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A few days ago, I had the privilege of witnessing my cousin’s beautiful wedding at the Botanic Gardens, followed by an unconventional yet delectable wedding celebration at the nearby Pangium. The first dish on the menu was the Pang Susi, which the staff explained as a pastry filled with savory minced pepper pork. The staff traced the etymology of “Pang” to a creole word meaning “bread”. Because I was well into my Japanese Duolingo course, I was immediately reminded of the Japanese word for bread: “パン” or “pan”. And because the Korean variety show Running Man has long been a guilty pleasure, I also recalled that Korean for bread is “빵” or “ppang”. A further search also turned up “पाव” or “pav”, the Marathi, Hindi, and Konkani word for a type of bread pastry. ...

A tidbit I sometimes tell when doing the usual “share a fun fact about yourself” icebreaker: I have had the same barber cut my hair since I was a toddler. I don’t know his full name, but my father calls him Ah Tan, and he’s been my barber my entire life. And so when I went for the usual trim with my father earlier today, it was a shock to find his tools cleared from his table. ...

The primary purpose of every post on this site is to help me get better at thinking and reasoning. I fully expect to run into difficulty expressing myself. And have writing blocks. And realize my entire premise is flawed only after spending hours on an essay. Using LLMs here feels like planning a run then driving a car instead. The discomfort is the point.

Roughly a year ago, I found out how to keep running 1. Now I regularly run 60 to 70km a week and it rarely feels like a chore. One of the things that helped is simply the idea of prioritizing consistency: no matter the pace or the distance, just clock a run. The truth is, running at an amateur level really does not require “deliberate practice” or training smarter. I simply show up and run everyday, and enjoy the run without thinking too deeply. And I got better unconsciously. ...