Weight Update

Earlier this year I wrote that my weight, for the first time in my life, had crept north of 60 kg, and that I was trying to get it back down. I then neglected to post any updates, no doubt keeping my readers on tenterhooks.

Well, long story short, I got it down to the 59 kg range, then went on a long holiday to Malaysia where I ate out a lot (they have amazing food), and ended up at over 61 kg.

Now it's back under 60 kg, and I plan to keep it that way.

It seems that for me, the most reliable way to reduce weight is to cut down on rice. Just a few days of eating bread, chicken soup and boiled veg for lunch, instead of my usual generous portion of rice, helped me lose around 2 kg. Unfortunately, humans just need rice – or at least, I do.

But that's if I'm trying to lose weight. If I'm just trying to maintain my current weight, it seems I can keep eating rice, as long as I do some light exercise – which I should be doing anyway.

I like sports, but I've never been one for going to a gym or working out for the sake of it. Lately, to help me stick to a light daily exercise routine, habit stacking has been a very useful strategy.

My electric toothbrush has a two-minute cycle with short pauses after every 30 seconds, which is super helpful as an exercise timer. While brushing, I do squats for the first minute, and calf raises for the next minute. This way I'm doing some lower-body exercise at least twice a day.

I shower twice a day, and before each shower, I try to do ten pushups. While boiling water for my coffee, I do some toe-touches. While watching movies or YouTube videos on my computer, I do a few minutes of skipping or light jogging on the spot. And before going to sleep, I do some reclining hip stretches, though I haven't settled on a specific routine yet.

A pretty light regimen, all things considered – but it's better than nothing!

My Court Shoes Saga

My toxic trait is being resistant to buying specialised apparel for activities that I partake in.

Years ago I wrote:

I have trekked in the Himalayas in trainers – one trail took us to over 18,000 ft – and maintained, not without a touch of disdain, that only people who were not surefooted enough needed specialized boots for hiking.

When I first got into pickleball, I just wore my regular trainers – an Adidas pair which I got secondhand (but unused) for something like $20.

Because I also used those shoes as daily wear – and because, for reasons unknown, I always seem to wear out my soles much faster than most other people do – I soon ended up with virtually no treads at all.

The treadless shoes were slippery at the best of times, but when it rained, it was like playing on ice. It got to a point where if the court was wet, I would rather play without shoes, because even barefoot I had more grip.

Photo by my friend Li Ling; I like the blurry ball at top left!

I finally accepted what my friends had been telling me for months: I needed new shoes.

After much research, I found a heavily discounted pair of Asics Solution Speed FF 3.

The orange was brighter than I expected, but once I got used to it, I really came to love that pair. They were comfortable and bouncy, they had good traction and support, and best of all, they were extremely light – like running on clouds.

The Solution Speed series are all-surface shoes, so I could wear them on both indoor and outdoor courts. And they are non-marking, so I could wear them for badminton too. I even wore them in non-sports situations, pairing them with jeans.

But once again, as with all my shoes, the treads eventually wore out.

Brand new (left) and after a few months' use (right). In places the blue outer sole

wore out completely, exposing the white inner.

In hindsight, I think that non-marking soles are simply more delicate. Even if they are marketed as all-surface, if you wear them on hard courts, they won't last long.

Recall that I started out not wanting to buy specialized court shoes at all, then acquired an all-surface pair which proved to be not so all-surface after all. Finally, I capitulated completely and ended up buying two separate pairs for indoor and outdoor courts.

My current outdoor court shoes are a pair of Adidas Court Spec 2. I don't love them like I loved my orange Asics, but they do the job.

However, I do love my indoor shoes – badminton shoes, which I also use for indoor pickleball. This Yonex Dominant pair, which I got secondhand but unused:

They have excellent grip, and they really help with quick directional changes which are a key part of badminton. Looks-wise, they are nothing special, but I got colourful laces, and behold!

I stole this idea from Japanese badminton player Tomoka Miyazaki. I don't have a fraction of her badminton skill, but hey, at least I can wear non-matching day-glo laces.

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.

2025 New Things List

Last year I wrote a post about a few first-time experiences and new things that I tried in 2024. This year I thought I'll do the same, but whether this will become an annual tradition remains to be seen. Some of the categories are repeats from last year (food, sports, videography) while others are new.

