Flavour of Life

Let's start by linking to the latest earworm:
It's an old piece by Utada Hikaru. When I first heard of it, I understood nothing about it, but could immediately feel that strongly bittersweet sentimentality behind it. It's more about the way she sung it than anything else.

Mind you, I didn't watch the MV, or even this studio recorded version either.

Then I learnt of the lyrics and translation (courtesy lyricstranslate.com). Original:

「ありがとう」と君に言われるとなんだか切ない
「さようなら」の後もと解けぬ魔法淡くほろ苦い
The Flavor Of Life

友達でも恋人でもない中間地点で　　
収穫の日を夢見ている青いフルーツ
あと一歩が踏み出せないせいで
じれったいのなんのって　Baby
「ありがとう」と君に言われるとなんだか切ない
「さようなら」の後も解けぬ魔法淡くほろ苦い
The Flavor Of Life

甘いだけの誘い文句　味気のないトーク
そんなものには興味をそそられない
思い通りに行かない時だって
人生捨てたもんじゃないって

「どうしたの？」と急に聞かれると「ううん、なんでもない」
「さようなら」の後に消える笑顔　私らしくない
信じたいと願えば願うほど　なんだか切ない
「愛してるよ」よりも「大好き」のほうが君らしいんじゃない？
The Flavor Of Life

忘れかけていた人の香りを　突然思い出す頃
降り積もる雪の白さを もっと素直に喜びたいよ

ダイヤモンドよりも やわらかくて温かな未来 手にしたいよ
限りある時間を 君と過ごしたい

「ありがとう」と君に言われるとなんだか切ない
「さようなら」の後もとけぬ魔法淡くほろ苦い
The Flavor Of Life

And the English translation:

When you thank me,
It somehow seems painful
And that enduring magic that comes after saying goodbye
Leaves a faint taste of the bittersweet.
This must be the flavour of life.

The space where we are neither friends nor lovers
Makes me feel like an unripe fruit dreaming to be harvested.

The way we are is aggravating, baby,
As we never seem to make any progress.

This is why thanking me
Seems to somewhat hurt
And yet the magic that comes after we say goodbye
Leaves traces of the bittersweet.
That is the flavour of life.

With only sugar-coated words and phrases,
Talking seems to have lost its taste.
I just don't find such things intriguing.

Just because everything is falling apart,
Doesn't make our lives any more dispensable.

Asking me ``What's the matter?'' all of a sudden
Can only elicit the response, ``Nothing, nothing at all.''
Yet, when the smile fades away after we have parted,
I don't seem myself.

Wanting to believe and hoping for hope
Seems to somehow amplify the pain.
``I really like you'' is better than ``I love you'',
That's more like you, isn't it?
Such is the flavour of life.

Suddenly remembering the smell of the person you had almost put behind
Invites a joy that is more innocent than the white of fresh snow.

Devotion means more than diamonds.
I want a warm future in my hands
And in the limited time that is my life, I hope to share it with you.

Still, when you thank me,
It seems somewhat painful
And the magic that comes after we say goodbye
Leaves traces of the bittersweet.
This is the flavour of life.

Ah, that kind of pain... it is almost familiar. I can't say that I have experienced these exactly (memory is weird that way), but the familiarity of it all... even if it were a false memory, I still feel it.

Mayhaps it is related to my recent reading of Bloom Into You by Nakatani Nio. It's my first(?) yuri manga, and far from being the smut that one might think it is, it explored a more ``pure'' form of emotional intimacy that reminded me a bit of 《和空姐同居的日子》 that I read back in 2020.

Yes, there was a physical intimacy scene, but it was tasteful and not smutty. I would even go as far to say that it was ``necessary'' to show that the relationship between Nanami and Yuu have progressed into something more serious.

Anyway, reading Bloom Into You triggered a little bit of anemoia in me. I did live through the school time, but I never was involved in any form of relationships. I had some friendships with some folks, many of whom have since diverged in lifepath and thus sort of lost contact with, but never really ``liked someone so hard that I confessed I loved them''. I think even when I was involved in other deeper relationships after that, it would truly take me a while before I could say ``I love you'', which of course made the eventual break-up/getting dumped hurt all that much more---but I digress.

The point here is that during the halcyon secondary school/junior college days, I was never in love the way the characters were, and so seeing how beautiful it could have been triggered that anemoia in me.

``MT, you're not a secondary school kid now---you're a full grown man. You can always start any relationship you want now. So, what's stopping you?''

