Dear Tigey,
I like you. *presses nose*
Entry #224 (Jan 11 2026)
Table of Contents
Myth & …
ට Life
ට Games
ට Plushie of the Week #216
ට Dreams
Life
I had initially missed this in my deluge of emails, but somehow someone managed to “Like” my My Diary #221 post from a few weeks ago, despite the fact that as far as I knew, there were no like/dislike mechanics on the page at all. From a bit of research, this seems to be related to the Jetpack (local) addon, which is a bloatware security and performance WordPress tool that people seem to use for SEO nonsense but that I use for basic stats and for login/spam protection and site downtime checking. I had long since turned off most of their bloat features, including the likes/sharing section:
But apparently that doesn’t stop people from stumbling onto some mechanic that allows them to Like pages regardless. And the email I got about the Like is annoying because it shows me the other user’s latest posts too, so it’s obviously there to drive engagement on a Jetpack level, and the only option I had from it was not to turn off the Like feature, but rather to stop getting emails about it if I wanted.
I built my site on a framework of popular addons (Elementor, Jetpack) that turn out to be pretty crappy, and although I do have them pretty well customized and stripped down, I need to figure out how to migrate the site off of all that when I have time.
But I have more pressing things to do with my time these few weeks, for example getting ready for my trip overseas next month. While I still have tons of things to do, I did a bit of research this week into some accessories like backpack mounts that I feel that I would need if I were to take my camera filming while I am on holiday. There’s way too many mount options though and I am finding it hard to determine if any of them are what I need. And I haven’t even installed the image on the Belabox streaming box or done a test stream yet. I think at this point the odds of whether I do some IRL streaming on my trip or not are hovering around 50-50.
I’m also uncertain as to whether I should go down to Singapore or not. While I didn’t have passport issues the last time I was there, I did the second-last time I went, and even though in theory it should be fine now, Dad suggested I contact the officer I was in touch with before to make sure I was still fine to go in. She’s been uncontactable though, so what do I even do? I have my lodging there reserved, but not fully paid for yet, so whatever. We’ll see. Otherwise I’ll just hang out more in Japan or surrounding area.
While reading the chat from my Whatsapp group of Dunman High friends in Singapore, I saw mention of something that was super neat to me this week, an (well, another, I’d been to a different one of hers before) art installation from Debbie that was selected to be displayed at MRT stations around the country:
and that she had also turned into a walkable online gallery.
I like this one the most:
There’s supposed to be a 2D gallery too (local) but I’m not sure that one is complete yet, at least it doesn’t list all the different rules there. The 3D one isn’t conducive to being backed up by the Internet Archive though, so at least a sort of 2D one exists in some form.
I ordered some tea online from Harney & Sons (local) this week, in a joint order with WingBenny in order to split and lower the shipping costs, since he came up to Edmonton to dog-sit at a friends’ place and will be here for a week or two. We plan to grab lunch together next week, probably on Thursday, so hopefully the tea arrives by then, or at least before he heads back home. Otherwise there’ll be a stack of tea tins waiting a couple of months for his next trip up, hah. He also accidentally forgot to bring along the LinLee duck that he got for Tigey while in Hong Kong though, so that new recruit of the plushie army will take a bit longer to formally enlist. In the meantime he’ll create havoc on Tigey‘s behalf elsewhere.
The weird thing about Harney’s though is that the night-time streamer that we both watch, Nomakk, has an affiliate code for it that we used, however it seemed that the affiliate link didn’t take and didn’t count for his account somehow. And this allegedly isn’t the first time that this has happened with his community using his link. The affiliate coupon itself is a poor 10% one, but he’s been told that as long as we enter through his link and then make our order, it’s fine if we change the coupon code to a larger one if one exists (which it did in this case), and it should still give him the affiliate credit. Well, it didn’t, so he opened a ticket with them using our order, still pending.
We also have a long, virtual meeting at work next week that was pushed forward from this Friday, though that one’s scheduled for next Monday and should not clash with anything that currently exists in my calendar. The apartment management staff is also coming on Wednesday for an annual or biannual inspection, which involves checking the fire alarm, and I’ll interrogate them about when the pest control person is coming to take away the traps when they are here. We have an in-person work meeting on the 30th, which is the last Friday before I leave on my trip, and sometime between then and now, an outstanding package from Makeship containing my CrossCode plushies should arrive too.
For new foods this week, I bought two things again. The first was this Peanut Punch drink.
