[[How has been]]

Monday, April 20, 2026

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In real life news, it has been a week since I last updated on real life. In that time, Emili has since gone to Czechia and I am now living at kuninkaistentie in a room in a villa.

Since I moved in I realised that my previous accoms was somehow really dry leading me to have nose bleed. Here I have no nose bleed and no static electricity zapping me everytime. And I don't have to hold a fork to discharge it through the fork (if you hold a fork and tap the metal the "zap" happens between the fork and the metal apparently).

Let's see, so I lugged all my luggage to church because I was gonna move house. And, um, Emili didn't come to church hahaha. But anyway, this was a church I found on TGC website, English speaking, all the pastors from America (many if not all pastors from America). And I think it is a great church, very international, quite friendly.

The first Sunday I spoke to one of the staff, I think Sean? from South Africa? And told him I wanted to attend a small group which he handed me off to one of the pastors and I gave him my number and waited for him to contact me. In the meantime I spoke to some Filipinos and um, some guy from Nigeria at church lunch. I was super glad there was church lunch actually. Otherwise I would have had to eat my french toast and eggs cooked just before leaving accoms.

Anyway then I hit my new accoms with the luggage and all. And I went grocery shopping. Unlike the previous time, this time I decided I don't want to eat more lettuce so I didn't buy any green veg. And I realised I left some of my unfinished cherry tomatoes and cheese-like pizza topping (That cannot legally be called cheese) in the previous accoms, oh well. Anyway this new accoms has slightly better kitchen. Anyway I decided to treat myself and bought some salmon and also some pack of "meat" from finnish farms (like meat chunks of various animals) on 30% off because expiring soon.

Anyway, let's see, we can start off food wise. I have had fun with cooking. The rosti here went much better because there was a proper grater and all. The panfried salmon was super delicious. I also got real cheese, mozzarella and blue cheese. I think panfrying everything is actually so fun. I also ate out the first (and last) time here, it was at a chinese buffet that I saw had free flow sushi. The food was ok, i guess good for nordic standards?

The "landlady" or host is actually a nice old lady who has like her whole family living around her in various other houses along the same street. So she got the bike out of the winter and redid the air in the tires. There is also an old man called roger living in one of the rooms in the basement. He is actually very nice, has great grandkids, usually lives in latvia, think he is an important person in finnish handball. He likes to walk around in a bathrobe (i guess the normal?) and he taught me various things like how to use the oven and the coffee machine and where to throw the various types of trash and all.

Church wise, I attended small group of the youth pastor. Which was really nice. There I ate broccoli and cheese soup. The first time that I have eaten any significant amount of broccoli in recent years. Was a good, albeit short study. Basically just had discussion questions on sermon. the passage was reasonably short. And actually I can't tell how they pick passages, but I presume it wouldn't be too jumpy although it was jumpy for the two Sundays I attended, and very punchy short passages. One from Luke about centurion's faith and today from 1 tim about living for God. I also, today, spoke to some chinese people had an interesting conversation about politics and religion in China and such. Also spoke to some OM peoples about ship life, well, the usual. I also attended their youth group on Friday. I have many thoughts about their youth group, think it was done quite well... they had bible study for 40 mins then a big food + games for like an hour or so then worship, structured games and a talk for like 20-30 mins (usually very short small group discussions but none). Well contrast this to what i'm doing at my church which is 2 hours of bible study. Mehhhhhhhh. What am I doing seriously. Ok I know what I'm doing but yeah, it could be so much more. And this bunch of youth are so diverse and also well supported like apart from the youth pastor and new youth pastor, there were like 3-4 volunteers (church members) that come down to prepare food, clean up, talk to youth .etc. Apparently this happens weekly and their 17-18 years olds were also playing some somewhat leadershippy roles by anchoring conversations, doing worship .etc . Sigh la, I need help (from God), probably also from other people.

Frisbee wise I attended two more trainings on monday and thursday, thursday being after the small group so I was late (but its ok because I just skipped the warmup and like half of the drills). Actually it is quite fun to play with them. I totally could make a life here with church and frisbee for another few months easy. It was fun to run hard, I haven't been really running very hard in Singapore but here it is serious training okayyyyy. And it was fun to play in the cold again, funnily I had no issues and always end up sweating. I also have some cleats that a guy passed to me. (Can't remember if I had already mentioned this). And it was yeah just a fun experience. I walked 1 hour back from frisbee once (the small group time) and also cycled to and back from frisbee once. I realise that my cycling is actually like very slow and I blame the bike.

So I decided to cycle to some museums one day when I had nothing, and I did, but there was really not much. I somehow went on wednesday which is the only day there is free admittance, and it was like a 200+ year old farm. Ok cool... 1 day from helsinki so just nice final stop before helsinki when coming from the... north and west. Well really nothing to write home about, the helpful lady told me about a nice cathedral and graveyard and a 250 year old building with a restaurant. Which i went to both. The restaurant was more like a cafe and actually loaded with i people having lunch and chat with pastries. Which was actually super cool, like a true local haunt, and the cathedral and graveyard was just that, with a lot of young people like sweeping it. I spoke to one of them and apparently they are paid to do it? wow. I thought they might be doing CWO but then they didn't look like the delinquent kind so I thought they were volunteers from the church but I gu ess not. Anyway what I took away from that was that cycling is very tiring and im 1.5 times slower than google maps and it is actually not very efficient to cycle because I can't see the google maps well from the basket (and it keeps flipping) and there are also a lot of hills that are very tiring to climb.

Welp that is about it I guess! time to go back soon, drop by and see cwy on the way back, it was a good run.

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:22 AM|

Saturday, April 18, 2026

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I have also read everything is tuberculosis.

Welllllll. Interesting book I must say, I expected to read more of these kinda stuff on the holiday.

I believe the main thrust of the book, putting aside all the interesting historical stuff is:

1. Tuberculosis is a curable disease with proper healthcare

2. Tuberculosis still kills the most amount of people yearly

3. All these people that die of tuberculosis are in places that do not have proper healthcare (generally Third world or some shitholes in first world) (from 1 and 2)

4. Nobody should die from a curable disease (seems like a hidden assertion)

5. Inequality bad because it causes proper healthcare to not be in particular cases - and related systems that allow proper healthcare to be there (from 3 and 4)

Ok so the point 4 and 5 already probably tells you my thoughts on this book. I think points 1-3 is probably factual and right, not gonna spend much time on it.

So one of the book's main threads is this guy suffering from tuberculosis in sierria leone. Who is quite a nice guy and fun to talk to. And of course focusing on 1 person suffering tugs on the heartstrings more than saying 1.25 million people die a year because a person with a face (and a picture to boot, with paragraphs and paragraphs of his history, family, struggles and successes, hopes and dreams and fear) is a lot more relatable and people will tend to care more. Which while, good persuasive writing, doesn't really work very well on me.

Well, I think my position is quite nuanced actually. I do agree broadly that it is a tragedy that people die of inequality is unfortunate and should not be the case. However, situated in the broader picture of "inequality related deaths" (add the word "severe" before inequality if that makes you happier) I don't really see why tuberculosis ought to be prioritised over anything else e.g hunger or war or stability or whatnot.

It seems to be that she gets everything correct - tuberculosis flourishes only because humanity allows it to flourish and big pharma sucks donkeyballs by reducing lives to a line item and we can and should prevent big pharma from price gouging and "killing" (indirectly of course) a lot of peoples and these peoples have no power and no money hence nobody cares about them. It is exactly like he says though, and we should zoom out to see that tuberculosis is far from the root cause but one of the symptoms of a broken system and the system ought to be fixed as a whole.

I think it is very um, good? that there are people who care about such issues deeply and put in the time and effort to try and solve them. I appreciate reading it to make me remember that there is great injustice in the world and the world is not as it should and that I, in my situation, do have some non-trivial (say, as compared to those suffering) but very trivial (in the grand scheme of things) power to do something about it.

