![\"In](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/064f72b420.jpg\")
No one warns you about the time you’ll spend waiting on other people to do their jobs.
\n\nUnreturned calls and unanswered emails become the norm. The days stretch into weeks that stretch into months; before you know it it’s been over a year and there’s very little to show of real substance because you’ve set the bar so high.
\n\nDeadlines were taken on and one by one you blew past them, each one a notch off your morale. Expectations were set only to have them violated at every turn. And whose fault is that but your own for believing in the best of people? 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-22T12:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/22/faltering-at-the.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/15/a-single-win.html", "title": "A single win, please", "content_html": "
All I want is a win. After a year of nos and maybes—still, rejection.
\n\nIt’s the final lap, the checkered flag is in sight, yet moral has never been lower.
\n\nEmergency surgery earlier this year, asynchronous communication between and questionable levels of competence amongst stakeholders, regulatory hurdles, competing projects vying for our tradesmens’ time and attention… all contributing factors to the delays in the fit-out process.
\n\nI long for this discomfort to end and a return to what I do best.
\n\n‘Never again,’ is what I’m tempted to say. But I know it won’t be the last time. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-15T13:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/15/a-single-win.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/14/134715.html", "title": "Growing pains", "content_html": "I’ve been growing my hair out. No small feat considering how unruly it gets past a certain length. And no, I don’t want a return to my high school mane—just something different to the short-back-and-sides cut I’ve rocked for the past couple of years. Long enough to feel like a different person.
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-14T13:47:15+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/14/134715.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/08/oil-stick.html", "title": "Oil stick", "content_html": "![\"Irvine,](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/85985d6ed9.jpg\")
A lifetime later and I still remember having breakfast with you.
\n\nI wonder often about how you’re doing and if anyone keeps you warm at night.
\n\nStill I’m sorry for how things ended.
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-08T21:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/08/oil-stick.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/01/bowled-over-poke.html", "title": "Bowled over: Poke", "content_html": "![\"\"](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/60a9734b2d.jpg\")
You live in Southern California for a couple of years and suddenly you’re the go-to person for poke. And it rubs me the wrong way how it’s been so bastardized now that it’s trendy here, so far removed from what I’m sure Hawaiians actually consume.
\n\nI suppose that’s what happens when you live in a country without a true food culture and a deep, deep insecurity about its national identity.
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-01T21:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/08/01/bowled-over-poke.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/25/lunch-an-afternoon.html", "title": "Lunch: An afternoon in Culver City", "content_html": "![\"Culver](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/e8aebbb0ae.jpg\")
The best meals are the ones you remember years later, whether consumed al desko or surrounded by loved ones and laughter.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-25T20:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/25/lunch-an-afternoon.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/18/sea-and-scrub.html", "title": "Sea and scrub", "content_html": "![\"Margaret](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/cf8b2eee70.jpg\")
Margaret River remains a place to retreat to when the world spreads its jaws wide. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-18T20:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/18/sea-and-scrub.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/03/sleep-beckons.html", "title": "Sleep beckons", "content_html": "Nothing beats putting the work in and retiring for the night, circuits fried, content with the day’s toil. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-03T23:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/07/03/sleep-beckons.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/27/lunch-things-on.html", "title": "Lunch: Things on banana leaves, Laguna", "content_html": "![\"San](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/16c1c9eedf.jpg\")
I remember the stickiness of that day, the sound of coins falling into a collection tin in exchange for access to the facilities.
\n\nThe water was deep, murky and warm. The sun beat down on our party but we trudged on and were rewarded with a brief spell of rain.
\n\nOur efforts made the food taste better too. Licking fingers clean of grilled meat and ensalata, grains of rice sticking to greasy palms.
\n\nCan’t beat eating with your hands.
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-27T23:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/27/lunch-things-on.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/20/opening-day-is.html", "title": "Opening day is fast approaching", "content_html": "It’s not that I’m nervous or anything—I know I’ve been saying I am to so many people, and of course that has to change, needing to manifest good vibes and whatnot—but more that I feel as though I’ve boarded a fast moving train without a conductor in sight.
\n\nAll of a sudden I truly am in charge in a way and on a scale I’ve never faced before. However the track was built long ago and the vessel itself is something I’m familiar with, if only as its passenger. There will be a great many people I’ll be privileged to take on as new passengers, the landscape stretching before us indefinitely.
