I wanted to make it a lark and talk about how the week of hedonism went down with a big bang and me wanting to never want to get back to work again. Alas, that's just a fantasy that isn't worth thinking about.
Today is also a Monday, and the start of the new month. Incidentally, it is also a public holiday due to how Sunday was a public holiday (Vesak Day out here in SIN City). So I have about a week of recap to go before I return to the fray as part of work, and also about the wandering wondering of when my next long break is.
So on the Tuesday after the last entry, I had an unplanned trip down to Bike31 to sort out a broken Birzman pump that I had got in 2017-ish. The head could not mate with the new Presta valves that my new bicycle had---I was always using Schrader valves for the previous bicycle(s), and the pump worked well with those. The lady at Bike31 sorted it out quick with a 20-dollar replacement part, with no labour cost. I did have to take a Grab down and back, totalling up to another 40 more dollars, but that 60-dollar cost seems to be a fine amount to pay for hopefully another 7 to 8 more years of good use out of the originally 120(?)-dollar pump. I then spent the evening cycling out to meet up with GY out at Georges by the Bay (i.e. at Punggol Settlement), where we commiserated and bitched about what's wrong with the world/SIN City while chugging booze of all sorts.
On Wednesday, I had to make an emergency trip to IKEA to get a new chair, because my old chair finally broke itself apart. This was not the first time that it has ``broke''---I think one of the key latch springs was disengaged a few years back, and to re-attach that, Pa had to slice through some plastic part, and I didn't know what else did he tweak. Anyway, the chair broke when a metal part had rusted through, and decided to break at that spot. I didn't hurt myself, but it was a quick trip to IKEA to get a replacement HATTEFJÄLL again. This time, they didn't have an arm-less version, but it was possible to just not attach the arms that came with it.
``MT, if the stupid chair is said to have 10 years of guarantee for parts, and you broke the damn thing in year 5 or so, why did you go back to the same chair?''
Because it is comfortable, cheap enough (SGD345-ish), can fit where I am seated, and can be gotten pretty damn quickly.
Mind you, Wednesday was also a public holiday, this time it was Hari Raya Haji.
In addition to the cost of the chair, I had to chuck in another 40 more dollars for the Grab ride, because I was damn sure that I was not taking the bus with a bulky-ass box that had 20 kg of mass.
That same day, I took yet another Grab (SGD30 this time!) to head to the Arts House at the Old Parliament House for a baroque harpsichord/cello concert. It was a nice change of pace, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have no memory of what I heard (baroque music is still too hoity-toity for me), but I remembered liking what I had heard.
Dinner was at the Gyukatsu place in Raffles City. The beef cutlet is always wonderful, and the free-flow tea and cabbage with associated sauce makes it a great way to fuel up after a long day.
Thursday began with a planned trip to the Singapore Musical Box Museum. It's a private museum that was tucked away in Circular Road, and could only be visited via a guided tour through making a reservation. The reservation process was also arcane, partly because the museum seemed to be slowly winding down their operations (my perspective), but there were enough usable hints within their website to execute the correct reservation process. They are going to be at their current location till 2026-09, after which they are allegedly heading back to Telok Ayer.
But that aside, that museum was a true hidden gem! Many antique (i.e. at least 100 years old; anything at least 20 years old is merely vintage) musical boxes were available to view, and the guide gave good explanations for all of them. What intrigued me the most was watching the use of the studded logs (and then discs) gradually changing from directly sounding the tines of the comb to create the characteristic tingling sound, to using them as a control mechanism to activate lever systems that worked other types of percussive instruments. There was also the ingenuity of using small offsets between the spaces of needle-tipped tines to allow a single control log to hold more than one piece of music (the next music is obtained through a small displacement longitudinally); the use of replicated tines to allow that strumming effect without necessarily making it harder to manufacture the punched disc; aligning the lower notes closer to the centre of rotation of a disc while leaving the higher notes farther from the centre of rotation to leverage on the different linear velocities to play slow notes versus fast; and various indexing mechanisms that can be used to trigger other actions like disc changing, or accepting new coins for another song. The power mechanisms were very mechanical in nature due to the clockwork background, using coiled springs, weighted pendulums/pulleys, and combining with various flywheel governator designs to ensure that the output rotational rate is constant regardless of the energy levels of the mechanism.
All in all, a very fascinating trip that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I then roamed about the Upper Thomson Road area to kill time before meeting up with YT for dinner. The old Thomson Plaza has changed quite a fair bit---the games shop no longer exists, and there were many more new PRC-heavy shops too. The actual shophouses along the road were still quite interesting, and I even found another ``hidden gem'' location out at Thomson V Two.
Friday was when I chilled out a whole lot, spending much of my time watching The X-Files, before meeting up with CP for drinks out at Al Capone's Cuppage.
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was also mostly just me staying at home and watching The X-Files. My only comment is: thank God for the 'net to ensure that good television from the 1990s when I was too damn young then to understand can be easily obtained to watch when I am old enough to appreciate the content. I was supposed to take on the Rail Corridor on Saturday, but my Garmin eTrex 30 decided to have its plasticised rubber be brittle and fall apart, making the buttons effectively disappear. Without a back up like that, I was unwilling to take unnecessary risks, and so a replacement cover was searched and ordered from Amazon Singapore, and it's slated to show up on the upcoming Saturday. Once I have the GPSr sorted out, I will attempt the rail corridor proper. Considering that the route is unlit for protecting wild life, it would make more sense then to go only when I can tap into daylight hours.
And that brings us to now. It's time to sleep, and close this intermission for now, and to get back to the daily grind of work that both delights and drains me.
Till the next update.
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