Pangrams

Two years ago I wrote about mechanical keyboards which I use with my PC. But the OG mechanical keyboard is a typewriter, like my Japanese-made Royal 202 (previously featured here).

The typewritten sheet has four pangrams – sentences which use every letter of the alphabet at least once. A perfect pangram has no repeated letters, so it contains every letter of the alphabet once and only once.

Wikipedia has several examples of English pangrams, as well as pangrams in other languages. Here are my four favourite pangrams and why I like them, in decreasing order of "perfectness":

Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.
26 letters

My favourite perfect pangram. Wikipedia explains it thus:

cwm is a loan word from Welsh meaning an amphitheatre-like glaciated depression, vext is an uncommon way to spell vexed, and quiz is used in an archaic sense to mean a puzzling or eccentric person. Taken together, it means "Symbols in the bowl-like depression on the edge of a long steep sea inlet confused an eccentric person".

Although it uses obscure words and contrived grammar, I prefer it over other perfect pangrams which rely on abbreviations, contractions or proper nouns. And of course, it has the word cwm. One time I wrote a post about a cirque lake (as I called it), and Tommy commented, "I couldn't imagine posting a pic not just of a cwm, but of a cwm in Wales, and not using the word cwm in the accompanying text."

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow!
29 letters

This is the shortest pangram I know of which, to me, still sounds sort of natural – like it could be worked into, say, a fantasy novel, without seeming obviously forced or out-of-place. And it scores high on eldritch quality (if that were a criterion), nicely captured by u/joabaldwin in this digital drawing.

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
32 letters

Perhaps the most natural-sounding pangram on the Wikipedia list. At first glance it can even pass for a sentence that might occur in the wild, although if you stop to think about it, "five dozen" is an odd phrase. Unless the jugs come in packs of twelve, which is possible.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
35 letters

Longer than the other examples, but it's the first pangram I ever learned. It's popular for a reason – rolls nicely off the tongue, and scores high on whimsy.

In This Economy?

One of my favourite xkcd comics is So it has come to this – a phrase which, we are told, "creates instant dramatic tension and is a valid observation in literally any situation".

My brother's friend recently said something similar about the meme phrase "X? In this economy?" – as seen here (live, laugh, AND love? in this economy?) or here (Serotonin? In this economy?)

The more absurd the usage, the more I enjoy it, like a comment on this video from the Orleans Masters badminton final between Pink Opatniputh and Nozomi Okuhara: "A high serve? In this economy?"

For context, Okuhara and many other players generally serve short, as seen at 6:51 of this highlights reel. But Opatniputh often serves high and long – even in this economy.

AI Criticism

I gave ChatGPT my blog URL and asked for criticisms of the author's prose and writing style. Here's what it said:

* * *

Here are some stylistic criticisms that could reasonably be made about the writing itself, independent of the author’s personality. These are not "flaws" so much as areas where certain readers might feel the prose could be improved or sharpened, based on the tone and patterns common across the blog.

1. Occasional over-elaboration

Many posts unfold in long, reflective paragraphs with nested thoughts, asides, and clarifications. While this creates richness, it can also make the prose feel a bit meandering or slow to arrive at its point.

2. Intellectual density that may alienate some readers

The writing frequently incorporates references to philosophy, linguistics, niche hobbies, and technical details. Readers not already invested in these areas might find the prose overly cerebral or high-context.

3. Understated emotional tone

Even personal stories are often delivered with restraint. This controlled register may feel emotionally distant; some readers may wish for more immediacy or vulnerability in the expression.

4. A tendency toward self-qualifying and hedging

The prose often uses softeners ("perhaps," "I suppose," "in some sense") that add nuance but can dilute the clarity and confidence of a sentence.

5. Structural looseness

Posts sometimes move organically between observations, memories, and reflections without strong signposting. This can feel poetic, but it can also produce a slightly scattered structure, where the thematic arc is implied rather than shaped.

6. Precision that borders on fussiness

Descriptions—especially of tools, processes, or small experiences—sometimes linger on fine details. While charming for detail-oriented readers, others may find it overly meticulous or slow.