Black chicken

I had seen black chicken on sale in wet markets, but I hadn't tried it until my friend made this stew for me. Silkie chickens, as they are called, have white feathers, but their flesh and even their bones are black. They taste like regular chicken, just a bit gamier because they are usually free-range.

60 kg (132 lbs)

One time at a house party, my friend, who was a few drinks down, was describing the ideal body type that she aspires to. Legs like X, boobs like Y, and so forth (all celebrities, though I don't remember their names). After running through the list, she paused and added one more: "And Sroyon's metabolism."

All my life, I've been lucky enough to be able eat whatever I wanted and still be a healthy weight. I was underweight in college, but for the last ten years, I've been in the 57–59 kg range. But I always told myself that if I ever hit 60 kg, I'll do something about it.

In the last two months of 2025, I was socialising and therefore eating out a lot, and not playing sports as regularly as I did before. And sure enough, in December, I clocked in at 60.4 kg.

It's not concerning by any means – I did a body composition analysis recently, which said my recommended weight is around 63 kg – but if I do gain weight, it should ideally be muscle and not fat. So now I stopped taking sugar with coffee, eating fruit for breakfast, and exercising more. Nothing drastic, but this is the first time in my life that I am actively trying to lose weight. My metabolism is still fast, but alas, not what it used to be.

Badminton coaching

As kids, many of us went to classes for music, painting, etc., but it's less common for adults – at least the adults I grew up around. But the cool thing about being a grown-up, if you are fortunate enough to have some disposable income, is that if you want to learn a skill, you can just pay someone to teach you.

I generally like to learn stuff on my own – I'm doggedly sticking to self-study for Spanish, though I know I'd make faster progress if I had a teacher – but with badminton, which I play recreationally, I realised last year that I had hit a plateau.

My friend recommended a badminton coach, and after a few sessions with Anthony, my game has improved a lot. I have more to say about it, but maybe that's a topic for another day, and a standalone post.

I like the different flavours of shuttlecock motion-blur that you can see in the sequence below: an instant of stillness at the apex, slightly blurry as it drops, and a streak as it leaves my racquet.

MRT station video advert

I've had photos displayed in public spaces, but not video. Until last year, when my friend Emiri spotted – and reacted quickly enough to record – this advert at an MRT (subway) station. It features a clip from a video which I made for Sigma Contemporary Dance. Blink and you'll miss it!

Malaysia

I went to Malaysia for the first time last year, to play pickleball in the border town of Johor Bahru. In the older parts of town I saw some interesting signage and typography. Maybe I'll compile them in another post, but meanwhile I wanted to share this one which I particularly liked – a random metal plaque outside a Commissioner for Oaths office. The Chinese text, apparently, says the same thing.

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!

The Beautifullest Sport

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

I was familiar with this quote long before I read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, but having encountered it out of context, I initially misunderstood its meaning. I used to think that Suzuki was praising the expert's mind: less distracted, more focused. But when you read the book, it quickly becomes clear that he means the opposite:

In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means "beginner's mind." The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it.

The same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind.

* * *

In the 1986 World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina, at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico, Diego Maradona scored the greatest goal in football history.

Brian Glanville, in The Story of the World Cup, described the goal as "so unusual, almost romantic, that it might have been scored by some schoolboy hero, or some remote Corinthian, from the days when dribbling was the vogue. It hardly belonged to so apparently rational and rationalised an era as ours." Barney Ronay spoke of "a man playing with a kind of light around him."

Here's Bryon Butler's commentary for BBC Radio:

Maradona, turns like a little eel, he comes away from trouble, little squat man... comes inside Butcher, leaves him for dead, outside Fenwick, leaves him for dead, and puts the ball away... and that is why Maradona is the greatest player in the world.

Victor Hugo Morales' Spanish commentary (English subs, Spanish subs) is equally iconic, albeit, shall we say, less restrained. Sam Markham describes it as "a frenzied mix of poetry, yelling, and sobbing that ends with a prayer: 'Thank you, God, for football, for Maradona, for these tears, for this – Argentina 2, England 0.'"

Much has been written about that goal: the differences in the footballing culture of the two nations, the context of the game itself – England's persistent fouling and "the sheer level of physical abuse dished out to Maradona during the game" (Michael Cox for the NYT), and his previous goal which he snuck in with his hand – as well as the wider socio-political context of the Falklands War.

