vampyrichamster

This year, I decided to make Jamaican fruit cake for Christmas instead of my usual kind. I got fascinated with the stuff after the local Grocery Outlet brought in a pile of German ready-made loaves. The German ones were really more of a chocolate cake with orange and rum notes. Great flavour for a cake, but not a fruit cake. It turns out the key difference between Jamaican fruit cake and the English kind is that Jamaican fruit cake blends its fruit into the batter. The Jamaican version also makes liberal use of rum and fortified wine, which makes immense historical sense in the Carribbean. Incidentally, this cake is called Jamaican black cake in its native locale, where it is used as the standard at weddings and other life celebrations. This also makes historical sense because the traditional English wedding cake is a fruit cake, and fruit cake celebrates the wealth of families with its rich preserved fruits and sugar. The cake is in fact black, as the batter is coloured with a liberal dose of basic caramel syrup, a lot like Malay beehive cake.

The recipe I tried results in a cake with a density resembling an English boiled pudding. It's intensely moist from the fruit puree and gets even heavier after aging, again with rum and fortified wine, preferably. The taste is somewhere between a very traditional fruit cake and a red wine-flavoured fruit leather. Next time I make this I might try to harmonise it with the German version by adding substantial cocoa powder to balance out the red wine/red fruit. This is one of those weird cases where the mulled wine spices that go into the cake somehow got swallowed up by the rum. My idea is to use the chocolate to bring out the inherent spiciness in the rum (if you know me, I don't skimp on spices in cake, I double them; imagine a fruit cake flavour so overwhelming it cancels that out). In more acts of heresy, I might even only blend half the fruits so there's more textural variety.

On a late night with crackers and a warm cat, I decided to re-watch Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes, which I think I first saw a couple of years ago and thought was good. Dennis Nilsen was a British (more accurately Scottish, even if he killed in London) serial killer from the early eighties, who famously got found out when his neighbour reported a clogged pipe and they found bits of flesh in the sewage. He targeted young, at-risk men, many of whom were homeless or drifters. As the documentary's name suggests, it has actual snippets of Nilsen discussing his biography while in prison. Hearing his voice again, I realised I was listening to what my late cat Dorian would have sounded like if he were human being. Nilsen has a droll, actually rather polite personality on tape. He tries to come off as a sort of tragic gentleman outcast with a black sense of humour. Very matter-of-fact about killing. Not quite trying to be an edge lord, really, more like a sort of imitation literary man, perhaps the type prone to consumption? At one point, he critiques the prison curry, which he tries to better with "West Indian sauce". He comments on how the local cooks probably don't know what they're doing and how the meat is textured soy protein, eventually conceding the curry is "not bad, actually", probably due to the West Indian sauce. There was a while where we were under-feeding Dorian when we first got him without realising it. The poor boy would eat anything in sight, even breaking into bowls of instant ramen while we were out. He developed a taste for people food, which he kept all his life. For about thirteen years, he taste-tested all my curries. Well, he taste-tested virtually everything I ate. You couldn't convince me he wasn't testing it for quality. I'd eat a kimchi katsu sando and he'd be on the other side nibbling it with me--and no, not because I allowed him to! That Food Inspector Cat would very much comment on prison curry if he could, passing judgment on the kitchen and hot sauce while he was at it.

If Dorian were to describe himself, I could see him describing himself as a sort of dark gentleman gourmand, possibly prone to a little thuggery. He would narrate his tales with a grandiose air if pressed, very politely, while going out later for a bit of night air and backstabbing. Before he was caught, Nielsen hid bodies under his floorboards at his first flat prior to burning them in his backyard. Police would later sift bits of bone out of the garden soil as they struggled to identify his victims. Out of potentially fifteen victims, only eight were ever identified. Dorian initially brought hom these terrified, catatonic little mice I would calmly pick up and set free out of sight. Eventually, he concluded rather than have his hard-earned prey released, he'd bring then to us dead. During his hungry phase--which was utterly our fault and I'll never stop feeling guilty about it--he ate a fairly large rat I walked in on. I wouldn't at all be surprised if he ate his kills relatively often. During the winter possibly a year or two after we adopted him, I found a couple of stiff rats tucked under fallen leaves in the backyard. While he was around, the gardener who came to rake our yard would frequently complain about finding dead rodents. We will never know Dorian's true kill count nor where all the bodies are buried. Dorian was a quiet and discreet murderer.

Watching the Nilsen documentary wasn't all random reminiscing about my dear, sweet cat. The reason Nilsen could kill as indiscriminately as he did for some five years in London without anyone noticing was the same reason quite a lot of serial killers got away with it during their golden age--he targeted people the cops and public were more likely to ignore. In Nilsen's specific case, his victims consisted of down-and-out youth left behind by a poor economy. He deliberately went after men who had problems or knowingly engaged in risky behaviour to survive. The documentary is clear that his victims were in their circumstances hardly of their own will. Specifically in Nilsen's case, he also took advantage of the fact being gay in late seventies and early eighties England was primarily a closeted affair. People at the time clearly would rather not see or talk about the fact gay people lived among them. Victims, commensurately, were ignored by police when they survived and reported something was wrong. It's one of those things I appreciate in balanced documentaries. Not the salaciousness, rather, the social environment of the place and time that enabled a killer to go unnoticed. We say serial killers are rarer these days because awareness of basic safety has improved, people are more suspicious of strangers and surveillance tech is everywhere, but this is not universally true. Even armed with the knowledge of a modern city dweller, the fact remains people who fall under the radar are still being targeted by people with the mind and means to do so. For example, Bruce McArthur was active between 2010 and 2018. He targeted mostly South and West Asian men in Toronto's gay village--men who were migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, quite a few of who were closeted at risk of ostracism to their conservative Muslim communities. Toronto police at the time faced criticism in being slow to notice a serial killer in the gay community and slow to connect a string of disappearances involving brown-skinned men. At least, the Toronto police were subject to several internal and external reviews and eventually formed a dedicated missing persons unit.

The world we live in now is kind of oddly swivelling itself back towards darker times that many of us were hoping had finally improved since we were children. I am honestly rather weary of how people who until recently were easy targets for discrimination are once more being called out to distract us from the important problems happening around us. It seems like whenever a whiff of something serious comes up; a widening poverty gap; a bad job market; inflation; extralegal military action on foreign targets; some hired goon in the wings has to shout, "Look out! It's the gays!" or "Men are wearing skirts and women are wearing trousers!" or "Baby killers!" to draw away attention. It's an effective distraction. It's absolutely lame if you thought about it. But well, if we thought about it. In the meanwhile, the "people over there" who get pointed out are effectively re-traumatised in the public spotlight for no wrong they did. This is the problem. We need to be constantly aware that this is a distraction. It's a tactic. It's not the real issue. That's how you get rage from stuff you read on social media while you were trying to tell the news from the alarmists.

You've heard me talk about my decadent cat-based lifestyle before, but how exactly does one achieve a decadent cat? It's surprisingly easy, assuming one isn't starting with, "First, obtain a cat." But even that is fairly simple to solve. Many fine organisations exist to help connect cats with safe, warm and caring homes. If you have space in your heart and a place for a cat, adopting one from a reputable organisation is the best thing you can do. Then, all you need to do is ensure your cat knows it is the most loved critter in all the world. Treats help. So do kisses on the head. As we know, cats who are insufficiently kissed on the head might go feral. If you do your job right, eventually, your cat will loudly berate you at inconvenient times, demand you follow its will and step on you whenever it likes. When that happens, congratulations! You have achieved a decadent cat.

Inside Voice: Hey, is it me or did we switch genres for a second?
Me: What. No, no, no. Absolutely not!

Cats are lovely little alien beings. They don't think like we do, which is what makes them so fascinating to watch. I see my cat as a curious, affectionate little murderer who just wants to help. He shares his kills from a place of love. My husband simply assumes all cats are adorable sociopaths and extrapolates their intent from there. Between the two of us must lie a perfectly reasonable middle ground.

Even if you cannot have a pet right now, whether or not that is a cat, you can still help a creature out there have the best chance at life. From dogs and hamsters to coyotes and pikas, there are an immense number of places and people who work hard to help those furry, scaled and slick. There's usually somewhere like that near where each of us live if we just look. Your nearest local organisation might even be the local animal care and control centre. The one in San Francisco where I got Moggie helps with both domesticated animals and wildlife that get entangled in urban settings. I saw a guy walk in with a box of kittens he found left in his neighbourhood. There was a room with rabbits and birds, and even reptiles. They liaise with Yggdrassil Urban Wildlife Rescue, which helps orphaned and injured wildlife from within the SF Bay Area. A friend of mine helps out there and it is a legit cool organisation. I went to a recent emergency fundraiser they had and met a really lovely little baby possum; bought a pretty T-shirt with a suitably in-theme Norse tree motif and had an amazing vegan cardamom jam cookie. I am told somewhere on their grounds is the roundest, cutest rescue squirrel around.