* * *

I do agree with the analysis, although I also think that some of these "flaws" are what makes the writing distinctively mine. But I have, independently, been trying to cut down on asides and clarifications (point 1) and hedging (point 4). There is always room for improvement – I suppose.

Baroque Wordplay

Two instances of wordplay which rely on (a) swapping, and (b) some knowledge of few-centuries-old western art.

Dick Cavett asked us to imagine a newspaper photograph of the billionaire Aristotle Onassis standing outside, and thinking of purchasing, Buster Keaton's former Hollywood home. Cavett's suggested caption was "Aristotle Contemplating the Home of Buster" – a play on the title of a Rembrandt painting, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.

On similar lines, riffing on the first line of a Shakespeare poem, a Cincinnati sporting goods store apparently put a sign in the window: "Now is the discount of our winter tents".

I should say that baroque, in the title of this post, is not strictly accurate. While Rembrandt is indeed a baroque painter, Shakespeare is more of a Renaissance guy, though his later works supposedly show "emerging baroque aspects". However, baroque can also mean "complicated in style, often when this is unnecessary or too much," and in that sense, I thought it was fitting!

Sidewalk Badminton (that Tai Tzu-Ying Video)

In an earlier post, I linked to a video of Tai Tzu-Ying playing badminton on the sidewalk with her 90-year old grandma. The video is from 2020, when badminton tournaments were suspended due to the pandemic (more context here).

TTY is now effectively retired, but at the time, she was world no.1 in women's singles. She held that ranking for a record 214 weeks, although the two biggest titles in badminton – the World Championships and the Olympics – always eluded her (she won silver in both, but not gold). TTY is my favourite badminton player, not because of her many records and achievements but simply because of the way she played – graceful, fluid, seemingly effortless, spontaneous, unpredictable and endlessly creative. (For a taster, see Tai Tzu Ying: Queen of Deception.)

Anyway, the aforementioned sidewalk reel is one of my favourite videos on the internet. It has captions in Mandarin, but I haven't seen a translation, so I got my friend Muzi to transcribe the captions and ran them through Google Translate. For anyone else who is as obsessed with the video as I am, here's the text in simplified Chinese:

奶奶第一次试打
站姿看起来很有架势💪🏼
我的假动作一定是奶奶遗传给我的
再看一次🤣
不小心丢到奶奶的脸了🤭
奶奶这个杀球太快了！
要看到最后哦😏😏
跟奶奶解释她打的太快了
我会接不到😅
奶奶有慧根
一点就通
奶奶一直想站着打
我跟她解释这个瓷砖地担心站着会滑
又来一个假动作🤣
原来奶奶也是欠训练的啦👍🏼
再看一次精彩表演

... and in English:

Grandma's first time trying it out.
Her stance looks pretty good 💪🏼
My feint must have been inherited from Grandma.
Watch it again 🤣
I accidentally hit her in the face 🤭
Grandma's smash was so fast!
Be sure to watch until the end 😏😏
I explained to Grandma that she hit it too fast
and I wouldn't be able to return it 😅
Grandma is quick to learn.
She gets it right away.
Grandma always wanted to play standing up.
I explained to her that I was worried coz the tiles are slippery.
Here comes another feint 🤣
Turns out, even grandma needs some training!👍🏼
Let's watch another great performance!

Enjambment in Texting

Enjambment in poetry is where, as Wikipedia puts it, "the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next". Here's an example from Big Thief's Simulation Swarm:

Once again, empty horses
Gallop through the violet door.

The opposite of enjambment is end-stopping. In the following excerpt from Bob Dylan's I Want You, line 3 is enjambed, while the rest are end-stopped (more analysis here):

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I
Should refuse you.

In some cases, like the examples I just gave, enjambment and end-stopping are very obvious. But sometimes, it's not so clear. If I had to pinpoint the moment when I first learned to appreciate modern poetry, it was when, aged 14 or so, I encountered these lines from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The meaning does indeed 'run over' from line 1 to 2, but at the same time, line 1 is an independent finite clause (i.e. it can stand on its own as a sentence). So I'm not quite sure if it's technically enjambed, end-stopped, or a secret third thing. I haven't looked into this in depth, but I suppose the answer might also depend on how exactly you define enjambment. According to this typology, I think the Eliot couplet is an example of cross-clause enjambment.

