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2024-05-09 02:37:09
In the jumble of thoughts and emotions that make up my existence, I find myself entangled in a web of contradictions. It's not poetic; it's real, raw, and sometimes messy. Here's the truth about living as a paradox:
I'm drawn to happiness, sure, but I can't shake off the weight of sad thoughts that often cloud my mind. It's like there's a constant tug-of-war between the two, and I'm stuck in the middle.
I'm not always my biggest fan. I see my flaws and shortcomings more clearly than anyone else. But amidst all that self-doubt, there's a begrudging respect for the person I've become, scars and all.
When I say "I don't care," it's not because I'm indifferent. Deep down, I care too much. It's just easier to put up walls than to deal with the vulnerability that comes with caring.
Attention is a tricky thing. I crave it, no doubt, but when it comes my way, I often find myself pushing it away. It's like I'm afraid of what it might reveal about me, or maybe I'm just not used to being seen.
I've been both a healer and a wounded soul in relationships. I've tried to fix others, thinking it would fix me too, only to end up with my own heart broken in the process.
Listening comes naturally to me, but sharing doesn't. I'm great at keeping other people's secrets, but when it comes to my own thoughts and feelings, I'd rather keep them locked away.
So yeah, I'm a walking contradiction. It's messy, it's confusing, but it's real. And maybe that's okay. Maybe embracing the messiness of life's contradictions is the most honest thing we can do.
2024-05-15 00:45:06
There's 2 genders, right? We all know that.
Of course there is. You're either a bloke, who has the dangly bits between their legs, or you're a woman without said dangly bits.
But maybe there's more. Maybe you have the dangly bits, but it doesn't feel right to call yourself a man? Maybe it's the opposite? Or something in between?
Honestly, I don't give a fuck. For all I care, you could identify as a potato and I'll still respect your wishes. But getting pissed off at me if I mis-identify you is not cool.
Look, it's a fucking minefield out there when it comes to people identifying as non-binary. We've been mincing about this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, and for most that time there's been 2 genders. Male and female.
But in the last few decades there's been a number of other genders that have sprung up. So if I think you look like a man, and I refer to you as "him" don't get up on your high horse and start screaming "YOU ASSUMED MY GENDER! NAZI!"
I assumed your gender because you look like a fucking man. If you identify as something else, that's fine. Tell me politely and I'll happily respect your wishes. Live and let live, and all that. Makes no difference to me.
Irony is, if you're not a dick about the whole thing, you're far more likely to get people on-side. You're always gonna get bigoted wankers, that's par for the course. But just because someone makes a mistake, it doesn't make them a bigot, or a transphobe, or a TERF, or a Nazi.
It just makes them human.
Peace ✌🏻
2024-05-17 14:07:27
(This open letter is inspired by a post I read yesterday by Gabby of woolgathering fame.)
Dear Gabby,
It’s not just you: getting over the fear of expectations is hard. I still struggle with it, after 300 something posts. I have a feeling I’ll never get completely over it, but here’s what’s helped me so far.
Posting a lot helps. I’ve posted so much nonsense on this blog that these days there’s not much I can do that will be worse than something I’ve written before. Somehow, I still have regular readers. Realizing that there are people out there still interested in what I have to say after all the good and not so good is a great comfort. From what you write, you seem to have discovered as much.
Another perk of having a large body of work is that each new piece you create becomes a smaller and smaller part of your entire oeuvre. When you’re first starting out, it feels like each creation you put out defines you. After all, if you only have one post, it’s the only thing people can judge you on. If you have a hundred, a wayward post is a drop in the bucket.
That said, wouldn’t you still want to see the creations your friends or favorite creators aren’t proud of? Or see their art even if it doesn’t quite fit the niche they’ve carved out for themselves? Everybody half-asses things in their own unique way. There’s a beauty in doing things imperfectly, too.
All that is to say, keep up what you’re doing. Creative inertia is a very real thing. You’re doing the right thing by posting, even if you feel like you’re just posting to break the streak of inactivity. Writing in any form begets more writing.
Anyway, welcome back to Bear! It’s good to have you back.
Yours,
misu
2024-05-13 23:53:23
i know, kind of random.
but if you've read some of my posts, you know that i'm currently working a part time job teaching kids how to code.
the kids i teach range from age 6 to 12, and i'm constantly fascinated, for lack of a better word, to see how lacking they are in some knowledge that i consider very fundamental.
these days, kids in the region where i live get chromebooks at school.
that's wild in my opinion.
you may think that this means they're extremely computer-savvy, but it's quite the opposite.
when i was in elementary school, we had a dedicated class in the computer lab where we learned how to type properly; although i had already learned how to use a computer from my dad and had my own preferred way of typing already.
either way, it made for efficient typers, and kids who knew what a pound symbol, an asterisk, and a colon were.
many of my students, including the ones who are now in middle school, are not efficient typers, and in fact many of them are slamming their pointer fingers down on keys one by one, the younger ones not even remembering where any of the letters are even after countless repetitions of the same words.
one of the languages i teach is python, which requires colons and like many other programming languages, parentheses.
some of my students don't know what either of those are, and every session i have to remind them that the parentheses are the round ones, and the colon is the two dots on top of each other.
and don't even get me started on their spelling skills.
there are students who are excellent spellers, but most don't know how to spell words like choice, import, and scissors, although i'll cut some of the younger ones slack on scissors.
i even have a student who can't spell her own last name.
even if she is 6, isn't that one of the first things you should learn how to spell?
something else i find pretty funny is that occasionally they'll try to touch the screen on the desktop to navigate.
something i find pretty not funny is that i had one student come in for a trial run and she didn't know how to use a desktop mouse.
and this is all coming from an area where many of the school districts are top in the nation.
