I picked up a new book series to read – “Bride of the Barrier Master”.
I was looking through Books Kinokuniya last Saturday and, for some fortunate “oh what’s this” curiosity, I found this series by Kadokawa (and translated by Yen Press). Whenever I browse through the light novel bookshelves in Kinokuniya (and even at Fully Booked), I usually try out things that catch my eye first. That’s how I found “Maiden of the Needle” a while back. I don’t have a lot of time to sift through these all – and some of them I already got the gist and I wasn’t going to re-pick them anyway.
But that particular Saturday, I was kind of bored. I already got the latest ones I had in my mains (“Realist Hero”, “Demon Swordmaster” and “Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent”), the “Restaurant to Another World” doesn’t have the sixth volume yet, some of the other series I’ve kind of put on the backburner I wasn’t keen to buy ahead yet, and some of the ones I also picked up recently like “Reborn To Master The Blade” and “Miss Savage Fang” are too recent and likely their next volumes are lots of months away. Also, I am getting a bit bored with “Hachinan” as the author is clearly running out of creative ideas to stretch the story. So I started nitpicking a bit and looking for the newer ones in the bookshelves, maybe I missed out on a few hidden gems.
Turns out, I missed at least one.
I took out the first volume of the “Bride of the Barrier Master” series there, looked at the synopsis on the back, the art style on the cover, and flipped through a random page and checked a while if the writing style has the quality I liked. All three passed for me, so I instantly bought all three volumes available (Volumes 1 to 3 were all in English already).
I really liked that the protagonist was female. I was getting bored of male protagonists anyway. Hana, the main character, is a spunky and feisty young schoolgirl with a compassionate side but with a massive chip on her shoulder, of both being a blessing and a curse. She lived in a modern society but one that has meshed well with traditional Japanese folklore sorcery thing, like magic practitioners with powerful clans and shikigami. Fortunate happenstance that she tapped into a great latent power that allowed her to be her family’s actual most powerful person, but as her father was basically a dick with an inferiority complex and her mother a spineless POS, she had no incentive to flaunt it or make it known.
I finished Volume 2 a few days ago, and maybe Volume 3 tomorrow. Should be enough to keep me content for a while.
Last Sunday, I was on a bus headed to Lucky Plaza for my bi-weekly hankering for familar Filipino meals. Sat on the window side to the left, just looking outside… until I saw something outside the Thai Embassy just along Orchard Road. A banner advertising a “Thai Festival”, basically a Thai market full of vendors selling lots of nice Thai goodies, from accessories to food, with some lively bands playing Thai music. There was also a massage booth. It was held under this big covered area inside the embassy grounds.
That made me decide to alight from the bus right away (at the bus stop right in front of the embassy), and try out the market, see what’s what. Also, I was curious to go in this embassy.
And as it was right around lunchtime, I made a beeline for the food section, where vendors selling Thai meals were there, and the food were definitely not “watered down”. It’s full-on Thai. The great smells alone convinced me of that. Man, if I wasn’t on a diet and I already had my gym time the day before, I would’ve ate a lot here and just burned them later at the gym. But my thighs and my upper arms were aching. I have to pick my battles here. Lots of yummy Thai food, from tom yum to green curry to fried rice. Prices were a bit higher than usual hawker fare, but as this was a special occasion and it’s on a pop-up event inside an embassy, the prices were understandable.
I had a plate of pork basil rice, a small snack portion of chicken gizzards, two pieces of Isan sausage, and a glass of Thai milk tea. The pork basil rice was definitely up my alley – very spicy. Saw it from the area earlier, and I spotted that they had the chilies ripped and crushed – not chopped and thrown into the dish. Crushed. So the chilies’ spiciness should be blazing hot. And I was right – same as the one I had in Bangkok, no hiding from the chilies here. The spiciness coated the meat well. The Isan sausages were kind of OK, but I guess I was mentally comparing them to what I had in Thailand a while back and the native one had more grease and fattiness to it (also I was missing the free veggies). These ones sold here were a bit lean.
The weather was also kind of blazing hot that afternoon, so I also bought a glass of Chang beer. Kind of pricey at 8 SGD, but it was draft beer, ice cold with a good head. No complaints. I like Chang.
I did walk around the area to see other non-food things and stuff, but nothing really stood out for me to buy. I felt some of them were priced a bit too steep for my liking as well.
To finish off the hour, I went back to the food section and bought packed snacks and half of what was to be my dinner for that day. A pack of tom yum flavored anchovies, a pack of durian sweets, a medium-sized bag of mixed Thai-style fried sweet fritters (bananas, yams, sweet potato balls), and a packed serving of mango sticky rice to eat later for dinner. The fried mixed stuff were great. I usually buy a bag of those whenever I go to my preferred Thai supermarket here in Singapore (in Aperia Mall), and the vendor there is the same here – Talad Thai Banana.
I later learned that this could be a yearly thing. Best to keep an eye out for it next year, then. But I’m also curious – any Vietnamese festivals anytime soon I could visit?