Well, everytime I think about such things, I go back to the basics:

1. The world is flawed, and will remain so because humans are sinful, while we can and should (and will, arguably) do something about it, the hope is in an eternal future without sin in the new creation and not on this side of judgement.

2. Seeing "lives saved" (i.e lives not taken by tuberculosis) is actually quite a lame thing to me la... Actually I think the writer does acknowledge this in a part where he discusses basically whether saving lives are just for the economic output of these lives saved. Well, as argued previously (idk when, maybe some years back), modern medicine doesn't save shit, it just prolongs life and i do not think that prolonging lives is a good in and of itself, in fact, in many cases it is, in my opinion, the wrong thing to do as these lives prolonged are net negative (in whatever way you want to see it, utilitarian or otherwise). This is quite a fundamental divergence from the casual narrative, then, which assumes that it is a good in and of itself - once you strip religion or some deeper level ethics out and become broadly humanist, you don't really have any other options that can quite garner widespread support as much as "saving lives" with some vague handwaving towards human rights and stuff.

To not make a strawman, I think probably everyone acknowledges that dying with dignity .etc. is important and generally dying of a failed system is probably undignified, especially with what is mentioned in the book about the stigma and social cost of being ostracised and shunned. It seems to me that preventing the shunning and dying with dignity is probably a very worthy cause. As a side note, I do really like the idea of poorer people being "weaved" and having much more community than richer people. Being more "weaved" and in community makes you happy, and also more susceptible to disease transmission of course, than the bourgeoise in them Stefan Zweig books.

3. The fight against high costs to save lives against profiteering... Dang. I think I am quite fortunate to see a wide range of views on this among my friends.

On the one side there is the fully free market stuff that, sucks to be you if you are weak and disempowered, the market doesn't care, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must -> you can rely on handouts from billionaire's "philanthropy" (lel, sorry i can't take billionaire philantrophy seriously, think it is at least 90% full of shit as long as you remain a billionaire. The type of person you must be to be a billionaire is not the type of person that can do philantrophy properly.) or USAID (which has been pwned by muskrat and trumpet) or some intergovt thing with perpetually not enough funding.

Actually, this isn't even the full free market side, this is just realism, this is just what is and the question then is do you look at it and say, not my problem, someone elses' problem OR, they deserve it (to varying degrees of being qualified) OR, i'm going to help them suffer less - e.g in the book some lawyers band together to prevent secondary IP from being granted to big companies to extend the gatekeeping (and profiteering) of important medications. As an aside, I have written my views on this whole IP shit before and it really really seems to me that... Why don't yknow, you just flout the IP laws and make generic life-saving drugs in the third world countries themselves? Surely there is a moral argument for that under your humanistic framework. Or suddenly IP law, of all things, becomes an insurmountable problem? OR, because you are western you are constrained by it bla bla, law is oppressive but we cannot flout it so must go through the proper channels (by all means do so if you can, but if you can't, yknow). This is especially since the book claims the IP is a result of govt funded research anyway. As an aside I think public funded research is a good that can and should be funded though sigh, it is very hard to allocate dollars to competing interests and the risk of corruption is always there - it is much better than private research anyway, on a intentions POV.

But at the core of it is really true that the weak suffer what they must and, it really is not our main problem to remedy the weak suffering what they must because the problem is unremedy-able. I think we just do what we can / want to, and methinks that generally this would be largely in our local scope rather than global scope, unless your local scope is the global scope.

And then there are all the bleeding hearts where people have so much compassion. I dunno, personally I don't really see a large amount of bleeding hearts people actually doing a lot (shag this one super controversial) in the greater scheme of things beyond virtue signaling (OKAY OKAY ITS NOT JUST VIRTUE SIGNALLING, THEY ARE TRYING TO CREATE AWARENESS which doesn't lead to jackshit but it might not be just virtue signaling) which is quite disgusting to me la...

I think I would be happy to donate some small amount if the donation has good ROI, but well, I think missions work has very good ROI. If the missions work does tuberculosis treatment that would be great. One could move in that direction with the prolonging and saving lives dual prong approach.

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:43 PM|

Friday, April 17, 2026

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Let's cover the few novellas i've read, 3 by Stefan Zweig and an automatic noodle. One reads novellas when they are too tired to read something more substantial. Anyway the Stefan Zweig stuff is not what I would normally read but it was recommended by my friend who talked about it being the last of the great romantic spirit (before modernity) - I dunno, I only know Romantic period from music theory and I think they are talking about the same thing before the 20th century although music is probably just one small part of it.

The partner

Story is about a nobleman who has nothing better to do at a hotel and likes to "get" women and so he pursues this 30 year old woman with a child by using the child. He befriends the child to get to his mother and well, incurs the child's wrath after he finds out that his friend doesn't actually want to be his friend and the child kinda "grows up" through this experience.

Anyway, I didn't really have too much thoughts about it because this was set in late 1800s or early 1900s and well, I guess the "getting" attractive women part is something that all males understand, I thought his methodology was quite odd and um, really lacks finesse. Actually I think the whole of Zweig's stuff lacks finesse but then again it could just be there was not that much finesse ~1-0 years ago and maybe theres some cultural context that I'm butchering.

Zweig loves to write about people that have too much time on their hands and, i dunno, lonely bored women with rich husbands. I think I truly am a man of modernity (which is a decent place to be IMO, post-modernity sucks). And the romance, it seems to me is just poor self control and some sort of pathetic emotionalism against weak decisions. Very interesting exposure though. This was one of the stories alluded to in the earlier post about romance (very different from romanticism) though I didn't name it.

A Chess story

Story is about two chess masters, one guy who is dumb by all conventional metrics but becomes the world champion at chess even though he cannot visualise without a chess board, like a freak genius with some training after being discovered. The second guy became a chess master by self studying during 1 year of war when he was trapped in a comfortable prison with nothing but a chess book containing like 150 best chess games.

Welllllllllllllll I have played some chess and devoted some non-trivial amount of my life to it.

Andddddddd I want to say that it screams out to me that this is full bullshit. Yes yes my friend says some stuff about a romantic ideal and dream about the beauty of the desperation and all leading to a heroic result.

But it is really bullshit la, sorry my modern self really cannot suspend this, especially because I have background. I think if I knew less about chess and what it takes to be good at chess MAYBE there would be a chance but knowing what I know, first hand, experienced, I really just find this story to be laughable.

Firstly theres this guy that is supposed to be dumb, can't speak can't use language well and at the chessboard he is big brain but he cannot pull up the chessboard in his mind (essentially) and needs to play with the chessboard. Well, I think such a guy just can't play chess well. There is no way you can think ahead without being able to visualise a chessboard in your mind. Yknow we learn notation and shit and usually it seems very amazing to be able to play chess without a chessboard but it is just actually not learnt, it is just a normal outcome from yknow, studying and playing chess. Ok let's put that aside, freak geniuses can't be explained well.

This other guy is even more insane. Don't really know how to play chess, stole a chess book of past chess games. Firstly, memorises all the games due to boredom torture (he is in prison with nothing else). Secondly, understands all the games. Thirdly, starts playing with himself after he is bored with understanding all the games.

Wellllllll help me la. I think if you only have a chess book of the past 150 games, you probably can't beat a strong JC player not to mention challenging the world champion. This reminds me of some guy that challenged magnus carlsen (by paying him a lot of money presumably), he styled himself as a "compulsive learner" and he learns stuff like in a few months (or just 1 month, I can't remember - I think it was just 1 month). In the game he just played like ~8 moves of theory in a completely main line, got out of book and just rolled over easy. I remember watching it and thinking this guy is a joke. He probably can't beat anyone at his local chess club and he wants to challenge the greatest player of all time. You can watch on youtube max deustch vs magnus carlsen or amateur challenges chess grandmaster magnus carlsen.