did you also know that kids nowadays are more susceptible to online scams and malware?
have you ever illegally downloaded music and had a page that had 5 download buttons, but you knew exactly which one was the real one?
yeah, apparently kids these days can't tell.
and overall, kids throughout the nation are reading at a significantly lower level than they should be, even with schooling.
idk, it's all kinda concerning.
that's it from me, thanks for reading my rant:)
2024-05-14 21:18:05
I never really thought about it while growing up because I was raised in a religious family anyway and it's just how I was used to people talking, but at this point I've been living in Japan for several years and I often notice that very normal phrases take on a religious persona when translated to English. For example we have this word yokatta which literally translates as "it was good", but if you were to translate it normally to English as it's used than it would come out as "thank God". Or we have this other word kotoka which would be translated as "God knows" like "God only knows how bored I am" (なんて暇なことか). Also a lot of words in English are shortened versions of old phrases with religious significance like "Goodbye" coming from "God be with ye", and a lot of set phrases or common expressions in English that people use all the time come straight from the Bible like "a drop in the bucket", "go the extra mile", "by the skin of your teeth", "the root of the matter", "a labor of love", "scapegoat", "broken heart", "eye for an eye", "rise and shine", "fall by the wayside", or "a wolf in sheep's clothing"
I'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing (and I don't think it is), and Japanese has a lot of similar words or phrases which come from a religious origin too. It's just kinda weird to notice in retrospect how in English-speaking countries everything is experienced through a Judeo-Christian lens, even if you're an atheist.
Maybe that's why Western society and Japanese society are so different. Or partly why, anyway.
2024-05-16 15:28:05
woah, hello bear! it sure has been a while since i've last written.
a little bit after my last post, i went on some back-to-back trips around asia. i spent a few days in seoul and about a week in bali. i did actually write about both of those trips with the intention of sharing them with all of you on here but for some reason i couldn't quite bring myself to publish it. i've never really written on any sort of platform before this, but i'm assuming that just like visual art, some writing is just meant to be kept to yourself.
with the only things i had written in that span of 4 weeks being private, i didn't really have much else to post. and the longer i went without posting, the harder it was to come back. this always happens to me. it was the exact same mindset i had with my art account on twitter and playing genshin impact, some hobbies of mine that i enjoy but had gone over a year of avoiding before running back.
my friends started letting me know that they missed seeing me post, which i greatly appreciate—it makes me happy to know i have people looking forward to what i have to say (because i really am just saying anything on here) but it feels like such a double edged sword because now i also know that people have... (for a lack of better way to express this sentiment) expectations?
i was crushed knowing i felt this way because this is the same feeling i get whenever i try sharing my art publicly and start gaining traction. it's a habit i'm trying to unlearn and although i think i've definitely improved in some areas, it's still something i struggle with.
i didn't want to wait another year again before i wrote my next blog post so hi, hello, i'm back before even more time passes! i hope you've all been well.
if you're curious, here's a short list of notable things i did during my time away from bear:
until next time! :)
2024-05-18 04:26:07
A little bird came to see me,
Told me he was from the olden times.
I asked: Do I know you?
He said, you may not know me in this form, but you know my name.
What’s you name? - I asked.
Kafka - he replied.
He told me he knew what was on my mind.
I replied, take a guess?
And he chirped the following words:
“Dear Sunflower, if a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was I, if no one loved you then, know that I am dead.”
2024-05-17 23:35:12
the absolute worst thing someone can tell me about their anime viewing preferences has nothing to do with the kind of show they watch but how they watch it.
skipping openings just because you're on a binge can so easily rob you of what i'd argue are the best narrative and collective highs a series can offer.1
from a purely functional standpoint, they give us time to breathe and process what exactly we're watching. take, for example, the three versions of shippuden's penultimate opening— blood circulator. each variant denotes which point of the story you're at, and primes you for what's to come. (if you pay attention, you'll notice they lead into each other seamlessly! so neat.)
sometimes it's instinctual and more about building anticipation tonally, regardless of how much plot you can actually glean from the corresponding visuals. cowboy bebop's tank! and samurai champloo's battlecry both come to mind as prolific game changers; though i'm sure if you dig deep enough director watanabe shinichiro is bound to have weaved meaning between the lines.
on the rare and special occasion when anime is specifically centered around music, getting the mood right becomes even more significant. the fictional bands of k-on!, bocchi the rock!, and given are lent tangible legitimacy because their openings double as MVs. character voice actors will often go as far as lending their vocals to the supporting track despite not being singers by profession; lyrics and compositions are usually crafted specifically for the show. like, i doubt anyone can help jamming out when they're confronted by beck's hit in the usa; the whole production is pure nostalgia dopamine for anybody who cared about rock in the early 2000s.
(side note: somehow my favorite MV-style opening is from a show that has nothing to do with music, haha. tite kubo's impeccable sense of fashion landing the jump from page to screen crowns bleach king, i fear.)
other times, it's about payoff.
gradually mapping out mob psycho 100's kaleidoscopic dreamscape or unraveling the intricacies of oddtaxi's mystery episode to episode just feels satisfying. on a wider scale, great openings can walk, talk, and even roll out the red carpet for each other. see: the incredible legacy that unfolds between one piece's original we are! and its most recent uuuuus! can't be fully parsed unless you've stuck around for the entire ride.
now, this section would be a total sham if i didn't round it off talking about directors bringing in the opening song as background music to really bolster a story arc's climax. when that's done well? like with gurren lagann's sorairo days— it's often the moment you can never go back. in haikyuu! speak, that's the moment you'll be hooked on volleyball. everything a show has tried to say laid bare at your feet; the culmination of a thousand gives and takes.