But here's another angle: the psychology of elite sport. In the span of 11 seconds, even as he beat five opponents and seven challenges in a blur of whirling feet, feints and pirouettes, Maradona was weighing up the options.

In his autobiography, he said he considered passing to Valdano who was free at the far post ("I was waiting to pass the ball – the logical thing to do"), and that perhaps subconsciously, he was also guided by his little brother's advice about a goal he missed five years go, in 1981:

Turco phoned me and said: "You moron! You shouldn't have sidefooted it... you should have thrown a dummy, the keeper had already committed himself." And I answered: "You little shit! It's easy for you to say that, you're watching it on the telly!" But he really shut me up: "No, Pelu, if you'd thrown a dummy, you could've dragged it towards the sideline and finished with your right, do you see?" The brat was seven years old! Well, this time I finished like my brother wanted.

Pass to Valdano, or go solo? Sidefoot past the onrushing goalkeeper, or feint and go around? Decisions made at the speed of thought, Butcher and Shilton sprawled on the grass, the ball in the back of the net, Maradona wheeling away to celebrate. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities.

* * *

I was born too late to enjoy Maradona in his prime. My two favourite footballers whom I've watched live are Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi.

If I had to summarise what sets them apart, I would say: what Messi did (occasionally still does, though he is nearing retirement now) are normal things, but executed at a preternatural level. His moves are fundamentally simple. Feint left and go right. Slow down and speed up. Thread the ball through the inside-right channel to the forward making a run. Cut inside and curl it in at the far post. It's just that he did these simple things better, and more consistently, than pretty much anyone else who ever played the game.

What Ronaldinho did, at his best, was not normal.

Messi is the better footballer – certainly the best since Maradona, perhaps the best to ever play the game. But Ronaldinho was magic.

Rob Smyth once wrote an article with a tongue-in-cheek clickbait opening: "Ronaldinho is the greatest footballer of all time." Never mind mundane nonsense such as goals, assists and trophies, he urged, greatness should be measured by pure thrill and goosebumps. Eventually he concedes: "OK, OK, ... he's not the greatest footballer of all time. But he is the footballer with the greatest imagination, and the one who gave us the most fantasy. These things matter."

* * *

In an earlier post I said I don't know about the beautifullest game, but I do have some opinions on the beautifullest sport.

Football (soccer) is the most watched sport in the world. In Brazil they call it jogo bonito – the beautiful game. And while these things are essentially subjective and indeterminable, football has at least a claim to being the beautifullest sport.

I always loved playing football, and I've watched more football than all other sports combined. It is certainly beautiful to me – both individual skills like the Maradona goal, as well as highly coordinated team play. But I suppose any sport is beautiful to its most devoted fans. The beautifullest sport, I feel, should be one whose beauty is apparent even to a casual observer.

By that metric too, football might be among the contenders. But my pick, at least for now, is badminton.

I had the thought recently while watching The Mistress Dispeller (2024) which now ranks as one of my favourite movies ever.

The movie has a few scenes of the protagonists playing badminton. They play recreationally, in what looks like a typical municipal sports hall, but I found myself admiring the movements and rhythm of the game. It's captivating, even poetic.

Elite badminton is still more beautiful, especially the women's game which tends to be slightly slower, with fewer smashes and longer rallies. Badminton racquets, I think, look more elegant than those used in other racquet sports, and when they hit the shuttlecock, they make a most satisfying ping. I like the rhythm of the game too: a slow lunge and reach, followed by a swift flick of the wrist, the shuttlecock flying off the racquet at speed, and then falling in a slow, graceful arc. Slow-fast-fast-slow.

The shuttlecock itself, with "its ridiculous asymmetric shape", is a unique object (as far as I know, the only other sport that uses something remotely similar is jianzi). It's the fastest object in sport, yet the drag from the feathers means that it decelerates dramatically (as this article puts it, "The exponential deceleration of a shuttlecock in flight means that for any particular court condition it is almost impossible to hit a shuttlecock much further than its design distance"). It follows a parachute trajectory, rather than the parabola of other sports balls.

After a gap of several years, inspired partly by The Mistress Dispeller, I started playing badminton again. And also watching badminton, although the names I grew up with – Lin Dan, Lee Chong Wei, Susi Susanti – are all retired. BWF streams the major tournaments, so I can watch for free, which is not the case for a lot of other sports.