No idea. Trauma? Trust issues? It's funny because the life that I am currently living seems no different from when I was in school; I start my day stupid early, do the stuff that needs to be done (i.e. go to school or in this case, work), then take a long-ass commute home, reading along the way. Even the after school/work activities are the same---once I reach home, I pull up my computer, and continue reading, or work on some personal projects, or these days, watch some YouTube videos from my favourite creators.

And after that, I sleep, only to restart everything again the next day.

(sigh)

Anyway, not sure where I was getting at with that rant. Maybe I haven't fully sorted out what it was that I wanted to say.

In other news, I've re-started my One Meal A Day (OMAD) proper, and re-instated the fitness ladder from The Hacker's Diet as a means of rebuilding my weakened-ass body. I'm also doing the cycling thing more now, but have altered the set-up---instead of doing Tuesdays and Thursdays, I've decided to have two rest days in between early morning cycles, starting on the Tuesday just passed. The main advantage was having more rest time, but one key disadvantage is having the day of cycling precess through the week, which makes it trickier to keep track of.

But that felt way easier to work with than the original set up. Maybe when my overall fitness is high enough that a ``one rest day in between'' set up is workable, I'll try something different.

I think the last thing to refer to is the current reading of A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan. It explores what it means to be ``conscious'', and covers quite a few different angles. I'm still only within the first chapter, but it already looks really interesting.

I think that's about it for now. I'm tired from God knows what, and am fast losing focus on what to write. Besides, Q10 claims that we're at more than 1000 words, so it's roughly the right time to stop.

Till the next update.

April Lah

Ah. It has been a while. Feels funny/good to be writing out here again.

So at some point between then and now, I finally concluded that I needed to live again. This meant taking control of my life once more, instead of just floating about with the proverbial tides, and allowing my meat-body to rot away due to a distinct lack of care---the loss of the one day work-from-home per week is not an excuse to stop any form of physical activity that is necessary for ensuring that my meat-body is in fine working form.

For the moment, we'll just leave that heart thing alone; I mean the whole ``relation/date-ship-thing'', not cardio.

I went for a comprehensive health screening after not having done one for nearly six years. The results... are as expected. High LDL, high BMI, raised eosinophil counts---the usual markers of a fat fuck and a guy with chronic atopic dermatitis. Since it has been so long, I also added extra stuff for screening, including a resting ECG, an abdominal ultrasound, and a treadmill cardio-stress test.

Everything except the cardio-stress test has shown things that are within range. Nothing wrong with the cardio-stress test; results aren't released as at time of this post.

The whole experience was sub-par. The group that ran it was Minmed Group, and it made everything operate out of its mobile app. And the mobile app is terrible. It informed me that that for my first location for the screening, fasting was unnecessary unless I had the abdominal ultrasound. So, cool, I just did my usual of not eating breakfast and showed up.

No ultrasound. Strike one.

Okay... I was then briefed on site that I needed to book a location off-site to get the rest of my screening packages on the app. Alright, I pulled up the mobile app, and saw that it was either Minmed at Paragon, or Minmed at Jewel.

Jewel was a little closer to me, so I chose that to do the tests. Picked a day where I had a leave applied too.

And on the day I arrived, I was told that I could not do the treadmill test because there was no registered nurse present to do it.

I blinked. Hard.

``I know I'm early, did you mean you don't have a Registered Nurse now, or today?''

``I mean today.''

Stupid app allowed me to book the location despite this... limitation. Strike two.

I did all the other tests, and wrangled with the customer service rep at Minmed Jewel to book that last treadmill test. It was eventually done, and I had to choose yet another day that I had originally taken leave to do other stuff. And when I finally went for the treadmill test, the sonographer on duty told me that this whole ordeal that I had underwent was not uncommon.

So, here's my semi-public rant about it.

------

On 2026-03-28, I went for my first hololive Production concert, dressed in the TAKOD.EX hoodie that I had gotten some time back. This one was Drawn to Dawn, and features two of my favourite VTubers Ninomae Ina'nis, and Takanashi Kiara, both of hololive English -Myth-. I didn't fly all the way to LA just to see them, but instead took part in the cinema live-streaming event that was made available. I could only go on the day 1 concert of the 2-day concert, but it was a WAHnderful experience. I met some dude who was chilling there early, and we talked about hololive excitedly while waiting for the doors of Golden Village Suntec to open. We were given a button as an official souvenir from the cinema live-stream event, and a couple of other roaming hololive fans were giving out stickers and keychains of holo-natsu key chains of the Myth ladies.