I dunno its so freaking stupid to me. Like SO FREAKING DUMB. Like I dunno what it is about chess that people romantically think savant genius can come out of nowhere without realising that it is actually almost entirely about pattern recognition. It's like saying that yknow there is innate genius and you become the best basketball player of all time. Or, you are locked in a gymnasium and you train for 1 year and you are the best basketball player in the world, 1v1. Sounds dumb? It is so freaking dumb. Basically there are levels to this shit man, it's like the people challenging the white mamba brian scalabrine - you can watch this on youtube.

So player 1 can't basically construe patterns outside of a chesssboard and player 2 is like alpha go, able to play against himself and iterate and get better and better. I can tell you that memorising 150 games without background is probably quite difficult but doable (he apparently learnt notation from the book), well within the realm of doable in a year if you have nothing else to do. BUT, understanding why the players made the moves, I think you can give the guy 100 years alone with his thoughts and he still won't be able to understand like 1 game properly. Because in every game there are like so many permutations that are thought of and rejected that don't come up in the game, as well as ideas that were missed by one or both players. So step 2 will defo fail.

Step 3 of playing against yourself and becoming like insanely good through that. Moley shit that is truly a pipe dream unless you are a modern super computer. I told my friend if you play a thousand games with yourself you will still suck cos you sucked in the first place. Firstly, its so so so painful to play against yourself with any sense of seriousness because you have to fully compartmentalise like really well and/or you will just be calculating both lines unless you really time bound yourself to switch brain - even if you do that it is still very very hard. Secondly and more importantly, you will not improve because, well, you don't know what you missed!!! And you have no one to tell you that you played a shit game with yourself missing lots of things. I suppose it is possible to eventually, upon deep reflection, find that you missed something, but that really requires good background AND the rate of progress with that is really slow. Chess is built on like, many of these "inspirations" across the entire community (although nowadays it is just like computers). Well its just very unrealistic and cheapening as to what exactly chess is.

Ok that was quite riling. I'm surprised at how riling it was. I think i'm just annoyed that people don't know how little they know about chess to talk sensibly about it. Like seriously there are levels to this, you don't have to write the story about world chess champion, maybe try beating the old dudes that plays chess under the void deck first? Or like some random school's chess club player.

Anyway last zweig novella that I have read up to know is Fear

The story is about a woman (again bored and rich and with kids and attractive) that has an affair and is blackmailed. I shan't say more about the plot.

Tbh the entire time I was reading it I was just so annoyed at the lady for being a weak-ass piece of shit dominated by fear. Ok ok, I talk big, maybe I will be afraid when the time comes, but I think surely you need to like have some sense of who you are as a person right??

How is the thing that they are blackmailing you with the full sense of your identity. And if it is so, well happy being blackmailed.

Anyway blackmailing sounds so fun, like you can control a certain type of person with it. A person that does not lead a life with integrity, that is.

Automatic noodle

Is set in some post-civil war America in the future between california and America, where there are like sentient robots. I thought it was quite a decent read. Think there are quite some critiques of America. What I got is (and I could defo be wrong cos, well, I'm not American nor super keen on America):

1. California always leads the way in being um, liberal.

2. I think the humans vs sentient robots dynamic was somewhat of a reflection on how slaves gained their rights in America

3. How to stand up to cyber doxxing / bullying

4. Some critique of capitalism

Anyway these bunch of robots built a BIANG BIANG MIAN restaurant. Which is actually a hilarious thing cos i'm quite partial to biang biang mian myself. I left it unspoilt cos maybe you will want to read it.

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:28 PM|

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

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I read two fantasy books: the tainted cup and the raven scholar.

I thought the tainted cup was not bad, sensible narrative, no huge logic jumps .etc. Well one can suspend disbelief on some of the fantasy elements, it is still relatively rooted to reality.

The funny thing I find is that for both stories they seemed to have just written the thing in English and then ctrl+f all "God" and replaced it with another word. So its very funny when they swear oh <replaced word> but then all other normal swear words are the same like "fuck". Very amusing to me honestly because... I guess they can't make up a whole new language with new swear words, it would break the immersion and nobody is trying to be tolkien here. But, i dunno they find it necessary to help the world building by having a new name for "God". And it's always quite funny that characters in fantasy books swear the same way as we do but well, again, understandable (oh double entendre).

Tainted cup was just a detective story, i guess nice break from living in this world to live in another world.

Raven scholar was like significantly longer and I thought the narrative was very slow, took very long to build up to a point (I GUESS given that it is supposed to have a sequel... maybe it is understandable). By the time I found the point, I was almost 50% in and not particularly enjoying it because there were very odd decisions and the characters didn't seemed quite one-dimensional without much thinking. Like... I thought there were many better ways of doing things (obviously better) and the characters just... lack imagination .etc? It is always a problem if you write the character as highly intelligent .etc. and then the character does something questionable, that one would expect an intelligent person to do something better.

Oh well but the completionist side of me won and I completed the book. I mean it wasn't terrible, just could be a lot better. It was very plot driven, rather than character driven. Like the plot got big things happening, coming up, huge secrets and reveals which I guess, always interesting to see how the plot evolves but the characters within the plot are like, quite carried by the plot rather than building up the plot.

I don't really know how to explain this but if you gave me the plot I suppose many characters could achieve the same. And I never realised it was something I disliked up to now I suppose.

Liana tells me Raven Scholar is more YA (I think Young Adult). I guess that makes me more adult. Oh well, such is aging.

Anyway, all good... having fun cooking. Am a bit tired of reading actually, and I was supposed to do count of monte criste which is like sooooooooo freaking long. ah I doubt I can do it honestly. Gotta read something ez, methinks.

Hope that I can attend a small group for 1 week! Today was stay in day while yesterday I bicycled to frisbee which was nice.

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:26 AM|

Sunday, April 12, 2026

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In real life news, I have since attended another frisbee training, which is like, 2 more than I have attended in years. And this was in 4 degrees which became 2 degrees before the end, but somehow my hands were not frozen, I think it is because there was minimal wind so that was great. I think the trick is to play with a beanie on? I dunno. It was fun and I even got free cleats LOL.

And the next day read read and then I decide to walk around THAT bay (reminds you of anything?). I left house at 7pm and decided to go the more ulu way first (which actually isn't that accurate as you will see). Anyway, the first part was on main road with footpath, very easy. Then I cut into the forest and followed a couple to find a foot trail, then I found out that strava has these faint green lines that shows foot trails so I navigated kinda using strava's faint green lines mostly though these trails are kinda hard to find sometimes cos they might be overgrown or have a fallen tree blocking or similar. And I don't think I actually managed to save a lot of, yknow, distance by taking the scenic and less travelled route. But ok it was scenic and relatively nice with the sunset.

Then I hit a town and then between the town to the next town was mostly just one long road which I thought, how hard can it be. So I followed the road, actually the scenic route where possible beside the road, but then it became more "rural" and there were less footpaths following the road cos it was just road and then cul de sacs and then road. So after that I started walking beside the road and realised it seems to be like an expressway which is not really meant for walking beside (no footpath) and also, the cars were going really fast. There were some bus stops, but no buses coming to the bus stops and my app told me to go backwards to take a bus back the way I had come from which I wasn't keen on doing.

So I just walked along the road, where there was barrier I would walk on the outside of the barrier and sometimes when a big truck zooms past it is kinda scary (it is not really a expressway in the Singapore sense cos it was like 1 lane each way (or at most 2 lanes). And then there was a bridge that passes the railway and I was concerned that I had to walk on the road. Fortunately, I could walk on the sloped dirt / grass outside. Then I saw a footpath beside the railway and made my way down and walked on the footpath. And light was already gone by then and it was really dark and I was alone (have been alone since starting to walk on the expressway). But it was nice lots of stars and I just walk as if as I know what i'm doing, no one to see anyway. And then the footpath ended so I walked in the field beside.

