Coast that you are confusing the world about. - I am an expert at cracked heels, and hydrocolloid plaster manufacturers don’t advertise this on their packaging, and so I had to check how long you can leave them on for.
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Mr Bean says no.
Rowan Atkinson tells you why electric vehicles are not the panacea they claim to be. -
You cannot google for this, and have to scour through various blog posts and/or go down to different libraries to find it out for yourself, but finally, because this was asked in Parliament, there is now a list of book exchange corners in Singapore’s public libraries.
I wonder if the fact that there was no list has got to do with the piles of unusable/ obsolete material one tends to find at libraries’ book exchange corners, or the enterprising men who target these places and collect books to sell. -
I was reading Nelson’s blog, and then I came across a post on ambient music.
I too was trying to avoid “gormless electronica and “earth fart” recordings that fail to inspire” and was glad for a worthy recommendation. -
How to beat desk rage
I don’t think The Economist has a solution, but well, it does a good job of describing a very particular agony of modern life. -
I Bought a CO2 Monitor and It Broke Me
I loved this piece. It is a reminder that there are many things one can measure, but really, what are you going to do with the information? -
These Microsoft wallpapers are awesome.
I love Clippy.
📖 The Wall
“Billions of tiny cocoons hang woven into its threads, a lizard lying in the sun, a burning house, a dying soldier, everything dead and everything living. Time is big, yet it has room for new cocoons. A grey and relentless net, in which every second of my life is captured. Perhaps that’s why it seems so terrible to me, because it stores everything up and never really allows anything to end.”
―
Marlen Haushofer
The Wall
//
This story is morbid, disturbing and I loved it. It had me in a soft but firm grip, and there are no chapters, just a breathless report stretching 238 pages. The main character goes off for a holiday in the mountains and finds herself the sole survivor behind a transparent wall. The book follows her as she undertakes the task of surviving – cutting wood, planting crops, milking a cow… The narrative skips between the past and present, and that required processing but also made the read even more engaging. Even as it was clear that things would not generally go well, I was engrossed in the details, trying to guess what happens next.
This is not a fast-paced science fiction novel. It is an ode to the natural world and the human spirit. It is a simple story, told in beautiful prose. But as to whether the protagonist truly finds equanimity, I do not know.
[The book was first published in 1963, and I have never heard of the author. I am so pleased I chanced upon it at the bookstore.]
Recommended.
//
“But if time exists only in my head, and I’m the last human being, it will end with my death. The thought cheers me. I may be in a position to murder time. The big net will tear and fall, with its sad contents, into oblivion. I’m owed some gratitude, but no one after my death will know I murdered time. Really these thoughts are quite meaningless. Things happen, and, like millions of people before me, I look for a meaning in them, because my vanity will not allow me to admit that the whole meaning of an event lies in the event itself.”
Links from the past weeks
- What walking from Washington to New York reveals about America
To me, walking is a good thing. Maybe one day I will take a 26-day walk. -
Nepo babies have never been bigger. So why are the Windsors and the Roys so unhappy?
Sometimes I try to read about why rich people become so unhappy, as a mind-expanding exercise. I appreciate that suffering is part of the human condition but I also appreciate details about the devastating effect of being wealthy. -
Microsoft Surface Precision Mouse review
I had the chance to test it, and got it at a good price. I am new to this customise-all-the-damn-buttons-on-your-mouse train, but I do like the size and look of the Surface Precision. It is slightly smaller than the Logitech G604 that I already have. -
10 Seattle bookstores you’ll never want to leave
When we saw the photo of Twice Sold Tales, I knew we had to go there. We spotted a few cats and met a couple who was there trying to spot all the cats. - Sometimes you get nice tips on Lifehacker, and sometimes you scratch your head at articles like this: How Library Book Requests Can Keep You From Impulse Shopping
- I am told that the 90s is back and Outdoor Research’s retro gear are really cute.
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Turn off your email, get the packing right – and never, ever play Monopoly: 15 tips for a happy holiday
Ha, the hate that Monopoly gets. I played Monopoly Deal (a card game) on a trip and it was quite fun.