I managed to ``6--7'' some folks because the halls for the event were Hall 6 and Hall 7. 😏 Then I did it again by asking about the "rocking grandma", which was just ``roku nana'' in Japanese. 😏

The concert experience in the cinema was amazing! The weeb crowd came out in full force, with their light sticks, chants, singalongs with the pieces, among other things. Singing along, chanting along, screaming along with everyone was a great experience, and it did feel like I was out there in LA together with the rest of them. The KFP and Takodachis of SIN city came out in full force, and a WAHnderful time was had by all.

If they did more concert watch-alongs like this for other hololive Production events, I think I can find myself coming along for them.

------

I completed Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, choosing the ``full cure'' ending for my male-V streetkid run. It was a bittersweet ending, but it felt more right than the other available endings. V is no longer the ace-mercenary in this ending, but keeps his life, in a sort of back cycling back to the beginning way. As what Misty said in this ending, we just fade into the background once more, joining the multitude who never even got a foothold towards being the kind of Legend that V had underwent.

After all, what else can one seek after reaching the pinnacle, eh?

In some ways, that is the general sense of what I am personally facing in the real world these days. I vaguely remembered someone saying something to the effect of:

Being an adult is about slowly losing all the dreams and goals that one might once have, upon realising that limitations and restrictions are as real as they are numerous.

And this is true even for someone who never really had a major ambition like me.

``MT, you have no ambition? Surely you kid!''

No I'm not. Thus far, much of the ``magic'' that I pulled off was out of spite and not ambition---some dickhead said something nasty to me, effectively declaring that I was incapable in some way of doing something, which ended up pissing me off enough just to do the said thing out of spite, to not only succeed, but to do so superlatively.

There isn't a bone of ambition in me; I was not born in the right family to have that, and never sought the types of environment that would foster that. And even when I was in CMU doing my undergraduate studies, probably the most competitive place that I had been personally, I never really sought to be the number one; just being there among folks of a similar predilection was already good enough for me to be in a new happy place, and that's also knowing that there were wizards there who were at least ten times more potent than I am, and of course never really acknowledging whether I was even potent to begin with.

Even my GP tutor who wrote one of my recommendation letters was giving me the stink eye about how I could have been better off in a more competitive place like RJC instead of the VJC that I was in. I just shrugged at her---competition has its place; retrospectively, I think that I preferred a more harmonious and cooperative approach over competition, preferring to raise everyone up instead of forging ahead whilst leaving others behind in the dust.

If I run ahead, I'd be alone, and will have to face everything alone. Truly I will be faster, but I cannot go as far as when I run together with everyone else, with each person supporting one another and boosting each other, complementing our weaknesses so that as a group, we can run the full marathon in tandem, since eventually even the best of us will face scenarios where their skills are outmatched by the environment, and not necessarily because we are unskilled, but that there are too many skilled tasks that need to be done that a single person is physically unable to keep up with.

------

In other news, Eirian-VI has her firmware updated to 5.19.2. 😫 You gain some, you lose some.

Biggest gain: colours in PDFs are finally rendered in full colour instead of some grayscale thing, while still having that auto-margin cropping thing going on. Biggest loss: E-books now have weirder margin issues and stranger rendering outcomes, like excessively wide line heights and what-not.

This meant that the old workflow of converting CBR/CBZ comics to .mobi for viewing on Eirian-VI needs to be rejigged to convert into PDFs instead, and even then, PDFs that are limited to be no more than 200 MB to avoid breaking things.

There was allegedly a 5.19.3 release that addresses some of the losses (including a battery drain issue that I don't seem to have noticed), but that release was bug-ridden to the point of it having to be recalled. Unfortunately, the Kindle series does not have the ability to restore previous firmware releases, and so the early birds who had installed 5.19.3 will find themselves stuck with it till a fix is released.

Word through the grapevine is that Amazon has been ``vibe-coding'' these firmware updates, which resulted in all these issues. How true, I don't know, but it does sound plausible, given all the other information that has been coming out of the company as a whole (job cuts all over the place, and massive pushing of AI for everything).

------

I think that's about what I want to talk about for today. I'm in the middle of Kingdoms of the Dump, which I am enjoying very much, but word on the street is that the last Act was not very well-done.

I might bail out at that point---we'll see. So far it is still charming.

Till the next update, I suppose.