And then the railway line crossed a bridge and there was NO footpath to cross the river / stream and it was like, quite a substantial stream so I can't jump or tree trunk it (also I didn't see any tree trunk also dark). So... I waited for the train to pass (and hide a bit so the driver can't see me) and then I ran across the bridge at the side of the tracks. Well, somewhat exhilarating I guess. Then walk abit more and more and more and then I reached the next town decided to bus back after ~3 hours of walking. That was... fun I suppose? I forget how walking friendly Singapore is and how in most places, there is really no demand for people walking around, especially kinda between towns. I also think perhaps what I did is not unexpected, that is what you are expected to do if you are the rare few that want to walk between towns.

Today I read and then had a walk with Emili which was nice. Then I cooked everything in my fridge because I am moving accoms tomorrow. Pretty sure nothing went bad yet (at least I hope so).

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:26 AM|

Thursday, April 9, 2026

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In "real life" news, my feet hurt after playing indoor frisbee, not blisters but like feels like the bone hurts from smacking into the floor repeatedly. They also play at a pace faster than I have been used to in a long while since they are actually training for something, so I have also been running a bit more than usual in pick-up games.

Anyway, I was glad that I went for the frisbee training. The next day I went for a hike with Ondrej (Ondra previously). And got to know him better. Interesting chap I reckon, we also tossed a frisbee at the national park (nuuksio) that we did the hike in. Unfortunately we started a bit late and could only do a 4km ish loop but there was a 2.3km walk in and out so total maybe 9km? Anyway he is going back to Czechia so I doubt I'll see him again, maybe in 5-10 years, or if their camper van comes to Singapore. That would be nice.

Also I've been getting more used to travelling 1-1.5 hours and on buses. I don't like taking busses in Singapore because they take a long while to come and can be late. The buses here are relatively on schedule and I don't have any other choice. Such transport also I guess, helps a slower pace of life. I can't chain 2 transit to shave 3 minutes off my commute over a 1 transit route lol.

After that we joined Emili's small group in a sauna. Its quite interesting how these finnish people travel like, i dunno 30-45 minutes to meet, meet for 1 hour in a sauna no less and then SKEDDADLE to their respective places for dinner and such. This would auto fail my inbuilt cost benefit analysis in most cases unless it was someone that I really wanted to meet.

Anyway the sauna was quite the experience. Changed to swimming trunks in 3 degrees air. Sat in 80 degrees (which is apparently the lowest of the range). The air is oppressive to breathe in at that temperature, like through the mouth, just felt really well stifled hot. THEN after that you walk down a rocky / sandy path to the baltic sea and then have a dip in there. The first time I walked there I felt cold on the walk already. then Ondrej freaking walked into the sea like aquaman splashing as he went and I was like, yknow, for the plot. So i went in and the water was so cold my feet started to hurt. And someone shouted to go faster is better so I submerged my whole body in except head and bruh it was so so freaking cold and my feet hurt like crazy. And I u-turned and got out of the water (I think like 5 seconds in water only). and once out i clung to the railing cos I couldn't put weight on my feet for quite awhile before like walking back. Funnily enough the internal wasn't shivering.

Then I did it a second time because, for the continuation of the plot and I think I hadn't sauna-ed long enough previously and I knew what to expect and really dreaded entering the water but I did it anyway and then I shivered a bit on the way back and then when we got back they said our time was up (I dwadled so only joined like half an hour out of the 1 hour) so I just went in for a quick 10 second warm up before having to vacate the sauna and gather all my stuff and change in 3 degree air (the changing room is like metal blockers in public).

And I was very glad I did it like a viking, especially when I saw the next group (that took over the sauna after we left) go to the sea and then the girl didn't enter the water at all and one guy just dipped only his lower body while the other guy did a full dip but really fast went up. Ondrej is such a boss he walked in and walk/swam to the pier to come out so I think he was in the water for maybe half a minute to 1 minute.

You know, let me go back a few days. When I was playing the idle game, it was a game about a guy waking up in some dystopian world and then have to piece together what happened by repeating the day over and over again each time he dies but getting more and more knowledge and all. Which was very much like twice. How he dies is either plot related OR running out of food, air or water.

And I feel like it was very relatable cos i need to not run out of money, food or water or energy while I am here. This is really living the life though.

[[I wrote this at]]*|10:22 PM|

[[Thoughts on books read]]

So if you read the previous post, I've completed "twice" by mitch albom and also people we meet on vacation (henceforth PWMOV) by emily henry and 2 novellas of stefan zweig. Let's put the chess story (one of the novellas) aside.

Well for 1, I would like to whine that the male protagonists are all tall. I think theres a diversity problem here (lol), whats with being tall that makes it particularly romantic? Like the character can be hunched, withdrawn, all sorts of other negative traits but he has to be tall because all these other traits can be "resolved" but well, you can't write that he has a growth spurt suddenly right? And the final picture must be tall guy + pretty / whatever height / NOT FAT girl. Oh well. I probably could write a lot more about this but let's not dwell on this, kinda like old news. Just irks me cos i'm short and hey I wanna be the main character that gets the girl too.

Second thing I want to whine about is that romance in these books have lots of kissing AND sex AND outside of marriage necessarily. All are set in western societies and all these western societies have really casual sex Ok maybe I'm just repressed and/or weird. Or just very different from culture because of Christianity and am paying some price for beliefs. But it's like so... unsubtle and crass. And I hate it that it is the Zeitgeist. That having more sex = better, more experience?? = better FOR relationships. The fact that it is the Zeitgeist makes it such that it is taken for granted, like not even worth mentioning. How do you rail against things that people don't even see, like it would be easier to rail against trump or the democrats, but this is like capitalism or "democracy", people already take it as default. I had actually stopped PWMOV at 68% (on libby) cos I thought it was getting a bit too trashy but i'm glad that I came back to it.

What makes the above worse is, of course, that I can see the appeal in kissing and sex. Of course, it is a biological imperative. So I rail against it and at the same time, fully get it, that including it will make for a much more interesting book and storyline and all that stuff. Anyway this no / yes tension is always the issue with being holy.

I think it is very unfortunate that there are no good depictions (at least that I can see) of romantic love, good romantic love without this element. Actually the best that I have seen in recent memory is freaking douluo dalu where the main character loves a girl (also a rabbit) and monogamous and the most they did is kiss i think. Maybe there is a big market for non-sex worldview media. But it has to be done well, not in a cringeworthy Christian way that preaches some sort of prudishness or holiness over all - the draw has to be dealt with realistically. It is not about preaching it is about the worldview in which the narrative is situated.

Ok, now let's transcend the whining (actually the whining can be a separate post but wtv). I thought all 3 books were written quite well. Mitch albom is mitch albom and writes beautifully as we all know, stefan zweig is from a much earlier time period and writes like, seriously. Emily Henry writes wittily (at least the characters are witty, and its as fun to read wit as to hear wit, AI has no wit it sucks).

I wonder do people always imagine themselves in the story. I've spoken about this to various people over the years and it seems like people generally don't, at least not to the extent I do (see previous post on how annoyed I was with the time jumping mechanism in twice).

I think both twice and "people we meet on vacation" follow the standard trope whereby LOVE CONQUERS ALL, a la harry potter and the Bible but here we are quite limited to romantic love. And when faced with a well written story about how romantic love conquers all (though in very different ways, mitch albom ina more roundabout, less traditional way - dude dies doesn't actually "get together" with the girl at least in the latest timeline, PWMOV the more traditional guy and girl realise they love each other and oh happily ever after!)

