trisected

Tag: reading

  • September Updates

    I just turned 36, two days ago. I might have updated sooner, but I’ve been struggling more than ever on where my thoughts ought to go in the interwebs. I can’t decide either between all my different journals where I want to place my ideas, my emotions, and the other 50 million things that run through my head.

    So today’s post is really just to get my focus back, in part.

    Clarice asked me about my reflections about being 36, or turning 36 for that matter. I don’t really have much to reflect about, but I have realised how much I really appreciated being a dad. I think I’ve learnt a whole bunch about myself, and also about Clarice.

    Key things that I’ve learnt about myself:

    1. I have limited energy (it might be age related)
    2. I have a tendency to get short when I have not enough sleep, or food. (also might be age related)
    3. I lose track of things, because I tend to do too many at one time. Multitasking doesn’t work as well as I would want it to.
    4. I attempt efficiency, but it doesn’t work out as well I want it to.
    5. I also have understood the lack of control one has in the world, and how sometimes talking and discussing leads to better results than trying to do things myself.
      • Maybe these are two separate points.

    I don’t think everyone ought to be a certain way, or think a certain way. I just think that we can have a range of understanding, because everyone is taking turns to be right and wrong when you’re a majority or a minority.

    Unfortunately for me, I am both at the same time. I am brown skinned, but I am Chinese. In Singapore, I visually look like a minority, but I am technically a majority. After 36 years, I have realised how much emphasis people put on externals, and how much emphasis people put on character and behavior. The answer is a lot on externals and the perception of one’s first appearance, and the second is a lot on character and behavior – we expect people to behave a certain way to show if they’re “respectable” or not. That leaves me with a lot of smiling to do, so that no matter the color of my skin, I would be generally pleasing to most first impressions.

    But that brings the point, everyone can live their way, and I think I would continue to support some part of that view. As a Christian, I do think there are concepts that I view as truths, like God as the creator and judge, who will judge us as humans for how we have lived our lives. But at the same time, I understand that someone might not come to that same worldview as me. Will I judge them for it? Of course not, if I believe my worldview, then I believe God will judge everyone, including me. I’m not anyone’s judge. But I’ll do my part to make sure I am both loving and kind, so that if I am judged by the God I believe in, I’m seen doing the right things by him.

    Because at the end of the day, whether someone views me rightly, or with prejudices, I will treat them in a way I think God would want me to treat them, which would be to let them deal with life their own way.

    (I’ve been thinking a lot about major religions and the twists and turns of minorties and majorities in social scenarios in the past few weeks. Don’t mind me if this has not been your cup of tea.)

    Anyway, just done reading the Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and I am just really thinking hard about people, societies, and wartime. It’s really a lot to take in.

    I recommend reading the book for sure, it’s worth it!

  • How February has happened so far

    I’ve been doing my reading, but my mind has really be thinking about the work I need to finish before my wife delivers. As I am writing this, she is already dilated by 1cm (noted by the doctors two days ago). The baby comes out at 10cm dilation, which is a ways to go. This could take anywhere from hours to days to weeks. Other conditions like contractions, water bag breaking, are all other signs of labour, and then the baby will finally come.

    With all that in mind, I’ve been reading: Jack Reacher, Sally Rooney, a Montessori baby book. Nothing self help specific I feel I could share opinions about, but I do have some thoughts about teenagers and life from Sally Rooney’s Normal People.

    Normal People by Sally Rooney

    I’ve seen Sally Rooney’s name plastered everywhere around the reading forums, and books to read. Obama listed Intermezzo as one of his books of 2024, and I have it on my “to buy” list of books. I watch Haley Pham now, and she had mentioned some other Sally Rooney books too.

    All that hype aside, Normal People was an easy read. Might be a little trashy, but immediately I could imagine a TV show or a movie taking place. I looked at the cover of my book, and yup, made into a TV series already.

    It covers that in between bit of life, after secondary school, when you’re a dumb teenager, and the next bit, where you’ve got a partner, a job, and starting to settle down. Even the term Settle Down indicates a different phase of life, and the book explores what Normality looks like.

    I’ve met variations of the characters Normal People talks about. There are people from very well to do families, but their family life is not one to write anywhere about. There are others who have had to go through difficult circumstances, to land on their feet one way or another. There’s also the idea of being born rich, born good looking, born smart. These components play heavy into how we become adults and our view of the world around us.