It seems I am fated to be a celery farmer. Mumm-ra I and II (the Ever-living), my celery plants spawned from a dying stump my husband saved one winter, are now clearly joined by Mumm-ra III and IV (probably Ever-living), and if I am not mistaken, Mumm-ra V and VI may also be sprouting in a couple of previously "empty" pots. This is all well and good, if my relationship with celery as a vegetable wasn't quite so tenuous. When I was little, my mum had a soup she cheerfully called ABC soup--celery, carrot and tomato in clear stock--that often showed up for dinner. I don't know why, but my tastebuds registered the boiled tomatoes and celery together as a weird clash. To this day, I can't look at a minestrone straight. My dad, when he tried hard to cook for his kids, often made stir-fried celery. It's a little better than minestrone, but again, something about celery stir-fried in soy sauce wasn't working for me. Stir-fried celery shows up a lot in Asian-American stir-fries too, probably because it's an abundantly cheap vegetable. Any stir-fried celery I encounter in my take-out goes to my spouse. And here I am, growing these ever-living bushels of celery.

But wait, you say. I like Cajun food. The base of Cajun food is the Holy Trinity, their mirepoix of onions, peppers and celery. Mirepoix is where the vast majority of the celery we grow ends up. I can tolerate any amount of mirepoix from whatever cuisine. The celery works with the other ingredients to create a specific flavour profile in a mirepoix. If mirepoix tasted mainly like celery, that's not a mirepoix. I use celery stalks and leaves in my cooking, as the leaves are a fairly common garnish in Malaysia. It's used to bring out the aroma of soups, especially for noodles, everything from simple clear broths to fairly spicy curries. It garnishes chicken soto, one of my favourite clear broths (which is taken with either or both noodles and rice). Also, it's worth noting that while clear broth with tomatoes and celery in it is still repellent, celery as part of a tomato sauce, like a marinara, is just fine. So again, as mirepoix, flavourant or garnish, finely-chopped celery shows up in a good number of our meals.

I do not, by the way, kill any of the plants that decide to survive my garden. Even the celeries I take decent precautions against to prevent spawning. That's honestly what being a local-vore is all about. The core of eating local is eating what grows seasonally where you live, the closer to you the better. (Thereby reducing the carbon footprint of your food.) I think it's also a lot about being creative with the things that will grow locally during the season where you live. Put more bluntly, you're also forced to make do with the plants that will grow for you. Before eating local was trendy, there was a time when most of the world didn't have the immense variety of produce in local markets--or for that matter many markets--than it does today. I'm not even talking about the ancient world yet. This was true even in the 1980s, when I was a child. Malaysia was one of the luckier countries, I think, because the majority of our cuisine combined Malay, Chinese and Indian cuisines in whole or part. That meant basic ingredients of those cuisines were easier to access for a large number of people. I can't, for example, imagine pandan, spring onions and black pepper being out of reach unless you lived very, very off the map. In fact, some of these things might very well have been growing in one's home garden.

I still remember when fresh button mushrooms first started being a common sight in KL (they were tinned for a chunk of my childhood). Even the tinned mushrooms were kind of a treat, as they still had to be imported. My surprise was finding out the mushrooms were originally white. I knew about straw mushrooms as white mushrooms, but who knew these uniformly brown things in tins were white? An American friend told me that when yellow bell peppers were introduced in American supermarkets, they were considered odd in the 1980s. It turns out these varieties were originally Dutch and exported from Holland. Button mushrooms are grown in Malaysia these days (though also substantially imported), the same way candy-coloured bell peppers are grown in the US. The heirloom vegetable revival brought a pile of zany new colours, flavours and shapes to market out in San Francisco, albeit at an heirloom-esque price. California is particularly lucky for local-vores because the state grows the vast majority of America's fresh produce. Farmer's markets in SF, loci for local-vores, have impressive piles of things I'd say we're lucky to get locally. Bok choy and mangoes were not things I thought I'd find in an open-air market in the US. Personally, I wished the variety of kales would expand a little away from the European types (note: tough and bitter). Bok choy is a great start, but explaining to my spouse that kale is from the same family as the delicious, tender green vegetable I got at the Vietnamese market as the intimidating yet clearly built-to-last purple feather-duster I forgot to remove from our produce box isn't convincing. They're all mustard greens! (Also note: Blanching and seasoning with vinegar can make even the latter taste edible to someone whose childhood wasn't an endurance test of mustard greens.)

Here lies the crux of my present ramble: without the influx of tasty produce varietals, eating local would be...a more difficult creative process. We can think big, like how without the Columbine exchange or our ancestors exchanging seeds with neighbours everywhere they moved, we'd be growing a lot less types of food where we are. Just without the Columbine exchange, there'd be no potatoes, squashes, capsicums, tomatoes or corn. Trying to think of my food without garlic (domesticated probably 4000 BCE in Central Asia) or ginger (5000 BCE, Southeast Asia) makes my blood curdle. Don't get me started on chicken eggs (domesticated 8,000 years ago in Thailand). Even for a brain that likes to imagine recipes with historical subtractions and menus proper for the cradles of civilisation, there are possibilities too apocalyptic to consider.

If we think small, the lack of agricultural innovation with the plants people had in place would still be pretty bad, honestly. Remember kale? The reason I somehow managed to still like mustard greens as an adult is because ancestral Asians decided they needed to expand their repertoire of Brassica juncea as far as they could stretch it. In Asia, mustard green flavours go from mild, almost spinach-like varieties to peppery and even somewhat astringent types. There are types for soft leaves, firm leaves, tender stems and crisp stems--or combinations thereof. Some varieties are actually grown primarily for the stems alone. As an adult, I'm fascinated by the varieties of mustard greens I didn't know other parts of Asia had. So in spite of the hillocks of greens I was made to eat as a child (greens were cheap, my mother's a health nut and she's Chinese--which somehow combines to maximise stuffing small children with vegetables), I was able to remember in some corner of my lizard brain that mustard greens taste nice.

There's a great cookbook I have that tries to recreate from an archaeological perspective what ancient Vikings ate. This was primarily cereals and legumes, mostly porridges. Although they had bread, it was pointed out grinding flour takes significant effort for a small amount without large-scale facilities. Women were the primary millers. Female skeletons have been found with torn joints commensurate to the ones used to work a hand quern. It gave me a new respect for liquified cereals, whether porridged or fermented, as a source of nutrition. The book's primary emphasis is imagining how the different regions of Scandinavia ate with the seasons, making do with the last bit of cheese and dried meat in the pantry before harvest season, and flavouring the sameness of everyday staples to stretch what you had. While our ancestors' tolerance for sameness was forced primarily by circumstance, even back then, cooks were clearly faced with the same dilemmas we have in squeezing satisfaction from our meals. People then and now do still eat to fill our bellies, yes, but I can't imagine that, if given the choice, anyone would continuously just fill their bellies. This is as baffling as saying poverty is a choice. Incidentally, the other takeaway from that cookbook was yet again that meat in virtually every culture was once a celebratory food item. Particularly important for anyone trying to eat local is understanding the impact the Green Revolution had in feeding people who once otherwise struggled to obtain a nutritiously balanced diet. One of its offshoots was the increased availability of cheap meat protein, which requires the most intensive inputs to create. Cooked cereals/legumes flavoured with vegetables and occasionally with (usually preserved) animal protein, whether land animal or aquatic, was the daily staple everywhere before the advent of cheap chicken. I guess what I'm trying to say here is the ideal local-vore diet is probably a reflection of that. Before anyone starts yelling at me about nitrates, I do want to point out there are other methods of preservation to stretch our local proteins, outside of eating less meat in general. Which reminds me, it's been a while since I had stockfish. (It's ancient! It's a seriously ancient food!)

We have passed the month where everything in America is inexplicably flavoured with turkey or pumpkin spice. During his Thanksgiving vacation, my spouse asked if I could make a cheese omelet for breakfast. Far be it from me to deny my beloved spouse a meal he specifically asks for, but every time I make an omelet, the gods roll a die. About ninety percent of the time, the omelet will crack and break before I can flip it into a neat fold. Please let's not start on the mild nightmare that is a Japanese-style rolled omelet. I have only been trying and failing for years to make one. I am utterly convinced the League of People Who Hate Omelets have not cursed and poxxed my ability to make a proper omelet. You cannot convince me this League does not exist. Up until I was in my early twenties, I recall folding omelets stuffed with cream fillings. How then, does a thing I learned to make as an adolescent turn into a broken, semi-scrambled egg almost every time? Frying pans that turn out perfectly nice crepes somehow hate my omelets. Iron skillets I have trusted to cook almost anything in and have hate my omelets.

(Note: The remaining ten percent when the omelet folds, something else will inevitably go wrong--the egg might break a bit at the seams, the omelet is always too browned, something!)

