You came to me in a dream
and I laid my head on your chest.
You were cold and had no heartbeat
just as you were when I first discovered you
many moons ago.
But somehow, in that dream,
when I told you
“You are cold and have no heartbeat,”
we both knew it and
we both twitched a wistful smile;
a calm took me and I knew that
it took you too and
we both were of the same heart
for the first time in
many moons.
Everyone knows what goes into a bowl of wonton mee (云吞面). You typically have egg noodles, baby yu choy or equivalent greens, char siew (roast pork) and wontons, of course. It’s a fairly simple dish with no frills. However, what if you wanted to frill it up and make it unnecessarily complicated for a potluck party in which you would fish for compliments?
Then you flip the script and create mee wonton.
You see, I go to this potluck party fairly often where people have come to expect that I bring something interesting each time (I brought kueh pie tee previously). But I can’t keep bringing new dishes all the time! Even new animals and drugs are discovered at a faster pace than new dishes are invented. I wracked my head for concepts and deconstructed a dish I practically ate all the time as a kid.
The concept I had in my head was: take the mee, take the vegetables, take the char siew and put them all into the wonton. If you had a wonton stuffed with wonton mee ingredients and put the wontons in a bowl of wonton mee, you can achieve wontonception! I had no idea how to achieve that since I wouldn’t consider myself an expert wonton maker. However, I was determined and set out to try.
My first attempt involved brushing two egg wonton wrappers with oil and putting it into a muffin tin, putting the ingredients in and baking it. It didn’t work. It resulted in a thin-crackling skin that was not very palatable. You see, I was trying to avoid deep frying anything, since deep frying always resulted in grease lingering the air for days. My kitchen did not have a vent and I had to manually vent anything out of the window with a box fan.
Plus, using two wrappers on top of each other wasn’t enough to contain enough ingredients to make for a satisfying bite. I had to figure out a way to expand the working surface area of the wonton, and came up with the idea of overlaying wonton wrappers and then gently rolling them to compress them into one oversized wrapper.
On it, I had mee pok noodles, baby yu choy, char siew I made from scratch and fried shallots. I used mee pok (flat egg noodles) rather than mee kia (thin egg noodles) because mee pok is the superior noodle and gives a more substantial bite than mee kia anyway. I tossed the noodles with fish sauce, a little soy sauce, and some of the char siew sauce I used to make my char siew. I stirred some sesame oil into the vegetables. The oversized wrapper has roughly six points, like an odd hexagon, and I folded it top-down, lower left and right corners, and then the upper left and right corners before sealing it with some water.
I tried baking the wonton again in a muffin tin. I was really trying to avoid deep frying anything. When the wonton came back out with a disappointing skin, I was like, “Ok fine. I will deep fry you bastards.” And so I did. The smell of grease permeated the air and mocked my failure at avoiding deep frying. But the wontons came out fine. Deep frying solves everything.
I cut into a deep-fried wonton and the contents tumbled out, a mess of char siew, vegetables and mee pok. My job was done. I had created a chimera that I will parade around the dinner party and bards will sing praises of my endeavours. I brought along some sambal belacan chilli I had made to go along with the wontons.
Most people didn’t stop to listen to my big exposition before eating the wontons at the party.
Google recently launched an interactive web game to train its neural network to recognise objects. The game, Quick Draw, calls on human users to draw a prompted object within a short period of time and the machine tries to guess what it is based on what it has learned so far from all of the inputs of previous players. Quite ingenious, to crowdsource training a machine learning (ML) program since many people are always looking for an excuse not to do work.
I wanted to test its learning limits. I more or less had a sense of how previous inputs for the prompts would look like, since humans tend to draw objects similarly when under time pressure. I wondered if I drew all of the objects from a different perspective, would the program still recognise it as the object — a task which humans are very capable of?
The answer is: not really.
I experimented with drawing in a sequence that would not be obvious what the object is immediately, but the end product would be discernibly apparent. I experimented with odd and skewed perspectives. Google Neural Net failed most of the time.
I think my mountains were really good! I started with a skewed line to not trigger immediate “mountain” responses from Neural Net and then quickly added half lines but by the time I was done, any human would have seen that these are really good mountains.
I thought it was cute that my mouth were interpreted as a bear, an owl and a smiley face. What?? I started with the top line forming the nose, lips, mouth, chin and neck, followed by the back of the head. I filled in details and drew an arrow pointing to the mouth. In Neural Net’s fairness, its creators probably never accounted for it to learn the concept of pointing — a task that I don’t think is too difficult given how far we’ve come along in ML. It seems Neural Net has really only been learning to identify objects by scanning them as a whole.
I drew a jagged tooth key, instead of a wedge-end key because I thought it’d be too obvious. By the time I finished the key, Neural Net still hadn’t recognized it. I had some time left and literally drew in the words “KEY” hoping it’d help Neural Net along but noooope. It thought it to be a crocodile. Cute croc though.
Looking at what examples Neural Net uses as its learned base to pass judgment, one sees that humans tend to draw things either profile or head-on, and hence how Neural Net learns to identify objects.
Come on. My butterfly was clearly the best butterfly all of Neural Net’s learned examples.
How are some of your examples even mushrooms!? They look more like penises! I declare my mushroom to be mushroomier than your learned examples!
Google Neural Net, it seems you have a long way to go.
Bonus pic from a friend:
COME ON. In what universe are these trombones?? I’m starting to think people have never seen what a trombone looks like.
Hi.
I’ve been trying hard to smile extra hard for you, but it’s hard, you know. The stone that moves not, know not how to smile, but tries hard, for hardness is its nature upon which churches and houses have been built. But belies the surface is molten rock; undulating, unsettling, unsure, undone. To rest is to solidify into igneous rocks — glowing embers that ultimately fade to black.