    But as much as we play the main characters in our own TV shows, Normal People talk quite a bit about the people around. The social life of a teenager, and a young adult. How one views us, and the costs of being seen with different crowds. Successful in one, and mediocre in another. The aspects of how others make us feel, think, and say things we might not agree with. Maybe things we regret even.

    Because of these very human elements of Normal People, I was reminded of my own teenage life, and how I treated and saw the world around me in different ways. There were times I wished I could have been nicer to my peers, or to the girls I had met. There were other times when I wish I stood up stronger for what I believe in, even if it would cost me more.

    How am I living my life now though? Is it any different from the times before? I would like to think I make a lot of effort to be kinder than how I used to be. Kinder, more intentional to keep up with specific people, although there are a ton of people I am in contact with, and I wish I had more time with each of them. Maybe I should have a silly aim like that one day, but I know for sure, I care for people a lot more than I let on. Sometimes I wish I didn’t but I genuinely do. It just hurts sometimes when it doesn’t feel well reciprocated. But that’s life sometimes too I guess.

    I’m in the midst of reading The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, and I will probably be about 2-3 books down by the time my baby does come out and we’re in the throes of early parenthood. But for now, maybe Jack Reacher is a good mindless read.

  • Book Review: Before the Frost

    Just a preamble: I write these reviews on the spot, just like how I write the blog posts. It’s just a little more useful for me to track my reading by writing some of these blog posts, for me to have a gauge of what I thought about when I read. It also helps to develop a better view of what I take in as a person, from my choice of reading to my review of the book.

    Before The Frost by Henning Mankell is a Linda Wallander book. I’ve read quite a few titles by Mankell, and specifically Kurt Wallander – Linda’s father. Kurt Wallander has a series on Netflix too, known as Young Wallander. As with everything else, the books are better.

    This Linda series makes for some alternative thoughts. I don’t really enjoy Linda’s internal monologues and presumptions. Mankell does drive at this a few times, and it comes off a little annoying. It’s actually the only part of the book I don’t enjoy. Throughout this book, there are moments where Linda has dream states, or there are snippets to other moments and flashbacks, and those are totally fine. It’s just Linda’s internal voice I can’t seem to stand.

    It runs into more detective thriller type books, and I can really spend all day reading these. It’s just something about reading how a sequence of events unfolds, and whether a perpetrator is caught, or not.

    Agatha Christie’s Poirot definitely gets it best. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher too. There are many reasons why those two authors have so much readership, and still continue to draw people in. They’re really well written whodunnits.

    I was looking at my library the other day, and Matthew Reily used to have a bigger spot in my reading life. Now with Reacher, the game has stepped up in some ways. Reily’s usual style has maps and contraptions and some science to it. Reacher has just a simple “I hit things, I find things out”. Why does it work so well? Perhaps because it lacks logic, and it just goes for hard hitting action.

    Anyway, I am reading other things too, but it’s just easier to speed through whodunnits. I really speed through them but that’s how I like it!

  • EMF- The Old Book Store

    I started reading this book called Swimming Back to Trout River, and it gave a fictional narrative about its characters living through the Cultural Revolution in China. It’s a moving story about people, and it also made me think about China as a destination to visit one day.

    I recalled the first time I wanted to visit China, and it was after reading the book Red Dust, by Ma Jian. It was an autobiographical recount of his time in China before he fled to Hong Kong. I haven’t gone to China still, but the book had made me think really hard about how we interact with the world as a country, and a citizen of a country.

    But the focus of this post is about the bookstore I got this book from: EMF.

    I can’t recall what EMF stood for, but I used to go there very often. My parents had brought me there the first few times, when I was young. I don’t remember when was the first time, because I was too young to remember. But I knew afternoons in Holland Village Shopping Centre, whether weekday or weekend, would always include a visit to EMF.

    Later I would go on my own, in my teenage years. It was a place where I would find interesting covers, or editions. My first few Murakami books started from the EMF bookshelves, because they had the Vintage series designed by Chip Kidd. I would only find out later about Chip Kidd, but these book covers started an obsession with Japanese literature.

    Between EMF and Kinokuniya for book purchases, I went to EMF almost purely because of the possibility of returning the book. You could buy the book at the stated price, but if you returned it, you would get a certain amount of money back. It was paying for rental basically. But if you enjoyed the book enough, you could keep it. I kept a lot of them.

    Their section for Japanese literature was tucked away at a corner, past the middle aisle that held the shopkeeper’s view. It was usually to the right, and I could ask aloud if there were other options of this or that book.