Links from the past weeks
- Downs–Thomson paradox
The equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport; improvements in the road network will not reduce congestion and improvements in the road network can make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient or if they cause disinvestment in the public transport system. -
GPT models are actually reasoning engines not knowledge databases
“Even though our AI models were trained by reading the whole internet, that training mostly enhances their reasoning abilities not how much they know. And so, the performance of today’s AI models is constrained by their lack of knowledge.” -
Cang Lan Jue is a Visual Feast inspired by Hades & Persephone
I was recommended to watch this, and did not expect the high level of CGI wizardry. It was a visual treat, and a break from the overly sexualised storylines you get from most other things one watches on Netflix. Reminds me of the shows we watched as children, but with much better computer graphics. -
Why EY and its rivals may eventually break up, after all
Because the audit business is in conflict with the consulting/ advice business. Amazing how the conflict of interests rules don’t apply to some professions. -
To fend off creepy guys online, Chinese women gather around ‘baby solid food’
The hashtag, associated with parenting, means the algorithm pushes the content mainly to women. I am guessing there will be various other hashtags one has to use to get away from creeps. - I was today years old when I learned about asparagus pee. (I can’t smell it.)
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The Benner Cycle Predicts 100+ Years of Market Movement
Someone once told me about 11-year cycle, but in recent years, the cycles are much harder to interpret. -
The Dubious Wisdom of Smart Brevity
“Personally, I cannot imagine sending a note with the brusque subject line “our chief of staff quit.” I suspect this is a gender thing: I spent much of my early professional years inserting exclamations into e-mails so as not to sound like a stone-hearted ice witch.”
We can all learn to write more concisely, but the ideology behind Smart Brevity may not be so universal, as this writer eloquently explains: “Smart Brevity is essentially a book about how to write a good e-mail. (And honestly it probably could have been a long e-mail.)”
📖 Real Estate
“There were some small improvements. I now owned not one electric bicycle but a fleet of electric bicycles. In this sense, as far as I was concerned, I resembled a rock star I knew who owned a fleet of aero-planes. Yes, I had one e-bike locked up under the tree and two more in the garage. Friends came to stay from all over the world and we cycled around London together. It was a gesture towards a life I wanted, that is to say, an extended family of friends and their children, an expanded family rather than a nuclear family, which in this phase of my life seemed a happier way to live. If I wanted a spare room for every friend, my flat could not support this idea. If I wanted a fireplace in every room, there were no fireplaces in my flat. So what was I going to do with all this wanting?”
―
Deborah Levy
Real Estate
//
A timeless question – What have I done with my life?, sometimes interposed with a more materialistic – What do I have to show for it?
I appreciate how Levy captures the questions and how we answer ourselves, never losing a sense of optimism. I have read and adored Levy’s previous two volumes of her living autobiography. In this volume, she goes into questions about patriarchy and a woman’s place in this world, and much as one yearns for a strong message or resolution, I understand why sometimes ambivalence holds sway. We may not get the outcome we want in this lifetime, but we have to keep on trying.
Living is striving. Living is keenly observing. You may or may not have real estate to show for it.
//
“Yet my encounter with this rented house was a taunt, a provocation; it made me feel more alive. If I was full of desire for its ambience and grace, the fact that I did not have the means to buy it only accelerated my desire. Perhaps it was not the house but desire itself that made me feel more alive.
Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space“
Links from the past weeks
- There are good reasons you always feel 20 percent younger than your actual age.
One postulated that it is the age when his “major life questions/ statuses reached the resolutions/ conditions in which they’ve since remained.” This made sense to me, the “me” who sees herself as being in her early 30s. - I’ve been listening to more electronic music lately, and googled what do DJs do, marvelled at how much the Scottish electronic music industry is worth, read about how house exploded in Scotland. Which then made me want to go back to Glasgow.
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Not the traditional style, but I do like Wu Jizhen’s calligraphy.
A thumbs up to the mango. -
Britain has endured a decade of early deaths. Why?
“in the early 2010s, life expectancy stalled in Britain compared with long-run trends and other countries. This slowdown in life expectancy struck all age groups, not just the elderly. And it disproportionately affected the poor.” -
Gender equality will take 300 years
An eye-watering headline. And the wage gap widened in 2021. -
What is the middle way?
A path in between extreme asceticism and sensual indulgence. -
What is a champagne socialist?
I read it while it was used as an insult (i.e. meaning no. 2). It raises an interesting question: what is the rich egalitarian to do? - Was finding out more about slow games, and learned about keepsake games and patient gamers. Bought The Return of Obra Dinn in the end and spent a few hours a little too engrossed.
- Ultramarathons sound very painful to me but Gary Cantrell’s use of books in race organisation amuses me:
“A master map of the locations is provided by Cantrell. To prove they’ve run the course correctly, runners must find each book and present a page from each, correspondent to their bib numbers. This is done every loop with the help of a compass. They have 60 hours to complete five.”
In my head: is the page torn, is it glued back later, oh my goodness. -
More on ambient music: How Japanese Ambient Music Became a Thing in America
There are masters, and pioneers, and then there are umm, screensavers.