By way of explanation how we got to omelets, I should state that eggs are my very favourite food ever, so imperfectly cooking even one to me is like a small culinary crime. I like bird eggs and fish eggs. Not sea turtle eggs though. Those are weird. You're supposed to suck out the insides--which are the consistency and flavour of the starting slime outside the first town in every RPG--after boring a hole through the shell, which has the equally distressing texture of wet brown paper. This is a delicacy in West Malaysia, where my family comes from. Probably also illegal or endangering sea turtles.

I have otherwise no problem with raw egg. I'm the type who can't truly enjoy sukiyaki without a raw egg to dip my food in. When I was last in Singapore, my husband correctly pointed out the region's "Asian runny egg thing". Along the Straits of Malacca and the Bornean coast, soft-boiled eggs with kaya toast is one of the major breakfast staples. Every time I'm out there, I try to have it as much as I do egg roti, along with a cup of Malaysia's bracingly strong and rich milk tea. "Runny egg" is more than breakfast too. Where I come from, adding an egg to virtually any set meal makes it a premium set meal. If you are familiar with the concept of onsen tamago by way of seeing it in your ramen or donburi, you have seen at least the mechanics of this in action. Bonus eggs show up on everything from fried rice to soup noodles to chicken chop with gravy meals. I personally add bonus poached eggs in my Cantonese-style sweet soups. A fresh egg cracked into your piping hot meal that then semi-cooks in the residual heat is something that feels strangely luxurious. It's what makes a special dish a specialty.

Outside of eggy goodness, we have at least figured out how to keep a collar on Moggie. We noticed one style of collar we got leaves a large loop of extra cloth when adjusted, which made it easier to snag on branches or get clawed off by a cat. Turns out the Little Black Cat Next Door, eternal frenemy of my cats, has a habit of cornering Moggie so he can't leave the yard next door when he visits. I don't blame the Little Black Cat. My cat is the one who keeps visiting other people's homes to have rude conversations with their cats. So I got the idea that if we were able to pin down that extra loop somehow, the collar would have less chance of accidental removal. My original plan was to sew it shut, but the collar is too thick for my needles. I then thought about tying even lengths of the looped part to the main body of the collar with yarn. I was going to use some nylon thread I had around for re-stringing beads, but nylon string is nigh impossible to tie with bare hands. I ultimately used butcher string. It's the only kind of yarn I have around, since I don't craft. I cannot craft. My sewing skills alone shame my family for seven generations. I just never inherited my maternal side of the family's penchant for creating physical pieces of art. But even a child can tie lengths of butcher string.

Moggie has now worn the same collar since Thanksgiving week. It stays snugly on. The bell jingles to reassure me that my cat is nearby when he's outside. The day after Thanksgiving, he came home with a sparrow and the collar because I have raised a serial killer. After letting me confirm the bird was dead, I turned to fetch him a distracting treat and he proceeded to tuck the bird safely away in his tummy with an audible, "Monch, monch." First wee lightbulb, get a collar with flashing lights. I saw these on dogs one night while walking home from dinner. They do in fact make glow-in-the-dark collars for cats in solid RGB or disco mode. Problem: my cat goes out primarily during the day. Unlike his older brother, Dorian, who habitually stayed out late and freaked us out by staying out all night a few times, Moggie is actually quite good about coming home for dinner. We've had less need to see if Moggie was pretending to be a bush in the dark, and I reckon a bird won't be helped by a lit collar in broad daylight. Second wee lightbulb, get a cowbell.

Seth: <instantly> No, that's a bad idea.

Yes, well, to be fair, although they do also sell cowbells for dogs and cats, getting one would bump me up from raising a menace towards local wildlife to being a source of noise pollution. Is that worse? A cat kills quietly. I've thought about buying more bells even if not a cowbell. My husband would be the first person to lodge a nuisance complaint. I'm also not trying to chase away ghosts.

The season has turned, darkness now comes early. This city might have trouble differentiating spring and summer, but it's great at suddenly turning autumn.

Our cat has lost six collars in six months. The last one lasted five days. We walked to the pet store on Sunday, put the collar on Monday and by Friday he returned a little moist and collar-free. He was then banned until my order of six collars arrived by mail, shaving chunks of our sanity in the process because we're boring people and our cat is easily bored. There are two theories as to where these missing collars wound up. The first says there's a small mound of cat collars waiting up on some errant roof or tree branch in a two-house radius (the cat's approximate range) just out of our sight. I've given up trying to put name tags on the collars, so we might never get them back. Also, because someone loves giant, fluffy cats, Moggie needs special ordered XL collars to fit his precious, just-over-standard-size neck. The second theory, mostly mine, hinges on my cat's most doggie-like trait, that is his enthusiastic approach to life using his entire body. When he gets from Point A to Point B, he ignores everything in front of him and anything else that falls to the side. Pill bottles? Don't care. Letters? Don't care. Random boxes of food? Eh. It's not really any better when he comes to a stop. I've saved my tea from his tail more times than I can count. It doesn't bother him one bit if his tail gets wet. I've seen him deliberately sit in standing water. His people exist for him to dead fall upon at his convenience. Frankly, if it's neither sturdy enough nor large enough, it doesn't matter in his space. Watching him amble about helps me understand the world a bit from Seth's perspective.

And so, I reckon his collars are actually caught on branches inside the monstrous jasmine wall that grows between my porch and the house next door, which features a cat tunnel (made over generations by neighbourhood cats) on the bottom and which my cat traverses over every day to torment someone else's cat. I keep staring at the monstrosity of gravity-defying jasmine and weedy ivy hoping to spot a bell or metal hardware to poke out. When I first moved in, I tried to pull out that ivy, but it's taken over the yard. There's a wooden trellis under the greenery, which when last visible was splintered and in dire shape, repaired in patches and seriously standing only because vines have grown so thickly it's become its own scaffolding. I continue to be impressed by its will to live. I suppose one of these days, I'll drag over a ladder and poke in more detail.

As always, my enemy to productivity is my decadent cat-based lifestyle. Very well-loved and decadent, the creature in question is curled in a curlicue of cat against me while I type, absorbing stress and motivation from my person like a sponge. We finished story-mode Final Fantasy Tactics. Now basically grinding the "learned every skill" achievement and odd monster drops I have yet to see in end-game. I do recommend the FF Tactics remake, which was literally remade because they lost the source code. It has amazing voice acting in the new incarnation, the story is great, very heretical, and though relatively short compared to Tactics Ogre, it's compact and complete on its own. Tactics Ogre could make almost any game look short though, so take that as you may.

I spent the weekend signing the signature sheets for The Society of Vegetarian Cannibals. As I mentioned previously, there are going to be 100 special edition signed copies alongside the regular hardcovers. You know how when you're at the supermarket checkout and they ask for your signature, you sign the paper slip or little screen, and you realise in horror you haven't handwritten anything for weeks so your own signature looks to you like some unrecognisable alien script? After probably signing 100 pages and spares (I wasn't manually counting them), I still wonder if my signature looked all right.

The point of the matter is that my signature has now been mailed back out to my publisher and you are genuinely receiving my handwriting, as peculiar as it might be. My cat tried very hard to help, but I assure you there are no paw prints anywhere to besmirch any of the sheets. He is a very helpful cat, albeit a cannonball of goofiness. I tried distracting him by hiding treats. He came back after checking under every tree and inside every rabbit hole within forty minutes. Luckily, my spouse heard me pleading with the cat not to step on things and carried him off like a sack of rice.

Early ordering is available for The Society of Vegetarian Cannibals directly from Absinthe Books' website. Keeping in mind that the publisher is located in the UK, if you are ordering from the United States, it is advised that you provide a telephone number along with your address when you order as this will help with customs clearance. With the world being what it is right now, I am not sure when pre-orders/orders might go up on online stores like Amazon, even though that store does have a placeholder page for my book.

I leave you with the most delightful comment I've heard yet about my new book's cover. A friend did say, "It looks like Jaws with trees." I cannot un-see it and it tickles me darkly.

A book that falls from the sky. I know this feels a lot like that.

Not long ago, I mentioned I was working on a big writing project. I can finally say what it is. Out now from Absinthe Books is my latest novella, The Society of Vegetarian Cannibals. Mm-hmm. Like the people who eat people. Or as it says on the back cover:

"Welcome to the Downlands, the last safe haven in a dying world. Even as the outside world remains poisoned and the population stagnates, purity runs deep here. Every person is born whole and complete. Every bite of food, manufactured from its base chemicals, is a perfect recreation of flavours from better times. And every one who dies becomes the perfect meat, raised on the perfect diet. At the funeral, the deceased's companions feast on this perfectly raised meal, absorbing the dead's memories and thus preserving their existence in historical record.

When Fritzel accidentally discovers his beloved cousin Bern is dead, and worse, has been refused a funeral, everything he thought he knew is shattered. No one in his family will tell him how Bern died or even what happened to the body. Desperate to salvage his cousin's memory, Fritzel begins a journey to discover how they lived. As he does so, he finds others who knew and loved Bern. Together, they find a way to save the memories they hold dear and savour the taste of a life that was worth living."