(anecdotal: when it happened in kekkai sensen with hello, world!, i swear i graduated onto a higher plane of existence.)
point being: so much is lost in the act of refusing to be conditioned. to appreciate art, we must first surrender ourselves to it.
even if you never really click with a series, sticking with the credits for as long as possible isn't a total waste. there are ops that transcend the medium and cement themselves as pillars within the community at large. think evangelion's a cruel angel's thesis, hunter x hunter's departure!, death parade's flyers. if you've ever been to a karaoke session where someone picks earth, wind & fire's september or queen's bohemian rhapsody, you know it's blasphemy not to belt your heart out in unison; nevermind telling an ouran fan you haven't a clue what it means to kiss kiss fall in love.
here's the real kicker, yeah? behind every single one of these triumphs is a dedicated team of animators, directors, performers, and assistants who've put their all into creating something meant to be replayed for our viewing pleasure. hell, even the small stuff— like deciding the right timestamp for an op to actually come in every episode— requires cultivating a certain level of rhythmic awareness.
i took up multimedia in college (they made us dabble in basically everything) so maybe its trivial for me to be kicking up a fuss. but i promise it's fucking hard. all of it. every element coming together on such notoriously tight deadlines borders on miraculous.
i understand the temptation to click on the button. maybe you're on the edge of your seat, or waffling with the weight of how you should be doing something else. but make no mistake: if you really want to be moved? honor your artists. don't skip the openings.
ending this entry here mainly because WOW this got long quickly. here’s to the first of many posts that’ll be somewhat related to j-pop/rock — i basically grew up on the stuff. it hurt not to just list all my favorite songs and gush. don't even get me started on ending credits, which are overlooked far more frequently.
p.s. sorry if not every link works regionally. (hello from the philippines!) happy to hear any strong thoughts or opinions on an op or ed here: [email protected]
009: writing this felt like running a hot knife through butter.
for those of you who are wondering what an anime opening is, it's exactly the same thing as that reel hbo plays before a succession episode — except you know, animated.↩
2024-05-17 01:23:05
I think one of the biggest reasons why I was utterly pissed off at the dude for ditching me was all of that built-up anticipation, only to be disappointed at the very end. I had this really big expectation, but I think I really shouldn't count on people too much. In my mind, I hadn't had a little trip in a while, and having that cool rendezvous experience with a cute guy? I was so keen.
I can't believe that I made plans with someone, looked forward to our weekend getaway, only to find out he's changed his plans without a word and flew off somewhere instead. It completely left me feeling confused and downright pissed off. I didn't think I deserved to be left hanging like that and to not have an in-person apology. I haven't even seen him ever since we went to the museum together 1 2.
I said this right after he sent me like 10 whole paragraphs of apology and explanation. To be honest, I thought my question was pretty valid lol
After we visited the museum, I had a little bit of time during the middle of the week to go back to the museum gift shop to buy the little notebook that he was staring at for a good 20 minutes. Jesus Christ, I had the patience of a saint. I thought that him taking such a long time at the gift shop was super endearing at the time. I said nothing and waited for him to decide on a magnet and was enamored that he really thought hard for his loved ones. But looking back at that moment, damn that took a while. And for what?
When I walked back to the gift shop, I bought the little notebook (6 RM/$1.27 USD/1,17 Euro) and put it in a little folder and wrapped it up for him. I included little notes in it and wrote him a postcard from Malaysia, just as a safe-keeping and a memento from his 3-month stay. In retrospect, perhaps it was a little bit overly romantic, but at that point we had been dating for 3 weeks and I felt like it wasn't a huge effort on my part.
I don't know what I'm going to write in this notebook now...? Evil plots and schemes?
He even told me that it was "more than okay to be romantic" and that "I shouldn't suppress that side of me." He even gifted me a resistance band from Decathlon because I wanted to use it for training for climbing. I thought it was a nice gesture, so I wanted to do the same for him, but in my own little way.
The lesson I learned is: lower my expectations and don't do girlfriend things for people that don't deserve it.
I am so embarrassed
Words of encouragement from my friend
I'm just bitter. As time goes on, I'll make my peace with this whole ordeal, but for now, I think it's alright to be upset about this for the time being.
~ bittersweet,
<3 K
🍄 https://exponixio.bearblog.dev/
Actually, that's a lie. I scrolled way too hard on Instagram and found a video reel of him on some Instagram travel influencer's account when he went to Vietnam. I recognized him based on the T-Shirt he had. Basically, the title of the video was like 'when you skip going to to all the touristy spots and visit different coffee shops with a French boy instead'. He looked good (God I hate that), but he seemed miserable. Some people were eviscerating him in the comments section. Some comments were saying: Look at his body language girl, he don't want to be there... that brought me some contentment. schadenfreude fr.↩
I had white-out the usernames for privacy 
↩
2024-05-03 22:37:32
I have always been lazy and ambitious. My life mostly has been a weird experiment in combining the two. Being ambitious means I want to achieve a lot, something that required hard work. Being lazy means, well I would rather not work hard.
And no this is not some post about smart work. I never understood smart work anyways. It assumes people are dumb and don't know how to approach problems from high leverage points. I am not sure if any of these people even exist when you are competing at a high level.
Competing at a high level means you are up against smart crazy human beings willing to burn everything including themselves. You have to grind hard to have a shot. So I had to solve my hard work issue.
I soon realised that my issue was not hard work. It was work that 'felt' like hard work. I can just program the wet squishy computer between my skull to change the 'feeling' settings. So hard work feels like a breeze. Even extremely enjoyable.
How can this programming be done? Well the key insight is you can bore yourself to a point that anything is enjoyable. Also you can gaslight yourself into making any mundane task feel grand. So what looks like mundane paperwork to someone on the outside could feel like the holy act of putting ink on paper and rewriting history to you. You get my point right?