    Ma Jian was in the stack of Asian Literature, next to the Japanese literature. And with those introductions, I continued to have my growing enjoyment of reading.

    and now, all I have left is Kinokuniya.

    I’ll do a Kinokuniya post soon perhaps. The outlet closest to my heart was the Liang Court one, but more on that next time.

  • A Reading Place

    Along one of my early morning runs, I chanced upon a girl reading a book along the Singapore River. A Caucasian lady, sitting on some of the cement benches, dressed for a holiday for sure. She sat there in the sun, with her sunglasses and in a sun dress, just enjoying the morning moment reading. I was running because I was quite free that day too, but I just felt very envious of her being able to read in the day like that.

    The skate morning I had a few days back was an attempt at something like that. I actually brought some of my morning routine things with me to do at the skate park, and read the Bible there. The sun was great, really bright actually. It was great.

    I used to read a lot when I was on my holidays when I was younger. As my hobbies started to grow, I would start to draw, or walk, or go shopping, instead of finding those moments to just sit down and read.

    I remember reading at Margaret River – in Perth, Australia. There were some books I had picked up at the airport, and I was reading them at the AirBnB or the motel that we were staying at. I was trying my best to rush and finish the book because it was so exciting. Then I picked up another few more books at some second hand stores as we drove along the different Western Australia.

    I hope in the coming years, I’ll learn how to pick up that habit again. I know that I’ve got more hobbies still, and more gadgets, and more things on my hands that just take away reading time. But I am still envious of that girl sitting along the Singapore river, reading in the sun on her holiday.

    Also I am on book 8/52 for my reading challenge this year. My hope is to make at least half way there this year. Last year I hit 10 books, and was deeply disappointed with my reading. I read fast, but not enough! Hopefully I clear some books during the coming trips, on budget airplane rides.

  • The Death of Book Depository

    I still remember the season of Borders at Wheelock.

    Borders was a physical bookstore at the corner of Orchard Road, part of an American franchise of bookstores. It was a place where you could get music, books, movies. I had spent years there, browsing through design books, and fiction, and listening to so much music.

    But Borders closed down in 2011. I remember being pretty sad about it but not very sad, because I had already faced some breakups with my bookshops before already. MPH at Stamford Road was a place I had spent a lot of my childhood growing up, and during that time, Tower Records and Tower Books was still around. The bookstores of the past was really what led me to appreciate music, art, and stories the way I have in modern day.

    In the past four to five years, Kinokuniya also closed some of their outlets in Singapore, and now we’re left with the main store at Takashimaya, and their outlet in Bugis as well. I remember literally crying when they had closed their Liang Court outlet, before Liang Court closed down within the next year. It was really a place where I spent years doing magazine collections, and just browsing and learning more about the world around me, because of the publications next to each other.

    And now, Book Depository, an online store closes.

    The move to start buying books online came out of a necessity. It was hard to find some books, or perhaps the different editions that I would find in store would be marked up significantly. I bought a lot of Book Depository books especially when I was at work, during my busy periods. I would come home to my own surprise when the book would arrive, usually three to four weeks later. With every package sent, they would usually send a bookmark as well, and soon I had a thick stack of Book Depository bookmarks in my room somewhere.

    It’s quite something to go through, losing these places that gave me access to much more of the world around. It was my window to the world, beyond the searches that the Internet gives. I was quite happy to actually bump into other people at the book stores, and to hear other recommendation from the different staff, from the different people onsite.

    Digital books have literally no place in my heart. There is no physical element, there is no paper. It is literally just the story. Every entertainer, anyone doing a presentation knows that the way that a story is received changes everything. From the way a music artist cuts an album on vinyl (which part of the album splits into the half), or the movie directors choosing to shoot with film instead of adding grain to 5K cinema quality, each of the creative decisions in the actual medium plays a huge part to the receiving of the content.

    Sure, anyone can also play forward the idea that the story is the most important. But who would want to just listen to an objective telling of a story? A man loses something he really needs, struggles ensue, but he finds it, and it’s great. That’s the premise for most movies, and yet, each one is told differently. The choice of how it is told includes the way it’s told. Is it told loudly, is it told with dramatic pauses, and all the other storytelling cues?

