Posts tagged "blog"
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The Moving Calculus
Some time ago I read a tweet by a queer Singaporean asking why any queer Singaporean would move to San Francisco, citing the following shortcomings (not verbatim): San Francisco used to be a place where queer Singaporeans would move to, for safety reasons, but perhaps those safety reasons aren't that dire anymore San…
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The Antidote to my SADness
Are you SAD because you're not used to the winter? # I used to love winter. Traveling to places in the winter, playing in the winter, winter sports, going out in the winter. Living in the northern hemisphere for the long term, however, has made me enjoy it less. I don't even live in somewhere with a significant winter…
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All of my wildest dreams
Scrambling down Alamere Falls (which is now dry) on the rock face I spent the past weekend hiking. Some of it was on a dried out waterfall, such as this one. For a long time now I have wanted to lead a wilder life than the one I had. Earlier in my youth, wild meant something else altogether. Today, it means:…
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Jharkhand Task List
Jharkhand task list photo Some of you may know that I have spent the last 9 years or so working to support children's education in Jharkhand, India. In better times I visit them 2-3x a year. I want to share something that stuck with me the last time I went: one of the girls we work with showed us their daily schedule.…
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Backing up iCloud Photos in the command line
I have been on a roll of late with my data liberation project. The last piece in my photo liberation project was to figure out a way to take out all of the data from iCloud. Having been in the Apple walled garden for more than a decade and a half now, I have.. a lot of stuff in there. Apple's official documentation…
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Schrödinger's Lesbian
In 2018 I decided to leave my home country of Singapore even though I once thought I would lead my queer adult life here because it was not a bad one. I decided to leave because I had met the woman I would marry, and there was simply no path for us to lead the sort of life we wanted in both of our home countries. Being…
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A unifying theory of Singapore food that ends in a dream
'Singapore food' is a difficult term. It's hard to put national wrappers around a smorgasbord of different culinary influences. This is why we keep getting into fights about appropriating others' food. Singapore food is Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Hokchiu, Teochew, Malay, Javanese, Sumatran, Tamil, Kerala, Mamak,…
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How I run PhotoPrism with Docker Compose and reverse proxy
If you, like me and many others, have started to feel uncomfortable about one company knowing everything about you, moving off the Google ecosystem is the natural first step. There are lots of alternatives for the main features: for search, there is DuckDuckGo, which is improving all the time and has now fully replaced…
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21 Days of Indoor Projects
Talk about great timing. Three days into our 14 day quarantine in Singapore, that got extended to 21. I found plenty of things to do. Cooking in a small space # I have some experience cooking in tiny spaces with limited equipment and ingredients, from camping and travel adventures Food is provided during this…
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Intersectional Grieving
I am processing a metric ton of grief this week. I am at once in pain at the violence that the Singaporean state (and many states) is inflicting upon trans people, with the support of transphobic people of all backgrounds, including gays and lesbians who really should know better than to weaponize their own identities…
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Travelogues, Ten Years On
It was the summer of 2004. I don’t remember things like seasons before 2018 (I did not live somewhere with real seasons until 3 years ago). Unless they had to do with travel. In 2004, I was a college freshman in a school in Singapore that was also the only one at the time which followed American semesters, terminology,…
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Life in Anxious HD
Before I came to this country I led a very different life. My luggage was never unpacked. My passport was tethered to my body. My weeks often began with breakfasts in Yangon on Mondays and ended with drinks on Jakarta rooftop bars on Fridays. On weekends, I might retreat into a Balinese forest alone or return home.…
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Letter to my Eighteen Year Old Self
In my younger years, meaning when I was a tween, I became acutely aware that my life would be different. I dated boys because I was supposed to, but whenever they said they loved me or that they wanted to marry me, I just shuddered. I don't like it when men sweat, I told them. In hindsight, that was a big, red sign. I…
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The Day the Sky Turned Orange
Today's headlines: Orange is the new bleak Surreal orange skies as wildfire smoke blocks sun in Bay Area Orange Oakland Why does the West Coast's Sky Look Like Literal Hell Right Now? Today's soundtrack: channel ORANGE I don't have any commentary other than 'oh shit'. So I grabbed my camera and walked around a bit.…
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Memories of Home
Every overseas Singaporean has the same fear: that when we return, we will not know our way home. Our city builds and tears down much quicker than most other places. Nothing is safe. The price of progress: everyone's memories. No time for nostalgia, or poetry, when we can have... growth. When I move between worlds, my…
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A World of Adventure
On Twitter, where I live, I posted snippets of the things I have done, the places I have been, the places I have gone. Where they might have felt jumbled up and messy on a blog or Facebook post, the Twitter thread / tweetstorm format seemed to be a natural home for my adventures. I am grateful for the mess that my…
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Akhuni
I could not believe my eyes when my wife Sabrena put on an Indian movie on Netflix and we saw at least two Northeast Indians at once. On screen. Having lines. Being whole people. Doing something. Something that seemed important. "Axone" (pronounced Akhuni) - is a Naga speciality dish made with fermented soya…
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We Got Married
If you are a queer person in Asia, like I was, moving away and starting a family might be top of mind as something you should do. To be fair, I did not feel extremely oppressed, I did not often face homophobia, and I generally felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do as a queer person in Asia. For a long time, that…
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Blogging in 2020
Why don't we blog anymore? I don't know. In 2003, I certainly was, and I had been for a while. I started my blog on Greymatter CMS, then Movable Type. At some point, B2, then Wordpress. Blogger got sold to the Borg (Google); LiveJournal.. what happened to them? They were so cool. Tumblr felt inane to me, an Internet…
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Love in a Time of Quarantine
The last few months have been all about the virus. Having lived through SARS and several other viruses growing up in Singapore, I wasn't particularly worried at first. Now, it's clear the best way to deal with all of this is too impose extreme social distancing measures. Where I live, in San Francisco, we haven't gone…
194 posts tagged "blog"