Then there are broken rhymes, where a line break occurs in the middle of a word, as in Willard Espy's The Unrhymable Word: Orange:

The four eng-
ineers
Wore orange
brassieres.

And just when I thought this could go no further, I found the delightful Essay on Enjambment by Raymond Griffith, where a line break splits a single letter (W) into two Vs.

When texting, if you press send in the middle of a sentence, it's a sort of line break. Some of my friends write longer, sometimes paragraph-length texts, while others break up their missive into shorter fragments. My friend Violet is an extreme example of the latter, and lately I was thinking how many of her texts read like skilfully enjambed poetry.

Another example:

wanted to share the joy that
i got a violin!

...and a longer one (all texts quoted with permission):

i was trying to look for lye
to make cold pressed soap
singapore is really
so regulated

The Beautifullest Game

When I was in school, my history teacher's daughter, Pupli (her nickname, or daak naam, to be precise) was around 8 years old and very mischievous. Our teacher, Ms G, would sometimes bring her along on school excursions and picnics, but Pupli needed an eye on her at all times. I got on well with her – I seem to get along with mischievous and hyperactive kids in general – so Ms G would often ask me to come along too, even in later years when I wasn't in her class. I didn't mind, as I got to go for excursions which I would have otherwise missed out on.

The photo below is from one such outing; Pupli and I are on the right. It was a school trip to see the Victoria Memorial, but when we were having lunch on the lawns, some people offered us (oversized) World Optometry Day t-shirts and asked if we could pose for a photo, which appeared in a newspaper the next day.

One time I was at Ms G's place, playing Ludo. Pupli won, and in a paroxysm of delight, exclaimed in English (we usually spoke in Bengali), "Ludo is the beautifullest game!"

I don't know about the beautifullest game, though I do have some opinions on the beautifullest sport. But that's a topic for another blogpost.

Sayang

Last year I posted about a tailless black cat I met at my friend's HDB block in Eunos. I had an instant connection with him, as you do with some cats (and also with some people).

A few months later, from a post on a Facebook group which cares for community cats, I found out that he died.

The photo is by Ruth Sn, posted with permission. Here's the note she wrote:

Just to inform the eunos feeders in case you are looking for the short tail black boy with glue on his back. For 3 days since Monday he was not well & stopped eating, aunt managed to secure him yesterday. I wanted to rush him to the vet in emergency but very sadly he passed away just before I reached her home

Remembering black gentle cute boy with big eyes. You are always untouchable but I managed to sayang you when your body lay lifeless.

You are always friendly to the other cats residing there giving them head rubs. Still missing you 😢😢😢

Sayang (from Malay) is a lovely word – especially the verb form, which means something like showing love and affection through sweet words or gestures.

It's been more than a year, but I still think about him from time to time. I'm glad that Ruth and the other auntie cared for him in his final days, and he got a sweet inter-faith (Christian–Buddhist) funeral and cremation. And I'm glad I got to meet him, however briefly, and sayang him, receiving many head rubs in exchange.

Yuanfen

When friends who don't speak Bengali hear me talk, e.g. on the phone with my parents, they often remark that I sound more animated and expressive compared to how I talk in English. (I also think I'm more likeable when I speak Bengali, though it's hard to test this theory.)

Last night my friend Muzi and I were saying random sentences, first in English and then in our respective mother tongue (Bengali for me and Mandarin for her, even though we don't understand each other). Muzi also sounds more lively and eloquent in Mandarin, and it's especially evident when she says the same thing in English immediately followed by Mandarin – it's like her whole personality comes out. It makes me sad to think that unless we learn each other's languages, which is very unlikely, we have to resign ourselves to a lifetime of second-best communication, lacking some of the warmth, wit and nuance that we can express in our native language.

Muzi on my balcony

Sometimes with a concept that's particularly hard to translate, Muzi will just use the Chinese term without translation, trusting that I will get her meaning from contextual or other cues. One such example is yuanfen (缘分) which means a predestined relationship, fate or chance that brings people together. Wikipedia says:

although yuanfen is often used in the context of lovers' relationships, the concept itself is much broader and can refer to any relationship between people under any circumstance.