* * *

An Se-young of South Korea is the current world no.1 in women's singles, as well as the reigning world champion and Olympic champion. She's only 23, but already in the conversation for greatest women's singles player of all time. I like her calm and methodical play, and especially her dives (I have a thing for dives, which is why Jonty Rhodes was my favourite cricketer). At this point in time, unless ASY is not fully fit or having a really bad day, I think no other woman on the tour can beat her. To me, she is like Messi – doing essentially normal things, but unbelievably well.

Tai Tzu-ying was like Ronaldinho. (I say was, because although TTY, at 31, has not officially retired, she plays a lot less now.*) In this post, Bharath V tries to explain the irresistible charm of TTY in full flow – graceful, creative, unpredictable, playing with joy, and bringing joy to those of us who have the good fortune to watch her play.

There's this video I've watched many times over: Tai Tzu Ying: Queen of Deception. One of the most delightful things about the compilation is how often the commentators – and sometimes even her opponent, like Carolina Marin at 1:24 – are laughing at TTY's skill and sheer audacity. Or try this video for a taste of her astonishing repertoire and imagination.

In Tai Tzu-ying's mind, there are many possibilities.

* * *

Players like Ronaldinho, Messi and Tai Tzu-ying can produce moments of transcendental skill, but some of the loveliest moments in sport are not about skill at all. Michelle Li and An Se-young laughing at a fluke shot. Jia Yifan playfully stealing the winner's cheque from her opponents, who are also her teammates in the national team. Sometimes, with everything that's going on in the world, when I need something to lift my mood, I watch a video clip of Tai Tzu-ying during COVID lockdowns, world no.1 at the time, playing badminton on a sidewalk with her 90-year-old grandma.

*	Edit: The very day I wrote this post, TTY announced her retirement. Dev Sukumar wrote, "If there was one thing Tai Tzu Ying gifted badminton, it is that essential but forgotten element of sport – playfulness."

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.

Singapore, 7:33 pm

We occasionally play pickleball at these very nice public courts at an HDB (social housing) estate in Ang Mo Kio. They're multi-purpose courts, so in the photo there are two sports being played in parallel: pickleball and sepak takraw.

The courts can also be used for badminton. I actually prefer badminton as a sport, but pickleball has contributed more to my social life – I've made some new friends and had fun experiences.

This is the first photo I'm posting which is taken on my new phone, a Google Pixel 6a, which has a 0.6× camera. I'll say a bit more about my new phone later, perhaps, and more on badminton too.

The Number of Hours We Have Together

The other day my friend Muzi and I were going to a mall for dinner. Her place is on my bus route to the mall, and we were trying to coordinate so she could get on the same bus.

The mall is about four stops from her place, so all this frantic coordination was for an 8-minute bus ride (as opposed to simply meeting at the mall). We should have known it was bound to fail, given Muzi's lack of yuanfen with the 145 bus.

I have another friend, Juliet, with whom I play pickleball at various venues around town. She has a car, and often suggests I go to a bus-stop near her place from where she can give me a ride. In some cases it would have been just as easy for me to go to the court directly, but if she gives me a ride, we get a bit more time together, which is nice. Maybe I'm growing sappy with age, but I find it rather touching – these little things people do to spend a few extra minutes together.

All this reminds me of these lines from For M by Mikko Harvey:

The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my
life and
come back
later for
it.

* * *

From anything by Adrianne Lenker: "Carol has a little if we need some / Joa has a ride if we wanna come."

The first line is probably a drug reference, but it makes me think of close-knit groups where you freely borrow and share and exchange stuff.

The other day Juliet messaged me at 7:30am, asking if I want to join a game at 8:30. I got out of bed, quickly showered and left the house. When I got there she handed me chocolate milk and a banana, saying "I figured you didn't have time for breakfast."

* * *

There are a couple of companies which send me photography gear to test and review. My contact at one of these companies made a passing reference to "other influencers", which tickled me because it implies that I'm an influencer too.

I told a few people about it, and they all said something along the lines of "Face it, you are an influencer." But Abbi had a different take:

Abbi:	Look at you moving up in the world Actually, I think this would be a downgrade
me:	😳 Downgrade from what?
Abbi:	Who you are and what you do

It's another example of seeing the best in me.

Paragons of Wisdom

My friend Abbi was recently trying to mediate a family conflict. I said it's good she decided to intervene, and she said, "Yeah, the cancer helps. People suddenly think you are a paragon of wisdom."

