Last week was not that great. At least, for me.
Just finished wrapping up my mini-travelogue on my three-day Thailand excursion.
They were intentionally long. I crammed almost everything I could remember of the trip and then some. I tried not to skip big details nor “cut” things out. And when words could not suffice, I added some more pictures from my phone to show stuff. I snapped a lot of pictures, so I do not have a shortage of stuff to show.
Thinking again about it, honestly, it will be a long time before I revisit Thailand again, specifically Bangkok. Not a knock against it, but it’s for myself.
I learned something when I revisited Japan in 2019 after I went first in 2017. 2 years is too short to reappreciate certain places. The commonality between those two trips were Kyoto and Osaka. I did revisit Fushimi-Inari for gratitude, but as far as the other places in them, familiarity kicked in hard. Like, oh, I know this station. I know this place. I’ve been here before. I did try to visit other places in Kyoto, but the appeal of seeing new things became quite limited because I’ve been around them before. It helped a bit, I admit. But it is what it is.
So probably I’d put Bangkok back on my list maybe 3-4 years later. I’d love to see other places there again.
And yeah, if my planned Hawaii trip does not come to fruition, I have two places in mind: Sydney or Hong Kong. Hopefully I can find the time to apply for a US tourist visa again.
My favorite yong tau foo place near my work has unexpectedly closed. They closed during CNY, but ever since their stall has not reopened. It’s been three weeks, and last week it seemed the final curtain was drawn as the overhead pull-down cover for the stall was put in place.
I am sad about it, as I liked the auntie that ran the place. Remembered me well, including my favorites. Sometimes when I arrive late, she restocks some of the things I usually get, like tofu and mushrooms. Likely because she knew I was a big spender at her stall. Most people pay 5-6 SGD, but my bowl was chock-full of stuff and I usually pay 8 SGD.
So now I’m looking for another yong tau foo place near my area. Hopefully there’s one.
Been a long time since I worked a weekend, but my last project required my weekend, as their data downtime was not long enough to allow a full duration of testing, and they are not going to have a full downtime on a weekday, so they scheduled the patch activity on a weekend.
I didn’t mind working on them, just that working weekends brought some memories with it.
At least I had some spicy ramen after a grueling Saturday.
Importing my old BlogDrive blog posts from university to early working days has helped me to remember some of the things I did in that time. Like unearthing a time capsule of sorts.
My BlogCity one? Not so much. I might not import anything from there. It’s weird, like I crafted some kind of persona in that blog. I don’t recognize this shit. Cringeworthy to the high heavens. But then I remembered, oh, this was when Friendster came about. Eveybody had a persona there. Even my high school teachers had a page, and this was at the time where social media standards were non-existent. So maybe I thought, I rode that kind of thinking to blogging.
And at least for me, I saw that persona being shed slowly in the BlogDrive posts. Changing one post at a time. Still juvenile, but not “woah there boy, slow down” kind of juvenile.
It’s easy to spot the electric cars in Singapore based on the build and brand. There’s a kind of distinction.
Tesla’s are easy to spot, the front made it obvious. I spot maybe 2-3 Model Y’s a day, and sometimes two inside my work building’s underground carpark. Second are the small electric cars in SG called GetGo, they have a lot of cars on par with Teslas. See them a lot, around same as Teslas. Third are Kias and Polestars. Anytime I see a car with the new Kia logo on it and no discernable exhaust pipe, I assume it’s an EV. Polestars are a rarity. I have an owner in my neighborhood, so I just see one usually, maybe once a week. Sometimes I see other brands like Hyundai Kona. Maybe every two weeks I spot other known car manufacturers’ EV offerings.
The only thing that’s not going to do it for me was BYD. I do see maybe one or two a day, but their designs throw me off from a distance, because I see it first as resembling other cars. Their car designs steal a lot from other car manufacturers. “BYD Design”, with an LOL. There’s “inspired by” and there’s “largely copy”. No bueno for me. But I admit, I kind of have a bias. BYDs were shit back then. I had a neighbor buy a BYD a long, long time ago, and it literally shit itself when he took it on a road trip. Car was cheap, so was the build. Had to call friends to bail him out with another car as he was stranded in the middle of the provincial expressway.
But let me offer a prediction based on recent developments: smaller EV companies like Lucid and Rivian will either downsize to a manageable extent, let itself be sold to other companies, or close shop once the premier car conglomerates figure out their EV game (I think it’ll be within 2 years). Biggest hurdle is mass production, not just of the car, but the batteries as well. Why do you think Tesla, once it got enough cars sold to make a decent profit, kept opening more factories instead of “widening its lead” as most shitty pundits implored it to? Short-term loss for long-term stability. Supply to meet demand. Just saying.
Hopefully there comes the day soon that EVs are more or less “common” and there’s no annoying talk of “king” or “killer product” anymore, like in current gas-powered vehicles where everyone gets a nice slice of the pie and everyone exists selling enough cars to keep business, like Peugeots and Skodas still selling alongside giants like Toyotas and BMWs. There’s a few companies at the top currently in EVs, hopefully in a few years more entrants come in.
The “AI” term is now an intelligence test to know which customers are suckers. Much like “cryptocurrency” was a few years ago.
And anyone with an online application platform is claiming their shit is now powered by AI. Holy damn shit, it’s the same application they had in 2022, they just now calling it “AI powered”.
I had programmers and PM friends (all in the Philippines) saying that some clients are starting to ask if their simple website can have “AI powered” features so that their marketing team can use the term. That’s funny.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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