In fact, it's even broader than that. The context in which Muzi used it – my first encounter with the term – was, "I don't have good yuanfen with the 145 bus."

Thanksgiving

My friend Abbi's 3-year-old nephew made this Thanksgiving Turkey – or rather his mom filled it in for him, but he told her what to write.

It says water bottle, my guitar pick, snacks, new baby sister, Aunt Lisa, zoo, Daddy, Mama, Aunt Abbi, Uncle Nate.

I asked Abbi about the guitar pick and she said, "My mom found one and gave it to him (he loves music and has a little pretend guitar). But he lost it 😂"

Anyway, I love guitar pick and water bottle – that he is thankful for objects – and cheap, everyday objects at that. It got me thinking about cheap, everyday objects that I am thankful for.

I recently got these plastic drawers which were only S$5 each (you can see them on the shelf below the typewriter).

I used to keep my art supplies in my storeroom, but now that I have them in my study, in neatly organised drawers, I use them more.

I'm likewise thankful for my cotton bedsheet, a pair of sneakers that I got for a steal (secondhand but unused), and a mint-blue retro-style toaster which I found abandoned in our recycling bay.

In my previous post, there's a photo of Chiok (who made the pomelo kombucha) and our mutual friend Emiri. Emiri is Japanese, and said itadakimasu before drinking. Chiok's partner Guofeng asked her what it means, and Emiri said it's a way of saying thanks.

Guofeng:	Like thanks to Chiok, for making the kombucha?
Emiri:	To everyone. To Chiok, to the farmer who grew the pomelo, the people you bought ingredients from, and also to the pomelo.

Friends, Older and Younger

It's fun having friends from different age groups; I think I'm lucky that way.

A few months ago I used the term core memory in a blogpost. Tommy, who is in his 60s and a former software engineer, commented, "I'm old enough to remember when 'core memory' was what computers had before semiconductor RAM."

Last week my friend Wu Chi asked me my MBTI type. I said I did the test five years ago, and can't remember what I got.

"Five years?! MBTI is that old?! Five years ago I was in high school!"

I looked up MBTI on Wikipedia, which said the Briggs Myers Type Indicator Handbook was published in 1944. Wu Chi had to take a few sips of yuzu soda to recover. "1944," she said wonderingly. "That's older than New China."

Idiot

From Eric Hobsbawm's introduction to The Communist Manifesto:

…the original meaning of the Greek term 'idiotes', from which the current meaning of 'idiot' or 'idiocy' is derived: 'a person concerned only with his own private affairs and not with those of the wider community'.

Cats on Bags

Late at night, at an HDB (social housing) estate in Singapore – super friendly tailless black cat checking out my tote bag.

He thereupon sat on the bag and refused to move, putting me at risk of missing my last bus home. These situations always remind me of this drawing by Galina Zhiganova.

I made a video of me trying to coax him into releasing my bag and shared the clip with some friends, one of whom pointed out that I was talking to the cat in Bengali. "ওই, অনেক হয়েছে, এবার ওঠ।" (OK that's enough, now get a move on.)

I have a friend from Kolkata (now based in Colorado) who is Bengali, but mostly spoke in English with his family and friends. Our Bengali teacher once asked him, "দেবক, তুমি কি বিড়ালের সঙ্গেও ইংরিজিতে কথা বলো?" (Debak, do you talk in English even with cats?)

The tote bag in question has prints of various vintage cameras, including a Leica M3 (1954) – a camera that I actually own and sometimes carry in that very bag. My friends were travelling in Indonesia when they saw the bag in a random shop and said "We have to get that for Sroyon." I've got some good gifts recently.

And now here's an older photo of "my" cat in Kolkata, sitting on a changing bag (used for developing film and other analogue-photography applications).

I say "my" in quotes because she is really a stray cat, but likes to hang out in our backyard and sometimes in my room. Our flat in Kolkata is on the ground floor, so she can climb in through my bedroom window. The most sweet-tempered cat I have ever seen.