For the record, I always thought she's a paragon of wisdom.

Some guy she had a crush on in high school moved back to her town. I asked her if she still likes him, and she said:

No lol
I don't know why I liked him
And my type has completely changed
To kind people who want to be with me 😅

I tend to set a lot of store by similar interests, sense of humour, curiosity and so forth – and these things are important too. But if you had to narrow it down to just two things, I think this is as good a list as any: kind people who want to be with me.

* * *

In an earlier post I said how my pickleball group has a diverse age range. Here's Oliver (17) and his aunt, who came to play together:

It was my first time meeting Oliver – a sweet, soft-spoken guy who is into boxing and microbiology. In fact he was a bit reluctant to admit to the latter ("I don't want to sound like a geek..."), but I assured him that my friends circle has many geeks.

Later that night, one of the older ladies was teasing me about why I don't have a girlfriend ("Stop being so picky" and so on). I didn't mind; I tease her about various things too. But Oliver took it to heart, and said to me, "Don't worry about what they say, bro, just work on yourself."

My friend Li Ling overheard, and was like "Wow, you got life advice from a 17 year old!"

2024 New Things List

I've never done a year-end wrap type of post, but I was thinking back on first-time experiences and new things that I tried in 2024. I wrote about some of them already, like mechanical keyboards, dengue and kombucha (surely the first time that these three things have featured on the same list), but here are five more.

Eating durian by the roadside

I've eaten durian many times before, but not freshly-cut-open durian by the roadside. Since moving to Singapore, I'd sometimes see people eating durian at roadside stalls, usually at night, and it always seemed like a Cool Thing to Do. In 2024 I tried it not once but twice – first with my friend Muzi, at Wonderful Durian in Geylang:

...and later with three other friends at a stall in my own neighbourhood. It's every bit as fun as it looks. They give you plastic gloves because durian has a very strong smell (famously, it's not allowed on Singapore buses).

The durian experience with Muzi was right after we watched a fire-dragon dance at a Taoist temple (where I took this photo). It was also my first time watching a fire-dragon dance.

Crying in English

This one's a bit more sombre than eating durian.

Last summer, one of my close friends was diagnosed with stage IV cancer (she is still doing okay, and I'm an optimist – we both are – so we will see).

The day after her diagnosis, I was doing a publicity shoot for a contemporary dance company run by my friends Chiok and Guofeng. I'm friends with the other dancers too, and photoshoots are always lively and fun. But that day, during a break, I was sitting quietly on my own. Chiok asked me what happened. I told her, and she gave me a dramatic hug.

I think this is the first (and so far only) time that I cried in English. I don't cry much in general, and when I do, it's often on my own. I've occasionally cried with other people, but they happened to be Bengali, so I would be talking (and crying) in Bengali too.

Anyway the photos turned out well, and Sigma (the dance company) used them for their ongoing production, Streams Where Deer Drink.

Videography

It was also thanks to Sigma that I got into videography. It's a long (and somewhat amusing) story which I won't get into here, but in the space of one week, I went from someone who used his camera exclusively for stills and knew next to nothing about video, to shooting the dance trailer for Streams Where Deer Drink. And using a gimbal, which was also a first for me.

I then went on to shoot the trailer and some rehearsal footage (screenshot below) for another Sigma show, and I have some more video projects lined up in the next couple of months. Fun times.

Mini PC

I had a desktop computer in college. Laptops were expensive back then (or seemed that way), and I only bought mine after I got a proper job. Since then, I only used laptops.

My current laptop, an Asus Zenbook, is over nine years old. It's still fine for work (which is document-based), emails and browsing, but it struggles with photo editing, and video is virtually impossible.

I was initially thinking about getting a replacement laptop. Desktop computers, in my head, were either big and clunky, or petite but relatively expensive like the Mac Mini. But then I discovered the world of Windows mini PCs – a development which I was completely oblivious to. You tune out of the PC world for ten years, and look what they come up with. I feel like Rip Van Winkle awakening to a new world order.

I immediately went down a rabbit-hole of research, as one does, and emerged with a Beelink Series 5 Max.

I already had all the peripherals, but in my home setup, I used to plug them into my laptop. The Beelink, which sits under my riser, takes up even less space, and is more than enough computer for my needs. I can edit videos in DaVinci Resolve or large multi-layer images in Affinity Photo, all while listening to Spotify and with multiple browser tabs open. Ryzen 5 processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, pre-installed Windows 11 – all this in a device the size of four CD cases stacked on top of each other. The future is here.

