Posts tagged "blog"
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How to get a H1-B1 Visa for Singaporeans
An updated, updated guide to the H1-B1 visa process for Singaporeans. Singaporean citizens (and Chileans) are eligible for the H1-B1, a unique work visa of the US that was negotiated as part of a free trade agreement in 2004. There are 5400 visas set aside for Singaporeans, and 1400 for Chile. From what I know about…
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How to add a Chinese dictionary to Calibre
I am trying to read more Chinese books. My Mandarin school teachers are probably having the last laugh, but I am genuinely interested in some of the fiction in the Sinosphere these days. Unfortunately my school-time Mandarin class experience was so poor (old school, traditional, not fun or engaging) that I feel like I…
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Making the Yamaha P-125 digital piano sound better
Early pandemic, I decided to reconnect with a part of my life that was very important to me: music. I played music, specifically piano, clarinet, trumpet, and other orchestral instruments, for most of my life. Then I stopped. Startup brain worms got to me. I did nothing but work for many years. The best digital piano…
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What Pride Means to Me
Screenshot of a photo of a queer couple *With my wife Sabrena in the Paris metro in 2022* 1993: I am 8 years old. I am a scared little autistic girl who felt in my bones that there was something strange about me. Was it my obsessive, hyper-fixation on the things that interested me? My intense feelings? Or that I felt I…
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Savoring Hijabi Butch Blues
Finished reading: Savor by Fatima Ali 📚 and Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H 📚 Two queer Pakistani memoirs in a row: Fatima Ali, a former Top Chef contestant who by had a promising career in food media before suddenly receiving a diagnosis for sarcoma. Co-written by Tarajia Morrell Lamya H, a religious, Pakistani butch…
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Wives and Lives
Some thoughts on being a gaysian immigrant to California A scan of a black and white photograph of some Chinese calligraphy writing on a wall in a Chinese restaurant in Oakland, California Two weeks ago, I helped to plan and organize a Lunar New Year dinner for 120 queer and trans Asian people. It's a tradition that…
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Review: How Daido Moriyama Takes Photographs
Finished reading: Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs by Takeshi Nakamoto 📚 Daido Moriyama is one of the photographers I admire the most. His work (black and white street photography) is an influence on the kind of work I am trying to do in my photography; and his shooting style most resonates with me. He is known…
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I Now Have an Attention Span
Various things in the last few years have alerted me to the terrifying fact: I don't think I had an attention span at all until, well, now. That I was able to graduate from college, get married, hold down jobs... privilege, and opportunity. Most of the time, I was told that I was that way because I was simply careless,…
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Feeding My Soul
Maybe some day, I'll think of the years between 2009 and 2019 as a lost decade. It was a decade of development, when I came of age, when I left home, when I made my home in so many different places in the world, where I tried on different ways of being, as if they were seasonal coats, or swimwear. Things are different…
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Mycology: Fantastic Fungi
Finished reading: Fantastic Fungi by Paul Stamets 📚 As part of my new interest in mycology, I read the book by the supposed granddaddy of the field. If you've watched the documentary on Netflix, this book is what started it all. Lately, I'm trying to read more about the perspectives of Indigenous people on mycology…
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Graphic novel review: All Quiet in Vikaspuri
Finished reading: All Quiet in Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee 📚 Sarnath Banerjee's graphic novel "All Quiet in Vikaspuri" is an alt universe / dystopian future story centered on the posh neighborhood of Vikaspuri in South Delhi. An ensemble of colorful characters illuminate this otherwise monochrome book,…
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Manga review: Moyasimon volume 1
Finished reading: Moyasimon by Masayuki Ishikawa 📚 I spent the latter half of 2022 reading widely on all things microbiome and mycology. I am fascinated by these two related topics, particularly by how little we seem to know about it. I certainly wish I had been exposed to these topics more extensively in school. From…
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How Music Works
Finished reading: How Music Works by David Byrne 📚 David Byrne seems to like the same things I do, having written a book about bicycles, and about music. Or, I like David Byrne and the music he makes and loved seeing his thoughts on music in this book. Part memoir (about his experience in the Talking Heads), part…
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Goodbye, Twitter. Hello, Slow Socials.
Almost exactly 16 years ago I signed up for Twitter, curious about what it might be. The social web was so young then. I was still in university. The hashtag had barely been invented. Technology seemed like it might change the world, and I was excited to be a part of it. 16 years later, I am midway through my career in…
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America is the restaurant that gives me food poisoning.
Sometimes I think of countries as restaurants. Every country has a different concept. Every country has something to offer. Some have menus, some do not. Some are large multi-concept food halls, others are exclusive white tablecloth places where people have to fight for the scraps—outside. My country, Singapore, is a…
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It's Not Enough to Bear Witness
Two days after the Supreme Court of the United States took this country backwards, with one of the more extreme justices stating that he wished to also examine the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and contraception, I found myself having the same conversation over and over. As a newly arrived foreigner, not…
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Tailscale
In a previous life, I had to use VPNs extensively. I was traveling all the time and often found myself needing to do online banking tasks in one country while I was in another. I also frequently visited some countries that blocked most commercial VPNs. For that reason, I have been figuring out how to use different VPN…
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The Saxophone Diaries
Screenshot of a YouTube video of someone playing the saxophone When I was a child, I immersed myself rather deeply into the world of orchestral music, especially in the woodwinds section. But the saxophone always felt too... large, for me. I am no longer a child, so it is no longer too large. I decided to follow up on…
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New Beets
In case you have not heard, Spotify sucks. A lot. Here's a summary of my post-Spotify exploration of music. I'm still trying to decide how I want to consume music in the future, but what I'm currently thinking about is: Apple Music for 'all you can eat' music streaming and music discovery Accompanied by Plex music…
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So far, so sober
It feels like not very many years ago that hackathons, free beer and drunken nights out with startups were, for a brief moment in time, cool. Perhaps it was even normal. It was in this environment that I came of age, so to speak, in my work. It was therefore no surprise to anybody that I soon developed a drinking…
194 posts tagged "blog"