Reading

Entry tags:

life

Karaoke, typhoon, reading, Chinese medicine

Saturday, I took my bestie over to China to a karaoke parlor. It was pretty nice. We didn't really sing much, but we just lined up the play list and pressed the button so that the vocals would be played out as well. We ordered some food from the parlor, and ordered some... bubble tea type of drinks from a delivery app, and including all the food and the room booking (3 hours)? The price of a regular meal for 2 in Macau.

We had another typhoon on Monday, got the day off practically. So I spent the day mucking around with my ereader and got the page turner clicker thing working. I could pet Sai Lup and click to turn a page, how convenient LOL

Of course, the other dog got jealous and decided to glue itself to me when Sai Lup decided he's had enough and wanted to leave my bed.

My cough is like... 90% gone, but i would still have sporadic shortness of breath, feeling really weak around my chest area, and have spouts of coughing. I do feel like I've got phlegm in my throat that isn't moving up nor down. My doctor mentioned it's because my inner body is "cool" and declared my gut health isn't too well (true-ish). So my doctor said to try the gua sha and suction cups thing to "pull out the wind and cold" in you. Funnily enough, after the session, I felt the phlegm loosen up, though I still couldn't ahem ahem and spit it out. And around 2 hours later I urgently needed the toilet to get rid of, literally, bad sh*t. Though, now it's like i got run over by a car. But anyway, next week again!
( Just a photo )

Entry tags:

books

Book: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice to Murderers

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice to Murderers
Jesse Q. Sutanto
Amazon Product Link

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?

= + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = +

Random Audiobook listen.

The narrator had a nice voice, very pleasant reading, and also had impressive accents.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable listen. There were of course, many eye-rolling points, but this managed to be an amateur sleuthing book WITHOUT the usual cliches. Or there were some cliches, but weren’t annoying overt.

Tongue-in-cheek way though, I would say, I could flip a table if I hear “Vera Wang’s World Famous Tea House” one more time LOL. That name is way too long.

This is basically a grandma deciding to go sleuthing and along the way cooking up a storm (heck, I even felt hungry hearing all those dishes). Hiccups along the way, of course, but everything works out.

My only “nuh-uh” moments were actually in some parts where in one sentence “something happened weeks ago” but then in the next line it was “three days ago”.

I do recommend this audiobook.

Entry tags:

books

Book: Convenience Store Woman

Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Morata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator)
Amazon Product Link

The English-language debut of one of Japan's most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action…

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

= + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = +

It sounds like the main character was simply on the spectrum and needed a very structured way of life to handle day-to-day things.

And it also sounds very Japanese-que (or Asian-esque) for the parents and people around her to be like “you gotta be cured!” Meaning for her to “conform with the norm!”

BS talk from the guy, so much BS I’d just shush him away for being sooooooooo disrespectful.

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Entry tags:

life,
yoga

I still feel sick-ish

I don't know. I don't feel like coughing much now, but I keep feeling like I'm sweating (not exercise sweat, just sweating as if cold-sweating) and I feel this... heat between my eyes, that I always equate to having a fever when I feel this way. But, I'm not sick. So I dunno.

Double session of Yoga today was brutal. Stick Yoga first, then Wall Rope Yoga. I managed a new pose today! Basically, it's back against the wall, one foot in both the ropes hope, hands gripping on the high rope, then lift the other leg up and form a "V" in mid air (not really, back is agains the wall). I was never able to do that.

Wonder if the instructor takes me as a weird person, seems like I'm the only one that answers him LOL. When doing the right leg, he was like "come on, leg up" and I said "impossible" LOL. But after that sequence and we changed sides to do the other leg, I gave it my all and tried.

Another pose was leg up against the wall and pressing down, so it's like doing the splits on the wall? He kept saying, "come on, still have space, jump a bit and stretch your leg" and I was all like "are you sure?" Guy couldn't keep a straight face LOL.

Let it be known, I've always known I was stiff. Even as a kid, when people say "kids are more flexible", I was never able to do the split, I was never able to do the back bend. Even the thing where one arm reaches up-back and down, and the other down-back and up and then clasp your hands on your back? Never been able to do that, even as a kid. But I'm trying.

While the wall rope yoga was difficult was the poses and such, I sweated so much with Stick Yoga, it was tough. But I persevered!