Pickleball

Finally, 2024 was the year I got into pickleball.

My friend Li Ling, pictured above, introduced me to a group which plays every day (though we go about once a week). I've never played sports in a group that has so much age diversity – we have people of all ages, from teenagers to retirees, and they are a fun, warm and welcoming bunch. We played with a guy in his twenties who used to be on the national badminton team, and a woman who is 74 but has a fearsome forehand smash. I might also start playing with another group in a different part of town.

Blog note: Last year I wrote that 24 blogposts a year is a good number to aim for. This year I wrote 44, which is the most since 2012! Still I will keep my targets modest. Once again, I would be happy with 24 posts in 2025. Happy new year!

Two Carol Quotes

The mezzanine floor of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple has statues of several eminent monks, such as Venerable Miao Hua (1922-2009) pictured below.

My friend Carol described it as "Madame Tussauds for monks".

* * *

Last year I watched Women's Football World Cup final with Carol and her dad. Before that, we also watched a few Men's World Cup games together which, here in Singapore, were very late at night.

On one such occasion – a Friday – we went to a birthday party in the evening. Carol and I left around 11pm to come back to my place, where her friend also joined us. We watched a game from midnight to 2am. I napped for a bit, while the two of them went out to eat bak kut teh at one of the all-night joints on my street. Then we watched another game from 3–5am.

I was wearing this t-shirt, which dates back to my college days when I was much more into football than I am now:

"Maybe you should cross out the Sleep," Carol said.

The Better-than-Average Effect

A 1981 study by psychologist Ola Svenson (PDF link) asked two groups of participants, Swedish and American, to compare their driving skills to those of their peers. They found that 93% of the US drivers and 69% of the Swedish drivers believed themselves to be more skillful than the median driver in their group.

Now it's theoretically possible for more than 50% of a group to be better than average at something, if average is taken to be the arithmetic mean. But the Svenson study was about the median, so the participants' beliefs can't possibly be true. This phenomenon, known as the better-than-average effect (BATE), has been replicated in multiple studies, and in many areas of life.

But I think this particular form of irrationality isn't limited to believing one is better than average. In my (completely anecdotal) experience, it also extends to some value-neutral domains (where there is no obvious better or worse), and at least one domain where I suspect most people believe they are worse than average.

Procrastination, I think, is an example of the latter. My guess is that most people believe they are worse than the median (i.e. that they procrastinate more than average).

I suppose you could turn it around and argue that this is just another manifestation of BATE (people think they are better than average at procrastinating). But that's just a matter of framing, and if it comes to that, most questions could be similarly flipped. For example, instead of asking drivers if they are more skillful than the median, you could ask if they are more likely than the median to cause an accident. In the second case, my guess is that most drivers would say they are less likely than the median.

BATE typically skews towards positive self-evaluations – in fact the article I linked to earlier defines it as "the tendency for people to perceive their abilities, attributes, and personality traits as superior compared with their average peer" – and procrastination is generally considered a negative trait. So if my hunch is right, procrastination is an exception: an example of a worse-than-average effect.

Now for the two value-neutral examples.

Consider the question of how strongly you feel versus how much you show. We might call this trait emotional demonstrativeness. For example, Chris Evert, in the passage I quoted in this post, was suggesting she was less emotionally demonstrative than Goolagong. If you did a survey, I reckon you'd find that most people think they are less demonstrative than the median.

Of course, how strongly you feel is a subjective state, so it's impossible to empirically compare emotional demonstrativeness. As I wrote in that post, "Presumably Goolagong reacted more vehemently than Evert did when she missed a volley. But perhaps Goolagong really did feel the disappointment more keenly – who can say?"

My other value-neutral example, however, is empirically testable. Variability in human attractiveness to mosquitoes can and has been studied and compared. Nevertheless, if you did a survey, I think most people would say they are more attractive to mosquitoes than the median.

Kolkata, where I grew up, and Singapore, where I live now, both have lots of mosquitoes, and over the years, I've heard many people say they are unusually attractive to them. I recently went hiking with a friend, and she said (unprompted) that she is less attractive to mosquitoes than average. As far as I can remember, it's the first time in my life that I've heard anyone say that.

