I made two exciting purchases this month!

1. a bicycle!

Riverside 500 from Decathlon. Bike + accessories came up to around $500. Decathlon delivered the bike (with accessories assembled!) for free. They did a piss-poor job but I don’t mind it. My wonderful partner helped tweak everything to perfection.

I found out that I’d bought a hybrid bike embarrassingly late. I’d wanted a city bike. I didn’t know the difference! I didn’t realise there was a difference at all. (It’s like crocodiles and alligators. They’re interchangeable murderous water reptiles until you see notice the difference one day and then you notice it forever.) Anyway, city bikes usually come with a front basket, a back seat, and a step-through frame. The step-through frame is what makes it possible for me to do one of the things I love most about riding bicycles—the part where I hop over the front of the bike to disembark. It’s one of my coolest moves. I can kinda sorta do it with my Riverside 500, but it’s awkward. I need to invent a new disembarkation move.

2. a scanner!

CanoScan LiDE 400 via Amazon for under $90. Amazing. I LOOOVE scanning things. It’s nice to have one that isn’t bulky and also a printer. It’s light. It also comes with a little plastic holder so that the scanner can stand vertically on one’s desk, a space-saving feature, I’m assuming. Kinda nifty but I’m not using it. It’s not like it can be used standing. It standing vertically also totally messes with my desk’s UI/UX or feng-shui. It looks awkward and doesn’t serve a purpose.

Here’s Mr Bean’s black sesame pancake wrapper scanned:

Black sesame mochi pancake was pretty good! Black sesame cookie not so much. Overall, black sesame pancake batter feels like a bit of a miss. It’s a tad bitter. It might help if the batter more sugar or if the pancake was thinner? They could also stick to the regular plain batter. In any case, it’s Munchi Pancakes > Mr Bean any day.

Hikiniku to Come is in Singapore! I was excited to try their hamburg balls after learning that it’s the very restaurant my partner tried (and failed) to make reservations for on several early mornings while we were in Tokyo a few months ago. We didn’t have to make reservations at Vivo City, which is where their new outlet is located. We showed up (past lunchtime on a weekday) to take a queue number and waited around an hour or so. VivoCity is a huge mall with many things to see, so an hour went by quickly.

I was annoyed that the meal came with that long explainer I scanned. (Bound! 😂) It’s like being excited to play a board game and then some guy goes, “alright, let’s go through the instructions first…” NO, NO, NO. We jump into the game, then figure the rules out along the way. It’s the same thing here! I can discover the delicious ways myself! Isn’t the fun in the experimentation?

Anyway, they instructions were absolutely right. “Take a big bite” actually goes so hard. The best bites were the heartiest ones. I typically avoid ponzu but boy did that grated daikon and ponzu sauce slap. I ate deliciously. Thank you for the meal.

I also scanned some childhood photos using the “photo” setting. It works well enough.

neko atsume

I’m playing Neko Atsume again! Both #1 and #2. In 2024 they went and made Neko Atsume #2, which is completely like Neko Atsume #1, except for some minor differences.

The most major change is that you can’t cheat the game with the date-time trick anymore. Cat toys can be broken and fixed; as in, kitties visting your yard will be able to play with your soccer ball so hard it’ll burst open, and you can spend silver coins patching it up or buying another one. There’s also a new option to take photographs of cats in portrait mode, on top of the usual landscape. I like this new feature best.

It’s huge for me because I love filling up the stupid albums with stupid photos of cats. If you think about it, the gameplay is kind of wild… Like, what do you mean taking photographs of cats playing with various toys? That’s the game? That’s the draw? That’s it??! Why, yes, and it actually is very good fun.

One of my favourite things I did as a teen playing Habbo Hotel was purchasing Habbo credits (using real dollars!) to buy Habbo film for my Habbo camera that takes sepia screenshots inside the game. The result is a tiny Polaroid photo you can decorate your rooms with. You have to click on it to see the screenshot you took in a pop-up window. I went everywhere to find interesting scenes to photograph and displayed hundreds of them on my walls.

I lost my collection since the Great Habbo Purge, which is a real shame, but also, whatever. A few years ago I started an Instax Square photo wall in my home! Practically the same thing. I should curate one on this blog.

