The Return
It has been some time since I have come to Singapore. In fact, I think I passed the two month mark a week or so ago.
Last Sunday, I returned from Bangkok, after visiting Bram, my good friend. As we were coming in to land, I looked out of the window, and I realized I had arrived in Singapore. As I had also booked the flight from Bangkok to Singapore, this was not a large surprise, but somehow, the return felt fresh. For the first time in a while, Singapore felt full of possibility.
The week before the return was good. Excellent, even. However, and as you may have noticed from the shorter blog posts, I had been in a funk for a few weeks already. The funk was partly just a bit of home-sickness, but it was partly work-related as well. The details are not suited to a blog, but Monday the 28th some circumstances changed that largely resolved the direct causes for the funk. I would like to say that I immediately felt better, but in truth the rest of the week was spent somewhat overthinking things, as I am prone to do.
As a reaction, and as a result of the resolution, I made sure to have fun during the week by planning fun stuff, to prevent me from shutting myself in too much. I also made sure to have several discussions with family and some friends over the past few weeks. This allowed me to fight back against the feeling that Doom was upon me, and have some fun while doing so. Poekie is still in Vught anyways, so that would be impossible.
Tuesday the 29th, I went to eat with Yusuf, and I was introduced to pineapple rice and the Cola float, which is certainly a very dangerous beverage for my health. It’s extremely tasty, but I honestly do not want to think about its contents.
I also had a call with Saskia and Erik, family, that evening; I was able to see their kid Lukas for the first time too, on stream, and he was adorable. I got recommended The Thinking Game, which I still have to watch.
On Wednesday the 30th, me and Erfan went out for dinner. I wanted steak, so we spent some time choosing a not all too expensive steakhouse to go to. When there, however, we threw all caution in the wind, and went for a Wagyu steak; I wouldn’t say it is always good to indulge, but sometimes it is, and I have no regrets. The steak was very good, certainly the most tasty fat I’ve ever had on meat. I am unsure if I would do it again, for I generally like less fatty meats, but I have no regrets. We also found that Hoegaarden glasses can be very big.
On Thursday 1st, I took things a bit more easy and recharged a bit.
On Friday 2nd, I worked from home. Generally, working from home is better for creativity and focus when I have a goal, while working on location is better for setting goals and finding resources. I still have to train it a bit, but I think it is good to put this desk to use and work from home once a week.
The evening of Friday the 2nd, I went to Bangkok. I was at the airport far too early, but then, I had also forgotten to pack some underwear, so I had reason to explore the overly expensive airport shops. At 20:50, the plane went to Bangkok, and when it arrived, I booked a taxi to Bram’s place. Though I was ready to sleep, Bram convinced me to watch White Chicks before we turned in; what followed was a fairly relaxing and entertaining late evening. Though the movie is not something I would normally watch, it was fantastic. If you like zany plots and an excellent comedic turn by Terry Crews, White Chicks is one to check out.
On Saturday, we pulled out all the stops with regards to relaxation; Bram had made some plans, and they were excellent. After some time, I finally fully began to relax. The highlight was a visit to the Tribe, an excellent bar in Bangkok; maybe even the best bar I have had the pleasure to visit. There, we enjoyed fruit, a nice south african sparkling wine (it turns out that reservations in Bangkok require a certain amount of spending, which is effective policy) and we met some cool people from Thailand and South America.
We also went to a whisky and cigar lounge, which was quite excellent, and we reminisced a bit (as one does when sipping rum and smoking a cigar). Thanks to my father’s and Bram’s tips, smoking the cigar went quite well; I may do it again in the future, on special occasions.
On Sunday, we took it easy. Me and Bram discussed life a bit (a very good conversation) and we went on a small excursion to find brunch. After some more chilling, I then returned to the airport for my flight
The weekend was truly excellent, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bram again for it. The Saturday especially features high on my list of favourite days in the past few years. I had forgotten one could live that much in just a day, and I am happy to have been reminded.