I think this romantic love as weighty, worthy of giving your entire life to is, to me, the most compelling narrative against, yknow, something else, for me would be Christianity (basically your worldview). There is a whole industry pushing this idea down really subtly and well, didn't even expect mr albom to be part of it. But well, I get that romantic love really is quite fun and the feels are really intense and it seems like everything will be alright as long as you have it. It gives butterflies and fear and the whole gamut of emotions, whats there not to like. Can also engender awesome sacrifices: do big things, do little things, do all things, move the mountains, dig a tunnel all by hand all in the name of love. It feels big enough to be like something to revolve your entire life around. And also it feels like the locus is not within yourself so it is like, more selfless which is a big plus compared to the other shit that people chase like money and sex in itself and power.

This is to be expected. AS THE SCRIPTURE SAYS - ok i'm not gonna quote scripture but to paraphrase Paul, to be single means can solely focus on God, the married man has to care about what his wife wants. I do suppose romantic love, including sex and PDA and kissing and all that, is the second greatest gift that God has given humans. After all, it was right at creation when God said it is not good for man to be alone and then made and gave him his wife. It is indeed fulfilling and satisfying and exciting and all that good shit, though not ultimately so because your wife is human and falls sick and changes and dies.

That being said, each time I read a good love story, heh, I feel highly tempted to do my secondary quest here in Finland (the one that I was strongly advised not to do). Maybe i'll get around to it someday. It is quite unfair that they always portray such a love, usually a first love, that faces difficulties and then eventually difficulties are somewhat overcome, thats usually just the plot right? But it's like ALWAYS love wins. Or, even more subtle, that in the end they choose love over XXX where XXX can be anything that people hold dear to them.

And each time, it's like THE RIGHT choice and fireworks and all that (ok twice case is alot more subtle but still, the right choice at least strongly implied). And then its like this level of feels and then everything feels correct and then you snapback and go, like some friends say, its just a book, its just a show, a movie, its not real, just continue on with your life. I'm so unromantic and yet maybe i relate too strongly to media (i mean the media in the broadest sense) that I find it hard to just fully detach or perhaps I choose not to fully detach because then what TYPE of reader would I be?

Yknow, romantic love is still a subset of love and love conquers all is arguably main theme (of is). So I suppose it is only natural that it is yeah, a strong contender because it is true (or at least a facet of it). And many people have felt it to be more real that Jesus' love, many Christians I mean. You know if I could twice back, I have many interesting options.

[[I wrote this at]]*|9:34 PM|

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

[[Time jumping in "twice"]]

I just read "twice" by mitch albom. Well, he writes beautifully as usual. but when it comes to these type of stories. I'll include less pedantic thoughts in another post. This post will just be pedantic shit about the realistic-ness of it. I can't fully turn off the rational brain seriously lol, so that's why this is here, and I don't want it to spoil the other stuff of the book which is nicely written by pointing out plot holes. I guess I am that guy that can't suspend or "bracket" the disbelief well. Or actually, I can, I just don't want to. If you don't want some pedantic logic exposition, feel free to skip this post.

So the premise is that this guy inherited this ability to "time travel" by the following means:

1. Tap himself on the body twice and say "twice", while thinking about a specific memory (a date i.e 1 Feb 2026 works too).

2. He then goes to the specific memory. If no memory is thought of, he goes back to the start of the day.

3. He is the only person that remembers what happens in the alternate branch that was "twiced". It seems like he can learn and keep skills too (probably as an extension of knowledge).

However,

3. He cannot repeat a moment more than twice (essentially can only jump back once, coz that would b e the second time he is doing the same moment.

4. He cannot redo love (well mitch albom really loves the concept of love) - if he twices back somewhere and basically tramples on love in some timeline, the person will not be fond of him (romantically) in a subsequent alternate timeline.

5. Death dates and times cannot change, people will die regardless of which timeline at the same day / time. The way they die will change though, basically, it seems to me it will be smth like final destination, guy will die, just don't know how, and will die by whatever circumstance is around.

As with any time jumping thing, it HAS to be riddled with issues although I think this is probably one of the better tries given the restrictions, especially the not more than twice rule.

However, the not more than twice rule is not as limiting as it initially appears to be. If you think of time as linear moving from 1 -> infinity in term of "moments" (it isn't exactly clear how a "moment" is differentiated, it seems to be a finite amount of time period (so cannot like split the minute into seconds .etc .etc. and essentially the twice rule becomes meaningless). Essentially you can jump backwards as far as you like (as long as you have not done the exact same jump before) and you are able to access the memory (the main character writes a lot of things down so he has the access).

Once he can jump backwards as far as possible, essentially a new branch starts from the number jumped back to - all other numbers that were after this number are all fully erased and will never be exactly the same anyway, if I might add, since they are redone with the additional information that he has. So how I view it is that say he jumps back from 100 to 3, 3 is scratched out (never able to be jumped back to again) and then rebuilds from there. And lets say that he dies at moment 1000 or something - although he doesn't know, but well, in many cases, he can roughly tell e.g falls sick, on the verge of death, then you know, well, don't yknow, play around this cos if you die no twicing back from that because you have no hands to tap yourself or voice to say) - let's put aside all the incapicated unable to say "twice" or tap yourself.

It would be much cleaner such that if he twices back at any point, he cannot twice again until he reaches the point in time in which he twiced back before and thereafter, can only twice back to points after the previous utilisation of the power. This would be, at best, being able to live truly, "twice". E.g every hour he relives the hour or he just jumps back once near the end of his life.

In the book situation, however, he obviously obviously obviously obviously obviously has a crazy possible nesting of jumps.

Let's assume he dies at moment 5 and calculate the maximal total amount of jumps he has (let's assume he knows he dies at moment 5).

Combinations and here I'm already using each moment as that which just passed so essentially he only has 3 "moments" here because in theory it should add another cycle:

1,2,3,4, (jump back to 3), 4a (jump back to 2), 3a, 4b (jump back to 3a), 4c, (jump back to 1), 2a ,3b ,4d, (jump back to 3b), 4e, (jump back to 2a), 3c, 4f (jump back to 3c), 4g

So in total for 3 moments to be relived he has 8 (a-g + original) potential final outcomes, 4 penultimate outcomes, 2 "earliest change" outcomes. As you can see, the final outcomes are just 2^total changeable moments and the total amount of moments he can live is 2^(total changeable moments +1) -2 or sum of the series.

So its a exponential function and well, given that a human life has lots of moments, or at least lots of days, the power is essentially freaking broken cos you can do anything you want with that amount of time. Main character gets his power at 11 years old. Just counting days after that he has 50 years * 365.25 days (assuming he dies at 61) and you 2^ that, dang, it's literally (not literally, but you get what I mean) infinity, you can do whatever you want with all that free time (except have some people love you presumably).

Ok then back to somewhat main story it is about this guy who regrets what he did to a girl and then bla bla, nice and touching, will get to that in the other post. BUT, dang once you see the math, you KNOW what you can do with that???

I mean, if I had such an ability, I would become the best possible person (ok I guess maybe this will hit against certain limits of the human brain...? maybe? dunno). Like I could take a thousand years out to cure cancer (within that same 1 year, if you get what i'm saying. You can literally be so freaking OP. The book does talk about getting money easily through stocks and/or gambling but thats easy and obvious (the book also closes it by something like mama told me not to before she died so MC doesn't do that which is like... ummmmmm. okay?)