It's a hardcover! Super fancy. There are also 100 signed limited editions available. This is like, the fanciest treatment my writing has ever gotten in my life. Any more than this and I might start glowing in the dark.

This year, as it is every year, my attempts at gardening were beholden to the whimsies of fate. Every garden is ultimately a gamble, sure, but my efforts to research what might grow in our Victorianly-pale levels of sunlight always seem extra-tossed in the kind of RNG I expect from only the harshest of video games. Heck, I might as well say it's as bad as end-game fishing in FFXIV. There are fish in that game I'm sure hold some kind of blood grudge against me after years of trying to kick them out of the depths. There are plants I had to spend years trying to grow before they turned up when I no longer cared, and plenty of plants I cared about that wouldn't even try. Be that as it may, I grew violets for the first time after reading for several years about their potential culinary uses. In my attempt to make sure I got an edible variety, I wound up with Viola tricolor--not the scented kind, so no baking, although I probably could have dried and turned at least some into colour for cookies. The violets didn't have any particular flavour either, but they do add colour, and possibly some extra nutrition. All late spring and summer-long, I harvested a small pile of just-wilted violets to toss into dinner as a garnish. I didn't get the freshly bloomed ones to keep them around for as much as possible. Getting the flowers that had just begun to close served as efficient dead-heading and encouraged even more new buds.

Next year, I'm curious to try V. odorata (the famously smelly variety) or 'Rebecca', which apparently has notes of vanilla. They were quite easy to grow, already uncommon for me. If raccoons didn't come excavating through my pots every time I seemed to just sprout something new, I probably would have had much more violets. And even with the fuzzy miscreants, I got at least twenty plants. Like last year, I also grew out nasturtiums to turn into capers. They're tasty bursts of piquant in almost everything, but especially the usual suspects, i.e. lox open sandwiches and lemon caper butter sauce. Quite bizarrely, I did not get any accidental or deliberate shiso this year. I wonder if I was too enthusiastic about removing flowers to keep the leaves going from the last batch, although that really didn't help much, leaving few spare new seeds. None of the old seeds from the past two years would sprout, which was bizarre. That said, I got so much furikake from Don Quijote (locally called Don Don Donki) in Kuala Lumpur I probably have enough shiso flakes to last me until next year's crop. I darn near killed the poor lavender I've been trying to nurture for years. It dried out while I wasn't looking and somehow grew even more lush than ever before from a tiny miracle nub. Still no flowers, but I harvest any twigs drying out and grind the leaves because even these have a very strong lavender scent.

The other recurring plants in my garden are that catnip my cat doesn't care for unless I am trimming or processing branches (then the scented oils tickle their curiosity) and my two ever-living celery stalks. I call them "Mumm-Ra I" and "Mumm-Ra II". Both are the children of a wilting celery Seth saved and sprouted one winter. That parent plant died after a season but spread seeds everywhere, even with my careful gathering. "Mumm-Ra I" sprang up literally over the spot its dessicated parent was buried, while "Mumm-Ra II" somehow managed to sprout on its own in a totally different pot three feet away from its sibling. They have seeded. They have put out new shoots. They are weirdly immortal and pretty much ensure we can never run out of celery or celery seeds. Frankly, I think if I tried to sow them on purpose, I'd wind up being a celery farmer. Really, I wished it was spinach that did that instead. My taste for celery only goes so far. The greens I try to plant batches of throughout the year have had depressing fail rates except for the wasabina, which is reliable, but again, light and raccoons have not at all helped. I pretty much have to cage in pots I'm using for sprouting because they've shown up in the middle of the night and scraped out the topsoil (along with sprouts). A neighbour down the street has raccoon traps he noted can't be used on our neighbourhood raccoons because ours are...too fat. Statement on our wastefulness as urban humans?

The koji fermentation experiments, unlike my garden, did not subject me to fae-level aspects of whimsy. Actually, the best result turned out to be my shio koji. After fascinating me for about two months with its sizzling and popping, the liquid in my jar developed the scent and colour of liquid butter. I was deliberately going for low-salt, so it was only mildly salty with a natural sweetness. Were it not for the clearly watery mouthfeel and complete lack of fat, I could have mistaken this for melted butter. I'm tempted to see what I can do with it if blended with other things because of this odd profile. The sacrificial COVID-era white beans and brown lentils have definitely transformed into readily useable, delicious miso. More importantly, I have escaped the spectre of crunchy beans. As it turns out, fermenting beans that would otherwise have cooked up crunchy is possibly the only way to soften them. I am most pleased I was able to avoid wasting food. The white bean miso paste has a clean, sweet profile and is way less salty than any commercial paste I could buy. It is just salty enough I wouldn't use it in a dessert...or wouldn't I? Recently, I tried a salted vanilla bean ice cream that tasted exactly like my favourite salted caramels. I also know from practical testing that my white bean miso and butter makes an amazing sauce. Perhaps in tahini cookies? I have quite a lot of white bean miso paste, so definitely a lot to play with.

I could barely take the flavour of the brown lentils in their original form when cooked. Although lentils never go crunchy with age, I couldn't say I found it appetising either. As a five-month-old miso paste, it is now earthy with a nutty sweetness, something I can and have mixed into all sorts of dishes as a salt substitute and flavour enhancer. There's a part of me that wants to go out and buy more koji so I can try other things, but I honestly have a lot of stuff at home now. It can wait. Especially since I did all this to avoid wasting food! With the stuff I have on hand, I could pickle us a portal into the pickle dimension. And yes, before you ask, it is incredibly easy to over-pickle.

There's a great scene in the first season of Peacemaker's TV series where the title character is feeling glum, and his pet bald eagle tries to cheer him up by catching him a squirrel. When the squirrel falls from the sky and lands with a thump at his feet, Peacemaker thanks his pet for the gift, tells him that it's okay but he doesn't need it, and that Eagly (the eagle) should eat it on its own. The whole experience is affirmative and positive. It's how I want to be as a pet parent when my pet brings me a gift. Not mildly panicked and trying to yank away said gift to safety. Not trying to calm the cat and the spouse in the middle of this traumatising experience. Thank the pet, retrieve the gift and stay calm.

FYI, the cat has not returned with a gift since a fluke dove he caught about a week after we gave him a bell collar. That was back in June. The poor bird was probably nesting, since Moggie brought home the same bird twice separately over two days. The first day, I was able to set the dove free. The second day, I spent an hour vacuuming feathers in the living room. I briefly wondered, since they appeared in medieval dinner settings, if doves were tasty. (I can sense you giving me the same look my spouse did when I ran the idea past him.) Seth pointed out it could have been diseased, which I admit I didn't think about. I figured parasites were a matter of not eating any innards, but I can't do anything about a bug anywhere else.

I am insufficiently trained in post-apocalyptic survival to prepare my cat's protein contributions. Think about it for a second. My cat worked hard to get food for his family, and rather than help prepare it to ensure it's totally safe for him to eat, or even let him eat it, I go bury it in the backyard. Sure, we festoon him with treats and reassure him he has done nothing wrong. But he has every right to feel betrayed. Note here, he probably eats all kinds of weird stuff on his own I don't know about. He has caught flies, moths and spiders and munched them. I'm pretty sure he lived as an opportunistic forager when he was feral. Based on the things he tries to taste off our plates, I have a notion he's even less picky about non-meat, dairy and sweets than the average cat. Cats aren't even supposed to be able to taste sweetness. Perhaps, the ghost of Dorian still whispers in his ears that my lunch is made of tasty things. I still miss Food Inspector Cat, but his little brother keeps him alive by stalking my lunch and supervising my cooking.

My mood right now is somewhere between Tool's "Ænima" and Bright Eyes' cover of "Devil Town". Seth caught a cold at the dentist. The weekend before my birthday, he lurched about the place like a tall, grumpy shade. Naturally, I caught the same thing by birthday Monday. We spent a quiet, mostly calm week trying to work through brain fog and not sounding worse than we feel. There's a lot of disappointing things happening all at once right now. Some are just delays before good things. Others are much more parochial. I'm waiting on Black Friday to get a cordless drill set I want. I'd also like to see if we can install a heat pump water heater to replace our gas tank. I've actually been hoping I could install a heat pump in our home since learning about the technology. It could replace the gas-fired heating grate from the 1920s in the hallway--which we haven't use in years--and actually contribute coolness in the summer. Compared to the heat pump water heater though, that's a very long-term fantasy.

