Dear Tigey,
You’ve been coming along with me on my visits to the hospital and parents’ place. You’re destined for a bath once all this is over.
Entry #159 (Oct 06 2024)
Table of Contents
Comfortable…
ට Life
ට Games
ට Plushie of the Week #154
ට Song of the Week #131
ට Memory Snippet of the Week #138
ට Dreams
Life
My chair from Wayfair, that I ordered two weeks ago, finally arrived this week. It came in a large, flat package, and had pieces to put together, so I put it together and it turned out wobbly. So I undid and retightened some of the washers and bolts a second time and now it’s a lot less shaky. It’s still a little shaky if I squirm from side to side though, which is expected I guess since the pieces are attached together by eight bolts — this is definitely something I miss about the old chair, whose frame was just one single solid piece of metal. I think.
What I won’t miss is the scratchiness of that chair’s seat though. This one is faux leather, and although I generally lay down a.. piece of cloth over top of it to sit on, like I did on my old chair, the texture of this new chair is so much better than that old one. And both the chair seat and armrests are of a nice height. I definitely prefer this chair over the old one, and will continue to do so until one of the bolts lets me down.
Mom got released from the hospital this week, so I started visiting them at my parents’ house instead of the hospital. I went over on Wednesday with some food and groceries, and then again on Friday to accompany Mom for the entire day while Dad went out to the Asian supermarkets downtown to get other groceries from there. I offered to go do those groceries, but he refused, saying that that area was dangerous due to the number of homeless there accosting people on the streets. But won’t it be even more dangerous for him? Oh well. He wasn’t having any of that.
I came back from my visit on Friday with an armful of stories, photos, and things to scan though, which I was happy about. It’ll give me some easy content for my Memory Snippet for a Week for a couple of weeks at least, above and beyond just the good and nostalgic feeling of rediscovering old stuff. One of the things I came back with was a pile of old cookbooks from Mom, and I scanned one of them already, a 1972 cookbook called Cookery Course Part 1 by Tham Yui Kai, who was apparently a locally famous cook. It’s located here on my archive.org account.
I spent a LOT of time this week doing both my game commentary thing, where I practice recording myself talking over a game I’m playing, as well as vocal and singing practice, which consisted not only of actual random karaoke but also stuff like warmup exercises, breathing lessons, lip trills, voice feminization exercises, and lots and lots of different YouTube videos outlining different techniques and things to try to improve one’s voice. It was actually a lot of fun, but also took a lot of time, I spent over two hours a day on both those things combined on average, probably closer to three. And it was a lot of fun. I still have a long way to go though, but I learnt all sorts of things about chest voice and head voice and the passagio (where chest and head voice overlap) and breath support and perhaps even trying to make one’s voice less nasally. One thing’s for sure though, the mic that I bought two weeks ago has been getting quite a workout. I also wanted to give a shoutout to the Singeo YouTube channel which I have found myself liking a lot this week.
On Tuesday morning this week at sometime just after 4 am, there was a fire alarm. I didn’t actually wake up for this alarm until close to 4:30 am, at which time I wondered what that din was. It took me a while of blearily lying in bed, then going to the balcony door to look out and see if the sound was coming from outside the apartment, before I realized that it was the fire alarm blaring from outside my front door. I grabbed my jacket, phone, and my Tigey, and headed out and down the stairs, and I could smell something that smelled like burnt rubber as I did so. At the bottom of the stairwell, there was a huge fan that had been set up to blow air out the apartment side door, so obviously something had happened in some room connected to the ventilation system, though there was no actual fire that I saw.
I reached the lobby just in time to see the firemen leaving and allowing everyone else back in, so I just blended in with them and took the elevator back up to my apartment. Thankfully I didn’t have to go out into the cold at 4 am in the morning, and more importantly didn’t get immolated while asleep, but that’s four fire alarms in less than two weeks now, even though this was a “real” incident of some kind. So anyway, the answer to the question “Can I sleep through a fire alarm?” is “Yes, probably.” Although this could be partially due to being deaf in one ear and thus dependent on which side of the pillow I’m lying on.