Entry tags:

life,
movies

Recently...

My assistant went on holiday and brought back this bookmark/sticker/don't know what it is yet as it's not in my hands yet. This is actually absolutely delightful. It's so punny. It's funny and witty! Simply by meaning is "My Boss is at his wit's end (dealing with me)". It also looks like a Taoist talisman... thing.... (if you watched Sailor Moon before, it's what Sailor Mars uses sometimes) because the key word for "hopeless to deal with" sounds the same as the name for the talisman thingamajig.

So today is the last day of August, and the ceramics workshop place has... continued to not have someone open the door. The last 2 weeks there was another class going on so an instructor had the door opened. I was hoping the door would be opened today, but no dice.

Again I went to the office proper one level up, no one there. So I was like, what the heck, I'll use the hidden key. I know of the key but I try not to use it. But when I was cleaning up by the end of my session, one of the staff came in. She didn't ask how I got in, I didn't say much, just greeted her a hello. Wonder if they'll take the key away or not.

Here's me shaking a bottle of underglaze because it's a concentrate and I added water to it so that I can use it for the airbrush.

Since I've already amassed quite an army and I didn't feel like painting them, I've started on a new project, but I intend to only make 1 piece of it for now.

I saw on IG someone adding a teddy bear on a plate and then painting the comfortor colourfully, so I decided to do something similar. I think I made the dog too big, but... I dunno, we'll see how it comes out. I also plan to paint the comfortor as if it's a quilt? So I'll paint it all in squares... and use up my other glaze colours. Making all those cats and dogs, I'm low on black/brown/grey/white/orange, but am totally still full of blue/pink/purple/red

My bestie didn't come today, and I wasn't sure what to do for lunch and after, so I went ahead to Wynn Palace as I heard there's a Japanese Omakase place with a good deal on a lunch omakase set. And yes, this is the toilet. How grand LOL.

The set came with 8 piece sushi, dessert, miso, and some appetizer, but since stuff came piece by piece, I couldn't take a photo of the spread. Managed to finish that book during lunch... FINALLY!

My bestie was raving about this movie, but I think it's just because she's a fan of the main character. She's going to watch tomorrow, but I don't have time tomorrow, so figure I'd just watch it today. It was... very Japanese (LOL what am I saying). Basically, the guy got into a corridor loop and if he saw any anomaly then he should turn back, and if there's no anomaly then he can go on (looping again and again on a pre-set corridor). By the end i was like, "just turn back" when there was an obvious anomaly. It actually turned absurd in 2 of the loops.

And at the very end, it's again... very Japanese LOL. They showed the beginning of an action, but not the actual action, so you don't really know what the main character did at the very end.

Book: The Courage to be Disliked

The Courage to be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
Amazon Product Link

The Japanese phenomenon that teaches us the simple yet profound lessons required to liberate our real selves and find lasting happiness.

The Courage to Be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of 19th-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, the authors explain how we are all free to determine our own future free of the shackles of past experiences, doubts and the expectations of others. It’s a philosophy that’s profoundly liberating, allowing us to develop the courage to change, and to ignore the limitations that we and those around us can place on ourselves.

The result is a book that is both highly accessible and profound in its importance. Millions have already read and benefited from its wisdom. Now that The Courage to Be Disliked has been published for the first time in English, so can you.

= + = + = = + = + = = + = + = = + = + = = + = + = = + = + =

Ugh, this book took... FOREVER for me to read. I was expecting this to be a non-fiction dry text, honestly, I was totally prepared for that, and had my brain formatted to adapt to that. But then, the contents are being presented as if in a fiction book, a young man conversing with a philosopher.

It was even dryer than a non-fiction, and the young man was absolutely grating. There was a part where the young man got all mad and went on a rant, but it was a child style rant, absolutely refusing to listen. But then, by the end of the book, he's totally done a 180 and just meekly accepted.

As for the actual contents on Adlerian teachings, I wouldn't be so pompous as to say "I knew it already" but that I've unknowingly been adapting to some viewpoints along those lines for a while. Or, to say it absolutely crudely, I have no more f*cks to give and as long as I am not hurting people and I can live with a clear conscience on my actions and decisions, then who cares what others think of me.