    Books tell that story in that way for me. The choice of the cover design, the way the fonts and the paper comes together, whether publisher, or designer, or the writer made a choice for it, it was a choice and it added to my own reading experience. Even the difference between hardcover and softcover add such a huge difference for me, and I am happy to collect multiple copies of the books that I enjoy. Re-reading would lead to such a different experience, especially if re-read with a new edition, with updated authors notes.

    I will miss Book Depository. I thought of getting myself a Kindle, but I think my heart just aches for the shrinking market of the printed book. I hope one day, maybe I would publish my own, just to keep this hobby of mine going. Maybe that would be my own founder problem.

  • A Good Read

    I think there are a many good days when the world can benefit from a good book, or something stimulating to read. I don’t think my blog is one of them, but I know my wife enjoys to read my posts.

    It’s a mix of emotions. Reading takes concentration, and sometimes that concentration isn’t something that you want to give. But you plough through it, and try to make the best of the situation. It’s tiring some days, like today for me. I really want to finish the book that I have on hand “Something Nasty in the Woodshed”. It sounds like a ridiculous title, but that’s the very reason why I want to read it in the first place. I want to give my focus and concentration to read it, but I don’t think I’m getting that strength out of myself.

    There’s the feeling of wanting to know the story, and wanting to come to the end of it. But when you do, sometimes it’s not a nice ending. Sometimes the ending just makes you wish that there was something else to it. One of the feelings is that of an incomplete ending, where there are questions unanswered. The other lacking feeling is one where the story ends, but there’s more to the story that should continue on. Two different emotions to that same end of a read.

    Maybe later I might get a bit more mental strength to plough through and read the rest of the book. I’ve got about another 30-40 pages to go through, which I would normally be able to fly through quickly. But I’m really having quite a bit of fun reading through the details of the book, catching specific nitty gritty bits that are descriptive and really enjoyable.

    Or I might just take a nap and read tomorrow instead.

  • Weekly Roundup 31 Oct – 6 Nov 2021

    How fast time flies especially when I’m not blogging! I was thinking about how I should jump back onto updates here, especially because there’s actually a lot that goes on. I mean, I did manage to daily blog for at least 50 days in a row. I really have a lot of random things going on in my life at one time.

    I had two orders come in that I was really excited about: Keyboards and Used Jeans. Orders from Amazon Japan, and from Yahoo Auctions Japan. I had won a full size RealForce Keyboard at a really good auctioned price, and then I won a nice pair of used Momotaro jeans. There are some parts that are so nice, and honestly, I see myself enjoying the things that I’ve gotten.

    This week also proved to be a bit more restful than expected. I got to join in a mural painting on Wednesday. It was great getting to do some painting outdoors, and just to talk to other people who weren’t my colleagues. Sometimes there’s really a lot of baggage that we keep on carrying, and I just gotta let go of it. It’s not good to hold on to it, and I need to help my friends brush their baggage away too.

    Books I’ve finished reading: The Great War by Ralph Kern. Sci-fi war book, interesting premise, and I’ve just finished Book 1 of 5. I will probably do the rest in the months to come.

    Books I’m still reading: Sanshiro. I lay in bed one of the mornings and decided to start the book afresh. Man there were so many good lines that I had missed. Natsume Soeseki is really such a great author, and has such good command of expression. I keep thinking about what the Japanese original piece would say, instead of the English translation that I’m currently on. I will get to the Japanese book soon, I’ve already bought the book, and it’s sitting on my bookshelf.

    Listening to: Yaeji and Oh Hyuk’s EP: 29 and Year after Year. It’s really such a jam. Really enjoying Yaeji’s rapping and vocals though, it’s very chill, and her phrasing is very interesting. Silk Sonic just released a new track too, and that’s really quite dope too. Anderson Paak and Bruno Mars is a really nice collab group. Such is the theme for this week’s music update I guess.

    Things I’ve been doing: Sashiko (Repairing embroidery) and Running. The sashiko thing has been on my mind since Kenjima (on YouTube) showed the embroidered Levi Jackets, and also the sashiko jeans. Such a nice vibe.

    Been running again because Clarice had started running, and asked me to train her. She got a really nice pair of running shoes, and I’m really stoked to train her in running. It means that I’m running 5 days out of the week too, but that’s good for me. I get some exercise, and I’ve been feeling a lot more positive in life.

    I do want to get back to daily blogging, because I think there was a space for that in my life. But I’m not sure which part of the day I want to try that on again, and I’m not sure if I can keep to it. But I’ll work on these weekly ones first and we’ll see how things go from there.