Not exactly a blog but intermittent notes on my reading list, observations, and contemplations.
Mar 2025
The last couple of months have been a little odd. I lost out on a job interview and inadvertently questioned my professional self-worth in the process. The news was disappointing but not entirely unexpected, as I had a gut feeling that I perhaps could’ve driven the interviews a little better on my end. I lost sleep for a week but snapped out of it eventually. My wife even wrote me a long letter which now sits folded, on my desk, ready to serve up a dose of heartfelt love and inspiration should I ever feel inadequate again.
On a volunteering front, I had the opportunity to share my career with youths at a career exploration fair. I jumped on the chance to get them to try out a quick affinity mapping exercise by encouraging them to list down their challenges at this very point in time. As you can tell from the image above, most stickies fall into the “Uncertainty” category — they were afraid of making incorrect choices, eventually ending up in wrong majors or jobs they might regret. My response was probably something you could guess from a mile away, that life is rarely a series of linear and angular steps, each leading to the next. Instead, regret and wrong choices are inexplicably a part of our lives and they are something we all have to learn to live and work with, even as adults.
Oh, I also picked up this wonderful graphic novel, my first ever.
Capital & Ideology: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Thomas Piketty, Claire Alet, Benjamin Adam
I’m often in awe of people who are capable of transforming dense concepts, explaining them through visuals and the illustrator of this graphic novel does just that.
The story follows how wealth follows a family across eight generations, concluding with six proposals for participatory socialism in the 21st century.
January 2025
It’s quite often that we chance upon “polite prejudice” in our daily lives which takes the form of chatter and gossip within our like-minded friends. But how do we go from ‘polite prejudice’ to the ovens at Auschwitz? From time to time I pull out The Nature of Prejudice and very early in the book, a five-point scale describes how prejudice starts and evolves. I find it exceptionally meaningful because it reminds us how a kindling can turn into a bushfire if left unchecked.
- Antilocution - With our like-minded friends or family members, we may express antagonism freely. Most people never go beyond this stage.
- Avoidance - There’s no harm being inflicted here on the prejudiced group. The bearer of prejudice simply starts to avoid members of the disliked group.
- Discrimination - Things start to get real at this point, where the bearer of prejudice starts to exclude the members of the disliked group from privileges and opportunities.
- Physical attack - We’ve all seen this play out through the course of history, more recently being the attacks on ethnic Chinese during the peak of COVID-19 who perhaps had absolutely nothing to do with the virus.
- Extermination - The final straw. Lynching, pogroms, massacres, and gas chambers.
The Nature Of Prejudice: 25th Anniversary Edition
Gordon W. Allport
First published in 1954, this remains the standard work on discrimination.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time within the last five years researching office chairs and I’ve pretty much concluded that there is no such thing as ‘the chair’. Leather? Too much for hot and humid Singapore. Padded cushions? Same as the previous point. Mesh? Depending on the brand and the warranty, these can get saggy pretty quickly. What I’ve settled for is somewhere in the middle, the HAG Capisico which is mostly plastic but has a padded seat mostly for the sit bones. I’ve been using it for the last five years and it’s certainly a love-hate relationship. Its rigidity means that you’re forced to sit in a certain opinionated way.
My search for the perfect Goldilocks chair also led me to the discovery of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs by Jonathan Olivares, a book that is unfortunately out of print but you may be able to find it at a library nearby.
That said, humans didn’t evolve to sit for extended periods in urbanised settings and chairs are pretty much a modern invention by definition. At the end of the day, I feel that my best remedy for avoiding sitting-induced pain is to take regular breaks every hour or so to just move around, even just a little.
December 2024
I tried my hands at Madeleines for the first time today and was pleasantly surprised by how they turned out. I followed the recipe from the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook which has served me exceedingly well over the last decade. Unfortunately the book failed to mention that madeleines have a lifespan of 5 minutes out of the oven, after which they turn into dehumidifiers and suck up all the moisture in the air, getting soggy in the process.
August 2024
The last two months have been exceptionally special because I’ve been able to don my uniform and volunteer over three weekends for our National Day Parade, considering the last time I had the chance to do so was in 2011. An opportunity like this is not usually available to servicemen who’ve completed their two year conscription stint so I’m not sure if I’ll ever get a chance to do this ever again.
May 2024
Are you happy with your life right now? As in seriously, don’t bullshit us.
What you see above was one of the questions posed to me by one of the kids during one of my volunteer sessions this month. It had very little to do with the nature of my job and it’s sort of the kind of question I come to expect from these sort of sessions. Sometimes they catch me off-guard, but this time around, I was surprisingly well-prepared for this answer.
I’m happy because I’m contented with what I have in life right now, one of the things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is that life will always give you something to chase, achieve, or buy. That said, I do take stock frequently to see how I can better improve myself simply because I want to be a better version of myself, and ideally not because some external factor is pressurising me to do so.
I’m sure this answer will continue to evolve as I meander my way through life, but I’m content with this version for now.
I also managed to get through these over the last few months.
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
Rashid Khalidi
An excellent account of how things are never as binary as they seem and a sobering reminder of how far the situation is away from being truly resolved.
The Song of the Cell
Siddhartha Mukherjee
I’ve been a fan of Siddhartha Mukherjee since I read The Emperor of All Maladies and this was no exception. Overall, it’s a great book that abstracts medical concepts and advancements into crisp writing and accessible examples.
April 2024
I’ve returned from Nepal having completed the Annapurna Base Camp trek with my wife, the supposed less touristy version compared to Everest Base Camp which has a serious trash problem.
What was both startling and humbling was the fact that Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia and the 17th poorest in the world. Approximately 25 percent of Nepalis live below the poverty line, the result of centuries of political unrest as well as natural disasters. Over the course of the trek, I also learned that my porters were paid really poorly, that they do it not because they enjoy it, but simply because there are no better alternatives. As a result, I could not help but wonder if my desire to see the world was also part of the problem, contributing to what feels like exploitation of these people.
Also, here are some points summarising Nepal’s history.
- Nepal was unified in the 18th century under Prithvi Narayan Shah, but the country’s development was hindered by a period of hereditary prime ministers known as the Rana regime from 1846 to 1951.
- The country transitioned to a constitutional monarchy in 1951, but political instability persisted with frequent changes in government and power struggles between the monarchy and political parties.
- A decade-long Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 resulted in over 12,000 deaths and further destabilised the country.
- The royal massacre in 2001, where the crown prince killed most of the royal family, shocked the nation and added to the political turmoil.
- In 2008, the 239-year-old monarchy was abolished, and Nepal became a federal democratic republic.
- Despite the transition to democracy, Nepal has continued to face political instability, with 14 different governments since 2008.
- Economic challenges persist, including a heavy reliance on remittances, limited industrial development, and vulnerability to natural disasters.
- Nepal’s geopolitical position between India and China has added complexity to its development, as it navigates relationships with both powerful neighbours.