San Francisco is banning gas-powered water heaters in 2027, necessitating our switch. The problem is, I'm not sure our basement can handle an alternative, so I'll need to consult a professional. Our basement is cold all year round, practically a wine cellar. Great for a server room, but not ideal for a heat pump. It sounds like the ambient room temperature needs to be warmer to efficiently heat water. I'm already aware it probably is never going to heat water as quickly or as hot as a gas heater. It does not help we live in a multi-unit building, where major infrastructure changes are done by committee. The space where our current water tanks are lined up may be too narrow with insufficient clearance on each side. We don't have an air vent duct, a consideration that nearly derailed replacing our clothes dryer in the same space just a month ago. My layman eyeballing says we could probably run a line for water drainage, but I have no idea how we'd do electical power hook-up. I suspect that would personally cost us a fair penny. This would all just be for our personal unit, and again, I'm worried it'll require stuff we must handle as a whole building. In Malaysia, it was pretty common to get electric showers (I believe Americans call them point of use showers). It might ultimately be our only option with the space/wiring/plumbing headache, though that would mean giving up hot water in the rest of the house. We're lucky that SF is still practically one of the mildest places I've ever met in terms of weather. It's why we don't use a heater in winter, just blankets and socks. The joke around the house is that by the time we seriously consider dragging out our plug-in air conditioner, our (two weeks or so) of summer heat wave has ended.

As I was cleaning our manga shelf the other day, I was wiping the dust off our Berserk volumes when I thought, man, think of how much faster this series would have continued if the late Miura Kentaro hadn't played so much Idolmaster. The manga was notorious for long stretches of hiatuses, including the mangaka's breaks for video games--thereby contributing to its run since 1998. Which is precisely where I paused, thought about it, and realised I shouldn't be throwing stones in glass houses, because I would honestly be writing more if I didn't spend all my time reading and playing video games.

The game Seth and I dug out of storage to replay lately is the remake of XCOM 2. XCOM is right up there as one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made. It predates other titans like Tactics Ogre (by a year) and Final Fantasy: Tactics (by two years). The whole series revolves around saving the world from a secret, then not-so-secret, alien invasion, and is known for its deep, engrossing mechanics and hair-pulling difficulty. When XCOM and its sequel XCOM 2 were remade, these games also became classics in their own right. XCOM began as and stayed pretty much a PC game throughout its existence. However, when the ports came out for PS3, we were ecstatic because we could play together. As I said earlier, XCOM is known for being difficult. We naturally insisted on trying its hardest settings in Ironman (soldier perma-death) mode. Campaigns are long. It truly takes both of us handing over the controller to start, fail, restart and finish the game. In XCOM: Enemy Within (the first remake), it took us 50 campaign restarts on Classic Ironman difficulty to get one finished. XCOM 2 (with its major War of the Chosen DLC) took 48 campaigns on Commander Ironman (second-highest difficulty) to get one done.

Unfortunately, while XCOM 2 is a great game, its PS3 port could be one of the buggiest games I've ever met. Especially with War of the Chosen installed, which is necessary if you want the full level of variety and rich content. When it came out in 2017, you could crash to OS for all sorts of barmy reasons. The worst part was that every crash brought the risk of destroying your latest save. In Ironman mode, you cannot hard save. The game by its nature relies on auto=saves so you are stuck with every wrong decision you make. Part of the reason we had to restart our campaigns wasn't just because we failed miserably on a mission, but because we lost perfectly fine campaigns to crashes. The game was so fragile, every time there was lag between AI decisions (happens often), a save took too long to load (all the time) or even if a fight went on for too long, we were holding our breath hoping the darn thing would stay alive. But guys, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen is so good, I still dragged our Playstation kicking and screaming to the end of a Commander Ironman campaign. The PS claims we have played over 500 hours of this thing and I don't think it's lying. It's a game so good, we fight the game to play it.

Fast forward about nine years after the base game's release, on a PS5 (two iterations of system later). XCOM 2 is in no way at all optimised for the PS5. Is it more stable? You can sort of vaguely feel more stability. It's nebulous. Crashes to OS leading to loss of Ironman auto-saves still happen. Save loads are still slo-o-ow. But it feels like AI decisions are faster. It got so bad, we finally let go of our obsession with Ironman mode and just tried playing Legendary, the highest difficulty, while save-scumming like some....normie. Hey, we already got that Commander Ironman trophy. And soldier deaths can still be utterly stupid. You tell me how an ADVENT pod spots my concealed team through the ceiling from two floors up and crits through two stories of walls. Oh, and we can still crash to OS, even if we don't lose our saves this time. Somewhere on Reddit it was reported you can mitigate some crashing by deleting the Photo Booth file (in-game photos the game takes of your team--a cool memento function from slightly before every game had a photo album feature). We tried that. It does help, should you too get the urge to replay an insanely buggy classic. Also, all my joking aside, letting go of Ironman actually allowed us to have a more relaxed high-stress campaign experience, the fear of randomly losing all our effort surviving that long being gone. Take that statement how you will.

It also makes actually finishing whole campaigns noticeably faster! In a month, we have completed a full Commander and Legendary mode campaign. After the Legendary run, I discovered a I never fully experienced a DLC I had enabled because you could only see that storyline by switching off War of the Chosen. So now I had to restart the game again in its plain base version. Turns out, after all the frantic bells and whistles of War of the Chosen, this version was practically a whole new animal! It's as if I don't have a giant backlog of other games I mean to get back to, like the Tactics Ogre remake I literally ground Palace of the Dead so hard in my motivation went flat, and the highly-anticipated Final Fantasy: Tactics remake coming out in a week, which I promised Seth I would help grind classes for.

Oh, writing? Yeah, I meant to get to that. Did I mention my sourdough experiment resulted in tasty rye bread even Seth liked? Or that my white bean miso paste came out so well I used the rest of our COVID-era, beyond-saving white beans to make more? A moment, please. I think a jar of shio koji somewhere needs degassing.

It's been a long time since I've thought of The Mighty Boosh. My favourite episode is undoubtedly "Nanageddon", that is to say, the goth episode with hairspray "made from Robert Smith's tears"--though really I think the entire second TV series is worth the watch. At the end of "Nanageddon", Noel Fielding does Lovecats as spoken word. I didn't know that until I watched it with Seth, who would of course, recognise that immediately.

Okay, but why did I even think of, "Oriental prince in the land of soup"? It came about quite naturally while deciding I would try making my own miso paste. I like lacto-fermenting things. I'm not terribly fond of vinegard pickles, but I do like lacto-fermented ones. Pickles are great to have around. You can salvage half-dead veggies and the pickles can go into marinades, salads, sauces, fillers, stir-fries and stews. I use them or the brine as seasoning and salt replacements. The same goes for miso paste. I've had the pleasure of tasting a variety of fascinating miso pastes over the years. They've actually grown in variety as more local producers join the usually imported from Japan types. I think the real surprise for me was when I discovered non-soybean miso pastes, but it logically made sense. People do have soy allergies, so alternatives would exist. It's like non-soybean tofu. I remember being pleasantly surprised when I first tried Burmese chickpea tofu. While figuring out how to make that at home, I stumbled into the fact virtually anything could be made into tofu. In fact, the guys at local station KQED have even made hemp tofu. Their post helpfully points out the local hippie co-op sells nigari should I want to attempt my own.

If lacto-fermentation is pickling for lazy people, making miso paste is pickling for even lazier people. Yes, there's not even starch solution to mix. You more or less boil the base material, mix it with salt and koji starter, and abandon it for at least four months. I'd earlier on tried making a shio koji-esque marinade by using rice wine yeast and glutinous rice, then koji pickles embedded in rice, koji starter and salt. I was incredibly excited when Aedan's fermentation outfit opened up in my neighbourhood and I could buy real koji starter just a few blocks away. Aedan also makes fresh miso paste, koji pickling mixes and soy sauce on-site, if you're ever there, along with healthy bento boxes. (I recommend the amazake if it's available.)

The biggest reason I thought about making miso paste though was because we'd kind of stockpiled these beans and lentils during COVID, and now we had many old beans and lentils that were lying around getting crunchier by the year. I don't mind some crunchy old beans in my stew, but the spouse is sensitive to that texture. I can mitigate some of it with blending, but we had a lot of disappointing dried beans to go through. So I thought, what if I fermented them? I thought about sweet white bean paste, which I really like--and find way more palatable than the mung bean paste that forms the base of Chinese pastry stuffings. Surely, white bean miso must be quite tasty? (And not crunchy.) There were also these dried brown lentils that refused to be anything appetising no matter what I did but didn't want to throw out. I cannot abide wasting food. I can't even watch food-based pranks, which utterly confound and horrify me. But lentil miso might actually be fun. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought cooking brown lentils could be fun. Seriously though, if you must get a lentil, the yellow and orange ones are great. Beluga black lentils are incredible. We need to move past these peasant browns and greens, yes, yes.

Incidentally, my greatest concern about making miso paste was that every recipe required a pickling stone or some weight on the fermenting substrate. People were making do with soup cans and filled small jars in bigger ones. Guys, I'm so lazy I have thought about but somehow managed not to buy pie weights for about 15 years. My pies still come out fine. Occasionally I get bubbly crusts when I'm too lazy, but they're still edible pies. I figured if I occasionally flattened down the substrate with clean fingers, much like resubmerging and squeezing out the bubbles in brine pickles, we'd probably still be fine. I was right. Three months into fermentation, I have a bright, sweet brown lentil miso and a mild white bean miso gently aging away. The brown lentils really mellowed. I was genuinely amazed they turned sweet with no added sugar. It reminded me a little of Aedan's Kyoto-style miso paste, which is my favourite of their line. Both pastes smell amazing, like alcoholic mash. At first, I thought if by the end of this I wound up with just strange hooch it would be hilarious, albeit not any contribution to culinary science. But, no, I am going to get miso paste out of this. I tried using some of the brown lentil stuff on grilled trout for dinner tonight. It really came through.