Imagine the taste of peanut butter. Then imagine that taste but in liquid form. That was this drink, Peanut Punch from Grace. Ugh. I didn’t like it at all because I couldn’t shake the thought that I was just drinking peanut butter. And the straw got clogged up when I was halfway done too, which made the second half of the drink much more difficult to finish. At least it was only $1.63.
The other thing I bought was considerably nicer. It was this box of ma’amoul cookies, from Teashop, featuring a regular cookie exterior and a paste inside made from Saudi dates. This was yummy, though very crumbly, and involved a vacuum cleaner intervention at one point. It reminded me of Chinese-style pineapple tarts in its texture and mild sweetness. I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and it cost $6.29 for the pack of 12.
I am rapidly tearing through that Indian pickled mango from last week too. It’s getting a bit messy though, as the sealed bag inside the container that I showcased last week is just terrible for navigating when trying to scoop out the goop to put onto my rice. I’m not sure what the solution would be for storing and transporting that stuff though while still being easy for the end user to use. But it’s not this plastic bag, heh.
Lastly, here’s a nice evening snowbank picture from Wed Jan 07 2026, 5:02 pm:
The colours just scream (whisper) idyllic peace for me. I kind of want to turn this picture into a jigsaw puzzle.
And one from Sat Jan 10 2026, 4:35 pm:
So cozily peaceful.
Games
I finally finished Disco Elysium on stream this week, and despite all my complaints about the game, especially in the mid-late game with the bugs and design choices that we ran into, the ending was actually very satisfying. I liked it. Good stuff. I won’t miss the game, but I would probably play a sequel if they ever make one.
After Disco Elysium, I started Urban Myth Dissolution Center as my next game. This one is even more of a visual novel with a few extra buttons rather than a game with any sort of agency than Dsico Elysium was, but that’s fine, as I do like the game topic and theme, which introduces various Japanese urban myths and legends centered around a detective theme. I’ve become a much larger fan of pixel art over the past five years or so, since I used to dislike anything that utilized it in the past. But some games, like this one, are really pretty, even if I sometimes cannot tell which direction a character is facing due to lack of detail.
Outside of stream, I’m still pretty much playing Minecraft and nothing else, trying to finish up a big building project before I get bored and move on. I’m having some trouble justifying spending any time here while I still have things to do for the trip though, and that’s not a fun feeling. But I think I’m balancing it fine overall. No pictures of that will be forthcoming until I am done the build though. Instead, have a picture of Tigey, my cat in the game, who decided to randomly roam into my house and sit on my fish barrel and force me to adopt him.
It is also very much worth mentioning that Emmy_ gifted me a Steam game called Little Witch in the Woods. I couldn’t help but notice that this came in a day after the Steam sale ended, so umm… I hope appropriate amounts of money were still saved there, so I don’t feel bad about it. But thank you!
Plushie of the Week #217
Astute eyes might have noticed a large, new plushie in the plushie group photo that I took last week. He’s there in the top right, along with his minions, perched atop him. Meet Boba and the Pearls!
I don’t actually have any official name for these guys yet, but close enough. Kel brought this back to Canada for me when she came back from China, and I believe she said that it was a Taobao plushie, although I don’t know for sure how much it cost, or how exactly she squeezed it into the suitcase. Must have been vacuum packed in some way, since she said to fluff it up a bit when she first took it out of the large plastic bag that it was in. This is a bubble tea plushie though, and it comes with six tapioca pearls that we promptly (and unofficially) named T, A, P, I, O, and C. Not sure which is which though, and the big one is not officially named yet.
The pearls are split into two different face types, smiling and grimacing, and there’s three of each one. Clara stood in for the missing/duplicate A when we were pushing them around on the floor of our parents’ home on Dec 30 2025, since she’s also two-faced and is about the same size.
The big bubble tea drink plushie looks like this. Front, with all the tapioca pearls locked in to a kangaroo-style tight plastic pouch:
Back:
Top:
Tag front:
As far as I can tell, Mon Lapinou, or Yangzhou Babyjoy Crafts Co., Ltd (local), is an online retailer that sells on AliExpress (local) and similar sites, so Taobao would be right in their wheelhouse too. Look, here’s the exact product listing (local), I believe.