📖 Narcissus and Goldmund
“One knew nothing. One lived and walked about on the earth or rode through the forests, and so many things looked at one with such challenge and promise, rousing such longing: an evening star, a bluebell, a lake green with reeds, the eye of a human being or of a cow, and at times it seemed as if the very next moment something never seen but long yearned for must happen, as if a veil must drop from everything. But then it passed, and nothing happened, and the riddle was not solved, nor was the secret spell lifted, and finally one became old and looked as shrewd as Father Anselm or as wise as Abbot Daniel, and perhaps one still knew nothing, would still be waiting and listening.”
―
Hermann Hesse
Narcissus and Goldmund
//
I love the writing and for the first few chapters, I was absorbed. There was a sense of not wanting to move forward, because the story may move such that I don’t get to enjoy the writing anymore. This not wanting to let it go, is a form of relishing.
Then, I went to other books, and came back again. Into the book I went; suddenly the story sped up and I was caught up in Goldmund’s travels, and Hesse manages to use this young man as a foil, teasing out the deeper questions of life, and yet, there is never an answer. Because life carries on, and meaning may or may not arrive.
It is clear that Hesse has insight into the human condition, and the way he described the natural world, it conveys a zest for life, an understanding of the importance of the simpler things in life. I read and re-read the first paragraph of the book. Goldmund is such a character – an aimless wayfarer – and Narcissus is so intellectual, perhaps overly so, but I love them both, and their differences perhaps reflect the different extremes one may struggle with, within oneself.
I am reading this in my 40s. I wonder if I would have loved this book as much if I had read it as a younger human. Would I have tasted the same sense of wisdom?
Highly recommended.
Links from the past weeks
- We started watching Girls5eva and “New York Lonely Boy” is an awesome song.
- Quirky slides from Softbank’s 2020 earnings call
Slides in my industry are umm, more academic but I am always up for inspiration. -
I almost bought Marcin Wichary’s book on keyboards, but instead, I soothed myself with a 2018 article he wrote: Bigger in Japan.
(The Kickstarter page is here.) -
After reading this MacStories piece about how there is a remake of the classic version of Angry Birds, I went and paid my $0.99.
It is a simple game and very enjoyable, but it was made stupid in later years, when it became saddled with mechanisms aimed to get you to make recurring in-app purchases. - Reading The Art of War, and bemoaning the lack of the Chinese text in my copy. Not that being able to read the characters mean you understand the text, but well, I would like to refer to it and pretend my education hasn’t been wasted.
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Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market
I really love this piece of journalism. Not so great for those involved in the Singaporean project. - This is a little against my desire to stop using music as background, but I read somewhere about slow radio and went looking for the BBC Radio podcast.
- Apparently, Chinese youths are referring to themselves as rats. It is a self-deprecating way to refer to themselves while describing their struggles. The article also touches on other memes, and includes the Chinese characters and Hanyuan pinyin to help one understand the wordplay.
- Another day, another artificial sweetener to be careful about.
Interior
Suddenly we have been together for 12 years and on alternate Sunday mornings, we put our night guards together, in a bowl of water, and use Brite on them.
Lately, aka perhaps a short summary of my early 40s
I got myself a pair of glasses with progressive lenses. I wear full-strength contact lens to correct the near-sightedness in my dominant eye, and on the other eye, I wear a multi-focal lens that is powered down for my near-sightedness and has provision for my new-found far-sightedness. There are quite a number of options these days for people with both myopia and presbyopia and none are perfect apparently.
Listening to a bunch of new-to-me music: Bluetech, into.cassette, florist, caroline. Oh I love Bluetech. Especially when your audio equipment is capable of rendering some form of soundstage. I also made a playlist of ambient electronica from the 90s after I watched John Darko’s videos on how he got into electronic music.
I sought out old comforts – film cameras, the Ricoh Digital IV, keeping a blog. I obviously cannot find that version of myself anymore, but living is searching, refining, and hopefully finding some equanimity.
Relatedly, caring a little more about meditation, taking walks, and sleeping better.
I started running in my late 30s, and last year, my running volume halved. Covid undid my efforts at building my running self, and it has been tough trying to get back to the same speed/ volume. I keep things fresh by going to different places but with the world moving on from the pandemic, I find more places more crowded these days, which adds friction to my going for a run. Ah well, I will figure something out.
I read “big” books like The Third Reich, Lord of The Rings, The Complete Works of Plato … and added War and Peace and The Art of War to my list. Even though I once said I decided to not read W&P. Ha. Perhaps someone in her 20s might have wanted to read such books, youth affording the time and headspace but life moved along quickly. Perhaps someone in her 40s might find joy in the labours of reading such fat tomes, so that she does not reach her retirement, thinking, “Oh maybe I really should read these books now, before I die.”