Everyone has a different brain and how you programme this squishy thing will be personal to you. Just spend time with yourself. Introspect to read the documentation.
Be the cracked self programmer you need to be!
2024-05-10 23:54:38
A running list of things that have had a big impact on me :
Hank and John Green: Nerdfighteria is my internet home.
WaitButWhy: Deep dives into topics from first principles and cool sticky figures. Became very popular. I was one of the early ones reading the blog. Back when Tim tried to do new posts every Tuesday. Good times. Learned a lot. One of my all time favourite blogs.
Brandon Sanderson: My favourite author. Amazing fictional worlds with detailed world building. His writing literally saved me in a dark period of my life.
Staring into the singularity : The link to this was suprisingly hard to find. The orignal one taken down. I read this a long time ago. When I was around 16. Has stuck with me since.
LessWrong: Great site with awesome posts. Was about rationality back in the day. Has evolved a lot over the years. Lot of gems.
Richard Feynman's Lecture On Computation: I keep coming back to this. This man is an absolute legend. Do checkout his lectures on physics as well. His books. Everything actually.
2024-05-14 22:09:15
I'm currently writing this post as a break from working on the comic I have due at the end of the month. It's an eighteen-page oneshot and my very first contribution to an anthology, which is honestly very exciting. Intimidating, too, which is why I ended up putting off most of the work until the last minute.
Working on it has, as I anticipated, brought to light a number of my artistic weaknesses: I don't like inking, I half-ass shapes I don't understand rather than look for a reference, my faces are inconsistent... the list goes on. Seeing all the ways I fall short of my expectations is what I was afraid of happening, why I put it off for so long – but I don't really have the time anymore to sit and nitpick at my work, which is kind of a blessing. Stuff is getting done!
It's frustrating to want to create, to know what good art and good writing look like and see that your work is far from it. I always think about that Ira Glass quote:
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?
I have to periodically remind myself that done is better than perfect, and that however shitty this comic turns out, I'll be able to make another, perhaps better one after I finish it. I've never been particularly motivated by sentiments like "you'll get it next time," but it's annoying and true enough that I roll my eyes and pick up the pen again.
Still, I like to try and find other ways to light a fire under my ass. My most recent method is telling myself I could quit anytime, and for some reason that gets me. The painful and frustrating experience of making art is nothing compared to the painful and frustrating experience of not making art. If I never drew again, never told any stories, never tried, would I die? Probably not, but what a miserable life.
2024-05-14 18:12:02
my supposed last term in college, i ended up failing a class and falling into academic purgatory for months.
i try not to dredge up the past but looking back, it's not that the issue was a matter of effort. sudden losses in the family and a general fear anyone else i cared about would fall ill aggravated a condition i was largely unaware of into rearing its big, ugly head. those days i'd lived not knowing 120 bpm was my resting average. and then the waitlists. and the forced leaves. and the absurd changes to curriculum.
hard not to fault myself for ignoring my health. i mean, i was and still am obsessed with seeming invincible. who else was supposed to notice something was wrong? but at the very least, i probably would have graduated on time had the world not been actively folding in on itself at the end of 2020. before all that, i was a single decimal point away from bringing home a near-perfect gpa. you couldn't say i wasn't diligent.
so it wasn't the medal i mourned. mostly i hated the reality check losing it served so plainly. everyone knows this, though up until that point i was great at pretending it wasn't true: no matter how hard you work, sometimes things fall through.
facing the facts meant expecting the worst quickly became a habit. for a while i did everything to cut my losses. but that didn't stick. somewhere along the line, i realized i do better in a fight. never before but exactly during. i've always been a stubborn dog, a busybody— picking myself up is muscle memory. i'm convinced the bulk of my confidence stems from being first pick on everyone else's crisis management team.
don't get me wrong. i can see that the years haunt me. like, it still unsettles me when things are good. i've been braced for impact constantly for who knows how long. but i don't want to go back to who i used to be. that's a version of me living more carefree but with far less tenacity. here i'm anxious to get taller. to prove i'm bigger on the inside. i used to flag desire as righteous naivety, but now i see it as a kind of revenge.
things fall apart. let them. i'm a sore loser. i'll come to the cutting room as many times as it takes for something to give.
lately i've been doing my best to solidify intent. by which i mean i made plans to watch a concert with a friend and bought us tickets early. i set up a fund for an electric guitar in march. i've been putting on a costume once a month to psych myself up for a convention where other people can see me. my deepest sleeps come after dreams of falling. the more i stack on my plate the less i feel wobbly.
2024-05-15 21:10:26
For the longest time, I wanted to work in big tech. I got placed in one such company from campus placements. It was mostly due to my c programming skills and research work.
I am grateful for the role. I get to work on something I like. The people I work with are smart and kind. But it is just a job. Both to me and to the people I work with. One of the major perks that the HR department keeps repeating is a great work-life balance. You get time for yourself. That is very true.
Isn't that great? You get paid well. Get enough time for a good social life and side projects. You can also fund these side projects with your salary.
Yes, but what about working in a startup? A place where a lot of super passionate people are going ham at what they do. To them, it is not a job but a mission. A sort of crazy cult. Filled with kind passionate nerds. Some place where you own part of the dream. Have equity.
It sounds nice. But such places are very rare. The startup scene in India is pretty horrible. I have heard some really bad stories. So many of the startups look cool on the outside. Have great pay even. But are horrible to work for. I have had friends experience this.
I also feel like I am not good enough for those truly cracked places yet. So I am happy where I am for now and just Skill maxxing. I want to feel like a really capable engineer. I see so many of them at my org. All are really kind and happy to guide me.
