-
After almost five complete weeks (including the entire month of August!), I was discharged from hospital on Saturday. The wound hasn’t completely healed so there’s still the risk of another reinfection. That’s meant I didn’t feel the sense of relief you might expect and indeed I’m not sure I will until the stitches are removed. Still, it’s nice to be back at home with Eri and the kids. Speaking of which, I was struck by how short the kids all were (I had spoken to them exclusively via FaceTime during the hospitalisation and so had become used to them all being at my eye-level).
-
Why did things improve? Some people will say it was the antibiotics but I choose to believe that I successfully reverse jinxed myself by restarting my Japanese study. This of course does mean I could have got out weeks ago if I’d just started studying after the initial operation but I’ll know better for next time (which hopefully I’m successfully reverse jinxing myself against).
-
As for the Japanese study, it went all right, I think. I liked the Udemy course enough to take advantage of their August sale and purchase the N1 one as well. I will say that immediately upon returning home, the amount of time I have to devote to studying has dropped to almost zero so I’m not sure if/when I’ll get around to that one.
-
Before I was discharged, I did make it all the way through season 2 of Only Murders in the Building. Brandon expressed some reservations about this season but it went down a treat for me. I’ve now caught up on all the episodes of season 3 and am almost ready to put it ahead of Westworld in my all-time ranking of TV shows. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
-
This is going to sound like the strangest segue of all time but in the vein of amateur sleuths solving mysteries is this epic blog post by Tyler Vigen. In it, Vigen details his attempts to unravel the mystery of a bridge in his home town. I know that doesn’t sound like something you’d want to read—and maybe this is the fifth week of the hospitalisation talking—but I’m being completely honest when I say it’s one of the best things I’ve read all year.
-
I enjoyed this cool exploration by the Straits Times of colour in Singapore. I do worry that this is the kind of innovative work that’s very difficult for newspapers to justify in the digital age. Did this increase subscriptions? Decrease churn? Have any positive financial impact at all? If I had to bet, I’d assume the answer to all those questions is no and yet the world is a better place for its existence. Is there some way we can ensure this kind of thing keeps being made?
-
I listened to all 5 hours and 25 minutes of this Apple Music playlist devoted to Australian 90s alt-rock. A song that isn’t on the list is Ammonia’s ‘You’re Not the Only One Who Feels This Way’ (Apple Music). It’s exactly the kind of second-rate alternative anthem you’d imagine an angsty 16-year-old listening to in 1998. I mean the title alone is just… could ChatGPT have come up with something more apropos?