And the other thing about love. Well, the main character essentially whimsically twices back, and it seems to me that he is just not very rational about how he does it. And he is like a very non-controlled person. Like something happens, mistake happens, oops, close my eyes and twice out of there - thats the whole premise of twice being like a mistake erasure tool that cannot erase love mistake. So freaking dumb way of doing things seriously. If you twice out when you see your wife with another man, such a loser. You should figure out everything, at least, before twicing out no? What lead to this, whats this guy doing, where did they meet .etc .etc. If you wanna fix it, at least. So avoidant and like, weak, literally using the most broken superpower as a avoidant technique.

And well, depending on how well you know me, you might understand the conviction in me when I say that I'm totally the kind that will spend many years on some lost dream, especially of love. But you have an infinite lifespan to live bro. And there are 7 billion people on this planet, you can fall in love with 1 billion people throughout your playthrough. While I strongly believe some people are worth, yknow, loving and waiting for and putting in shit ton of effort in, bro, the world is your freaking oyster. You can spend a thousand years on yes your first love and so on, but then you gotta move on.

Anyway i'm so irked by how the MC plays his life basically in some nested thing he loves his first love and marries her, then he screws up and then his first love is impossible to love him anymore (due to point 4.) and so he does his second playthrough as her platonic friend and "guardian angel"?? Like OKAY, you can do that. But then he DIES there and is happy to die "loving her" even if she cannot "love him" any more. WHAT ARE YOU DOING BRO. Yes playthrough the first love, yes playthrough the guardian angel, then playthrough literally so many other things. Playthrough her boss, playthrough her stalker, playthrough her fling, yknow, then playthrough the same with her best friend / sister / whatnot.

Okay maybe he's just a simple guy that didn't work out, logically, his power and what it entails.

[[I wrote this at]]*|3:55 PM|

[[]]

Let's see, where did I leave off in the general narrative of the Finland trip.

It seems that there are 3 threads here, one is thoughts (which overlaps with the other 2), one is books/stuff I am reading and one is the "real life".

Let me just write the general narrative following from the easter egg hunt. Well I always thought its a bit of un-christian cultural practices blindly adopted from the west. But given that I'm in Finland, happy to partake in their cultural practices.

Anyway after that Emili and Ondra sent me back, which was great cos otherwise it would have taken me like 45 minutes in the cold taking buses while being annoyed that the public transport is so expensive.

And well, we arranged for a hike on Wednesday, that sounds fun, gonna go for it in about 4 hours.

The next day, I moved accommodations to my new accoms, more in espoo, walking distance to their place. This accomodations also was like much more in civilisation, like are actually shops and supermarkets around. On Monday I took a walk down the baltic coast but it was raining and quite cold and miserable so after like a km + i turned in and found some cafe, then a pizza place, then a metro station with 2 supermarkets. Yay supermarket! Time to buy groceries again hahaha.

Anyway then on the way back I found a sports complex and went inside, the ice hockey level was very high, the badminton not so. Some elderly finnish couple and a family was there, I learnt that badminton is only open here on the weekends hence not so many people (was easter monday, PH, hence open). And they declined to play me. Anyway, wearing boots.

Then I went back and had a lot of fun preparing my own meals. I think when you have time, cooking is really fun. So many ways to cook the potato. I think I went a bit overboard on the potatoes hahaha but wtv. When in Rome...

So that exploration was not bad, then stayed in for the rest of the day. The next day I felt a bit bored just reading so I went to find a frisbee game. Also did some small amount of statics in the room. Then read for the rest of the day and also youtube. At least no gaming which is good. Not much joy from gaming anyway.

Then I went to play the frisbee game at night also found a semi-thawed ski slope which was very nice to walk on. The was a local club, relatively international that they had it in English. I enjoyed myself. Good day, maybe will join them again on Thursday.

Now i'm just experimenting different ways to cook the potatoes, reading and writing wuhu.

Ok gonna write out some other stuff (really should read all these chronologically)

[[I wrote this at]]*|2:21 PM|

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

[[]]

Overseas I speed run through the levels of doing nothing. I'll get back to this thought.

Just to continue the story, church was alright, chatted with some of my Emili's friends about evangelism in Europe and post-Christian Europe. The sermon was quite non-expository, kinda not used to it but maybe is cos it is easter sunday. Also, there was this quite cool live translation done via headphones so I guess I could follow it a bit more. There was a decent emphasis on holiness.

Anyway, after we went to shop and I bought like enough food for the rest of the week, I think?

Then we walked back to Emili's place in the rain. Which was... lol, cold and windy. But I guess fun?

Then I had some onion soup and such for dinner. Which was nice.

Thennnnnnn we had a EASTER EGG HUNT. Which is actually hilarious. I dunno if I played it before in childhood but dang, this is really quite fun, but I guess it is adult version. So the main premise is everyone has a color of egg and then everyone else's eggs are hidden by other people and then everyone hunts together and you don't pick up other people's eggs. And there were eggs of various sizes. And I think i'm a clod, i'm not very fun at just doing fun stuff for fun (though I am attempting to like want to sing / dance more .etc.) So sucks yknow, to be a clod. When they said they were doing it with like so much enthusiasm I was like whaaaaaat. But ok went along in the spirit of holiday try new things, don't be a clod and it turned out to be quite fun. So like, I had 4 eggs to find, one was in some container in the kitchen shelves, one was taped with lots of duct tape behind a shelf (got a hint to find that), one was in a guitar in a guitar case and last one was like, behind a book on a bookshelf (smth like that, not exactly a book but idk what it is).

You can just be happy by being enthusiastic about something, why do you need to be a clod. Its so fun to be enthusiastic and then be happy. So much better, we shall see.

Ok anyway, I'm tryna cycle through this time alone + lots of free time thing. The general pattern is that when i have mass of free time I try to play a game to "use" it well i.e in moderation, make good progress .etc.etc. But INDUBITABLY I fail and play too much. Then I need to force myself to not waste time on games. INDUBITABLY it plays out and takes a few goes, maybe then substitute game with something worse. Until one is truly bored of all the vices then one is able, thereafter, to utilise the time and energy knowing from RECENT EXPERIENCE that one does not want to live life like that.

But it is so roundabout and so slow. Can't you just decide that you don't want to do this? Haven't I already decided i'm here to read and write? But no, I can only do it for 3-4 hours a day. Freaking half day. Do I need to take leave and spend hundred bux a day to do this? Probably yes actually lol. This self control thing is insane. Ok but lets cycle through them faster by imposing artificial deadlines and / or like page counts that I need to read. That usually sorta works, makes it like reading the Bible. Lol.

Anyway, while Ondra and I were waiting in Emili's room for her and Ella to hide the eggs for us, he showed me a scrapbook with pictures and such he made for Emili. And dang, he said took him maybe 10 evenings. It was so cute leh. And apparently he is intending to do 1 a year. I wish I could do something as cute in the name of romance. But my brain is like... I don't even know whats the most romantic thing I've done but I don't think its very high. I think I am happy to give my time and money and all... But do I actually do it...? My idea of romantic, wow, dangerous territory here, is waiting for people to be done and then going back with them or doing stuff together that needs to be done anyway, or like just listening to the other person over voice call while doing own thing. Kinda pathetic? I dunno, I hesitate to say that it is pathetic, I think it costs a lot. I guess it's also like how I view the world and maybe my limited artistic skills. This how I view the world thing really manifests in very weird things that I'm different from other people. For example, very few other people write a blog? Made me think quite a lot though.

And I asked him why he likes Emili and he said something about she is very non-judgemental and he is able to be himself around her. I think the latter is like well ya, all love (that is worth anything) should be like that, accepted for who you are. But the first part about yknow, accepting of other people. Dang, I never thought of that as like an attractive quality but he is right, it is and it should be. Ok I think with some qualifiers as to what constitutes "accepting" but well, just define it in a sensible positive way. Clearly not what I look for since my brain had to try and grasp it but then, why not? Maybe its like a subset of kind or something. Anyway sounds like I'm rambling again.