\n\nI wish for success in this new chapter of my life. Have I defined what it looks like? Yes, for the most part. Sometimes I paint success to be a picture of what I don’t want: large amounts of money and fame; multiple venues under my belt. I simply wish for this business to grow organically, to be of honest service to my guests, to be surrounded by people I love to work with, and to be a worthy client to my vendors.
\n\nIt’s funny, the longer I work in hospitality the less jaded I’ve become. And I used to be—so very much. But now I’m hopeful, hungry. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-20T19:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/20/opening-day-is.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/13/just-keep-swimming.html", "title": "Just keep swimming", "content_html": "They say Capricorns are naturally drawn to water, and I am both of these things. But I am also afraid: there will always be something unsettling about the depth and shade of it.
\n\nI’ve plunged myself into countless bodies, seen pool tiles mimic the ocean depths and forcing me to swim with my eyes screwed shut. The generic bluish-whiteness of the municipal pool seems tame by comparison.
\n\nI’ve timed my visits so lane five, the pool’s dead center, is always free. Often the lanes on either side of mine are empty and I’m just far enough away not to get distracted by the free play and aquaerobics junkies. I’m aware of my own nakedness and the fact I’m surrounded mostly by black and brown bodies.
\n\nIn this water we are free.
\n\nIt fills me with joy to feel the energy, multiple lanes away, of boys roughhousing and girls splashing around in groups: a pair flitted under me once, shocking me into standing up mid-freestyle—I only minded a little.
\n\nAs I slice through the water I catch glimpses of the lifeguard making her rounds, a medpack and radio hugging her waist. The red and yellow shorts do her strong thighs every favor.
\n\nMy own, however, are quick to burn from the strain; my right ear perpetually waterlogged. I am not the strongest swimmer but my strokes are earnest; being self-taught affords only a modest increase in speed. Not nearly enough to outswim the thoughts rising from the chaff.
\n\nThe concerns change from day to day, lap to lap: my place in the world, the shape of the next few months and years.
\n\nI think about how my form reflects who I am as a person. Lacking the power and coordination demanded by freestyle, I’ve adopted the breaststroke as my main. It’s harder than it seems but I like that to go fast you really have to go slow.
\n\nI flirt sometimes with the idea of joining a swim club but the extra fees are out of reach at the moment. And I like having lane five to myself. Chlorine seeping into my pores, goggles perpetually foggy, I like having no one else to compete with—I am my own metric. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-13T22:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/13/just-keep-swimming.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/06/06/review-bobs-burgers.html", "title": "Review: Bob’s Burgers", "content_html": "📺
\n\nI managed to watch most of the first season in 2015 but didn’t have complete access until Disney+ integrated Fox IPs into their platform.
\n\nIt piqued my interest even then, being a sitcom about a family owned restaurant, and it’s been such a delight to see the production value soar over the course of its run with the end credits becoming a show within the show itself. I can’t recall the last time I’ve actively watched anything from opening to closing credits.
\n\nCampy, Broadway-esque numbers became integral parts of certain episodes, and since The CW’s Crazy-Ex Girlfriend wrapped in 2019 I didn’t realize I’d been craving a chaser for musical storytelling.
\n\nFart jokes abound and hijinks are aplenty but the Belcher family always makes it home in time for dinner. They’re incredibly easy to fall in love with and they are, to this day, one of my favorite TV families.
\n\nHere are a few of my favorite episodes that cut into the meat of each character:
\n\nOver time Tina’s obsession with Jimmy Jr. fades (well, sort of—her world becomes populated with other things), Louise softens her edge and even Gene does some growing up. Bob and Linda still put work into their marriage.
\n\nWe’ve had plenty of Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes and yet no one seems to age.
\n\nI don’t really want them to.
\n\nStray observations
\n\nDrink every time:
\n\n![\"Esplanade](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/7dec7def9c.jpg\")
The city state showed me what we could have been—the heights to which we would have risen. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-30T08:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/30/on-foot-in.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/23/the-guest-experience.html", "title": "The guest experience", "content_html": "![\"Patricia](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/cfb985bc20.jpg\")
For a split second one flirts with the idea of finding a different, perhaps quieter shop for that morning’s caffeine fix.
\n\nBut this cafe’s reputation, even amongst the city’s coffee professionals, preceeds it and so I brave the queue snaking well past the door.
\n\nOf course I am met with an oasis of calm masquerading as front of house staff.
\n\nOf course their navy and white button downs are crisp under pristine leather aprons.
