March 30, 2025The year was 2009. A high school senior, I just discovered this up-and-coming singer with a funny name over the winter break. His name was Khalil Fong. I knew him as 方大同. I told anyone and everyone about him and his latest album, Orange Moon. A shy-looking guy with black-framed glasses on an orange cover. I talked about him so much that my classmates started calling me Khalil as a tongue-in-cheek joke. That winter and the following spring, I was on top of the world. So was he.
Then it was college. When I spent all my time in the library preparing for studying abroad, Khalil’s new album, 15, was with me day and night. When I finally studied abroad, Khalil released Back to Wonderland. It was the music that kept me grounded while I fully immersed myself in a new culture. I felt in between after college. Khalil released Dangerous World, a weird one. When I finally moved forward and found a career that I loved and adored, Khalil released a double album Journey to the West. It won him the Best Male Vocalist from the biggest Mandopop awards. I gave it a few listens and decided it was not for me.
Then I was grinding. Khalil shifted his focus to his newly founded record label. Then in the blink of an eye, years had passed, and it was Covid. Khalil would occasionally release home-produced singles, the kind that you knew weren’t leading to an LP, and I would rediscover his first three albums, Soulboy, This Love, and Wonderland, and listen to them on repeat. I realized how badly I wanted to see him in concert. Although I knew it wasn’t happening any time soon as he had some vocal issues. The change of range was obvious in his stay-at-home singles. Then in August 2024, out of nowhere, he released a new single and announced a new album. In the announcement, he mentioned he had made great progress with his illness and was on the path of recovery. As fate would have it, I was dealing with obscure health issues for the past few years. I told my friends that Khalil must really have struggled because only people who did would say things like the path of recovery. Only they knew it was a long journey. I felt the strongest hope for my own recovery from the fact that he was able to make a new album. Khalil looked really thin in the promo videos, and his vocal range was so limited throughout the album. However, I knew he was getting better, so I was happy. He seemed happy about the music, so I was also happy about that. One day in October, I was in my car, listening to The Dreamer, cruising through the city. It was my happiest and most hopeful day in a very long time.
In February, I went to a Mandopop singer’s concert. My friends and I were joking about how crazy the ticket price was. I quietly told myself that when Khalil toured again, I’d go in a heartbeat no matter the cost. In the early a.m. of March 1, just when I was setting my phone to airplane mode before bed, I got a message from a high school friend. It was a link preview. The truncated title said, “After struggling with a stubborn illness for the past 5 years with a positive attitude, Khalil Fong.” I didn’t need the whole sentence. My heart might have had skipped a beat. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. I couldn’t feel. I stumbled to bed.
Dear Khalil, thank you. I miss you. I’m all too lucky to have your music. I will continue down the path of recovery, and I’d like to believe in some ways I’m also doing it for you now. I’ll remember how people called me by your name long before there was Timothée Chalamet. I hope I can do your kind heart proud. I hope you found peace — if I know you at all, you did.
* * *
The year was 2009. An album with an orange cover caught my eye. The first song was titled Singalongsong. One word; no space. How cool. I put it on, and it went: I wrote this song. It’s not too long...
April 28, 2023Elizabeth Spiers in A Defense of Jeremy Strong (and All the Strivers With No Chill):
The real question, then, is what is worth striving for? There is a difference between pointlessly toiling away for a company and working hard because you enjoy it, or you care about what you do, or most crucially, you are trying to economically advance. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do better than your parents did. Making an effort — even an over-the-top effort like Mr. Strong’s — should not be embarrassing. We strivers understand this because we’ve never been able to achieve great successes without that effort.
It could be unfortunate that my most relatable TV characters are Kendall Roy, Amy Lau, and Danny Cho, but I think it at least is fortunate that the screen content is now diverse enough I can see myself from a third person’s view.
I think parts of my constant feeling of stress, anxiety, and burnout coming from I want to believe I’m a chill and cool person and that I’m probably not — I’m as a wannabe as one can be. Maybe I can be way happier if I have the courage to face my true self: a striver with no chill.
One comment of the article said:
I think strivers are often also pleasers, or at least they want recognition that they’ve done well. My mom told me that you shouldn’t live your life worried about what other people think (she was born in 1924 for some perspective). And that’s the antidote to the problem this article poses. If you’re smart enough to earn your success and the fruits of your work, then enjoy it, share it, and don’t worry about what people who don’t matter think.
That seems to be the other key ingredient of the formula for happiness.
At the end of the day, it’s ok to care so much about what I care about, and in the meantime, for my own sanity, it’s also good to keep in mind that the things I care so much about are probably not the most important things in the world.
October 28, 2022If you know, you know.
It all started when I needed a keyboard and a trackpad that can be easily switched between my work and personal laptop since the whole working from home episode had begun.
A quick Google search led me to the Logitech MX Keys and the Logitech MX Master 3, a universally praised productivity combo. Order was placed and soon I’d have the ideal WFH setup. Seemingly easy enough.
The devices arrived in a few days. The pairing was simple. I could now switch between my work and personal laptop with a single unplug and plug of a thunderbolt cable from the monitor which also served as a hub while everything else kept wireless. Things were going great and then the devil emerged from all the places I didn't anticipate.
