A sporadically updated log about what I’m doing, reading and thinking about
Updated on 02 July, 2026
two Shih-Tzu puppies I had the pleasure of dog-sitting for a week
from a morning spent at Cubbon Park in early June
Work and Projects
I’ve been working on a massive backlog of documentation, spanning literal years. For all the documentation I do at work, I am equally bad at doing it for myself, so I’ve set out to change that. One thing that helped massively is not worrying about the form it should take or where it should live. All I’ve decided to do is document the major projects of the last 6 years in excruciating detail, in my Obsidian. Only once that’s out of the way will I decide how to structure and/or publish them.
I wrote on Kindred Spirits about the virtues of a career manifesto, calling it “an act of intense, concentrated attention”. I think I managed to succinctly capture what a career manifesto is and can do for people who write them:
A career manifesto is both a filter and a flare. As a filter, it repels the consensus-good in favour of the personal-great. As a flare, it attracts the rare, specific fits, the Hell Yeah opportunities. Once you’ve said plainly what you want and how you operate, you become findable by the people and situations that fit and—just as usefully—unbearable to the ones that don’t.
Play
My little balcony garden has been thriving, despite—or due to?—my spare care. I tend to be rather unfussy about my garden, so I’ve gravitated towards hardy plants that look after themselves, expect to be watered only once a week and pruned as often as I prune my own hair (so, not frequently). My bougainvillea is thriving, and my two lime trees (Gandharaj and regular lime) have borne sweet, citrusy little fruits. My frangipani made it back from the brink of death and the leaves are now a delicious deep green, although there are no flowers to be seen yet. (That is to be expected; it takes anywhere between 1-3 years for the plant to grow mature enough to bloom).
one of the many Gandharaj limes growing in my balcony
a pile of books from when I was re-categorising my bookshelves
I’ve been off Instagram since the beginning of June, and that made me realise how accurate a description “addictive” is. In the first week, I felt what I call “phantom scrolls” and didn’t have anywhere to direct that energy. But by the second week, it was as if the app never existed, and the rest of my life neatly flowed in to occupy the gaps in time. My friends and family are not so thrilled, though, because they’re having to download reels to send via WhatsApp or bring me up to speed on the latest trends so they can reference them in conversations. But I think I’ve successfully broken the addiction and hope not to go back for the foreseeable future.
More and more, my attention and interest turns towards reading. I now have subscriptions to The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books, which I rotate through every morning and lunch break. My Kobo Clara is possibly the best electronic investment I’ve made in the recent years, and it keeps me company literally everywhere I go. I read 12 books in June including Kohinoor, a rollicking non-fiction book about the world’s most infamous diamond by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple.
Now that the count of books in my personal library is pushing 600, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a second IKEA Billy bookcase. It’s increased in price since I bought the first one three years ago, but I’m relieved they had the same design and wood tone in stock. I’m feeling all the more excited about making my study more library-like.
Whenever I wash the dishes or do something menial, I’ve been listening to the Sherlock & Co. audio drama podcast. It’s like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes set in the 2020s London we know and love, still documented by Dr John Watson but this time in the form of a true crime podcast. I find it really immersive, almost movie-like albeit without the visuals. The production value is off the charts, and the signature score is fantastic. It’s also remarkable how the voice actors for Sherlock (Harry Attwell) and Watson (Paul Waggott) sound exactly like Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which really helps the immersion.