The other night I was sleeping in my flat here in Singapore – my fifth-floor flat, where no cats climb in through windows – when my bedside lamp toppled onto my bed. It made the exact same light bump as my cat makes when she jumps from my windowsill onto my bed in Kolkata. It woke me up, and in that moment, I missed her intensely.

Night Picnic

On Chinese New Year's Eve, I had a picnic with two Chinese friends at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It was truly impromptu – my friend texted me when I was about to cook dinner, and we met at the park an hour later.

We hung out till after midnight, and it was a memorable evening for me. One of those times when everything comes together perfectly – a core memory, as my GenZ friends say. The only downside was that despite dousing ourselves with herbal bug-spray and my friend burning white sage ("It clears bad vibes, not sure about insects"), we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

CNY Eve, as you would expect, is traditionally celebrated with Chinese food. But I got Indian food as requested, and my friends brought pizza and grilled chicken. I remarked it was funny how none of us got Chinese food, to which my friend said, "At least the mosquitoes are getting authentic Chinese blood."

My friends were teaching me random Chinese phrases, among which was luchabiao or green-tea bitch – a woman who is calculating, but pretends to be innocent and pure, usually to attract men. Obviously it's a problematic term and not one we would use, but for my cultural edification, they gave me various examples of luchabiao behaviour.

A short while later, I was trying to open a bottle of ice tea with a very tight lid. I tried for a bit (unsuccessfully), then passed it to my friend, asking her if she wanted to have a go.

"Now this is green-tea bitch behaviour," she said, "except the gender roles are reversed."

Caterpillar Rescue on the DHR

Fourteen years ago, I travelled by train from Siliguri (120 metres above sea level) to Darjeeling (2,045 m) – a seven-hour journey on the magnificent Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Last week, I took the DHR from Darjeeling down to Siliguri. (A separate trip. Don't worry, I haven't been stuck in Darjeeling all this while.)

The train, as you can see from this photo, passes alarmingly close to houses and shops.

Much of the route is forested, and the train also passes alarmingly close to trees, frequently brushing against leaves and branches.

One such branch had five caterpillars who were scooped onto the windowpane. We were worried that they would fall onto the road and get crushed by vehicles, so when the train stopped midway as it sometimes does, we decided to try and rescue them.

My friend picked them up with a boarding pass. I got off the train and ferried the caterpillars, one by one, to the trees on the other side of the road that runs alongside the tracks.

Another rescue-related anecdote, while we're at it. One of our university colleagues in Singapore is part of a food rescue initiative. Except sometimes, the food rescue team can't distribute all the food in time, so they request me and my friend T to help finish or distribute the food before it spoils.

T and I call ourselves: Team Food Rescue Rescue 😎

Miquailangelo Eggs

I've been meaning to try making marbled eggs for a while now, and having found a good deal on quail eggs at my local wet market, I asked my friend if she wanted to attempt the experiment together. She was charmed by photos on this recipe site; they look, as she put it, "like they were chiselled out of marble by Michelangelo."

"You mean Miquailangelo," I said.

So now we call them Miquailangelo eggs.

We boiled the eggs, gently cracked them with a teaspoon, then steeped them in black tea for two hours to get the marbled pattern.

 

Here is one such egg, in a salad with roasted sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese.

Quail eggs – at least the ones I bought – require extreme delicacy in peeling, because the marbling is imprinted on the membrane, not on the albumen itself. And it's hard to peel the shell without damaging the membrane.

My friend could do it, but I couldn't – especially not when hangry. Don't peel eggs in hanger, she said.

I expanded on it (too hangry to peel eggs, but not too hangry to write parodies):

Slip inside

A finger in the shell—

No need to do it well,

Just crack the damn thing wide.

Ichi-go Ichi-e

Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会) is a Japanese idiom which literally means "one time, one meeting." It's the idea that each encounter is unique and fleeting, "of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment" (Wikipedia).

It reminds me of a late-19th-century poem by AE Housman, From Far, from Eve. I especially love the second stanza:

Now—for a breath I tarry
     Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
     What have you in your heart.

