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'.
The other day I was reading a post by photographer Hannah Yoon, and thinking that Substack's design looks rather sophisticated and nice – whitespace, serif font, occasionally (in this case) broken up with an understated photograph. And I found myself wondering if I should give this blog another makeover to make it look more like Substack, or perhaps even start a new blog on Substack. (A parallel blog I mean; I wouldn't abandon this one.)
The new blog, if I were to start one, would be about photography. In 2020 I started writing regularly for a couple of photography websites, whereupon I decided I would reserve this blog mostly for non-photography topics. But I've recently been wondering if, rather than writing for other photography blogs, I should just start my own. Just an idle thought; I most likely won't act on it. In any case, changing this blog's design to make it more Substack-like was still an option.
Then I saw this tweet asking what people miss about the "good old days" of the web, to which @jeesun replied:
i miss blogs with a unique look. it seems like everyone uses substack nowadays.
I think I'll keep my old design for now :)
What I would like to change is how it looks on mobile devices. But that involves messing with the CSS template and implementing responsive design, which I currently don't (perhaps never will) have the energy for.
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In hindsight, I would have liked to have chosen a blog name and URL that don't have my own name – but that ship has sailed.
Last year I wrote that one of the blog names I considered was The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I think Planting Cabbages would have been a good name too. It's from a quote by Michel de Montaigne:
Let death find me planting my cabbages, indifferent to death, and still more to my unfinished garden.
Planting Cabbages is my username on WeChat, which I use to communicate with some of my Chinese friends. One time they asked me why I picked this name, and I told them about the Montaigne quote. They found it very interesting, and on the taxi ride home, we ended up having a long discussion about it. One of them also speaks French, so she looked up the original quote and proposed various possible translations. Another mentioned a Chinese philosopher who said something similar.
They later told me that the discussion continued after they dropped me off. The taxi-driver was silent throughout, but right at the end, as they were getting off, he asked, "But why cabbages?"
A rhinoceros beetle we found on a night walk in Pasir Ris Park, sitting on a wooden bench.
I had to get quite close to the beetle, with my camera in one hand, and a flash (with small softbox) in the other. But the beetle was unbothered.
The next beetle (rose chafer) was sadly past being bothered; I found it in my room when it was already dead. It was lying on the floor, but I placed it on this book for the photo op.
Remember the dangerous sheep from last year?
Now the lamb is lying down.
Balestier is just the name of my street; the post title references a Genesis album.
From the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a black wood spider (Nephila kuhlii) eating a bee:
Our Goth friend is an orb-weaving spider, same genus as the golden orb weaver featured last year.
I took the photo with a Fuji 50-230mm f/4.5-6.7 zoom lens (purchased secondhand for only SGD 130) coupled with a Raynox DCR-250 macro attachment. This combination does the job, but I'm thinking about upgrading to a dedicated macro lens for my Fuji, specifically the Laowa 65mm f/2.8. So I'm monitoring Carousell as one does, waiting for a good deal on a used copy.
The Laowa, borrowed from a friend, is what I used for the photo below, taken in Thomson Nature Park. A jumping spider (not sure what species) eating a moth:
Finally, a spider not with prey but with an egg sac. Heteropoda lunula, also known as the Lightning Huntsman, in Pasir Ris Park.
The last photo is from a night walk in Pasir Ris Park. In my last post I said I have a 100% (2 out of 2) record of spotting snakes at Pasir Ris. On last week's night walk, I saw an oriental whip snake (which I've seen before) and also a few dog-faced water snakes, which are apparently pretty common but I hadn't seen them before. I didn't get a good photo though, as they were in turbid waters.
Pasir Ris Park in Singapore is a good place to see snakes. On my very first visit, I saw an Oriental whip snake (reported here), and on my next trip, we saw a paradise tree snake. It was chilling on a wooden railing – hard to miss, really.
Paradise tree snakes are also known as flying snakes, because they can flatten their bodies and glide from tree to tree. I was hoping to see it glide, but this particular snake eventually crawled onto a tree and disappeared into the bushes.
So I have a 100% success rate at Pasir Ris Park so far – two trips, two snakes. But what I was really hoping to see was a mangrove pit viper. Oh well, maybe next time.
I did however see a viper last weekend at Thomson Nature Park – a male Wagler's pit viper which had just had a meal.
A close-up of the eye. Vipers are so cool.
I'm almost a month late with my annual Spring Equinox post (it completely slipped my mind), but I've been wanting to share these photos for a while.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens have these palms – Vanuatu fan palm, I think, but I could be wrong – with absolutely humungous leaves. Here's one such leaf, with my forearm for scale.
There's a little depression at the base of the leaf, where rotting leaves and other natural debris can accumulate.
Seeds land there too, and if the conditions are right, little saplings can sprout on the leaf itself. You can just about see this in the top photo too, but here's a close-up.
I like reading, so I often get books as gifts, and some of them come with inscriptions. My all-time favourite inscription is from my college friend Darshana, in a book she gave me after I finished college and just before I left for London.
I like the choice of book too – The Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories. I love trains, and Darshana and I had a really nice overnight train ride together. But the inscription is just perfect. It's a quote from Stay Out of Trouble by the Kings of Convenience, a band which she introduced me to.
Darshana and I got in trouble a few times. Science City in Kolkata had (perhaps still has?) life-size animatronic dinosaurs. At one point, some of them were discarded and dumped in an off-limits area of the park. I saw them from the highway, on the other side of a fence. In this untended and overgrown corner of the park, they looked much more real and in their element than among the fake trees and landscaping of the Evolution Park.
I asked Darshana if she wanted to scale the fence with me and get up close to the dinosaurs, perhaps even climb on them. She said "Let's do it."
So one day we scaled the fence and entered this off-limits area of Science City. We were making our way through the undergrowth, approaching the dinosaurs, but before we could get too close, a guard saw us. He gave us a firm talking-to, threatened to fine us for trespass, but eventually let us go with a warning.
We didn't get to climb on the dinosaurs, but before the guard appeared, I did get a photo.