Resting atop a rock lies a temple. In the temple, a pebble falls and clacks on the stone floors, stone-on-stone resounding off of the walls. Clack–clack–clackclack–whirl to a rest. A restive mood permeates the temple that stands on top of a rock. Within the temple lies the echoes of a hundred chants unsaid, mantras unrecited. “What if…” “What if…” “What if…?”
Wind scowls around, tendrils of air swirling around rough exteriors that exude toughness. Howls abound of “Happy Birthday” peel away at stucco and linger wistfully with the hopes of prayers that would never reach your ears. “There is nothing happy about this day,” I thought, picking at paint chips at wedge away so satisfying like scabs over wound. I take care not to bleed. On your wall, layers and layers of well wishes applied on by various people, each a different shade of “missing you” and well-meant love; all bereft. I chip away as they dry.
For my birthday, you got me a Toblerone and some white chocolate with coconut in it, to “share with friends.”
I chant, from beneath bedrock where glowing magma moves from within: “If only I could share it with you.” If only magma could become lava.
I walked in, hollow as a shell, into the floor of the Stella Maris monastery in Haifa, Israel. I took a seat in the pews in the back. Virgin Mary was on display, as waves after waves of people came to pay their respects and take pictures of her. Waves after waves of people washed in, genuflected, chanted, prayed, touched some monuments, took some selfies. I clammed up as fervour rose around me, rocked around as I waited for the rush to recede, flurry to fade. And then they washed out, and I was allowed to be hollow again.
And in my emptiness I was allowed to fill myself with feelings I had kept at bay.
And then the brine came — salt rinses, stings, preserves, cleanses. Virgin Mary looked upon me, face unchanging, witnessing a scene instead of being witnessed for a change.
Through my eyes, the tears tore through the tear that was tethered together too quickly, too haphazardly, and I was empty and ready to let them come.
Through my eyes, I am seeing sights you sought so much as you sailed in search of something significant other than what your life was.
Then let me be your eyes, for you are unable to see.
Because your eyes had been sewn shut.
[2 months]
Sometimes, you just gotta lighten up and take a break and create pointless, stupid stuff. I had been on the train, on my phone, extracting bridges from songs for future use on short video clips like these when suddenly the caption “Fried chicken can be part of a balanced diet too!” popped into my head. And as a fan of Cibo Matto, the idea of for this video clip came to fruition.
And I realise I’m no stranger to creating stupid things to make sense of life.
I probably made this back in 2008 or 2009. There were a bunch of other clips from that same filming session that I am not releasing because they’re very cringeworthy.
I surround myself with beauty
to distract myself from grief
and throw myself to the reckless wind
to let myself feel alive
yet I myself know that to be a lie
for floating myself amidst these currents
that I myself have no control was
to delude myself
that somehow I have gotten over
you
left us behind
you left us with all this hurt
you took off without a warning
you didn’t say goodbye.
But there is no more you anymore, is there?
We’re left behind
We’re left with all this hurt
We’re sitting around here
We didn’t get to say goodbye
Dérive, you told me, was a concept originated in Paris
where people criss crossed, crossed people and streets,
where there is opportunity, crisis
unplanned journeys across the cityscape,
getting over delusions that somehow
we have control amidst these currents
when we are really just floating lies to each other
to feel alive recklessly,
throwing grief at beauty
to come to the solemn reckoning that
in the end there is only just
me.
[1 month]
I often wonder what you would say to me
when I finally get to meet you
in the afterlife
but then I remember that
I don’t believe
in the afterlife
and that makes me wish that
sometimes
I were blessed with faith
so that I can get to see you again.
It’s been a wild ride. I have felt a lot, thought a lot, and subsequent written a lot. But I have also not felt enough, not thought enough, and not written enough. It’s been tiring, I am tired, and I think I will be ok.
Day 0: The Death
(Thought)
Day 1: The Dishes
Day 2: The Deadline
Day 3: The Darkness
Day 4: The Detectives
Day 5: The Determination
Day 6: The Drafts
Day 7: The Seventh Day
(Thought)
—
The Funeral
The Poem
The Interment
—
After the fact:
Music hurts
as I remember
but friends remind me
Music heals
—
It had been a month, and I thought about
Two, and I travelled in search of truth.
I’ve always been fond of Shibuya-kei, and have even written about it on this site. While I can’t fully grasp all local references, I’ve been listening to this Shibuya-kei song by Kaji Hideki (ヒデキカジ). It’s been helping me close the chapter and impelling me along.
君が旅に出た それも突然
You went on a journey, it was sudden
こうして僕が旅から戻ってきたのに
Because of that, I came back from my journey.
ドアの向こうには もう誰もいない
On the other side of the door, there was no one
恋してたのは僕だけじゃなかったはず
I’m not supposed to be the only one in love.
ささやかで役に立つ インスタントでできた
A small, good thing, INSTANT things can be
夢もコーヒーもすぐにさめなければ
Be they dreams, be they coffee, even if they turn cold
いいなと僕は思う
I think they’re still great.
そしてまた僕は次の旅に出る
And so I begin my next journey
例えば この空から雨が降るように
Like, for example, rain that falls from this sky.
ささやかで役に立つ レイモンドは語る
A small, good thing, RAYMOND says
青い空に白いシャツが合わないって事だってあるのさ
A white shirt that does not match the blue skies.
キミドリの庭を上 犬たちが飛び回る
Above the yellow-green garden, dogs are circling overhead
こんなによく晴れた日々君からの手紙が届く
A letter from you arrives in these sunny days.
きっとまたどこがで会おう
Let’s definitely meet somewhere again.
The Hexacoto 