Reading Alone, Singing in Chorus
A reading note on the Chinese literary magazine Chorus, from unsold copies and green-train nostalgia to short fiction, male-authored sex scenes, and the limits of collective fantasy.
An Anchor for a World That Won’t Hold Still
In a time of shifting identities and future shock, the search for a stable self runs into a paradox: neither total self-reliance nor external approval can hold. The answer may lie in a lifelong action.
DEMO Spring 2010: The Award Winners, From Document Signing to Voice Analytics
A roundup of DEMO Spring 2010 award winners, including Zosh, Everloop, Gwabbit Cloud Sync, Phone Halo, BlueSkies Hospitality, TAGtheLOOK, and MagInify Call Center.
Locked Out of GitHub by My Own 2FA: A Recovery Story
A first-person account of losing GitHub 2FA access when a self-hosted Vaultwarden instance failed, how SSH key recovery worked, and what backup and authentication safeguards followed.
MySQL utf8mb4: What Changes When You Pick a Collation
A practical look at utf8mb4 character sets and collations in MySQL, including default differences between 5.7 and 8.0, migration errors, and server-level settings.
Not All Self-Employed EPs Are the Same: Employment Pass vs. EntrePass
A look at Singapore's two self-employed pass routes, Employment Pass and EntrePass, and how renewal, dependants, Singpass and daily usability differ.
The City That Sinks, the Spring That Returns
A lyrical reflection on Venice, fleeting time, Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels, romantic self-deception, and the quiet return of spring after a winter of buried stories.
Reading The Plague in Three Layers: Disaster, Complicity, and Revolt
A three-layer reading of Albert Camus’s The Plague: disaster as separation, the plague as social evil, and resistance without illusions.
The Winter Arrives Anyway
A laid-off Midea veteran's internal post and Chairman Fang Hongbo's reply reveal the human cost of corporate retrenchment and one generation's fragile finances.
The Body I Inherited: A Rural Childhood of Illness and Needles
A first-person recollection of growing up with chronic illness in rural China, from folk needle treatments and borrowed vaccine money to penicillin shots, a tonsillitis doctor beyond the ridge, and years of herbal treatment for a breathing condition.