[[I wrote this at]]*|1:27 AM|

Sunday, April 5, 2026

[[]]

After the walk went for a Finnish Catholic good Friday mass.

And to be honest, well it was very underwhelming for me. Firstly because it is in finnish and although Ondra very helpfully let me an English translation of the mass stuff, I still couldn't particularly follow, especially the songs. Secondly, because it was catholic. Well, perhaps lets put aside some time to write down some stuffs.

So yknow the catholic churches have very nice high ceilings such that the sound reverberates around and a lot of the liturgy is very solemn and much is sung in latin and such. I felt like it was a very different way of worshipping God. Like the whole congregation doesn't sing together, its largely choir driven. And there was no sermon, just yknow, how a mass works - lots of bible readings and prayers which are fine IMO - apart from the stuff that I found hard to pray with e.g Pope, not that there is anything wrong with praying for the Pope but I couldn't pray for the Pope in the way they prayed for the Pope.

It seemed to me that it was very much something to be observed and I guess it is also the term they use for it. Not so much as to be a congregant being part of the whole, you are there to "watch" the things going on and partake in select parts. So e.g they had quite a bit of kneeling and standing, which was fine (i didn't kneel but stood the whole way which was rather tiring for me actually since I just did a 3hour + hike/walk). But the kneeling and standing was like 3-5 seconds interval between kneel to stand so honestly theres not much to be able to pray in that 3-5 seconds, especially with all the knees hurting and such eh.

And because good friday they had this special Jesus on a Crucifix being brought forward and then all the congregation had to queue up to do an appropriate sign of adulation which was generally just kissing Jesus somewhere. I wonder if it transgressed 1 and 2 of the 10 commandments. It also took very long and like, in that time, everyone was just I dunno doing what. It seemed like they were just waiting. So much free time. Like if it took the whole congregation 30 minutes to finish the wholeprocess and you queue for 3-5 minutes and kiss for i dunno, 10 seconds (including kneeling or what other sign of adulation you do), what do you do for the other 25 minutes? I reckon you could pray and such, but I didn't see much of it, nor did it seem to be the intend.

Well I thought the liturgy was quite sound, and it ought to be since they had many years to refine it. So that was good, the prayers were all sensible but it was like very much listening and following.

And then of course there was the eucharist, where everyone goes forward. And... they only took the bread, which the priest fed some people and others not (they just put their hand out and the priest puts it in their hand instead of in their mouth). Which was another round of individual queueing (though 2 queues this time). Well, abit odd to me that they can just have to bread without the wine. But whatever, let's put that aside.

It seemed to me then that it was mass following + hyper individual whereby you are kissing Jesus / taking eucharist. Very different from what I understand protestant churches to do whereby there is hardly any hyper individual where the whole church's attention is on the individual congregant and in the mass (here im using the word as many) congregational stuff, it is a lot more individualized (e.g singing / praying your own prayers or even taking your own sermon notes).

And I felt a bit sad cos abiboon guilt tripped me about not being in church on good friday / easter. And there I am with my catholic brethren or at least cousins and in Finnish and not partaking in their two most important events. I felt like man, really could have done with communing with my peoples.

Another observation was also that all the altar boys are non-finnish but rather Asian. I saw like majority indians and some maybe chinese or vietnamese or something like that (i'm saying ethnically, presumably they can speak finnish cos the mass was in finnish). But the church has quite a lot of finnish peoples of various ages. Just wonder why their kids don't serve as altar boys.

After that I went to my friend's family's "easter" dinner. Which was delicious and I was glad to be there. Maybe I should have joined the men in the sauna but I dunno, it was quite late and I was still somewhat jetlagged. So I left but at around 930++.

The next day was a full indoor day. Initially I wanted to go for a walk but I didn't. Dang, I haven't had a full indoor non-sick day in like ages. Like literally can't remember the last time I did that. And my back hurts from sitting at the computer and also from reading in various positions.

Unfortunately, I stupidly went to play some computer game (because just pure reading actually is very uncomfortable for long periods of time - I always rediscover this whenever I do something like this). And it fried my attention span and took up quite a bit of my time - coz optimiser once again. Oh well, I hard stopped it today. Now I'm going for protestant church easter service soon! Hope it will be a fun time.

[[I wrote this at]]*|7:39 PM|

Saturday, April 4, 2026

[[]]

So after my last post, I went to walk around a lake.

The decision making process was literally theres a lake nearby, i wanna walk around it. Temperature was 2-3 degrees, I attempted to leave house in shorts but I turned back because it was a bit too cold and put on track pants instead.

So I walked around the lake, it was quite the adventure actually. Was a full on 3 layer + beanie + gloves walk.

Initially, there was a nice footpath to walk. Silly me thought that all lakes have a nice footpath to walk around, I forget that Finland has many lakes, there are not many people staying around here (my accoms seems to be mainly for people playing golf at a nearby golf course).

Anyway, going was smooth until the footpath kinda vanished and I explored an island via a dubious wooden bridge. There was a couple with 2 huge dogs. I looked at the dogs from afar, and the couple pulled them away before anything else. They were massive though, and I suppose if they were wild and feral and aggressive, I could have died.

Anyway, I followed a kinda dirt path quite close to the lake shoreline until it disappeared, then I just bashed through the forest because I'm a true infanteer still following the shoreline. I think this type of I have a big idea but no route to it things are actually so fun because you can find your own route, you are in no hurry and like, just being while having a vague doing to ensure you don't lapse into aimlessness, like a loose tether within which you can be quite well.

Anyway (I think i'm gonna start many paragraphs with anyway). Anyway, the path disappeared and then I hit a fence which went all the way down to the water, which was quite annoying. Whats with this private property claims. I highly dislike fences when I am walking around, it is such a crass assertion of private property rights and blocks me from walking around a public lake. Anyway so I had to trace the fence up. And then I found a path which looked promising, and then viola, i saw it went INTO the fence. And that made me really quite annoyed because it suggests that the fence is like really recent cos the path looked really quite well defined. So ok I trace my way up and then I enter into this like private residential compound down a "main road" (basically of a settlement of houses) and try to continue on my merry way along the shore. And then I realise that all the houses to the otherside have fences too which was kinda annoying, so from the lakefront house I tried the next house and the next until one didn't fence the exit so I could continue but that wasted quite a lot of time and effort and it seemed like nobody was home in most of the houses although there were vehicles parked there. This was good friday morning (like 9am+).

So anyway back into the jungle and when there are like sorta paths, the going is faster and where there isn't then going is slower. But this jungle is not like the shitty jungles of Singapore or Brunei laden with insects of all kinds and spider webs and gross vines and thorns and so freaking humid and hot. This was relatively pleasant. Very soft ground, mossy and like nice to walk on generally. The vegetation is way less dense than tropical rainforests so... generally not THAT hard to find my way through which is why the idiot fences were the main issue. Also most of the trees were like bare cos it is barely spring so, ez vegetation to walk through.

Anyway, there after its like forest -> house -> forest -> house, maybe 10 minutes of forest and 1 minute of house. Then I realised that these are what one would call holiday homes by the lake. And it is the wrong season for a lake side holiday hence they are generally empty although they look quite well stocked with like firewood and stuff. Some of these holiday homes look quite built up and maintained though I really didn't see anyone inside. I was concerned if they had guard dogs or like a guy with a gun comes out and accosts me -that would be unfortunate - but everything turned out fine. This holiday home concept to me is like wild as a city boy. Like people have additional properties that they do nothing with?? My UHNWI course said something about having a non-rental residence would incur potential tax liability as it could be deemed as a residence bla bla, I guess thats how it works though in this case i'm quite sure these are all local finnish peoples. Well I suppose it probably isn't very expensive and nice for maybe 2-3 months a year. There were lots of kayaks and stuff on the properties. Fortunately for me these stretch of properties were not fenced.