I have some pictures below:
In hindsight, it therefore seems logical that I felt like a new man when I re-entered Singapore. The clouds had largely broken, and though I am still working to break the last of them, it will be a matter of time. For the first time in a while, I felt ready for the next week.
It is funny to realize, now that my overthinking is proportional to the events of the week again, that I didn’t have to change much about my actions to have an effective week. I had been putting too much focus on results to measure effectiveness, while I am not someone that can force results out of myself by putting myself under pressure beyond a certain limit. This week, however, the effort I had put into broadening my horizons to fit the current main project seems to be starting to pay off, showing me that not every effect needs to be immediate once again.
Monday was not too special, though I had a nice conversation with my dad, who I had wanted to talk to during the weekend a bit and which was useful for me to clear some of the cloud debris. I also had a nice and fun conversation with Nazanin over whatsapp.
Tuesday, however, I had a meeting with Martin on the current project which allowed us to realign a bit better, and from this I was able to make some headway in the project. That evening, I enjoyed some audio plays with Pim.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent on concretizing an idea I had on wednesday, which will be discussed in the next meeting. On wednesday I furthermore had a good curry, and on Thursday I took a leaf from my stay in Bangkok and had a Banh Mi.
Friday was a mental health day, and I took some time to visit the Bukit Timah nature reserve with David. It was a sweaty walk, but a good one; I saw my first ever group of wild monkeys, and we also saw a turtle in the lake we visited. Sadly the haze was quite present; it seems to be particularly bad this year. Just one more thing to be disappointed in humanity about then; the haze seems to be caused by intentional forest fires for agricultural purposes, and a period of at least a month of shit air quality per year for others seems to be considered a perfectly acceptable consequence for those doing the burnings. A somewhat disappointing pattern which can be found everywhere these days.
Anyways, pictures:
In the evening, I met with Ferry and Bob for AuDaLa; Ferry is doing good work there, and we planned a day to meet when I am back in the Netherlands. I also considered how to solve my one mistake in the thesis.
I came to the conclusion that to solve it, I would need to add a set A of AuDaLogic variables to AuDaLogic triples. These variables are then used to define an equivalence class relative to the AuDaLogic variable environment: for every environment s, any environment in the equivalence class over s and A can differ from s only in the values of the variables A. An AuDaLogic triple with set A is then only valid for a state with AuDaLogic environment s if it is valid for any state that replaces s with an AuDaLogic environment from the equivalence class over s and A. This would allow us to abstract away from exact values for i in the Gen Parallel proof rule and fix the rule.
Doing something like this is not a new idea, as similar things have been done in logics in the past. In the end, I decided to not implement it, as it requires a substantial rewrite of chapters 7, 8 and 9 of my thesis, which I do not think is something to prioritize right now. I may do so later, and depending on what happens with AuDaLa, I will include this in any second version of the logic.
Having been somewhat productive on Friday, yesterday, I swam a bit and I played V Rising with Niels. Today, I finished off this blog and a series I was watching; I intend to go eat after this, and then put some work into either a work project or my D&D project. Though I am not fully in the clear yet and still clearing out the last negative clouds, I can feel the drive to do things once again reaching useful levels.
Hopefully, I can use that for something nice. But I should not forget; no undue pressure.
Tom Out.
I have been reading and watching and playing a few things these past few weeks. Among the noteworthy things I’ve seen are the Infinite and the Divine, which is quite fun but which I have not finished yet, The Good Place, which is fun but a bit taxing to watch, White Chicks, which was surprisingly fun, and V Rising, which is an excellent and atmospheric game. However, I think the thematical winner of the weeks with regards to media is most likely Re;Zero. I’m not going to spoil exactly what happens in it, but as someone who generally thinks isekai anime (reincarnated in a fantasy world-type anime) are not particularly good, this is probably the best one I know. The anime has hit pretty close at times, too, as it did the last week of September.
