a wedding in the country - katie ffordes (2021)

anodyne and saccharine.

happy ending.

anodyne and saccharine.

despite previous good experience with katie ffordes.

anatomy of a airplane flight

things happen on my solo flight to guangzhou:

• i flop gratefully into my aisle seat (yeah!)
• i stand up to allow my window seat mate in
• a bunch of travelers show their excitement at air travel most vocally
• my seat back is wrenched by a fellow passenger on the way to her own seat
• a random baby starts a yodel. it starts low and reaches high
• somebody's suitcase drops from the overhead bin, fortunately intercepted!!
• my window seat mate starts coughing

• well! well! it looks like the middle seat will be empty!
• the baby lets out intermittent yells
• my window seat mate lets out intermittent coughs
• the vocal bunch settles down and quietens up
• the captain asks us all to get ready for take-off
• i hop up to retrieve my mask from the overhead bin (success!)

• the flight is nice and uneventful
• i am one row from the loo: best location ever!
• i watch food porn on the screen 
• baby is silent until the descent. very thankful. good baby
• seat mate mercifully snores instead of coughs
• we land and i get to test my chinese on google translate

aside: they should stop filming people actually eating food. most explicit and unattractive.

the academy - hilderbrand & cunningham (2025)

this is like mallory towers* made american and current, complete with a mam'selle equivalent and her french exclamations.

likable characters just a little larger than life

more tame than what i think american teens are like

enough tension but not so much i abandon the book

i enjoy this very much!

unfortunately i finish it before i realize the sequel is not out yet (aaaargh) and before my waiting list book** gets available. 

*the enid blyton classic that starts me onto school series

**my father's brain by sandeep jauhar

at the hawker center

some thoughts assail me today as i buy my breakfast:

• i need to stop describing my weekend look as the tau hway-auntie-at-the-market look. she is better groomed and dressed than my weekend self
• she looks super unfriendly. surely she cannot be; she doesn't know me and it is the start of day so it must be RBF
• better check my own default RBF, alter ego an' all

the seven rules of trust - jimmy wales (2025)

the style is rah-rah and upbeat.

you don't really sense that he is talking to you as a person or you as a corporation. he has plenty to say to both and it gets conflated.

but as a history of wikipedia and an explication of its inner workings it is inspiring convincing and now i want to be a wikipedia editor too.

assume good faith in dealing with disagreements. possibly the most practically functional piece of advice i've been given in a long while.

kissing frogs

• ethical chic - fran hawthorne (2012)  limited premise: are these cool companies as ethical as they are perceived to be? trouble is nobody really is and we don't need a book to conclude this. interesting background info about my favorite grocer trader joe's who remains my favorite grocer despite appearing in the book
• careless people - sarah wynn-williams (2025) 1-and-a-half chapters in and she is still brightly idealistically conversationally positive without getting to the stated idea of her book so i give up
• having people over - chelsea fagan (2025) too much chat and too little substance so i also give up
• the seven rules of trust - jimmy wales (2025) most promising of the lot although the book is not so much about trust (he tries though) but about the story of wikipedia which really is quite a heartening story about the better side of humans

all because i am on the waiting list for my father's brain (sandeep jauhar) and the app says i am first in line so i don't dare start a heavy book right now.

bringing up baby

J2 finds this in the library. A and E will grow up subverted.

the smartest guys in the room - mclean & elkind (2004)

page-turning drama until you get a bit tired of the unending hubris and chicanery and you start to think really? can anyone be so greedy? and you just want the saga to end so the bad guys can to go to jail.

what i say is, they must have plowed thru a mountain of ghastly stuff to get so much organized into a fairly coherent account of a book.

what i also say is, the lawyers had their work cut out for them.

good morning!

the morning after a satisfying storm is rather lovely indeed.

mugginess break

E the dog has been fed watered peed and pooped 

and everyone at home is home 

bring on the storm! yeah!

nice rolls of thunder rumbling away

i am hopeful of a cool evening and night

ode to the shoppe

i feel like

going shopping

i think of

the sun

the bus

the crowds

and

lunch

i go to

shoppee

my grab driver today

he drives

with arms extended

and intermittent body jerks

and intermittent car jerks

and he wants to

chit chat

my goodbye!