🎶

I listened to lots of new stuff in June. There’s Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and I’ve never heard the Dalai Lama speak at length before, and holy crap does he sound like Master Yoda! Was George Lucas mocking the Dalai Lama? That rat! A cursory search tells me that there’s no mocking, I don’t know why that was my immediate thought. I actually know why, I tend to think mean and terrible thoughts.

“I thought, Okay, I’ve got this character who is kind of like a little Dalai Lama, so I came up with an Eastern-sounding name. Then I felt his dialogue and cadenceshould be unique. In Star Wars, I had to write Han’s dialogue so it would explain what Chewie was saying, which was hard to do. I tried to give people accents and subtitles. But when the second film came along, I thought, An accent isn’t going to work here. I’ve got to come up with something even more dramatic, because he’s such a weird, alien character. I had to come up with something that’s not a foreign language, not an accent, but somewhere in between those two things. That’s how I started Yoda’s backward style.”

— George Lucas, excerpt from The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition) by J. W. Rinzler

I downloaded the album because I read somewhere that Maggie Rogers provided vocals on one of the tracks. In another one, the Dalai Lama reveals that he sleeps nine hours a day, and then meditates for a few hours when he rises. I was under the impression that really good meditators don’t require very much sleep—a positive side-effect from all that meditation, which really drew me toward it because I require around 10-12 hours of sleep a day and’d like to shorten it by about half. Perhaps the Dalai Lama needed 14 before?

There’s also Eric Andre’s Film Scores for Films That Don’t Exist. (He makes music?!) I love the premise and it’s fun listening and making up a fake movie in my mind that matches the songs.

What’s For Dinner left the greatest impression on me.

I imagine a half-human, half-alien girl leaving her planet to search for her father on Earth. When she gets here she’s instantly nabbed by the CIA psychics. They’re actually good people, thinking she’s lost her way, and want to help send her home. During this time, someone within the CIA who knows the secrets her parentage and disappearance of her father attempts to kill her. It’s an action movie and the alien girl is very good at beating people up. Spoiler alert: the man who’s out to kill her is her father. Spoiler alert: he’s a good guy, and he’s not human. He’s another kind of alien, a rare alien prince, and there’s something about him that puts our very universe at risk. He’s hiding out in Earth because it’s a no-alien zone; I can’t go into detail, but it’s a bit like being in stable continental craton interiors where there are no earthquakes. Anyway, he was drugged and raped to make our protagonist. Spoiler alert: her mother was also innocent. Some other dark forces are responsible.

Run For Your Death is definitely about these legendary, immortal, unsleeping, cyborg horses who run the annual Race. When the Race is on, the entire universe tunes in and centillions of betting dollars are generated. It’s Run For Your Death because a winning horse cannot compete in the Race again, and is awarded the grand prize, the one thing all horses are after: euthanasia.

Loved Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Another fire, no-skip album from Miss Rodrigo. My current favourite is my way, followed by stupid song. I’m looking forward to her live performances because I always discover new favourites this way.

There’s also Modest Mouse’s An Eraser and a Maze, and DCFC’s I Built You a Tower. The latter I feel myself having to brace up(?) to listen to? I think because it feels so heavy and heartbreaky and I’m not willing to get into that heartspace. I need more time with these two albums.

My favourite song this month is Salt Rain by sogumm. There’s a purity and earnestness in her voice and lyrics—like it’s sung by a mother who’s also a child, a sort of sweet and naïve Mother God. It culminates in the chorus with salty raindrops keep falling on your head / salty raindrops keeping falling on your head. Raindrops as a metaphor for tears isn’t a new invention, but I felt it so fitting and poignant here; Mother God, innocent as she is; hurt, crying, does not recognise what her tears are and calls them salty raindrops.

In my heart, Ne-Yo is one of the best singers of all time. When he sings I am rapt. I cannot believe his voice. I was shown a Reel of him singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to the instrumentals of Closer and I was absolutely gagged. Here’s an extended version:

Play

I love this Remi guy. His vibes are so good.

Speaking of good vibes, I came across this conversation between Simi and Michael Puett, and I was so struck by Puett’s happy demeanour. He appears so interested, humble, nonthreatening. I want to be him.