Sometimes these essays help me put my life in context and clear my thinking a lot. This was one of those.
2024-05-16 20:24:53
[This is a continuation of Day 1 of Malacca]
I woke up the next day around 8:30AM. Malacca wholeheartedly welcomed me, but I haven't had a chance to savor it much. I decided to have a lie-in and play on my phone for a little bit before taking on the day. Most businesses open around 10 AM and I just needed some rest.
I laid in bed, tapping away on Instagram messages and WhatsApp chats. I looked back at the photos and videos in my photo album that I haphazardly took while I was in the club and giggled. Throughout the early morning, I was updating my friends in the morning about my adventures. A bunch of them were laughing at me because it seemed like I replaced one French person with another French. However, this time- she's way more fun and she commits to the plans that we make.
Ok, I was still feeling bitter about the guy who ditched me. After the big night yesterday, I was still feeling a bit bothered. I had such an amazing time nonetheless. Before we said our goodbyes and went different directions to our respective hostels, I told my new French friend that I will stay one more night in Malacca at her hostel and then head back to KL. I truly felt like I needed to look around the city more.
Around 10 AM, I left the first hostel and walked towards my new friend's hostel. Before heading over, I stopped at this vintage shop and ate some breakfast and bought an old copy of High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.
The vintage shop had such a nice vibe to it. I figured out what kind of breakfast to order on the menu while I was listening to three German tourists politely argue with the waitress about why butter wasn’t vegan when they asked her about certain dishes on the menu.
When I got to the hostel, I saw my friend feeling hungover and tired, lounging on some beanbags. I waved to her and had a bit of chit-chat before she went off to breakfast and I went off into the town. The hostel wouldn't let me check in until 2PM, but allowed me to drop some of my stuff off and lock it away from strangers.
Around 12:30PM, I borrowed a bike and took it towards the river. I had some time to kill before checking in and I needed to explore a bit more.
I rode the bike alongside the river and checked my map on where to head off to next. I decided to head towards the Christ Church in the middle of the Malacca city center. I sat on the ledge of the big fountain in the square and heard some funny cackling and loud voices. Three people walked past me and were complaining about the weather in a rather humorous way. I instantly recognized that they were speaking Tagalog to each other. Just some Filipino tourists enjoying their holiday together. One of them were carrying a Taylor Swift tote bag and I thought they seemed like energetic good people to be around.
As I was sitting by myself, I watched the three of them parade around the fruit stands, taking photos and laughing. The vendor gave them a free sample of the watermelon. The watermelon looked juicy, especially on such a hot spring day, so I made my way across the street.
I approached the watermelon stand and gingerly asked for a slice before buying the watermelon shake, but I was refused immediately. I was a bit peeved off and returned to my spot on the fountain. I came back and saw that my kababayan1 were enjoying themselves, munching on their watermelon shakes and taking many pictures on an iPhone timer. I mustered up the courage to talk to them.
"Gusto mo ba ng picture, po?" I said to one of them as I gestured towards their phone sitting on the table. They all laughed and smiled at me and handed me their phone. I tried to take the best picture of them on the plastic table as I possibly can, showing the church and fountain in the background. After the mini photoshoot, they asked me to sit with them and engaged me in conversation.
"I thought you were Korean!"
"I get that often"
The three of them around the table were quite curious about me. Maybe it was a bit off-putting to approach a group of people randomly and make conversation these days. As I sat down, I was a bit nervous talking to a panel of strangers. I tried to me as genuine and approachable as possible. They explained to me that they actually saw me first and thought I was pretty (oh hehe). I explained to them that I was Filipino too. Perhaps that shared culture and identity was part of the reason why it was a bit easier for me to approach them, instead of them approaching me.
They asked me why I was out here by myself. I was bit embarrassed, but I ended up telling them the reason why I was in Malacca alone. All in all, I was simply heart-broken and using solo-traveling as my antidote. Talking with other people could just take my mind off of things. I didn't want to trauma-dump right then and there, but I tried to hide some of my sadness and say it as succinctly as possible. The three of them listened to me rant about this guy for a good two minutes, before I sighed and slumped back down on my plastic stool in the hot sun.
"You know that Sleeping Beauty movie and the blue, green, and red fairies helping Aurora get dressed for the party? We'd be honored to be your fairy gaymothers."
I laughed my ass off, then accepted the offer.
From here on out, I shall describe and dub my new companions as the fairy godmothers and guardians, who appear in the Sleeping Beauty (1959) film.
Out of my new group of friends, Flora, the leader, was our outgoing, androgynous (does drag on the side) kababayan from Calbayog City in Philippines. They explained to me that It seems like the group appointed them as the leader of their little trio, carrying around a golden fan (bought in Chinatown!), providing them the travel itinerary, and cracking all the loud jokes- in general, keeping the group morale up. After much discussion, I found out that they actually live in KL, actually quite close to me!
The Fauna and Merryweather characters are from Cebu and Bohol respectively. They are actually boyfriends who attended the Singapore Taylor Swift concert together (hence the Taylor Swift tote bag I spotted before I approached them). After the concert, they had a little bit of holiday time to spare and headed up north, stopping at different Malaysian cities along the way. Flora decided to meet up with them in Johor Bohru and take them around Malacca and KL. I thought it was a wonderful trip.
My fairy gaymothers let me tag along to visit the St. Paul's Church on top of the hill. As you move on from the A Famosa fortress, you will see a white flight of stairs along the slope. These are the stairs which will take you to the St Paul's Church. The church can be reached easily by climbing up the stairs for about 5 to 10 minutes depending on your speed of walking. It actually took us about 15 minutes because it was so freaking hot. Upon reaching the top of the St Paul's Hill, we saw the entire city and a historical church.