\n\nEvery move is calculated and efficient, telegraphing an ability to quell a guest’s every anxiety: you’ll get your money’s worth and then some; we know what we’re doing.
\n\nThese are the things I notice in my line of work. Not the slick fitouts which leave me hollow because the staff chosen to run the show don’t have the personality to carry the space.
\n\nAnd I don’t think you need much. A simple dress code, classic finishes—in this case marble, hardwood, brass—and gorgeous natural light by which to read the city’s broadsheets.
\n\nThe coffee itself was damn fine.
\n\nI think the founders’ grandmothers would be proud—they, of course, are whom the shop is named after.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-23T11:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/23/the-guest-experience.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/16/walking-amongst-giants.html", "title": "Walking amongst giants", "content_html": "![\"Gianyar,](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/7c3378a615.jpg\")
Gianyar reminds me of the forests of my childhood. I’m grateful to have breathed its air before the world went into lockdown last year. 📝
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-16T08:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/16/walking-amongst-giants.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/09/trumpet-adventures-sailing.html", "title": "Trumpet adventures: sailing the high Cs", "content_html": "I started in August of 2020, a few months after a COVID redundancy and years of wanting to pick up a brass instrument. 🎵🎺
\n\nInspiration came from Michael Giacchino’s work on the soundtracks for Incredibles and Incredibles 2, and John Williams’s brass-forward cinematic work. Credit also goes to Frank Lehman’s Star Wars thematic catalogue and the YouTube channel Sidways for sparking my interest in leitmotivic storytelling. Trumpet was to be an entry point to classical music, a challenging and seemingly inaccessible genre for any layperson.
\n\nI am, nine months in, still not great at it. My range is limited. I only recently busted out a high C and can’t sustain the note for more than a few bars at 60bpm. I can only just transition to it from other notes within the technical pieces I’ve been assigned.
\n\nI’d like to be able to transcribe jazz standards one day and I think it helps that I have relative pitch but it’s useless when I’m only starting to relearn notation, struggling with the most basic of rhythm exercises. I play guitar and piano casually—the magic of four chords!—and I’ve gotten this far in my life blaming an allergy to sight reading.
\n\nBoy, is it all catching up to me now.
\n\nBut you know what? As frustrating as it is to hit every conceivable brick wall technically, I’ve never had this much fun learning an instrument. I’ve been disciplined enough to practice between 15-30 minutes every day since picking it up, 45 if my chops hold up. A monumental achievement given practice feels Sisyphean most days.
\n\nThat’s more intentional practice I’ve thrown at an instrument in all of my life. I think that’s why I felt like bursting into tears one day in March when I suddenly popped off a high C. I was stunned.
\n\nHow did I reward myself? With more practice, of course.
\n\nThe myth you learn is that a single practice day missed requires two or three days to catch up. I for one am not willing to gamble on its veracity.
\n\nThese are the reasons I provide when I’m asked why I chose trumpet:
\n\nWhat I don’t tell people is that I play to learn how to breathe. I liken it to my affinity for swimming: tension throughout practice is inevitable but it’s the ability to recognize it, adjust and overcome that brings great emotional reward. Passable playing requires a keen awareness of one’s body, a constant reminder to breathe often and deeply. Controlling how you exhale is key. And it’s a lot harder than it seems given you have to maintain proper embouchure, arch your tongue a certain way and finger the valves in ways which don’t strain your wrist.
\n\nIt’s not as cumbersome an instrument compared to a tenor sax or, god forbid, a double bass but it is heavy enough for me. Managing that weight, understanding when to push and pull back to prevent discomfort or injury—that’s proprioception at its most demanding.
\n\nI have a newfound appreciation for everything from Arban-esque etudes (Carnival of Venice, anyone?) to the simple-sounding yet mindblowing execution of Hovorkan’s Maria solo. Technical- or melodic-foward, all trumpet playing is now impressive to me and provide many benchmarks to strive for.
\n\nNow if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play a rousing rendition of Hot Cross Buns.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-09T21:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/09/trumpet-adventures-sailing.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/02/dinner-village-korean.html", "title": "Dinner: Village Korean BBQ", "content_html": "![\"\"](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/4a737cd1b4.jpg\")
As the vent struggled to handle the amount of smoke we were generating, I couldn’t help but think we were doing it wrong.