is heartfelt

indeed

morning walk

i meet a rooster

gorgeous fellow

strut strut strut

and you have

otters and monkeys

next to high rise apartments 

talk about 

being close to nature

not quite

thinking hard that 

an affogato 

would be lovely 

so 

this 

is 

a 

poor second

the weather is muggy hot and it is only april. what will june be like??

evening walk

i meet a lizard on the wall.

it is undeniably grotesquely beautiful even as my goosebumps are popping up like they are on steroids.

doctored - sandeep jauhar (2014)

narrative of a physician's burnout and his journey out of it set in the background of moral ambiguity and avarice that is american medicine. he writes in a flowingly readable prose and the conversations are almost painfully authentic.

i guess we all go through a burnout of sorts in our middle ages. just as i guess most of us come out the other end bruised chastened and (if we are fortunate) re-couraged.

it's finally next monday

having finally come to the end of the mega-workweek i find myself loose and fancy free today (kinda).

what a lovely feeling.

it is a day for affogato.

making the switch

avant

après!

we bite the wallet and ditch the generational colorfest for minimalist glass containers.

fish curry

we make this for dinner with my friend's spices and J2's recipe. wimp that i am, this is my first foray into exotic asian cuisine. HOM is all excited. if you learn to make palak paneer and bread next, we can have people over for an indian dinner! he says excitedly. a little later he adds, tandoori chicken too!

i blame J2 for cooking all the above and making HOM think J2's mom can do it too.

made in america - bill bryson (1994)

a loose history of american english recounted in parallel with american history. fascinatingly delightful with punches of wit that ambush you.

unfortunately i have no way to tell how much of the stuff is accurate and how much is preferred theory. the gutta percha golf ball, for instance, is said to derive from malay for a piece of rag. respectfully not, i think.

also, i wish he would have covered more of the non-european non-indigenous provenance of the dialect.

slip of habit (and good sense)

DO NOT drink a cup of americano after you have affogato.

the combination is potently palpitatious.

HOM, on the other hand, is perfectly fine on account of his having two scoops of gelato instead of affogato and now his americano only serves as a deconstructed affogato of sorts.

hot weather escape

wuz affogato. iz cof. cof cof.

the days to come

friday: we arrive home. cough headaches chills

saturday: cough headaches chills

today: cough

monday: work

tuesday: work

wednesday: work

thursday: work

friday: work

saturday: work

sunday: play piano for church service

next monday: collapse

note to self: when going on extended time off, do not agree to take on too many additional tasks on return, purely out of guilt.

thoughts on easter

how glad i am that 

i need not seek. i have been sought. i am found

i need not do penance. he has suffered. i am bought

because

if i needed to seek and suffer

i may not even not seek 

or suffer enough pain

how glad i am!

sunset

is muggy. but sure is luvverly.

almost like fall

the leaves are doing an autumnal act. 

homeee

• it's muggggggy
• the king is materially wider than the queen. but i appreciate J2's 400 count sheets
• my beloved shower, yeah! in order of preference: J1/Yi's old apartment shower, ours, and Ji/J2's
• eating like a local again even with the vicious URI. i have missed you so much, soups!
• missing the little imp who comes up mumbling gonggong popo 
• and missing the children. HOM and i look at each other and say, we did good, by God's grace

in other news, i am trying to get my head around this plastics business and wondering if we ought to switch to glass containers. that would upend years of conditioning and practice. remember the tupperware parties?

the old car is in the workshop again. it is shaping up to be our de facto garage.

good friday

too sick to show up at church today. this must be the first good friday i skip church in all the years since knowing the spirit freedom of salvation. 

yet grateful.

final drive

our road trip back to the big city airport, punctuated by pit stops. it is a mercifully pleasant drive, unfortunately accompanied by my increasing cough and fever.

all in all, a memorable journey home. the last bit on the 'plane being distressingly memorable. 

best mem'ries

• being rammed by little A as she repeatedly runs full force into me
• having her come up and say popo, picture! like the diva she is shaping up to be
• when she deigns to pee in the potty (it's a wonderful feeling)
• carrying little E and having her try hard to focus on my face
• realizing that at 5 weeks, E likes to look outward at the world!
• humbly rejoicing in J2 being a good mom; certainly better than i was
• having J1 and Yi come up to join us these last few days
• and accepting that our children have grown well and found good partners!

it's been a good break, HOM and i tell each other. but it is time to go home.