We had another impromptu photoshoot on top of the hill. I was pushed into the limelight and ushered into the church by Flora, who told me to do different poses and turns. I felt really pretty, actually.
After the church visit, we visited Jollibee. I thought they were kidding when they said we were going to go to Jollibee. I happily munched on my Chickenjoy and rice.
After this quick trip, I had to return to my hostel and call dibs on my bed. I was actually one of the last people to check in, and only got a mattress on the floor. It was a very comfortable mattress, despite the small size. It's alright, I'm a small-sized person.
I took a quick afternoon siesta in the hostel before heading out again.
~ briar rose,
<3 K
🍄 https://exponixio.bearblog.dev/
kababayan = countrymen↩
2024-05-14 21:56:55
My throat hurts a little. I don’t know if this is because of the air quality here or because I’m actually getting sick, but I’m desperately hoping it’s not the latter. I stopped taking my immunosuppressants today and started drinking lots of juices high in vitamin C, despite research proving chugging OJ a rather ineffective method for warding off illness. (Something about all the sugar in it makes it hard for your body to absorb the Vitamin C, if I remember correctly.)
Traveling and getting sick go hand in hand for me. It’s as if arriving somewhere new triggers my immune system to self-immolate. When I visited New York in 2021 I lost my voice after a few days. I spent my first week in Latin America making chicken noodle soup and nursing myself back to health. My immune system’s never been good to begin with, and when you add in jetlag, a new climate, and an array of foreign microbes, it’s no wonder I get sick every time I step on a plane.
I just got back from an overnight trip to 大连 (Dalian), a coastal city in the north. My time there was … mixed. Dalian is a world apart from the small town my grandparents call home: it’s big, clean, and very sleek. I enjoyed getting to see the “new” China, for lack of a better term. But many of these advancements make it difficult for foreigners to function properly.
Getting around has been frustrating. Since Google, Uber, and the like don’t work here, we have to use a whole new set of apps like WeChat, AliPay, Baidu Maps, and Meituan. These are cool but unfamiliar to us. Mom can’t use them because she’s a boomer, and for once my brother and I can’t help her because we can’t read anything. (As far as I can tell, most of these apps have no option to translate the UI into English.) Chinese (and Asian) web design is also pretty different from its Western counterpart, so we fumble around and make fools of ourselves frequently. This morning our delivery driver dropped off our rice noodle rolls in the Meituan locker and after finally finding them we couldn’t get them out for a good 10 minutes. Do you know how frustrating it is to look everywhere under the sun for your breakfast only to find it locked away behind a transparent locker that requires you to do something you can’t read? Cold rice noodles and porridge is the taste of defeat.
China’s made large strides towards being a cashless society. People use WeChat and AliPay for everything. Even the old grannies at the roadside market ask you to pay for your cucumbers by scanning their WeChat QR code. After scanning and entering the amount agreed upon, usually a speaker announces how much you’ve paid, at which point you’re free to leave. You can pay for anything this way: haircuts, taxi rides, groceries, meals. It’s seamless, versatile, and honestly pretty amazing.
The problem with this is that until very recently (I think) neither WeChat or AliPay accepted foreign credit cards as payment methods, so the only way you could use them to pay was if you had a Chinese bank account (which — don’t quote me — is also difficult to set up for foreigners). A lot of places don’t take cash anymore either (though thankfully it’s more accepted than I anticipated!), so Mom’s had to pay for a lot of things.
(Also, paying for things like this requires you to have a smartphone and a working data connection, the latter of which I do not have. I thought it’d be easy to get a cheap SIM card here with lots of data on it but surprisingly, that’s not been the case. The online eSIM options cost a lot for very little data.)
I’ve been thinking about the word soulless a lot recently, a word many of my Chinese-American friends (and even some Chinese born ones) use to describe big Chinese cities. I can certainly see where they’re coming from. Downtown Dalian was eerily empty at many times of day, and the fact that two of their top tourist attractions are sad copies of other cities is a bit weird. It makes me sad that these imitations (“homages” might be a nicer word to use) are all over China, a country with more than enough rich cultural heritage to go around.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call Dalian soulless. What does it mean for a city to have a soul, anyway? And who’s the arbiter of that? I’m sure if I went to New York or Los Angeles or Tokyo looking for depravity and late stage capitalism I’d find it on every street corner too. I’m also sure that plenty of people that live in Dalian do find things they love about the city, people that know a lot more about the city than an American like me passing through.
There’s a lot we can learn from these big Chinese cities. The Dalian metro system is clean and timely. You have to go through a metal detector any time you want to take the subway or high-speed rail, which is a mild annoyance but one I’m happy to bear if it means giving up my right to involuntarily participate in mass shootings. Between the rail system, the subway, and the huge fleet of taxis, the mobility of an average citizen in Dalian is a lot better than one in any American city, I’d say.
(I know I keep going on and on about public transit. This will not be the last time. We’re starved of proper mobility in America, please understand.)
I’m also reminded again of why I don’t love traveling with my mom. I think the best way to put it is that she has low emotional IQ, or EQ. She snaps at us a lot when she’s frustrated, like today she yelled at us for“complaining” when we asked her a simple question about how to use Meituan. Or she’ll tell us to do X task then get mad why Y didn’t get done. Perhaps worst of all, she never apologizes or admits wrongdoing for anything, and sometimes gaslights me into thinking that things never happened at all.
Things are a lot better than when I was younger. When we took a road trip to Yellowstone in my middle school years Mom didn’t speak to me for a week. What for, I couldn’t tell you. None of her outbursts ever seem to suit the offense. My brother and I are pretty well-behaved kids, and I’ve never had any similar issues with my dad. The rage is also usually directed at me and not my brother, for reasons beyond my comprehension. I don’t think I’ll ever know why my mom is like this.