I also took an online Sitefinity certification exam recently, for their new tech that utilizes the advantages that the .NET Core platform offers. Not the full-fat big certificate, just the part that covers the .NET Core and what it offers for people who already knew Sitefinity well. Took me a week to watch the introduction videos and set up a test environment to play around with a V14 trial version. To be clear, the certification wasn’t too “high” up to require remote supervision like those project management exams, so it was just a SGD100+ online exam that can be retried a couple of weeks later should one fail.
I kind of liked their approach to exam questions. They weren’t literal by-the-book queries. They were more of practical questions that would require applicative knowledge from the one answering them. Basically, rote memorization won’t fly – you have to know how to think what the best answer is from a given set of options. Yes, the test were all multiple choice questions. And the options range from “this has a great point” to “that seems sus but still could be true I guess”. Maybe only one or two “gimme” questions, the rest were very good. I guess they really wanted to only certify people who actually understood the new things on the platform and how .NET Core pushes it forward.
And in my opinion, man this should be advantageous for us to offer for future clients. A multi-tiered platform architecture should help with workload division on projects with multiple devs. The CMS and the frontend are now two separate tiers with their own source codes each. Frontend devs could work on their code and the backend devs could work on their code as well.
And yeah, I passed with 93%.
I find that the sweet spot for me right now when it comes to avoiding social media is 10-15 days. I do plan on increasing that number a lot further sometime soon. I just need to find a more engaging distraction or hobby.
For now, I only have Facebook on my phone out of necessity, because my family is on it. To be honest, if they were all off Facebook, I’d get this app off my phone and just access it via web whenever needed. I just post tidbits and reposts every now and then just for the “pulse” check. Also, my friend asked me recently if I was in Instagram. Hell no. I had to answer as politely as I can without saying “have you lost your mind”. I wouldn’t even touch Threads with a ten-foot pole.
For X, I just logged in there maybe last August, just to post my latest blog links and check on what’s what in games. I kind of like that I am in Singapore, so 1) there’s no ads served on my area so I don’t have to get any premium plans, and 2) the algorithm serves me stuff a lot better here than if I was in the US or EU. Also, I find that my home feed serves me more relevant and interesting news than freaking Google News. Hilarious.
Reddit is kind of a mixed bag. It’s now basically 4chan but a bit more educated. Lots of the forums I like have devolved after that API price hike thing, many mods left and the ones that remained were like cave monkeys. I just stuck with the bigger ones and left the smaller ones behind, those seem hopeless to revert.
Nope, no interest in LinkedIn. Place is chock full of corpo idiots and pretend influencers. I estimate they are the only ones keeping that dumpster fire of a place alive. Last I logged in there was maybe June just to approve two former coworkers’ request for a connection.
And that’s all.
Oh, YouTube? Not social media in my opinion, it’s a legacy video website that has some social media adjacent features. If YouTube is a social media, you could also call DailyMotion and Vimeo as social media based on that classification.
The nice bed items I bought from IKEA a while back really have paid off.
The mattress protector with the cooling layer works fantastic. I now have a pre-sleep ritual of “cooling” the bed. Basically, I just turn on the aircon in my room at least 20 minutes before I go to bed, and letting both the mattress protector and my duvet (it’s their “Brandlilja” with a striped side that retains some chill) absorb the cold air well. Then I go to sleep on a sufficiently cooled bed and a chilly blanket. I was initially surprised how easily I dozed off right away. I do admit, I prefer a cold environment whenever I sleep. Now it’s my regular routine.
Man, I got to get these for my bed back home in the Philippines. Both the mattress protector and the duvet. Fortunately, IKEA opened a big-ass store in Mall of Asia, so I will order those online when I get back, maybe a week before I fly back home so they deliver it around December 21 or 22.
Speaking of home, my youngest sister recently asked my opinion about us two footing the bill for a day-long AirBnb rental somewhere outside of Manila for Christmas. I agreed only if 1) it’s an equal split, and 2) she books it herself, as I am a complete stranger when it came to AirBnb. She wanted to book it, in my opinion, because she wanted her new dude with us on Christmas and she saw our current house as inadequate in terms of impressing.
I later landed a concession and a request for the first condition. I handed her the option of us doing a 60-40 split on the bill, with me doing the 60% part, as long as she does me a favor of buying and transporting a replica of WWE’s World Heavyweight Championship (the new one held by Gunther) for Christmas. I’d send her the funds to buy the thing, all she has to pay for will be the less space in her luggage, the title belt she has to fit in her things by December.
A few days later, she booked a certain lot in Batangas for a full day – Dec 24 to 25, essentially the crucial Christmas night. Problem was she only booked one night, which me and my other sister had some minor concerns with. We won’t be able to enjoy the place more. But the price was also… shall I say, “I’d rather look elsewhere”. A single day just for that price is a bit indulgent. But I did give her the decision-making keys, so I kind of handicapped my opinions. So I did the British thing and tried to be subtle about my preferences. I hope she got it at the time, but I kind of also worry about the logistics. Dad has to drive us there… and cook as well. Some of my favorite meals take many hours to prep and cook.
Also… man. I also learned she barely kept mom and dad in the loop. Should be an interesting fam call over the weekend.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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