Tag back:
Tapioca pearls front:
Tapioca pearls back:
Tigey doing what Tigey does best, comic relief. I mean, size comparisons:
Dreams
Jan 05 2026
- Snippet: I remember storage shelves for eggs that were sunken in the ground in front of me, but I could use each one of them to pull up and raise them into full-sized shelves with three planks of egg holes, like one would find on an egg carton, to place eggs in. However, the three shelves were installed next to each other so closely and in such an alignment that opening up two adjacent shelves would block me from reaching one of the two shelves, and opening up all three at once would block me from reaching two of them, similar to adjacent drawers that were installed vertically into the ground instead of horizontally into a drawer cabinet. This made the shelves very awkward to use, since I at most could open the first and third one at the same time to access two shelves at once. I was annoyed with how these were installed and opened them to demonstrate to a friend how they overlapped one another, causing me to not be able to upgrade my eggs.
Jan 06 2026
- Snippet: There was a scene where a star basketball player was on a basketball court, putting down two-stack high Minecraft blocks on the floor. Each stack had different patterns from the other stacks, though both blocks in each stack had the same matching pattern. Different blocks had different effects that could be applied to something in some way.
- Snippet: A person was changing the opening hours of whatever store or establishment they were running, but was having trouble actually spreading the word to his customers for some reason. He did not know why, because he had hired someone named Jimmy, a bicycle, and a submarine, to help spread the word to no avail.
- Snippet: I don’t remember the context but there was also a scene which involved something called idaecoix (or possibly idaetoix) tea.
- Snippet: I also remember standing on top of a ledge and either competing or arguing with someone while trying to turn and adjust a wheel of some kind. A piece of the wheel broke off and fell down to the ground far below. This piece represented some role power in the game that we were in, and someone who was down there picked it up and claimed it for themselves.
Jan 07 2026
- Snippet: I was waiting at a train station with someone else and we were discussing the merits of taking the train eastwards from here, towards the destination that we were headed to, versus taking the train westwards from here, going two stops to the end of the line, and then getting seats on the next eastward train from there. The train was really busy either way, as many people used this line from the westernmost stop onwards, so that would be the only way we would be able to get seats for any part of the journey. I was in favour of just going east for the shorter route though, and in the end that was what we selected.
Jan 08 2026
- Snippet: There was an outdoor room in the size and shape of a bus, but without wheels, inside of which I had many vertical tanks with slime creatures in them. I was raising those slimes and each slime produced a different gem which I could take and then sell, the most expensive one of which sold for about 500 currency per gem. I was showing that off to a friend and describing how I could generate a stack of those without too much effort.
- Snippet: I also remember a scene where I was at home, slumped over on the floor with my chin resting on my hands, while Mom and Dad were in the room and adjusting things. I was pretending to be asleep to not make them feel bad about something, while they were mostly quiet but did do a couple of things to test whether I was actually awake or not without outright trying to wake me up. I didn’t bite on those tests.
Jan 09 2026
- Snippet: I started in a room at the start of a top-down game which was timed in some way, and which was in a pre-game sort of state, like enemies were either going to spawn or things were going to get more expensive after a certain amount of time. But for the moment there was some time during which I could gather resources and get stronger. Instead though, I first used one of my abilities to summon a friend, even though that took a bit of time, and the two of us then spread out to gather as much resources or territory as we could before the game actually started.
Jan 10 2026
- Snippet: Near where I lived with my siblings, there was a dungeon consisting of a central room and four passages leading away from those rooms. Each of those passages was guarded by a large and slow fire giant that walked up and down the passage. I came up to maybe around their kneecaps in terms of height at most, but since they were slow, I was confident in my ability to avoid them. There were plushies in the chests located throughout the dungeon, both in the middle chamber and down the side passages, and I went in there after work to go retrieve them, hiding behind pillars as needed to avoid the giants, as I knew that they were now fully incubated and that some of these plushies would be world-first acquisitions.
Jan 11 2026
- A friend had her game for her school presentation fall flat and fail to work when she was up at the front of the class demonstrating it, and in between other peoples’ presentations, she asked our group if she could present ours instead, since the presentations were not worth any points. Neither my partner nor I really wanted to do presentations, so I told her that I would ask my partner when she returned to class and see what she said. A few minutes later, my partner returned and I duly asked her, and she agreed that if the first friend wanted to present it then she could do so. I went back to the first friend with the good news, and offered to walk her through a quick demonstration of our game so that she wouldn’t be figuring it out live on stage.
- Snippet: I was taking a friend through a garden that I owned, and showing them several plants and trees that I had that seemed to be inspired from Minecraft. In particular, we stopped by a tree whose trunk was made out of two or three blocks of black wool, with a green canopy above, and I said that that tree also produced black wool as an output. He wondered how that was possible since black wool wasn’t a real fruit.