For as many years as I’ve had to get used to this treatment, I still don’t enjoy being yelled at. Mom will yell at me for something incredibly trivial and then act like nothing happened half an hour later. I’m not someone who gets over things easily (something you might know if you read my writing; overthinking is my preferred form of exercise) so getting yelled at usually ruins my day, even if it’s by someone who does it to me all the time. I try not to let it show, and now that I’m older I will sometimes fight back with a venom that surprises even me, but that doesn’t stop little Misu from retreating deep into his hermit crab shell when things like this happen, and he doesn’t tend to come out once he goes in there.
2024-05-17 23:27:15
we lost our second dog today.
sherlock, my aunt’s darling boy, passed at 4:20 in the morning. at 3am, she knocked on my door saying the fateful words—i think sherlock’s dying. it was like my whole world came to a stop.
he died in her arms.
10 and a half beautiful years of his company. our kind, kind sherlock who sometimes snapped at us when we kissed him too much. our darling, darling boy who was great at finding toys we’d hide from him; who liked to eat the cheese crackers my grandma fed him when no one was looking.
he had chronic heart failure. we were counting down the months, really, but nothing could’ve ever prepared me for that 3am knock, his fading heartbeat, and his little eyes that wouldn’t close.
ten years ago today, my aunt’s dog quli—a botched attempt of naming him 去来, a dog who went and came—also passed. he had epilepsy, and in a house that was more oven than it was a home, his odds weren’t the best.
my own dog picasso spent all morning and afternoon searching for sherlock. he barked his poor little head off the whole day, searching for his companion of 10 years. we brought him to my aunt’s room, where he sniffed at everything in search for a little brown and white chihuahua, only to be met with an empty bed and nothing more.
my mom looked at him this evening, eyes glistening as she said “you’re always being left behind.”
quli was his half brother; they shared the same dad, but not the same mom. they stayed on two opposite ends of the room, but they were each other’s keepers for four years. he and sherlock stayed side by side, just a few inches away from each other. it stayed like that for ten years and then some.
now, he’s all alone. we have another dog, our youngest casper, and we have a cat—skye, but he’s not as close to them as he was with sherlock.
my whole household feels like we’d just lost a limb. our nighttime routine has been disrupted, and so has our daytime. there are notes on medication dosages, prescription, feeding schedules, that are now useless because there’s no one to look after.
it’s hard losing a pet, especially one you’ve loved for 10 or so years.
picasso, mom says you’re always being left behind. it’s okay, i’m here. we’ll be fine as long as we’re together.
sherlock, thank you for the 10-and-a-half years of joy. our handsome, snippy little prince, go say hi to grandma for us, okay?
ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚
a song.
2024-05-14 01:44:20
Open AI released a new update. You can now talk to your computers just like a human. Low latency. More responsive. It got me thinking about how I talk to computers.
The way I do it is more intimate. I am a low-level programmer. I write firmware code in c mostly. I think about the hardware that runs my code more than the average programmer. Yet if it was the 1980's I would be a very high-level programmer. The assembly lang bros will look at me with contempt the same way I look at the python bros. The thought alone makes me shiver.
How we talk to computers has evolved. So many great engineers built the infrastructure that I use today to turn my c code into machine code. From the libraries, the operating system, and the compiler. There is a sort of deterministic heuristic-based intelligence built into the infrastructure. It optimises my code as it turns it into lower forms of abstraction.
Such conversions lose on certain optimisations that a cracked assembly language engineer intimately familiar with the hardware can do. But I can write more code in less time. Solve problems from a higher abstraction level. A tradeoff.
We have been going to higher abstraction levels in our communication with computers. At each level, we make this tradeoff. The next frontier is talking to computers just like a human. The friction is low here. As the underlying infrastructure becomes more capable and reliable(hallucination issue?) programming will become 'speak and do'. And one day with Neuralink it will be 'Think and do'.
Those worried about programmer relevance don't understand that programmers are paid for solving problems and not for the 'arcane' ways they talk to computers. Any real software engineer will tell you writing code is just 20-30% of the job. The rest is problem-solving. And as you move to senior roles you write even less code.
I am excited about how things will evolve. How the whole plain language to machine code translation infrastructure will look like? How do we get to a reasonable conversion efficiency where the tradeoff is worth it for most applications?
I am in awe of the infrastructure the previous generation of engineers built. I want kids from the next generation to feel the same awe with the one we build.
2024-05-17 21:09:35
Today is our last day at the grandparents’ house. Tomorrow we take a taxi to the city we flew into and we’ll spend the day and night there before departing in the morning.
Mom is in her parents’ bedroom with Grandma and Grandpa. She’s sharing photos of us to Grandma and showing her how to download them to her tablet. I laugh as Mom gets frustrated with Grandma’s technological ineptitude. It’s her turn to teach technology to a Boomer.
Earlier I mustered up the courage to wander a little further from home than normal. I walked all the way to the train station and park in the center of town. I’m glad I did, because I saw a lot of things I hadn’t before.
As the sun dips below the horizon vendors set up tables in front of the supermarket. They sell a wide assortment of wares. Cages with corgis, rabbits, mice, parakeets, and chicks. Tanks and buckets teeming with crabs, frogs, fish, shrimp. Corn and skewers of lamb darkening over coals that pop with drops of grease (grilled corn is surprisingly delicious). Little copper and bamboo trinkets. Barberry and Luis Voitton [sic] handbags. USB-C charging cables. Knockoff shampoo and soap. And knickknacks of every kind, things you wouldn’t ever think to buy on the street.
I spend a few minutes petting a corgi who melts my heart. No animal should be kept in a cage like this to be sold. I want to set them all free, even though I know that will only make the problem worse.