Partially inspired by exploring my parents’ house while I was there on Friday, and finding boxes of old bookmarks, bus tickets, and business cards, I ordered something that I’d been meaning to order for some time already this week, which is a box to hold business cards. Or things of that size anyway. I picked this box out from Amazon in the end. I have a couple smaller loose boxes and a bunch of cards lying around unboxed that I have wanted to consolidate in one location for some time now, and this looked like it would do the trick while not itself being too large. By the by, Dad also had several coin and stamp albums, and then a fairly large collection of First Day Cover stamps too, which is a phrase that I hadn’t heard in a couple of decades. Here are a couple items I found and took photos of that I don’t intend to cram into a future MSotW though:
Firstly, an Altavista Canada bookmark from Telus! A little piece of internet history right here.
Next, a magnet from Vernon Barford, the junior high school that I transferred into and spent half a year at:
A Dunman High Scouts keychain badge:
And some Singapore bus tickets (pulled out from a huge box of them) from 1964 and 1969, long before my time. I don’t even recognize the bus companies, The Singapore Traction Co. and Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Co Ltd, from my own time in Singapore in the 90s, that’s how old they were.
The sunset skies weren’t as glorious this week as past weeks, a lot of the days were so overcast that there just wasn’t even a sunset at all. The temperature is also growing colder and I fear that the first snowfall of the year will soon be here. But anyway, here are some of my sky pictures from the week.
Sun Sep 29, 7:35 pm. Many clouds, little sun:
Mon Sep 30, 7:20 pm. with dabbing clouds:
Thu Oct 03, 12:11 am, after being tired of not having any good sunset pics to take for a couple days, I took a picture of some brightly lit low clouds instead, I guess due to some light pollution in the distance. It’s not usually that bright.
Thu Oct 03, 7:00 pm, streaks of paint across the sunset canvas:
And finally Thu Oct 03, 7:49 pm, because what a difference 49 minutes makes:
Nothing that I’d call a great picture though. Maybe 6/10 or 6.5/10 scores at most, if I were to rate them.
Games
I played a bit of Dave the Diver and TCG Card Shop Simulator in the early part of the week, but after that my time was all tied up with visiting the parents, scanning stuff, as well as those voice exercises, so I didn’t play anything at all besides Dream Tactics, which tied into the latter, being the game that I’m trying to record myself talking over as I play. It’s still pretty great, the ingame character banter had me bursting out in laughter several times, and the deck building and turn-based grid combat parts are very satisfying as well.
Other than that, and side games like AMQ and Pikmin Bloom, there was nothing else of note to report in to in the world of (my played) games this week. I’m considering getting Metaphor: ReFantazio on launch and playing that though, but we’ll see. I’ve barely gotten any time for gaming or anime these past two weeks.
Plushie of the Week #154
This monkey plushie was apparently sent to us by Auntie Doris, but I don’t have a date range for him by my notes, so I’m not sure if he was with us before we moved to Canada, or if he was sent to us afterwards.
He’s missing an eye though! What a rugged life he must have had. Check him out. Front:
Back:
And tag, slightly blurry:
I don’t have any other stories or memories associated with this one either, it’s one of the ones in the big box at my parents’ place. Nice to meet cha!
Song of the Week #131
Title: Nesshoku Starmine
Artist: Roselia
Album: BanG Dream!: Asonjatta! OST (2017)
This song is one of the better songs in the BanG Dream! franchise to me — it’s a toss up between this, Tokimeki Experience! by Poppin’Party, and another song I haven’t featured yet, EXPOSE ‘Burn out!!!’ by RAISE A SUILEN. That being said, it’s the ending song to a single OVA episode in Season 1, and doesn’t feature anywhere else in the anime series, so I never expected the Roselia band member that I saw perform solo at Animethon 2024, Yuki Nakashima, to sing this as one of the five songs that she sang that night, and the only “for the fans” Roselia fanservice/tribute song that she did among them at that. As I stated in that writeup, that was a big and very welcome surprise for me to see that performed live, even if just by one of the band members instead of all five, and it left a lasting impression on me.