Don't Call Me Kid

Sometimes people laugh when I say I like Taylor Swift; they assume I'm being ironic. Maybe it doesn't fit with (what they perceive as) my personality. And in fact, from her older catalogue, there are only a couple of songs that I like: Blank Space (2014) and Cornelia Street (2019). And not for want of trying. But I really like her three most recent albums: folklore (2020), Evermore (2020) and Midnights (2022).

As short, punchy refrains go, I think "It's me, hi / I'm the problem it's me" (Anti-Hero) is right up there with "Here we are now / Entertain us" (Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit).

Anyway, illicit affairs, from folklore, has this line: "Don't call me kid / Don't call me baby". It reminds me of a conversation with my friend. Or rather, a proxy conversation with my friend's niece.

Some background: the conversation was over text, but my friend (A) was with her niece, whom we call PoF. PoF – short for "Princess of Friendship" – is one of four sisters. For reasons outside the scope of this post, we use nicknames for the four kids: Camerat, PoF, Ladybug and Y. I've noted their age in [brackets] in the conversation below.

It all started with my friend telling me that she told PoF "I love you kid." And PoF replied, "I'm not a kid, I'm a child." The rest of the story is best told through the chat transcript itself.

Me: hahaha
so what does she think a kid is?
baby goat?

A: I think she thinks it's smaller than a child lol

Me: who made this hierarchy

A: The princess of friendship [5]

Me: Who is older, kid or child? Baby or kid?

A: She said a baby is older than a kid, a child is older than a kid and a baby

Me: did you ask her just now?

A: Yes lol

Me: Aww it's almost like me and PoF having a conversation
But a baby is older than a kid hmm. Not sure I buy that

A: It's her world, we just live in it

Me: Yes we have to accept it.
I can see why she was insulted though. You basically made her even smaller than a baby
So what is Ladybug? [3]
Kid baby or child
And what is Y? [1]

A: Ladybug is a baby
Y is also a baby

Me: 😳😳
even Y?
Then who is a kid? Incredible

A: Scratch it all, she and Camerat [8] are both kids and Y is a child

Me: Omg
It changes by the minute

A: There's no method to this madness

Me: What made her change her mind?

A: This is a mystery beyond my understanding

Conversations with Chinese Friends

Years ago I posted about a lawyer friend referring to Kyoto as "the protocol place". It happened again yesterday with my Chinese friend, who is an assistant professor of environmental law. This was just after she told me that she went to Japan on holiday.

Me: Oh, where did you go?

Friend: Tokyo and... what do you call that place? Jīngdū?*

Me: ...

Friend: You know, where we had the protocol!

* Jīngdū (京都), as I found out, is the Chinese name for Kyoto.

* * *

Another conversation with a Chinese friend who speaks very little English (but that's all we have, since I speak no Chinese at all):

Friend: In my province, the main... I can't remember that word. For example, Christmas is an important ___?

Me: Festival?

Friend: Yes, festival! So we can use English to learn English.

It's a form of what programmers call bootstrapping. In Bengali, we have a great phrase for it: মাছের তেলে মাছ ভাজা (literally: frying fish in fish fat). When you lightly heat a piece of fish, the fat starts to melt, and thereafter you can fry it in its own fat. I guess it works for bacon too, but Bengalis eat a lot of fish, so we have several excellent proverbs and idioms about them.

Reptilian Encounters

An oriental whip snake, spotted in Pasir Ris Park, Singapore. It was hanging motionless among the bushes, waiting for a lizard to venture within striking distance.

Its camouflage is excellent. I would probably have missed it, had it not been for another photographer who was already stalking it when I arrived on the scene. Sadly we did not see it hunt; it retreated into denser vegetation soon afterwards.

The common Bengali name for vine snakes is লাউডগা (laudoga, meaning "bottle-gourd vine"), and indeed, it looks very similar. The genus name, Ahaetulla, comes from Sinhalese, and means "eye-plucker". According to the Wikipedia article, one of its alternative names is "judgmental shoelace", which appears to stem from this meme.

And now for some Asian water monitor anatomy. I encountered this fine fellow in the Botanic Gardens.

Exhibit A: tongue.

Exhibit B: nictitating membrane.