The local park is packed with the elderly singing, dancing, and working out. I make my way over to the high bar at the outdoor gym, one of the few places I feel truly at home. In between sets of muscle-ups and pull-ups I spectate a circle of middle-aged men and women play 毽子. They’re unbelievable. The shuttlecock hardly touches the ground. They even let the shuttlecock fly over their head so they can bend over and kick it with their heel behind their back, a maneuver as difficult and unnecessary as it is flashy. Who doesn’t like a bit of flair?
(I wish I asked to join them, but I’m shy and I didn’t want to ruin the rhythm of their game. I might get one for myself back home. I just wish I had someone to play with!)
A man working out on rings approaches me to ask me if I’m ex-military or a cop. (Cue laughter.) I try not to let on that I’m not a local, but he’s insistent in asking me where I train, so I confess that I’m not from around here. I’m happy to see his surprise: it’s nice to know I can blend in here, even if only on the surface.
Mom and Grandma are arguing about something now. They’re mad at my cousin and aunt-in-law for not footing the bill for any of my uncle’s medical expenses. They went straight to my aunt to ask for money, who paid for everything without hesitation. (A saint!) I’ve picked up on so much internal family drama this trip. It’s sad — money (or greed) is to blame for just about every single family grudge. Mom always tells me the same thing: don’t lose your friends and family over something as silly as money. It’s not worth it. Some things in life you can’t buy. The words mean more coming from someone I know values money, the very same woman I watch count out every last penny of change at the supermarket checkout.
Even though I’ve not a single friend within the dusty city limits, I’m going to miss being here, surprisingly. I wish I could stay longer, even if I’m looking forward to putting some space between my grandparents’ nagging and their rock-hard mattresses. There’s so much left here for me to try, to learn. So many dogs to pet, so many skewers and bowls of noodles to try, so many signs to read, so many locals to talk to. I hate to leave it all behind for more comfortable pastures.
2024-05-17 18:06:38
warning: contains spoilers for gennarose nethercott's thislefoot & a lot of meandering!
each of my tour guides here have said the same thing. "in rome, a hundred years is nothing."1 and it rings true. when i ran my hands along the remaining stone walls of constantine's basilica (circa 300s) in the vatican grotto, i felt very strange. i've never dreamed of lasting.
honestly, the only thing i truly wanted to do here in rome was visit the borghese gallery. because a portion of their collection was at the corsini due to renovations. i had to choose between the two. for me, the answer was clear as day. raphael’s lady with unicorn would have to wait. bernini’s sculptures were waiting for me. i consider myself unlucky for the timing, but i could never regret my choice.
at 11-years-old i learned to sculpt before i learned to paint.2 at 16-years-old i learned to remake myself, somehow convinced that there was an angel inside me & i only had to carve her out.3 at 21-years-old, i'm still hacking away at myself to find her.
but centuries ago, at 23-years-old, gian lorenzo bernini learned how to transmute marble to flesh. when i say that seeing the abduction of prosperina in person was life-changing, i mean that i wish i had been brave enough to cry. we are both liars in our own right; feigning a softness that was never there. i still have a year to learn to be as convincing as he was.
for my sudden (and likely quickly passing) fixation with bernini and his sculptures, it's a fitting coincidence that i also recently finished gennarose nethercott's thistlefoot.4 one of its deuteragonists is bellatine – a woodworker with a burning in her hands that can literally make anything come to life. she spends majority of the story holding this back, afraid of her own magic. her brother, isaac, describes it as following:
"when bellatine wasn't Embering, she hardened, grew jagged at the edges, paled. she was so bent on witholding life from the inanimate shapes around her, she withheld it from herself, too. she turned herself to stone."
in the same way, i've realized how often i've held myself back from just being.
i had walked into college aloof and detached, wishing for a face like marble and a heart like burgeoning springtime. i wanted so badly to be the cool, mysterious classmate: kind, but reserved and always just out of reach. after all, if people knew me, how could they love me?5 wasn't it better to be unattainable than unwanted? years later, i'm still performing an idealized version of myself. one that i think could be easy to love.
bellatine experiences a somewhat similar character arc until meeting(?)making(?) a girl named winnie, the sculpture of a dead girl in a cemetary. (who cannot help but live if that makes any sense). she tells her:
"it's like everything in the world is in conversation. every time something touches me, it feels like that part of me wakes up all over again to listen."
for now, i think i'm sitting at a very silly intersection. what's a girl to a genius? what's skin to stone? we all lean into touch. i know how to listen, but i'm still learning to speak for myself. i think bernini is still a liar, but i don't have to be. where his art mimics the exression of life, can't i be life itself?
i forget that i'm not marble at all. i can change once and change again (it's part curse and part blessing). i can start becoming, instead of pretending – i can be loved without losing myself! i think it's taken me time to learn to want to live as someone and not something.
i ended up buying an art book from the gallery, but it lacks the context on his life that i'd like. if i'm not over him by the time i get home, i'll pirate whatever else i find.
also, i'm on a cruise until the end of may! despite the time i've spent st sea, it's been very grounding. i've visited italy, spain, and france so far. i'm looking forward to the rest as much as i'm looking forward to getting back to the philippines.
and still, everything in rome had been built lifetime by lifetime. imagine michelangelo's impact, or each emperor's or each pope's or all the other long lost artists'.↩
all my paintings from this time have been preserved in a sketchpad in the 3rd drawer of the dresser in my room. all my sculptures have been broken and are long gone, but i’ve honestly never found myself grieving for them.↩
ala michelangelo.↩
i don't enjoy writing reviews the way i did before – i still struggle to talk about things i love directly. tangentially is the best i can do for now.↩
a line from chia's work that has its claws in me.↩