Outside of that memory I don’t actually have too many other memories attached to the song, except that Satinel and Heg and I are all happy when the song randomly comes up in AMQ, so it has that positive connotation linked with it. I suppose I also generally like star and universe themed songs in general, as those sorts of songs all tend to evoke wonder and awe at the mysteries of the universe, so it has that going for it too. Nesshoku Starmine translates to Passionate Starmine, so it’s vaguely about an exploding star, which matches the single cover art. I have that CD on my shortlist to buy at some point, but I haven’t seen it at a price point and point in time where I’m actually ready and willing to buy it yet, so it hasn’t happened yet. Eventually, I’m sure.
Also, I wanted to link this English cover of Nesshoku Starmine by someone that I don’t know but that seems to go by Angela on YouTube — it’s not often I like English covers of Japanese songs, but I thought that this specific one was well done.
Memory Snippet of the Week #138
One of the artifacts I found at my parents’ apartment this week was the receipts for our boarding passes from when we flew here from Singapore to Canada. As well as copies of the actual boarding passes themselves. They’re dated Jan 01 1999, and we apparently bought them just two weeks before we went — Dec 15 1998, even though this was our final flight out of Singapore and the plane tickets were obviously an integral part of our migration to Canada.
Why did we leave this until the last minute? To answer this question, here’s a very interesting tidbit.
Those pictures are redacted, but the first one is the receipt for Mom, Dad, Jon, and Kel‘s tickets, and the bottom one is mine. Their tickets cost $1,782 SGD each for Jon and Kel, and $2,651 SGD each for Mom and Dad. But mine cost $5,287 SGD. The reason for this is that my parents bought a two-way ticket for me, whereas it was a one-way ticket for everyone else in the family.
Why?
Well, because I was 14 and a half at the time, and so would have been on MINDEF and CMPB‘s radar at the time, and my parents feared that if they saw that I just had a one-way ticket out of the country, even though we were emigrating, then the ICA would not let us leave the country. Or at least not let *me* leave the country on suspicion of draft dodging. So they bought one-way tickets for the family, but bought me two-way tickets, so that it would look like I was just going on vacation and would be returning to the country. Singapore does not allow dual citizenship, and does not allow young males to emigrate to avoid doing national service, although Jon was still too young (under 12) at that point to be on their radar. For that reason, too, they did not buy the tickets until Dec 15 — they didn’t want to buy it too far in advance in case the government “found out” somehow or in case plans had to change.
That’s wild! Dad said I never used the return ticket and thus we kept it as an expensive souvenir at the end. I scanned that too:
As well as the envelope that held our itineraries and travel passes, from a company called Euro-Asia Holidays Pte Ltd. This was in the age of the early Internet, so booking tickets online still wasn’t quite a thing yet.
From Google, they have an address at a different shopping mall now but their website is dead so I’m not sure if they’re still around. I’ll have to add that to the to-visit list next time I go to Singapore.
But yeah, an interesting piece of our history and the strained relationship that the main government party and its institutions there have with its citizens. The funny thing is, for the last couple months up until the day we were leaving, I had been fighting my parents to be allowed to stay in Singapore and study with my friends at Dunman High instead of migrating to Canada with the family, perhaps by staying with a relative or with one of my friends like something out of an anime (though I had not watched anime yet at that time and had no concept of that trope). Certainly by the time the day for migration arrived I was still quite torn in two but didn’t want to be left behind anyway so I went along, and I’m glad I did in the end, though that acknowledgement that it was a good decision did not come for 15 years or so.
I wonder what would have happened if I had yelled out loud in the airport that I didn’t want to migrate away.
As an interesting additional note, this exit permit page (local) talks about a $75,000 bond that is placed on young males leaving Singapore to ensure that they return — part of the reason that we bought that extra ticket was probably to safeguard against that to make it seem like I would return, as we didn’t “tell” Singapore that we were migrating away from the country until we were out. Although from the way I heard it from my parents, I wouldn’t yet have been affected by that bond due to some registration thing that they would have done in school (Secondary 3) next year. But better safe than sorry, apparently, since it was a lot of money. In the end, this was not brought up when I talked with CMPB after my transition and surgery and got my retroactive exemption, so.