The first stop was the keyboard. After typing on either a Mac laptop or a Magic Keyboard without numeric keypad for over 10 years, I forgot the compact layout was different from that of a full sized keyboard. Having the Fn key located in a different location and having the Command key not directly under X or , gave me an abundance of errors. I also wasn't too keen on the size of a full keyboard. The extra length from the numeric keypad meant the pointer device had to be placed further away from the center of the desk and that seemed unnecessary. Surely I’d get used to all this soon, thought I. I did, except I couldn't quite shake off the itch for finding something better, something perfect.
To research I began and to my deepest regret, I found the dazzling world of mechanical keyboard. My adventure with mechanical keyboard was filled with YouTube videos, Reddit discussions, purchases, and returns. I didn't like any of the keyboards I tried because they all had a thing or two that weren’t perfect. I didn't know where to go next, so it was only natural I turned my attention to the mouse.
If using a third party keyboard on a Mac meant preferences and compromises, using a third party mouse on a Mac was simply pain. The scrolling was horrendous. This was Apple’s fault. Luckily a little tool called Mos stood up and solved it for me. MX Master 3 did great in the gesture department. I was able to replicate all the trackpad gestures plus some more. However Logitech’s software was so buggy that the mouse would freeze up randomly when the software crashed and relaunched in the background. MX Master 3’s scroll wheel was a weird case. The magnetic scroll wheel would have been the best scroll wheel ever made if it were well executed. It would have been so smooth and so silent. Unfortunately in reality, it made squeaky noises and the scrolling would skip to be registered every so often. I thought I had a defected unit, but a replacement came in worse, so I had to conclude that the design was flawed.
In the end, I realized I couldn't use a pointer device that bothered me so often, and while the Magic Keyboard couldn't make the thock typing sound (which was delightful indeed), I was so comfortable with it and that was all I needed. In the amount of time I spent finding the perfect solution, I could have paired and re-paired the Magic Keyboard and the Magic Trackpad a million times.
The detour wasn't that bad of an incident on its own but the wanting, the obsession, of always finding the perfect everything — the perfect keyboard, the perfect to-do app, the perfect decision — was so energy draining and time consuming, energy and time can be spent to enrich life in so many ways.
The perfect something doesn't exist and I already knew that.
The obsession has become so ingrained. I wrote this one to keep myself accountable in burying it over and over again.
April 14, 2021Gabe Weatherhead is rediscovering Mac apps:
Todoist is still my daily driver for tasks. When my calendar starts to look like an overstuffed sausage, Todoist is how I get things done. It’s ubiquitous, intuitive, and that natural language input is like magic.
[...]
I’ve written a lot of words about Pinboard for bookmarks. I’ve enjoyed it but the apps were not feeling very polished or well supported. Then Raindrop.io came along and captured my heart.
When someone like Gabe is enjoying using Todoist and Raindrop.io instead of OmniFocus or Pinboard, it’s hard not to take a pause and realize how the software landscape has changed in the Apple ecosystem.
December 12, 2020The Phantom Menace is my favorite Star Wars film. Walking into the theatre as an eight year old, I had no clue I was about to be taken on a journey in an enchanting extraterrestrial world that I would love for so many years to come. For the rest of the summer I watched it on DVD every a few days and had countless lightsaber battles with friends. Qui-Gon was wise and aplomb. Obi-Wan was young and skillful. Padmé was smart and brave. Anakin was the best racer and mechanist in the whole galaxy. And Jar Jar was, absolutely hilarious.
Almost twenty years later, I watched a mind boggling documentary on this film. On the one hand it was thrilling to see the never before anticipation. I envy of the ones who experienced that in person. It must have been like being a theatre lover in NYC at the height of Hamilton in 2016. The crowd reaction — how do I put this — can probably only be found at a K-pop concert today. On the other hand, it had killed me to learn about the utterly disturbing truth of the assault Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd received following the release of the film. It was painful to imagine what Lloyd and Best had gone through. The bullying I experienced as a child was nothing compared to the death threats Lloyd and Best had to face but that was already hard enough. Jar-jar and young Anakain are great characters to me if that wasn't obvious from the beginning of the article. Yet people could be so narrow minded when things didn't meet their expectation. As I grew older, I started hearing about how bad Episode I was. I became reluctant to show my affection for it because I didn't want to be thought to have a less superior taste. Wanting to blend in and lack of critical thinking, I followed the public and became part of the problem.
Sounded all too familiar? People criticized The Last Jedi in many ways similar to The Phantom Menace. Then the target became Kelly Marie Tran who played Rose Tico in the film. Tran experienced major online bullying and harassment. People wanted someone to blame on and this time it was Tran. The irony was The Last Jedi might be the only film worth remembering in the sequel trilogy. The Force Awakens was a nostalgic treat for the fans and The Rise of Skywalker never found the story it wanted to tell. People had every right to disagree with directions taken by The Last Jedi and express their disappointment but attacking personally the ones who worked on the film or other people for liking it is plainly wrong and disgusting.
The Phantom Menace was my first Star Wars film, just like The New Hope was yours, and The Last Jedi could be theirs.
Be curious, not judgmental. May curiosity be with the galaxy.