My next random fermentation experimentation shall be sourdough. The starter I have is currently in what I believe is known as the smelly sock stage. Honestly, I think it smells more like a durian died. In my defense, where I come from, people consider salted, fermented durian paste a sort of exotic, prized condiment, so go ahead and imagine how skunked this must be to smell like a durian actually died. My mom was waxing lyrical about how properly fermented sourdough bread (for anywhere from 48 to 72 hours in the fridge, apparently) dramatically reduced the carbs and was better for diabetics. Personally, I think the science doesn't quite work that way, but hey, I am currently trying out a glucose monitor and I can empirically test this, so I will bake for science. I admit something in my brain also snapped while listening to her because sourdough is my adopted city's bread. I've baked several kinds of breads over the years but never sourdough. The reason for this is that I've never had to. Boudin is the brand that made the stuff famous in SF, but practically every neighbourhood has some bakery churning out their own version, including some truly artisanal, we-kept-the-starter-going-since-we-got-married types. I suppose I could accidentally insult someone if I asked how long they proofed their dough for though. And hey, if I find something that won't spike my glucose like a volcano that allows me to have egg salad sandwiches, that's a plus. Note: French-style honey dinner rolls are hilarious from a glucose monitor's perspective. It was as bad as my experimental two-onigiri lunch--which I knew going in was also going to be hilarious as Japanese rice is the starchiest kind precisely to fuel a cuisine built around rolling white rice into balls and other bite-sized shapes. Perhaps, I should try experimenting with maki rolls next.

In the long, silent void since my last post, I have two writing things to announce. The first is that Nightmare Diaries: An Anthology of Horror has been released from Moonstruck Books (in print and e-book). It contains a short story I quite enjoyed writing and that I am personally fond of, Mother's Work, which combines homesteading, lilies and a dead infant. Best to get the anthology directly from the publisher via the link above, but it is also available on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles if these are your usual sources.

The second isn't quite yet something I am sure I can announce formally, though I can at least offer the broader strokes. Some of you may have been aware that I spent the past half year and change bashing my head against my keyboard at a fairly large writing project. Part of this upcoming work is based off a very old novella concept I had that I could never quite get into good form. The setting was a somewhat futuristic alternate world; the culture there ate the dead as part of their funerary rites and the whole thing happened one evening at a restaurant as a murder mystery. I won't lie--the concept was rather more ambitious than I could pull off at the time with my skills. Mid-last year, I was asked if I could put together something by a lovely editor. So I did, weaving together bones from that old idea and more recent influences into something I hope is at least coherent, perhaps, even something others might like to read. I like to think of it also as partly a reaction to the stupid world we currently live in. Not even a figurately stupid world, these daily headlines that make The Onion look sober clearly stem from decision making by tantrum-throwing toddlers supported by sociopaths.

I spent a good part of writing this project listening to the Violent Femmes (the album by the band). Frantic, twangy acoustic sounds worked oddly well with how desperate I was to get the thing done already. Altogether, I want to say there were about four months of actual writing. Four months of listening to waspy singing about a bad trip and irreparably angry ex-ing set to some amazing bass. This was also when I discovered my cat is amazingly tolerant of my music playing from my tablet while napping on my legs. He still hates me being at my desk though.

When I was done writing, I spent several weeks collapsed in a heap playing Rogue Trader (the Owlcat video game) and being frustrated at how comically theatrical they do the Heretic route. There is no subtle evildoing in the 41st Millenium A.D. But, but! Alongside stuff like the Noise Marines, surely someone was also plotting more quietly? Without the slaves hanging in cages as bedroom furniture? Just when I was about to open a hole into the warp in the middle of Dark Eldar territory after figuring out from disparate player chatter I had to go sacrifice a whole room of people to the dark gods first, my editor came back and I was into edits.

Oh, edits were painful. My editor was lovely, line editing was a breeze. It was just that I had to elaborate on prior scenes and add new ones, amounting to about two more months and change of bashing my head against the keyboard with over a week in Malaysia in the middle. I had hoped to write while abroad, but my trip was primarily about dealing with administrative chores. By the time I'd settle down at the end of the day, I was too tired. So when I finally got back to San Francisco, I was pretty much chasing an ever closer deadline on heavy jet lag. While in Kuala Lumpur, my parents tried to get me to listen to some guy called Dimash. I have no idea what the kids listen to these days, so I had no idea who they were talking about. He's apparently a classically-trained Kazakhstani fellow who looks like a pan-Asian idol with perfect pitch. Apparently, he got everyone's panties in knots when he showed up for concerts in KL. Listening to him, it's clear he can sing six octaves and the higher ones at that. To my ears, he sounds like a sort of shrieky Josh Groban.

While not my cup of tea, I was curious to know what the original version of one of his staple songs, S.O.S. d'un Terrien en détresse, was. This led me to Starmania, the weird sci-fi musical it came from--apparently famous in the Francophile world--and an amazing cast recording version by Norman Grouix from 1988. There is a majesty in the way his voice progresses upwards through the chorus that I found very fetching. Starmania itself is weird. I don't necessarily recommend it unless you're that curious. I thought the music was mostly banal pop with a heavy cabaret feel. Until you read the lyrics and realise that the whole space rock opera is meant to be very, very transgressive. The main love number is a woman singing her unrequited love for a gay man; there's a song about the joys of being a transvestite actually called Travesti; somewhere in this there's a plot to topple an anti-immigrant oligarch. In this, I regret my lack of understanding of French. Clearly, if I knew what the songs were saying as I was listening to them, they would have more effect. Not all transgressive music has to sound transgressive, obviously, but I don't have to really know Japanese to figure out Buck-Tick aren't singing about tea and biscuits when I listen to them. On second thought, they could probably still sing about tea and biscuits, and make it sound like a sin. But you get what I mean.

As for S.O.S., it's the distress monologue of an earthling mourning his humanity. It's great to listen to when your brain is fried trying to come up with conversation for a banquet while you hate yourself for making it an eight-course menu. It's somehow still great to listen to after two weeks on repeat even as you start to question your sanity a little bit listening to just one song decrying the meaninglessness of the human experience. Almost at the end of adding enough text for an extra third of my whole project, my frustration with understanding Starmania reminded me how much I liked Nouvelle Vague, incidentally also a French band, who specialise in soothing covers of very dark music. Quite a bit of that music is in English, so I am also able to get just how delightfully naughty it is immediately. I remembered I honestly preferred their version of Killing Moon over the original. This, still interspersed with S.O.S., was my last week of writing.

Last week, the publisher emailed to say the artist I chose is doing the cover and all I am thinking is, "Oh, dear. It's really happening isn't it?" It's exciting although mostly it is frightening. Are they sure they really wanted me to write for them; could they possibly have mistaken me for someone else; etc.

For all intents and purposes, yesterday I turned 43. I don't mentally feel all that much different from I was a decade ago. But I could also argue I was already much mentally slower than I was when I was 20 before I hit 30. I suspect anyone who knows me would point out I still think in weird tangents same as I have my entire adult life. As a birthday treat this year, Seth booked us for an overnight stay in Japantown on my birthday. Being in Japantown on my birthday will always be special for me, since that was the date he proposed to me at Peace Plaza. Peace Plaza is currently closed off for renovations, making entry into both sides of the mall there kind of hairy. The omakase sushi place we went to for dinner is still around, albeit closed on my birthday Sunday this year. The claustrophobic Asian ceramic store where we bought two bowls—of which only one remains—closed down years ago. When we visited there in the morning, we were the first customers of the day, which at least in Chinese culture means that first customer must buy something or it's considered a bad omen for the rest of the day's business. Thus, the two little old ladies that used to run the place served us tea to make sure we knew we were welcomed. We bought two bowls and possibly a tea set, I don't quite remember. I think the tea set was a later gift from Seth at some point, but I could be wrong.

Incidentally, there is still an Asian ceramic store there today. It's a modern Japanese one with a focus on imported artisanal tableware and has pretty cool stuff. It is also run by two elderly Asian ladies. We got a couple of chic serving plates and deep noodle bowls earlier in the year that are real keepers. I'm not an "everything must match" person, and I'd rather we collect the things in our house slowly over time. I guess the exception to that is books. We have enough books we never get around to donate to keep us warm for at least one post-apocalyptic winter in the basement.

