Fiddler on the MRT

I imagine I am stating the obvious here, but easily 80 % of my fellow commuters (me among them obviously) have their necks tilted while tapping away on their smart(ish) devices. I guess that is now the new norm everywhere, but it did strike my eye when having just relocated over here. Of course you had people fiddling with their equipment in buses and metros in Helsinki, but not even close to this amount of people across all age groups. This might have changed in the past 21+ months though. Remains to be seen.

The constant fiddling is not limited to killing boredom while commuting. I have seen couples spending a romantic evening in a posh restaurant with stunning views from the 70th floor and both of them are deeply buried in their own devices. I took the liberty of noticing with certain sad happiness, that at least one of them was busy bringing more money to the Finnish mobile app phenomenon, Supercell.

While on the topic of commuting: I am not typically fond of allowing my social media existence to be used to promote any commercial products, but this time I need to give praise to Bose QC20 headphones. I just bought a new set over the last weekend to get me prepared for my next upcoming travels. I have grown so dependant on active noise cancellation headphones in planes that I was forced to replace my previous headphones (AKG NC 495) which broke during my business trip to China a month ago. I gave the Bose an acid test of ambient noises of Singapore in the morning and honestly was blown away. This is by far the most effective noise cancellation I have ever heard of. Or not heard of!? I was walking in true bubble of silence getting immersed in Portishead potpourri through Spotify and pretty much hearing nothing else. It was magically surreal to see people, buses, cars, trains, but not hearing anything but Beth Gibbons voice over trip hop beats drilling into my head. I didn't even feel the urge to fiddle my phone to pass the time.

PS. So that marketers don't have a field day on how social media affects buying behaviours, I need to state that the sound quality of these in-ear headphones is not as great as big over the ear model that I used to have. Especially the low bass sound I find is lacking. However it's the noise cancellation that is FTW.

PS2. The selection of Portishead was inspired by the fact that they had just performed live the other day in a Finnish music festival in Ilosaari. Wish I had been there.

PS3. With absolutely no relation to fiddling mobile devices, killing ambient sounds or really anything at all, I need to share the weirdest dream in a while which I just remembered by all of a sudden. My old client had drawn a donkey's head (!) as a failed rating on my exam for religion class (?!). I had refused to answer correctly because of the appallingly denominational way the questions were posed.

Quick Zhi Ya during lunch break

Over the past 1,5 weeks I have been even more tied with my laptop than normally and finally my lower back started to protest. Today I decided to pick up a quick lunch from the global fast food chain (I had McSpicy because non spicy stuff starts to taste bland) and then head out for 30 minute back massage next to the office. The traditional Chinese massage feels actually often more painful than good while receiving the treatment, however right after the session I could really feel the blood circulation running again. And thus feeling great I returned to my nerdy kingdom and resumed slouching over my laptop.

Biggest relocation hurdle yet

Surprisingly I have yet to comment on what would have to be one the biggest changes in everyday life when one migrates from Western countries to Asia. Something that is apparent almost on a daily basis. And I am not still used to it at all. Neither is my son. Something so profound that unlearning my Western behavior, which has embedded itself somewhere in the forebrain with other basic human functions such as eating, sleeping and controlling body temperature, seems utterly impossible.

Appreciation day

Nerd appreciates. Twice. 

On a totally unrelated note: had a weird sense of surreality while returning from post dengue check up. There I was in the middle of skyscrapers in the normal 35 degree weather listening on my headphones to what I could only label as shamanism influenced Finnish hip hop by an artist called Asa.

Approving nod

The nerd in me really appreciates the fact that SG government has rolled out free fast Internet access all over the city in major public places. Then again in a country this size it's relatively easy to ensure total 4G coverage as well. Anyhoo, free wlan is truly a measure of civilization.

In a hole in the ground there lived a...

One has to wonder what is really the point in relocating to eastern time zones, if not to have ultimate bragging rights on seeing all the big movies good 6 hours before they are released in Finland? However laws of karma apparently doesn't treat well cheaters like me. The Hobbit is being released one day ahead in Europe compared to Asia. I need to try to settle for some minor boasting like seeing the movie not only in HFR 3D, but in Imax , which has still not landed in Finland. That and the sheer hilarious scene of numbers of asian interpretations of Gandalf around me.