📖

In June I read reviews from the annual ACX review contest. I didn’t get to them all, and I definitely DID NOT read the one reviewing Harry’s memoirs.

Many years ago I decided that it was propaganda and refused the poison. And I was even more convinced of my resolve some years after, when I learnt of a study that showed that your knowledge that something is propaganda doesn’t protect you from its propagandic effects. I clocked it! Poison is poison. Knowing that the poison you’re consuming is in fact poison won’t save you, unless you’re some kind of reverse Warhammer 40K Ork.

As a Singaporean it is quite difficult to avoid Harry’s memoirs. People, the media, historians reference them a great deal. I happen to have two volumes on my bookshelf because I happened to be in a thrift store when they were giving them away for free. I very unfortunately cannot say no to free goodies. I struggled for two seconds and then accepted them. I told myself I would cut the colorured photos in the middle of the volumes and collage with them or something.

Of the ones I read I liked the the review titled “Collected Poems by C.S. Lewis” most.

Other stuff I read in June:

• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden
• The Albatross File Unredacted by PJ Thum¹
• Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

i’m finally on the hot hideout hype train

I might be the only person who dislikes mala xiang guo (MLXG). So for awhile I would get the collagen soup at A Hot Hideout (AHH), which is alright, but I’m never excited about eating it.

Then in June I discovered their oriental stir-fry, and it finally clicked for me.

Once, I waited for about an hour at AHH to get my food during the evening peak hour. Is that not insane?

How men feel when they go out fishing on a saturday is the same as how women feel when they stand in line for an hour for yogurt.

It's a meditative state. The end result is not really the point. You are just removing yourself from the time constraints you have to adhere to… https://t.co/IUtiVMsgSj

— LindyMan (@PaulSkallas) June 21, 2026

I typically would never get in line for anything but this tweet changed my mind a little bit. It’s fun to stand in line with your friends and shoot the breeze.

Anyway, this one time I was in line at AHH felt odd because there were obviously plenty of empty seats in the restaurant! Why am I standing in line! Is that necessary?

(Now I only visit during off-peak hours.)

The bottleneck’s the goddamn ingredient bar. People take aaaages picking out their stupid food. Getting to pick your ingredients yourself at the ingredient bar is one of the pillars of MLXG. It’s a thing. People love it. I don’t understand it. Why can’t I order my food on an app? I don’t care if the chef picks out my pork belly for me? The line would go much faster.

It pains me to say this, but I need to write about what I dislike about AHH. I need to get it out: The noodles could be cooked a little firmer. Fried cheese otah is waaay lacking in otah flavour—I don’t think most people would be able to distinguish it from a regular cheese tofu in a blind taste test. But I don’t mind it and I always get one or two with my order. I love cheese tofu so it works out. I’m not impressed by their lotus root and potato crisps. The secret powder you’re supposed to sprinkle on the crisps is also boring.

I sound like such a hater but I actually enjoy going to AHH. I think a huge contributing factor is that my partner loves mala and it’s not very easy for me to find something I like at say, a Sichuan restuarant. So I’m happy that my partner gets to have something he really enjoys and I get something I like!

📷

I tried to take more photos in June, and I did! It’s funny that I managed that without my pancake lens (XF27mmF2.8 R WR. The poor thing’s barrel’s stuck, I’ve yet to send for repair). I bought the pancake lens because I thought it would make my camera lighter, and was hoping that its lightness would increase the chances of me willing to carry a camera out of the house.

The photos below are taken with my XF35mmF1.4 R lens. It’s more than twice the weight of the pancake. I suppose it all comes down to the will to take photographs.

I forgot to mention that I got around getting a new bicycle because I had one bad experience with Anywheel’s customer support in May. I’m so petty. I can’t with myself.

Why does it look like she’s waving at me?

I met this cockatoo named Kiki and her owner along the park connector near Marsiling Mall Hawker Centre. I was there for my favourite seafood soup in the world (have to have it at least once a month). I asked the owner if his cockatoo speaks, and as if on cue, the bird squawked, “I love you!” He added that she can say assalamualaikum. 🤣

Am I complaining a lot in this post? I don’t feel very good about it. Might delete later.

Footnotes

1. I said a lot of shit about not consuming propoganda but I confess… I engage with a lot of anti-government propoganda. I am a hypocrite. ↩