ノスタルジア

I used to really like maths in high school, but for various reasons I didn't pursue it afterwards. Maths is still sufficiently a part of my life to be a blogpost category, but there were things – trigonometric identities, ways of solving differential equations – which I once had at my fingertips, but now have to painstakingly work out from first principles (if I can at all).

When I lived in Japan, I became halfway fluent in Japanese. After I left, I never made a sustained effort to keep in touch with the language, and now it makes me feel in equal parts sad, frustrated and stupid when I have to slowly parse a simple sentence to understand its meaning.

Sometime back Tommy wrote me an email which involved no maths, but where he used the phrase "Without prejudice or loss of generality". It took me straight back to combinatorics proofs (which I loved), and the wave of nostalgia hit me with surprising intensity, almost like a physical wave. More recently I had the same feeling at a European airport where all the announcements were in English, but suddenly and unexpectedly there was one in Japanese, asking Kanada-san to report to Gate No. ---. (I am not hiding the gate number; by the time I had translated the first part of the announcement in my head, I had missed it.)

Snatches of languages which I'm slowly forgetting seem to trigger a linguistic equivalent of the Proust effect.

* * *

The Brazilian footballer Philippe Coutinho scores a lot of goals with a trademark right-footed curling shot from just outside the penalty area. Last year he moved from Liverpool to Barcelona, and this week he scored just such a goal for his new team. A Liverpool supporter on Reddit wrote an unusually poignant comment: "it's like suddenly remembering that funny thing your ex used to do".

* * *

There are plenty of Japanese words which are said to have no equivalent in English (I have been guilty of invoking some of them myself). It amuses me therefore that the Japanese word for nostalgia, the title of this post, is simply a phonetic rendering of the English word: nosutarujia.

Two Boys with Rabbit

Photo-story from my visit to Calcutta this winter.

One afternoon I had some time to kill, in between meeting someone in the morning and lunch with friends. I was wandering around Ballygunge when I came across two boys playing frisbee in a back-street. As I walked by, the frisbee landed near me, and I threw it back.

A little later I walked back along the same road and passed them again. I waved in recognition, and the following conversation abruptly ensued.

older boy:	তুমি ইংলিশ জানো? (Do you know English?)
me:	হ্যাঁ। (Yes.)
older boy:	ইংলিশে কিছু বলো? (Say something in English?)
me:	What is your name?
older boy:	T---
younger boy:	P---
me:	My name is Sroyon. Good afternoon.
younger boy:	কি বললো রে? (What did he say?)
older boy:	বললো ভালো দিন। (He said it's a good day.)

Meanwhile their frisbee game had stopped, so I motioned to the older boy to throw me the frisbee. I threw it to the younger boy, and the conversation continued while the frisbee went round in a triangle.

younger boy:	Are you Englishman?
me:	No. I'm from Calcutta.
younger boy:	তাহলে তুমি ইংলিশ জানো কি করে? (Then how do you know English?)
me:	তুই কি করে ইংলিশ জানিস? (How do you know English?)
younger boy:	আমরা স্কুলে শিখি। (We learn in school.)
me:	তাহলে? (There you go then.)

After a while the younger boy's mother called him, and he had to go. A third boy, about the same age, appeared in his place, eating nuts from a paper bag.

me (to older boy):	তোর বন্ধু কোথায় গেলো? (Where did your friend go?)
third boy:	আমিও ওর বন্ধু! (I'm also his friend!)
me:	খেলবি? (Want to play?)
third boy:	খাচ্ছি তো! (I'm eating!)

So he snacked on nuts while the two of us played on. Eventually lunchtime rolled around, and I said I have go. The older boy said, আমার খরগোশ দেখবে? (Do you want to see my rabbit?) I said sure, and he brought out his rabbit for me to admire.

I just had to get a photo, as a reminder of this odd – and oddly pleasant – afternoon.

Tetris

Ultimately, entropy will prevail, but meanwhile we delight in small, fortuitous victories which buck the trend. Or to put it another way, you will eventually lose at Tetris, but until the stack grows too high, sometimes you get the satisfaction of just the right piece for just the right space.



Our food processor is from India, so it came with a Type D plug, and in the UK we had to use it with an adapter. At some point the plug broke. I decided to swap out the Type D plug for a UK Type G, thereby obviating the need for an adapter. Before I could buy a plug, we bought some darkroom equipment off eBay. It came with various odds and ends, including an old, solidly-constructed "Made in England" plug. I quickly united this unattached plug with our plugless food processor, and I am pleased to report that the two are now working in perfect harmony.

