Highly recommend this album!

New earworm!

In this day and age, loyalty generally translates into either feeling not motivated enough to cheat or being fortunate enough to avoid getting caught.

Contact me if you don’t really think so.

For a whole day, I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe how saddened I am about the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto. I listen to him on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. I share his music with all my close friends. I play his songs on my piano, albeit clumsily.

He was one of the few musicians in the world whose works literally touched my soul. His entire catalog of music has also been a great influence on many other musicians and the whole world. His influence will undoubtedly perdure, on many levels.

I’m sharing two videos here. One is from 1992, and the other 2022. We’ll remember this highly gifted crossover musician who once reshaped the soundscapes of Jazz, electronica, world music, and even hip-hop, before being recognized as an experimental and classical composer.

Rest in peace, Maestro.

Just learned from a YouTuber that one of my favourite singer-songwriters, Andrea Martin, passed away in 2021. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of her before, but her passing is to me as Kobe Bryant’s death was to a Lakers fan.

What makes me sadder is that her only album can’t be found on any music streaming platforms. Fortunately I bought a copy of her CD back in 2000 and will load it into my iCloud Music Library soon.

Her songwriting skills were amazing; her singing voice was underrated.

These two tracks are among my favourites on this album.

For someone born in the 1980s, I have to admit I had a little hard time distinguishing between Atlantic Starr and Midnight Star — probably because both are American bands, both have/had multiple members, both had R&B hits, both were formed in the exact year of 1976, and both have “Star(r)” in their names.

But is it really important to tell one “star” from another? As far as I know, many people outside of the Anglosphere still think Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley were the same person or mistake Marilyn Monroe for Madonna. (Beyoncé vs. Rihanna might be even more challenging for them.) On hearing the first eight bars of Billie Jean, however, they can sing and dance to it with total abandon.

So the answer is definitely a no. All we need to do is appreciate the beauty of these marvy works and feel grateful to those artists who ever committed themselves to perseveringly creating one marvel after another and pushing the edge of the envelope, even though we cannot exactly recall their stage or real names after decades.

Have you ever realized that, when you’re washing a carrot and two black plums in a kitchen sink filled with water, you’re actually messing up a snowman at room temperature?

I didn’t sleep in this morning. I had to get up early for work and later head to the nearby Costco warehouse to get my flu shot. After work I was told the location had run out of vaccines, so I grabbed a quick lunch and went back to bed, in hopes of tacking on some hours of sleep.

I’ve always loved dozing off to some music. The moment I opened Apple Music Cuco’s new single popped up. It was released today, fresh from the oven. I should’ve ignored it and picked out some Max Richter track good for a nap. Now it’s become an earworm precluding me from snoozing. (But I am still sleepy.)

It’s Christmas again. Here we have almost everything one would expect of a “traditional Christmas” — snow, gatherings, foods, wines, Christmas songs, gifts under the Christmas tree, etc. I can’t be bothered to mention Santa because we don’t really have a fireplace in this house. Despite that, some elements even got an “upgrade.” Instead of snow flurries, for example, many people are travelling against a province-wide blizzard warning. We chose to stay in because none of us would love to get stuck on 401 or at YYZ for eight or more hours straight.

This Christmas I’ve also done something meaningful. I’ve written a bunch of thank you notes to important people that crossed my path in the past year, as well as leaving truthful, largely positive reviews on Google Maps for businesses that impressed me one way or another. (Some business owners did request me to write one immediately after our deal was done, but that’s not the only reason I felt obliged.)

For the rest of the holiday, I’m going to read, learn, and code, as if the holiday hadn’t begun or had already ended. Study computer science, they said. Be a lifelong learner, they said.

I wish everyone reading this post a merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season.

Today I received the Derek Sivers Christmas bundle, which I thought would have been delivered to my doorstep but had actually been dropped into the mailbox two days ago. Thank him so much for the generous offerings as well as emails helping clear things up. It’s nice to have something really meaningful to read during the winter break. ☕️📖🎄❄️

Done the last big-ass assignments and all the necessary ¹ labs. Now it’s time for a little unwinding: swapping tires, sending out Christmas cards, shopping groceries, etc. The first final will hit us December 12th, so I’m not really going to gear down.

While I was burying myself in the fifth and last assignment of data structures and algorithms, Alexa streamed this song, making me want to pogo in the face of the deadline.