I’ve just launched a new set of websites: a homepage, a weblog, and a contact page. I’m a guy with a pretty eclectic mix of interests, and I definitely don’t want every aspect of my online presence tied to my full name or professional image. Therefore, I’m rebranding these sites with my nickname.

Job hunting can be tough, but if you play your cards right, you’ll have employers lining up for you… in one conversation 🤭 #ScamAlert

Whipped up these Eggs Benedict myself. They may not have turned out perfect, but I absolutely loved them.

New earworm!

Once I bought a frosted glass for $12 at IKEA. It was beautiful but a bit too big and didn’t have a handle. If I drank water from it before a meal I’d feel too full to eat. Just way too big. Weeks later I got an IKEA flyer and saw it’d been reduced to $7 and advertised as a vase.

Ergonomic chairs are arguably the worst investments. The best chairs are basic, sturdy, and possibly a little harsh on your bottom, encouraging you to stand up often instead of staying seated for hours.

Due to the current challenges in the Canadian job market, I’m contemplating using a pseudonym on my resume to increase my chances for an interview. I’m leaning towards “Jai Nutsdeep.”

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.

As of today, two orcas have resulted in the deaths of four human beings: a Canadian woman, an American woman, an American man, and a Spanish man.

Orca attacks are a First World problem.

Before I got my driver’s licence I used to practice parallel parking around my neighbourhood, parking my car in front of every house where there was already a parked vehicle as if I was another family member coming home from work. I even got out of my car and walked around (to check if I parked right). Thank goodness I did this in Canada. 🙏

Woman shot dead in New York state after friend pulled into wrong driveway https://t.co/OrW1dewEsZ

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 18, 2023

Went 70 in a 60 yet still annoyed those hoping for high 80s.

Welcome to London, Ontario, the home to edgy pilots on four wheels!

Did you know what made my day?

I was walking down the street and scrolling on my phone when I almost kicked a cobra chicken in the face. She was so nice a lady she didn’t even have a go at me!

What else?

I wrote the horrendous 3-hour CompSci 2212 final exam, which featured a 40-page booklet including 75 multiple-choice and 15 short-answer questions.

Now I have solid reasons to pop a bottle of champagne!

I had planned to rent a car in Victoria and drop it off in Vancouver the same day. With a Costco discount, that Budget rental, a Toyota Corolla, would have cost me $750 plus taxes.

Initially I didn’t opt for the ferries. I thought a rental for 12 hours or so would just cost 2x or 3x more than a ferry ticket. FYI, a one-way ferry ride is just less than $20.

Now I’m fixing to commence my ferrytale. ⛴️

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.

Lately I’ve been watching a YouTube channel on compiler design, which one of our compulsory courses this term is all about. The YouTuber is an assistant teacher at an Indian college. I hope she won’t become a professor, though, because even Ivy League professors can never explain stuff as clearly.

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.

Perhaps I’m among the guys on earth who have the least patience to wait. If your new service has hit the market but runs on an invite-only basis, you’ve lost my interest. I opted for Fastmail over HEY.com and felt happy. I ditched Clubhouse in the end and had zero enthusiasm for going back. Should I mention Dribbble, Pinterest, and Quora, where I do not have an account to date because they were once invite-only? Now Post finally gave me the nod, and I slammed the door on them there and then.

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. ☕️📖🎄❄️

The following block of text is from Mark, an intelligent, philosophical friend of mine:

One thing that suddenly struck me several years ago is this: ALL negative emotions all stem from one single one: fear.

Grief comes from having lost something or someone, and the fear that you know they will never come back.

Hatred comes from when someone does something bad to you, that you fear can never be fixed.

Envy comes from someone else having something you want, and the fear that you will never be able to get it yourself.

Jealousy comes from the fear that someone that you love will leave you.

When there’s no fear, there’s no negativity. If you have a partner that you trust implicitly, there’s no fear of them leaving, hence no need for jealousy.

To me it makes much sense on many levels, although the gist of his message is about handling jealousy in a relationship. You can even find further evidence:

• Vanity stems from the fear that people around you will not like you the way you are.
  
• Anxiety stems from the fear that you will be unable to confront any negative consequences.
  
• Indignation stems from the fear that you’re losing control over a situation where you think things should be done your way.

But where does fear, the seeming wellspring of almost all kinds of difficult emotions, come from? How to overcome fear? How to prevent fear from happening?

I believe fear warrants its own book.

Today marked the end of the fall semester, as the last final exam was written earlier in the afternoon. I had kept myself busy for a prolonged period of time, with quite a lot on my plate. Some professors were either disorganized or lacking in proper approaches to delivering content, meaning that I had to be self-reliant.

That said, it is not necessarily a bad thing because people working in computer science often find it needful to acquire new knowledge on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

It’s pretty nice to have a few days off around Christmastime and New Year. I had planned to fly to Vancouver but didn’t manage to squeeze the 10-day trip in. There are a few things that I’ve been neglectful of and have to attend to at this point. Unfortunately, most of them wouldn’t get done remotely.

Speaking of New year, if I get the time, I’ll probably make a post like “My 2022 Year-in-Review” or “My New Year’s Resolution.”

Finally, iOS 16.2 got installed on my phone. This means I have one more collaboration tool (Freeform, only available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone — not yet on an Android device nor in a web browser), can sing along with millions of songs (Apple Music Sing), have my iCloud data better protected (end-to-end encryption expanded to 23 data categories) ¹, but can only receive files from Everyone through AirDrop for a 10-minute window, after which it automatically reverts to Contacts Only.

Many have advised against updating to iOS 16.2 to retain the ability to receive “surprise content” from strangers for an indefinite period of time, which might be the grounds for Apple’s adjustment to this service considering that it has proved useful in many circumstances where Apple, or some of the regimes they’re serving, don’t see fit. Apple says it is a measure to cut out unwanted content. But unwanted by whom? Why just 10 minutes instead of 10 hours or 1 day? Why is there not even an option for users to personalize the service? Would Apple force iPhones to reject phone calls from strangers after 10 minutes to prevent “unwanted” calls?

So many questions need to be asked. Without satisfying answers, this move seems to be hasty and sketchy.