Dreams
I had my first remembered dream this week about my current apartment! So I had to name it, and I named it Edmonton 905, since that’s my door number. And yes that is a privacy concern, but I won’t be here past the end of the year anyway. I’ll have to obfuscate what I call my next house once I get it. I updated this list, too.
Otherwise, this week was just a lot of short snippets. Better than nothing I suppose. There were a lot of barely forgotten dreams.
Sep 30 2024
- Snippet: All I remember is either myself, or a character that I was watching, singing songs from a list, and at one point there was a setting that could adjust the volume but adjusting it too much would disable achievements, so we were trying to tweak the volume or something without triggering that invalidation.
Oct 01 2024
- I remember being in an aquarium-like building that either extended high into the air or deep into the ground. It was hundreds of storeys high. I went down the elevator with a friend, while in an adjoining elevator next to us were Kavitha and a few other Indian boys that she knew. We evetnually all convened in a lobby where those two elevators ended, and she came to join us to wait for another elevator that would take us even further down. Her companions, at least one of whom was her brother, suggested a few things we could see in the area below, but I didn’t feel comfortable with their suggestion, at which point either Kavitha or my friend noted that just because he was her brother didn’t mean that we would automatically have to do what he suggested.
Oct 02 2024
- Snippet: There was something about farming and rice but that was all I remembered.
Oct 03 2024
- I was in a game world with some people, it alternated between a top-down perspective in an overworld map set in a place that I identified as Vancouver, with exits if I walked off the map that led to other maps, and a first-person perspective in indoors maps when I was in buildings and special scenes.
- There was a long, convoluted plotline and a bunch of things that my group and I completed in a northern part of the city, before we walked south some ways, west, and then north again, and ended up at a place called Central Market where there was another boss that we had to do a bunch of things to defeat before noting that he was just an optional boss and not part of the main quest.
- At one point, we received a warning about another boss character that was wandering the streets, and someone in our group, possibly Zixiang, wanted to see him so we went to find him on the streets. The scene turned to a third person perspective floating camera and we saw the boss and a hundred of his lackeys, all shirtless, walking shoulder to shoulder and taking up the entire width of the street that they were on as they walked, and then started to run, toward us once they saw us. We all turned and ran as well, and fled down a few streets and then into a shop owned by an old man as he then shut the wooden front door behind us and barricaded the door. All the gangsters thundered past the shop and down the street as they had not seen us enter.
- At another part of the dream, there was a plotline where Kel had left to go overseas and another girl that I was friends with, possibly Zian, was planning to take a similar path as well. There was a whole passport application process that had to be done in the destination place but could take over a month to process, and required a local address as part of registration, so I was advised to book a room at a local Chinese villa that acted as a motel, they were apparently used to overseas people doing that as part of the passport process. A teacher figure in my dream left me a credit card to help sponsor my application.
- Later on, he brought someone that turned out to be a thin Michael Jackson to my Edmonton 905 apartment, he was there to teach us a martial arts move, which involved stepping on the opponent’s foot and using that as a fulcrum to then lift and toss them over his shoulder. But he also ended up doing the moonwalk for my female friend who liked him so much that she swooned. Later on they both left, as well as Dad, but not before he put a damp mattress bed sideways in the washroom, wedged between the bathtub and the toilet, so that it could dry off.
Oct 04 2024
- Snippet: I remember being with a group of people and we had to cast variations of a skill or push variations of a button or something like that. I did one variation that was in a different language, which impressed the people I was with. I also remember going in and out of a large standalone house with a balcony several times. I don’t remember the context, just the house instead.
Oct 05 2024
- Snippet: All I remember is that at some point I had to categorize something that we were doing or collecting and it had tag categories like Horror and Thriller that I could assign to it, similar to shows in AMQ. I remember assigning whatever it was the Thriller tag but not the Horror one.