\n\nMy forearm was sore from gripping the tongs. I’d only managed a few mouthfuls of salty-sweet beef and haemuljeon to go with the conservative banchan (more than one refill and the proprietors charged you for it). But the chicken remained stubbornly rubbery even as everyone around me eyed the cuts browning at their own pace.
\n\nPerhaps something less marinade-forward, then, for next time. Perhaps we’d consider arriving less famished. And maybe I’ll have cured myself of the need to manage the grilling and just enjoy someone else’s efforts isntead.
\n\nNone of the staff have picked up on our vent’s struggles.
\n\nIt felt as though we were doing things wrong but, thankfully, tasted every bit as if we’d done it right. 🥢
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-02T21:00:00+08:00", "url": "https://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/05/02/dinner-village-korean.html" }, { "id": "http://proprioception.micro.blog/2021/04/25/review-silver-spoon.html", "title": "Review: Silver Spoon", "content_html": "📺
\n\nThings I’d completely forgotten about during my first time watching Silver Spoon:
\n\nAnd during my subsequent rewatch: how easy it is to binge an entire season in one sitting. As the credits rolled on the tenth episode my queue stopped playing for some reason, and I ended up thinking it was a bittersweet and poignant ending to the run. (I currently don’t have access to the second season or the source manga itself.)
\n\nA day later I discovered there was actually an eleventh episode but its first half seemed an out-of-place hiccup between the penultimate episode and the epilogue. I mean, I liked stern Komaba’s baseball/family breadwinner balancing act but it took away from what would have been a neater ending.
\n\nEpisodes are traditionally structured (cold open, shenanigans, central conflict, emotional growth) with the main plot point wrapped up by an episode’s end. Pork Bowl’s fate serves as the overall narrative arc through which the showrunners explore how Hachiken is changed by Ezono, and how Ezono students in turn are forced to rethink their relationships to their family and farms.
\n\nThe side characters are memorable enough, from the definitely-not-Buddha equestrian club instructor/renegade cheesemaker, Ezono’s offbeat principal, to Hachiken’s crew of misfits. (I see you Tokiwa.)
\n\nI watched this after I’d read most of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and select chapters of In Defence of Food; I’m also working my way through Padma Lakshmi’s Taste The Nation, that beautiful and uniquely American love letter to immigrant cuisine. It’s no accident I’ve been gravitating more and more towards non/fictional work relating to the politics of food, the rearing and growing of it and the ways through which it makes it to our plates.
\n\nSilver Spoon delights in the ways it tackles these complex moral questions and delves headfirst into a young person’s anxiety about those first tentative steps towards adulthood. Hachiken grows from someone who starts out attending Ezono to escape the pitfalls of urban student life to someone who relishes early morning chores and provides the emotional ballast his cohort needs.
\n\nStray observations
\n\nNotable quotables
\n\n![\"\"](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/b3f9ee139d.png\")
![\"\"](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/84b94d15f2.png\")
Here is a blog. See how it reads. 📝
\n\nWelcome to a world of stray observations and half-baked musings written by someone who is doing this more to establish anything remotely similar to a craftsman’s routine, rather than communally revel in the minutiae of one person’s life.
\n\nFor as long as I’ve been aware of my desires—and for as long as I’ve been able to suppress parts of my identity—I’ve known one of my many goals has been to publish written work consistently. It’s also one of the aspects of my identity I’ve been most reluctant to embrace pre-pandemic.
\n\nBut now, mid-career shift, I have the time. And the willpower, surprisingly, to establish better habits. Or maybe a glass of wine on a Sunday night makes any idea seem like a great one.
\n\nWhy a blog when privacy is seemingly this day and age’s most precious commodity? It certainly feels antithetical to how I’ve been living my life these past few years—actively avoiding any semblance of a social media presence beyond lurking on reddit or imgur, and maintaining a relatively tame-by-design personal life—cocooned within hobbies and routine, and very much liking things that way.
\n\nIn a nutshell, this micro.blog is for myself. I am publishing merely to keep myself accountable to a deadline and hopefully develop the habit which seems to predicate success: if I try hard enough, surely I’m bound to experience some measure of it?
\n\nLonger pieces are inevitable but the scope in essence is:
\n\nPerhaps one day within the next year I might be cured of this compulsion to put words to paper.
\n\nPerhaps I might accidentally create something worth reading.
\n\nCheers.
\n\n![\"\"](\"https://proprioception.micro.blog/uploads/2021/2904ff6dce.jpg\")