I asked Seth's opinion out of four potential restaurants for my birthday dinner: a handmade-there udon shop, a ramen place I've wanted to try for months, an intriguing katsu calorie bomb specialist and the nice little Japanese-style Western food place on the mall's bridge. Seth isn't an udon person and I suspect he finds my fascination with springy, handmade noodles a weird Asian thing. Although this was my chance to eat something I wanted—even chicken rice—I wasn't going to torment my poor date. He gave me back two options, the katsu place or the yoshoku place. On the Bridge is frankly somewhere I've wanted to go for a while (hadn't been there since before the pandemic), so yoshoku it was. This was a great idea. First, the restaurant has an amazing selection of drinks, including our favourite Japanese brewery that was introduced to us by Nombe back in the day: Coedo. This is not a brand we've seen in a Japanese restaurant since Nombe closed down. I forgot which variety out of the five OtB served had the elderflower aftertaste. I thought it might be their pale ale, Shiro, but it wasn't. The Shiro is still a very light, refreshing wheaty beer with no hoppiness afterwards. My dinner choice was between the light mentaiko spaghetti Japanese-style or the "European-style" cream mentaiko spaghetti. I was not wise, I chose the cream version. It was amazingly delicious with mentaiko throughout the sauce and also really, really rich. The cream quotient here would have been enough to make this two servings of pasta. I was more or less a dumpling afterwards. Seth, clearly still with katsu on the brain, ordered the breaded hamburger steak curry rice. Much compliments to the chef, their home-blended curry mix is really good, tastes and looks like it was made fresh there. Like real curry, rather than flour or starch, the sauce was thickened by the spice paste. All dinner, I kept trying to figure out what the finely shredded something that formed the majority of it comprised. It wasn't shredded coconut, like in Malay curry, or lemongrass. It wasn't meat or soy protein floss. The best I could come up with was that it was a mix of ground gingers, boiled sufficiently long the flavour from the individual fibres was all in the sauce. Also, breaded hamburger steak: great taste, you only need to eat it once in your life to remember it raised your risk for heart disease. Verdict: dinner defeated us and we would gladly go again and order less hearty creatures.

Every time we are in Japantown, it is a must for us to visit Kinokuniya and the game store downstairs. It's not necessary that we come home with boo—yeah, we always come home with books. There are a lot of manga in the world I do not have shelf space for. There are a lot of gaming books he does not have the shelf space for. There are a lot of non-fiction books neither of us has space left for. Does it stop us? Did we ever claim to be reasonable people? I veeeery carefully put back that study about sex selective artificial insemination because its chapter on cross-border transactions was too limited and the study on whether Japanese millenials were really introverted shoe gazers. I did! Then I only bought one manga book. Seth recommended and got me (with my choice) the book about Rome's hidden historical women, i.e. they are not the occasional mother of someone important sequestered away in the back of a Roman villa weaving their whole lives. Unfortunately, whether the non-weaving (seriously, everyone in the ancient world spent their spare moments spinning thread), actively participating women of the historical world were anomalies or more common that we think remains to be found. Far as I can tell, we've found more of them over time, but equal participation in society is, again unfortunately, still a mostly modern concept. Suggest books with titles if I am wrong, please.

This is the first time I've been Japantown and not had a craving for crepe. Guys, I love my Japanese-style crepe. This includes the non-crepe yet still mostly crepe mille crepe cake. It's my birthday, you'd think I would coerce my spouse into cake. Well, you see, the Friday before my birthday, my spouse bought me a lovely handmade bourbon (maple) pecan pie. This is my favourite type of pie. I like it as much as meat and mushroom pie. My love of pies is apparently both American and British. On my birthday morning, I got a slice of pie with a candle in it. The pie was everything I loved about pecan pie except it was American-level sweet, which I forgot could be a thing. It was so sweet, for two days, I was in Japantown and couldn't countenance any Japantown sweets. Note: this usually means a stop at the Andersen bakery or some kind of mochi/taiyaki/cake. I don't do layered, multi-coloured, flavoured tea drinks (this is a travesty against tea) and I find the concept of the taiyaki soft serve (matcha soft serve with a red bean paste or nutella core) frankly terrifying. Does no one except fast food chains do a normal soft serve anymore? I could countenance Niji-ya's peanut butter mochi by day two, but I think they don't make and sell those now.

We stayed the night at Hotel Enso. Seth found this amazing room with a soaking tub. What we didn't know was that it also had two curtained-off window-seat reading nooks. The views of the square across the street from Peace Plaza were great. Suffice to say we read a lot and soaked our poor combination gamer/office worker backs until we were raisins. Day Two I requested breakfast at Hinodeya, the ramen place, for breakfast. The house ramen claimed to have scallop bouillon and no way in hell was I not trying that. Breakfast noodles remind me of my childhood, when I would go have a big bowl of soup and handmade beef balls with my mom and usually my maternal grandfather in Kota Kinabalu. Hinodeya has an amazingly inclusive and tasty menu. Yes, I am aware I am using "amazing" a bit too much. Honestly, if I wasn't so determined to try the scallop-infused broth, I would have gone for one of the vegan bowls as they were clearly meant to be as tasty as the meat varieties. Most ramen stores are tonkotsu broth-based, right? This was the first time I've seen a store that has options with pork, non-pork, non-meat, non-egg/seafood and intriguing choices of spiciness including some god-level choice with many question marks. Ingredients and potential reactions were meticulously labeled. Even on the fried garlic mix at every table. House scallop bouillon broth was a delight, you can really taste the scallop. A bit on the salty side, but that's practically every ramen broth in existence. They were very generous with the menma. We who are used to getting maybe two planks of bamboo shoots if we are lucky were surprised to find an actual handful of very tasty stuff. They use thick ramen here, nice and springy and perfectly cut to go into the mouth in one slurp. I took my first bite and thought, someone even thought this far ahead for the eater's convenience? Store owners and staff were super friendly and nice. Their karaage with matcha salt on the side is a big serving. The chicken was coated in a light, fluffy batter and it is delicious. I'm going to venture that if you are not too hungry or less than three people, maybe choose one of the lighter appetizers. About halfway through our meal, me and Seth kind of remembered ramen is very filling. Keeping in mind this was our breakfast, we didn't really need food for the rest of the day. It gave us a thin coating of fullness with which to walk into Niji-ya and shop prudently!

An amusing aside: the day Seth proposed, we were both walking through the square opposite Peace Plaza when this tiny old lady looked up at us and exclaimed happily how we were a great couple because of our sizes. She was super sweet and I will never forget her. This time, in the lift down from our room, two little old ladies exclaimed we were a match made in heaven after hearing our respective sizes, i.e. tall pale Swedish vampire and his hamster spouse. The best thing about my birthday continues to be the best decision I ever made as an adult.

Months pass where one day might as well look like the next. My cat continues to be a serial killer, which makes me think of both cereal and murder. It is not a coincidence every time I send away a rodent to freedom or read its last rites I get a weird craving for cornflakes. A couple of big game drops have helped form minor distractions. FFXIV's latest expansion, Dawntrail, came out in one of the warmest weeks of summer like always, requiring careful rationing of playtime after work while minimising the hazards to our hardware. This isn't exactly a joke. Me and Seth have had video cards dying on us during early access week in the past 11 years of this MMO. Dawntrail is set in a roughly 15th century fantasy Americas-like environment. It's pretty and incredibly detailed in ways that appeals to both my inner nerd that goes into a dungeon and admires the floor tiles and my inner nerd that reads about the Columbian exchange and squeals when I see visual representations of the "three sisters" planting method inside a pueblo village. As usual, my husband spends the first weeks zooming through new zones really hoping for more people to talk to about Plot and Stuff, while I lag behind fishing at every pond, stream and pool of stagnant water wailing sadly about my dwindling inventory space. This expansion also gives players random cravings for Central/South American food, particularly corn as a staple carb. Luckily for us, a delightful Mexican restaurant called Mayah's opened within walking blocks from us that specialises in some amazing pibil they kindly top a great deal of menu items with. Most dishes also come with hot, freshly made corn tortillas I would happily eat plain. The store is one of the few we've encountered that serves food in actual American portions though. I've joked the next time I go there, I'll just get the waffles for breakfast because I know I probably won't overeat that. The last time I ordered an as described 'small plate' of fried plantains, I could probably have eaten a quarter and packed the rest home and I wouldn't have needed anything else. Dawntrail also respects bananas as a staple carb, resulting in a secondary craving for bananas.

The other thing that came out was Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance. You know SMT V, that game I spent years waiting for while finding out the next Atlus game was yet another Persona. That came out late last year. Unfortunately, it first came out for the Switch, which was all right but not too kind to its vast explorable open-world design. Performance was sufficiently stilted to give both of us motion sickness while playing. The new expanded version of the game was also released for the PS5, whose much more powerful engine now enabled us to tag team this comfortably. We're about 60% through the story (I think), so far playing the original game without touching the new content at all. One of the recent story reveals had me seriously thinking about the difference in storytelling style for Persona games (an SMT spin-off) and the original SMT line. Persona games are centred around a complex main plot, like online rumours are mysteriously coming true in the real world. You resolve the story by connecting with a large cast of NPCs, who each have their own arcs and develop alongside your character. It's very tightly interwoven and structured.