We also had a saucepan lid whose knob broke off. Nevertheless, I continued to use it for nearly a year. Lifting the knobless lid off the saucepan involved a complex manoeuvre: sliding a fork between the pan and the lid to lift up the lid slightly, then grabbing its raised rim with oven gloves to take it off. Many is the time I contemplated buying a new pan, but I disliked the idea of buying a pan-plus-lid when I really only needed a lid.

My flatmate recently got a pan for free with something else she bought. The first time she cooked in it, some of the teflon(?) coating peeled off, so she decided to discard the pan. This pan too had a lid, but of a different size. But when I took off the knob on its lid and tried it on the old lid, voila! It fit perfectly. Ah, the simple pleasure of being able to lift a saucepan lid at a moment's notice and with a minimum of effort.

I get more joy than I should, out of these types of incidents.

* * *

While writing this post, I got curious about whether a fast-enough player can theoretically play an infinite game of Tetris. I found out that in 1992, John Brzustowski set out to answer this very question in a Masters thesis in applied mathematics. He also conducted a survey where he asked Tetris players to give one piece of gameplay advice. The responses, like go proverbs, read like profound pieces of life advice:

•	Stay calm.
•	Don't wait for that perfect piece.
•	Pretend you are having sex.

Turnaround

With digital cameras, I can get a good sense of how a photo turned out just by looking at the LCD screen. Furthermore, taking out the SD card and copying files feels like a chore, so it is often days – or even weeks – before I get round to transferring the photos to my computer, and sharing them if I'm so inclined.

With film, once I finish a roll, I am desperate to see the photos. This month Anasua and I started developing black and white film at home, and I was persuaded to do this partly because of the faster turnaround time: photo labs in Copenhagen take 10 days or more.

Last weekend we were visiting friends in Munich. On Sunday they showed us around, and I took some photos. Tuesday we were back in Copenhagen, and that same night we developed the roll. By Wednesday morning I had scanned and shared them with some of my friends and family, and today, as you see below, one is on my blog. Of course with digital, in theory I could have shared them almost instantly, but in practice it often takes me longer than five days.*

I usually enjoy being shown around by locals, and Munich was no different: we got to see things like river-surfers on the Eisbach. Slow-speed film (Ilford FP4 Plus 125) is not ideal for action photos, but luckily it was a sunny day.

*	I present this merely as an interesting irony, not as an argument for film photography. Perhaps there is only one true justification (thanks Saha).

Chonaldo

Summer 1998. I was 12 years old, we were reading about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in History class, and in the upcoming Football World Cup, Ronaldo was expected to take the world by storm. There was only one thing to do: my friend Gabli¹ and I founded a new religion whose god was Chonaldo, a synthesis of Chaitanya and Ronaldo.²

Our creed, so far I can remember, was to chant Chonaldo's name all day, speak in archaic Bengali and play as much football as possible. We tried to convert some of our classmates, but I don't believe we had much success. Ronaldo, too, fell at the last hurdle – under mysterious circumstances.

Last month, when I was at home in Calcutta, I was rummaging through old school books and found a portion of the Divine Scriptures. This I now present without further comment.

---

1.	Gabli is a pet name; his real name was "Abhishek Ray number 1" (there were two Abhishek Rays in our class).
2.	Thus anticipating Pirelli's ad campaign casting Ronaldo as Christ the Redeemer.

Class Consciousness

Yesterday on the train back from Cambridge I overheard some interesting conversations between a small boy and his grandfather.

I.

Boy (noticing the first class section of the compartment, just behind him): So there's a first class and a second class? Like the Titanic?

II.

Boy:	That hill would be great for cheese rolling.
Grandfather:	What's cheese rolling?
Boy:	It's a sport!
Grandfather:	Like, on PS3?
Boy:	No, in real life!

Four Postures

I took this photo five years ago at the International Manga Museum in Kyoto.

I posted it online with the caption The four postures for reading manga, and since then, a couple of people have independently told me they liked the caption.

The photo below was taken by Anasua's dad in a village in North Bengal (and is posted here with his permission). It is perhaps presumptuous to caption someone else's photo, but it would be a travesty to call this anything other than The four postures for playing carrom.