Anyway somewhere along the road I decided to turn on strava because, realised that it was taking much longer than I originally expected. I thought good case scenario is 2 hours (cos the lake is actually qutie long) but seems like it was 1hr 10 mins in and I was no where near halfway, about 1/3 way in.

Then went to the narrow parts of the lake. Very nature, some trails here and there, dunno made by humans or what, I guess there are less than 10 thousand people that have walked around this particular lake in all of history. Definitely less than 100 thousand. Then I kept seeing like frozen parts of the lake and there were more marshy areas. The thing is always whether to walk close to lake (more marshy, more chance of "streams" to cross) or further inland, ostensibly longer though less marshy also just walking in a forest maybe get lost.

Anyway, I stuck quite close to the coast of the lake, had a few stream crossings that I couldn't jump across so had to find a fallen trunk and yknow, go for it. Luckily I didn't fall into 2-3 degrees water though the streams didn't look very deep la, I think at most maybe 80 cm deep only but that would still have sucked, very brown full of tanins, I think. Also there was quite a lot of lake ice and in marshy places, the ice was like on the ground / water. And when I step on them theres this like cracking sound even though the ice didn't seem to give. It LOOKs like ground (and not a puddle) but then I try to avoid them where possible cos slippery AND idk, I really don't want my feet to get wet.

Anyway, I saw some cool sights, some very noisy small birds, startled some ducks (dunno the darks startled me too when they started flapping), saw some geese / swans (think they are swans) and only got my right toes slightly wet (was from a puddle kinda thing that I exerted too much force to jump over something else and not from falling into a stream). Also maybe thought I should have brought some water or food but then again, I didn't think it was necessarily originally and you can't die of thirst surrounded by that much freshwater I reckon.

So after close to 3 hours I walked into another kinda resi street and theres this finnish guy pushing a compound pram with, I presume 2 babies in them. And I spoke to him and he was somewhat surprised I walked around the lake cos not many people emerge out from the forest. And he gave me some directions cos the last part was a golf course. And I got stuck in the golf course still, because I could SEE my apartment but I can't reach it because of stupid fences and these fences ran so far and I should have just followed google maps but I always think theres a short cut but I spoke to an elderly solo golfer and then got on the right track and eventually left the golf course via a gate and this car drove by and lowered the window and it was the guy that originally spoke to me with the pram (now with a wife?) and I told him I finally made it out and he kinda congratulated me LOL. And then I got back to my accoms and it was a fine morning I suppose.

[[I wrote this at]]*|5:20 PM|

Friday, April 3, 2026

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Hello everyone, I have arrived at my destination and am living in quite a pleasant apartment for now (thanks to Emili's parents).

Was a really long flight that was supposed to take the whole of Thursday (I worked Wednesday). Here's some quick updates just so that I remember some stuff.

1. Dad sent me to airport which is appreciated, ate some waffles there lol

2. Flight from Singapore to Shanghai was quite uneventful as it was red-eye and just tried to sleep. I dabaoed the breakfast to eat in Shanghai.

3. Transfer in Shanghai included standing in a really long and slow moving line, oh well, I think it took almost an hour though I might be exaggerating, chatted with some greek lady (forgot name) who was going to Bali.

4. Flight from Shanghai to Helsinki was actually, surprisingly, entirely over land. 9 hours plus over land, kinda crazy IMO , think this has to be my longest flight over land, this Eurasian landmass is huge. To get out of China from Shanghai already took quite awhile then it was just Russia on and on and on. Really has a very different problem to Singapore.

5. Chatted with a polish couple that were kinda like building some tourist villa / house with several friends on koh phangan some nice island in south thailand. Seems like quite a heavy commitment to somewhat do business (30 year lease, hope to make money back in 5 years). We also spoke on various subjects like immigration, the wars .etc.

6. Arrived in Helsinki and then made my way to accommodation by myself. Actually I think this is a core skill whereby you should be able to get to accommodation via public transport solo without like anyone picking you up. I guess I do have that skill, kinda nowadays. It was train -> train -> bus -> bus and the train -> bus had a 10 minute walk that really hurt my hands from the cold.

7. I have quite a lot of thoughts on the Helsinki public transport system. They have this zoning system whereby innermost city centre is A, then in sorta concentric circles out you have zones B, C, and D. So a ticket costs more if you have to cross more zones during your trip. I reckon this is kinda used to reduce city centre congestion? But honestly, the Singapore model is so much more intuitive (just take your credit card and tap on tap off and distance charging). Also their bus utilisation is like relatively low in the suburbs, though I notice that a lot of their bus drivers are locals and such - probably there is some serious cross-subsidisation going on whereby high use routes subsidise the low usage ones and the fees are really quite expensive. I think this only works kinda like early days Singapore pre - circle line whereby you have to go to city centre to make all the important transits (i.e all roads lead to rome). The public transport comes relatively on time too, not bad. I suppose this is all part of the larger social safety net.

8. Went to my friend's place for dinner with her sister and boyfriend. Was nice, food was good. Europeans know how to make bread seriously (also sister is a baker) but dang the garlic bread was really good. Have some other thoughts but we will get there.

9. Went to shopping mall to get groceries for myself, was about 10pm to get back by bus. I tried not to buy any processed food to cheat and make it easy and unhealthy, we shall see how it goes lol.

10. Was super tired and slept, but mouth quite dry and all, had some jetlag too. Standard stuff when overseas I suppose, especially in a relatively cold place.

Am pleased to report that I have watched 2 movies on shanghai helsinki -

1. Nobodys (some quite funny cartoon about small monsters wanting to be main characters in journey to the west so they dress up as the main characters) - surely theres some critique there about how the nobodys of this world can try to seize destiny even when the deck is stacked strongly against them. There was a very cool line, I thought, about how not everyone can go and "get scriptures" whereby the entire original cast of sun wukong, zhu bajie, sandy, tang san and the horse were all like non-nobodies prior to being "selected" for this cool mission, and non-nobodies for like hundreds or thousands of years. What is life for the ordinary man? I actually quite strongly feel that I can make something out of my life and not be a nobody, though with many many many qualifiers, that being "somebody" in the right sense (mostly spiritual but not entirely). I feel like most nobodys don't even try, which is also evidenced in the plot, because they have been socialised and conditioned to think that they can't amount to anything and they should just be content and play their small role well. Well brings back to the whole ubermensch concept and will to power, which I have discussed at length maybe 7 years ago before starting work.

2. My favorite cake - some Iranian movie about elderly love. Actually very sweet and touching, about how everyone is lonely and, I dunno, should be spontaneous and give love a chance at all ages / levels. There was quite a big contrast with the polish girl beside me watching bridgerton which I think is young pretty love. This one is old messy, persisting after the world has done their best at me love. Well, fun, maybe ought to give this love thing a shot after all. Overseas for me has always been quite paradigm breaking, the normalmente-ness of life in Singapore in the day to day can't really produce much novel shifts I feel. Or even if they do they are not kept well.

I have also finished. on libby, days at the torunka Cafe which paints 3 idyllic kinda love stories that happen at a cafe in tokyo no less which is supposed to be hustle and bustle. And wow amaze I recognise at least 1 of the places like some fountain in ueno park. Well, nice book, more love stuff but the Japanese always do love less crass and more like subtle longing kinda than the Westerners which I do appreciate. I'm struck by how the work day is just a blur and then all the action happens outside of work, in the cafe. Probably an indictment against how the Japanese work, but maybe not only the Japanese. I really like these type of common thread stories (I recall redwall) whereby there are independent stories but set in the same world that builds on the world progressively.

Ok I need to be, instead of do. I guess writing is half doing half being. Time for my walk around the lake!

[[I wrote this at]]*|12:38 PM|