Posted in anime, Art, Hobbies, tagged Blue Box, Drawing, Kouji Miura on June 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Karen: Does she [Chinatsu] sometimes stare off into space?
Taiki: She does.
Karen: And then when you start eating snacks, she stares at you instead?
Taiki: She communicates a lot with her eyes. It almost feels like time slow down around her. I don’t hate it.
Posted in Daily Life, Travel, tagged Central Park, City, NBA Final, New York on June 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
This is my first time back in New York since 2019. It hasn’t lost its energy and reminds me a lot of Hong Kong—fast-paced, diverse, and full of character.
One thing I loved about big cities is how they support all kind of niche interest. You see people sharing tricks at magic shops, opening card boxes or battling TCG in card stores, and hunting collectibles. And of course, one can find everything from major brands to flagship stores. There’s a well-stocked Kinokuniya bookstore with plenty of anime goods, manga, and illustration books, some of which I couldn’t even find in stores across Asia.
If the New York Knicks had made it to the NBA Finals, I imagine the city would’ve gone wild following the games. But maybe because they lost to the Pacers, I spotted people walking around in OKC jerseys instead.
One of my favorite routines here is waking up early to run a loop around Central Park as the sun rises, then find a cozy diner for a hearty breakfast and a cup of coffee.
Thanks to the city’s cosmopolitan nature, it’s easy to find all kinds of food. Unlike in some places, I can easily get cooked vegetables, kombucha, and even natto at a Japanese grocery store for my daily needs.
PS: David Perell on living in NY.
Posted in Books, Happiness, Links, tagged Adam Smith, Henry Oliver, Jane Austen on June 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Henry Oliver wrote an article comparing two of my favourite authors, Jane Austen and Adam Smith. Both have a deep understanding of human psychology and behaviour. I’ve admired Knightley’s and Darcy’s character and self-command ever since I read Jane Austen’s novels when I was young.
Excerpts:
Smith argued that people want to be praised and to be praiseworthy. That they want to be loved and to be deserving of love. Smith says we must be virtuous to be happy. His virtues are prudence, benevolence and justice. His vices are pride and vanity. “The proud and the vain man . . . are constantly dissatisfied,” he writes. The route to virtue is through “self-command”. Therefore we must achieve “superiority over the most ungovernable passions of human nature”.
Self-command is a question of willpower, education, habit. It comes from being bred in “the bustle and business of the world” when we are exposed to “violence and injustice of faction”. To those who are miserable, Smith advises in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “do not mourn in the solitude of darkness . . . Live with strangers, with those who know nothing or care nothing about your misfortune.”
As the economists Bohanon and Vachris write, both Smith and Austen prioritise self-control as a means of achieving balance and self-improvement. By attaining the skill of self-command, Marianne is able to cultivate virtue.
What marks out the capacity to improve, in Smith, is being able to see ourselves as an “impartial observer” would see us…Emma is unable to improve morally until she takes Knightley’s advice. Like Marianne, she must learn to see like those with more self-command. It is when Emma sees things as Knightley does that she is able to reform. “I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me,” she acknowledges to Knightley.
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.
Posted in anime, Art, Hobbies, tagged Blue Box, Drawing, Kouji Miura on June 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“It’s tough working hard but never feeling like you’re improving…When there’s someone you want to beat and you make that your goal, all you can see are the things you can’t do. You stop giving yourself credit for the things you can. He [Taiki] acts like he has to cross a desert without water to get anywhere. But there’s no need for that. He faces his issues so diligently that he forgets to keep himself hydrated.” – Haryu
“Well, I know what it feels like to want to progress faster. Even people who do remember to hydrate still end up quitting. But…if you don’t want to give up, you just have to keep moving your feet. Because standing still hurts the most.” – Chinatsu
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