SMT games are typically premised around the end of the world. The creator god is probably dead. Angels, demons and gods from all manner of pantheons battle over how the new world is to be shaped, with your character as the final arbiter. There are NPCs, and they might be important in some way, but you're not going to spend dozens of hours listening to their woes or trying to date them. Plot development can happen like this: Your boss comes in and tells you and your fellow top achievers there's a global conference for your org coming up. Your subsidiary is going to secede from the main org. It's going to be okay, says your boss, because he's also one of the progenitor Japanese gods. Also, Tokyo is slowly fading away into the ether and you might not have a reality to go home to. That's a five minute conversation. That's all you need to know because you have a huge herd of demons to tame and combine to create better demons so you can fight even more powerful demons and who else is going to spend another 50 hours running around grinding if not you?

If collecting and evolving a menagerie of demons sounds oddly familiar, this might be because a certain other franchise that starts with a P borrowed SMT's core mechanic for a wider, younger audience. SMT games are not for kids. They might not even be for a segment of adults. It is gloriously blasphemous. Virtually nothing is sacred. SMT (specifically its spin-off Digital Devil Saga) is the game that taught me there is nothing that running around in the parking lot for an extra two hours levelling up your party will not solve. Even that might only be enough to beat the next optional boss after a few tries, because unlike its spin-offs where the difficulty may plateau with enough over-levelling, the flagship SMT games are habitually unforgiving. They love their cheap surprises. Your power to customise your party is commensurate to the game's RNG. Also, every SMT has featured at least one penis demon. The latest one has a boss I can only describe as "fruit vagina". If we go into detail, it's a putrifying fruit vagina with wee bat wings and a tongue making lewd gestures in your general direction.

As a result of my depressing media diet, I don't tend to get nightmares about monsters, because the real world makes me way more anxious.

For all that I've raved about food, my reason for returning to Malaysia this time was to settle unavoidable life-related paperwork. This included understanding a little bit better how financial distributions after death worked for Muslims in my country. Muslim inheritance laws and their related finance laws are insanely complex. Reading up on the procedures is both straightforward, in that there is an instruction for every one thing you need to do, and headache-inducing, in that there are a lot of instructions and there's a lot of things to do. This is true for anybody's death: an executor is responsible for tracking down a person's lifetime. The major amount of teeth-gnashing on understanding Islamic inheritance laws is realising how the laws were created for a specific, now largely historic, era and the vast amount of energy needed to work around the framework.

Part of the mandatory education for Malaysian Muslim-descent students up into college is to learn about how traditional Muslim inheritance distribution works. In a nutshell, there's a portion for wives, a portion for children where sons get twice the amount over daughters, a portion for the deceased's parents and a portion for their siblings with particular attention to their brothers. Adopted children do not automatically inherit. In fact, when I was kid, people even said that Muslims were not allowed to have wills. This is untrue. The glitch is that wills only apply to distributing ¹⁄₃ of a person's overall assets.

In Malaysia, an entire industry has sprung up within the Islamic financial sector to create means for Muslims to divide their wealth according to individual choice. At least as I see it, this involves a lot of careful renaming and rewording of common financial concepts, and establishing endowments. Endowments are legally conceptualised as gifts, so they're non-contestable. It's also not a 'new' idea. Histories I've read about the Baghdad Caliphate have mentioned fathers endowing specific properties to their daughters upon death that were to be managed by male intermediaries. The basic process of handling liquid and non-liquid assets is roughly the same for Muslims and non-Muslims. You inform the Civil or Syariah court or Land Office that an asset's owner is deceased, have them issue a letter of administration (i.e. power of attorney) where you name an executor, the executor gains power to settle the deceased's debts, liquidate/transfer as necessary and divide out said asset. As with any inheritance, potential claimants can interject and this is where that list of potential claimants according to Muslim law can really throw a wrench.

Say a husband dies leaving a spouse and children, with no living parents. If he was non-Muslim, his spouse gets ¹⁄₃ of his assets, ²⁄₃ is divided between the children. Roughly: If he was a Muslim, his spouse is entitled to ¹⁄₈ of his assets, the rest of his assets are divided between the sons and daughters at a 2:1 ratio. If both his parents were alive, they are each entitled to ¹⁄₆ of the assets. Theoretically, if there are children, none of the siblings have the right to inherit. If there is no son, siblings (particularly brothers) and other relatives may be entitled to a portion of assets. This is a historical relic. The assumption was that back in the mythical dark ages, women were less educated on financial matters, or if I may be so snide, "more prone to feelings". Women were at least more obliged to stay at home, leaving business and legal transactions on their behalf to male intermediaries who could move outside. The more 'capable' male relatives who received inheritance were expected to use their inheritance money on behalf of caring for the deceased's widow and daughters. You don't want me to start ranting about how capable women of the time actually were at managing money.

There's also the issue of who has power over managing the assets upon that Muslim husband's death. This is especially onerous if the children are underaged. Remember, the wife receives ¹⁄₈, which she can use freely. She does not have automatic power over the share left for underaged children. Depending on the Syariah court, control over the underaged children's share goes to either the paternal grandfather (i.e. deceased husband's father) or the Public Trust Corp. (Malaysia's default public institution for managing assets on behalf of the deceased, euphemistically, "legacy management").

This is all still somewhat sanely manageable if we were just dealing with liquid assets. Non-liquid assets require the assent of all beneficiaries as to their share before they can be liquidated. Great if everyone agreed, daughter gets the house, son gets the car. It could take years if every beneficiary fought over their share, even if all they did was tangle up the courts with a potentially 'rightful' claim. As ridiculous as it sounds, some people actually do try to divide parcels of land into implausible triangles. To make everything more fraught for the beneficiaries, depending on some combinations of relatives, portions of assets may also be claimed by the state.

If you're wondering, there are also seperate portioning rules for if the deceased is a woman. This is actually where a lot of money could go to the state if you do not have sons and living male relatives. Reading any table of divisions about this is infuriating.

By far some of my most amused moments waiting in banks in Malaysia was seeing the ads for the Islamic inheritance products. The tagline for one of them roughly translated to, "Bequeath the money you worked hard for to the people who truly matter." I might have misremembered the wording, but this is what they're hitting people with on the head. In the ad, a father was filling in the forms with his daughter.

Learning the rules was incredibly enlightening, insanely frustrating for anyone with an interest in women's studies or history or plausibly a modern individual. Full disclosure, I'm the eldest, the daughter and I am 100% sure I will be responsible for paperwork. No attachment to the inheritance, but paperwork is my duty. I can't even claim to be one of these mythical soft-headed women who make math look bad.

Last month, we flew back to Kuala Lumpur for the first visit in 14 years. Seth and I were a little wary, as on the trip we took there when we just got married, my fellow countrymen—specifically conservative-looking Malay men in public places—would give my husband dirty looks. Mind you, I always expected to be the one who got the dirty looks, since young Asian women dating white guys had a reputation as gold diggers in Southeast Asia when I was growing up. It's still the reason I'm wary about visiting Bangkok (where people treated me like I was my Dad's mistress everywhere we went). Turns out, we were fine. The people of my home city have noticeably gained a level of cosmopolitanism that wasn't there before. We were never hostile towards foreigners, actually I'd say most Malaysians are pretty friendly if approached, but there used to be a slight wariness, I guess? It was like when we were in Singapore a bunch of years back. Seth was at best ignored and at most given curious stares because he's Very Tall. I have also aged appropriately into a tube-shaped, 40-something Asian lady. Nothing to see here.

The very first thing we discovered upon landing in Malaysia is that KLIA is horrible about signage. The light rail that connects the airport terminals is currently being refurbished, so arrivals are bussed to Terminal 1 for immigration processing. No one told us this when we exited our gate and like everyone else, we initially followed signage to the Arrival Hall through these long, boarded-up tunnels (for the refurbishment) while getting ever more confused. It was by chance our nice neighbours on the flight told us that a) there was actually a Business-class passenger exit no signs told us about and b) we needed to take a bus. They even led us to the bus. Such nice people!

Getting an airport limo to our hotel was another weird experience. There were booths for hired cars right after immigration, but these seemed to be run by different companies. We arrived at midnight so most of these booths were closed. That said, a guy from one of the lit booths immediately approached us and asked if we needed a ride. Our first reaction to a tout is to look very baffled and suspicious. The limo company was legit though, with about-right pricing for our trip. We still waited anxiously as their guy led us out to the kerb and took forever calling up their car, which was just very reasonably stuck in traffic. The limo driver played 80s and 90s Malay love ballads (kind of like our enka) for the hour and change to our hotel. I kind of wanted to ask him why the old-fashioned the whole way there.

We actually stayed at the same hotel we did the last time we visited, Traders at KLCC. The hotel was a safe space which gave us a good experience the first time around, and it was still that way. My parents also kept reiterating how the location was extremely convenient to get around town. Given that we checked in after 1AM, we also opted for the hotel's buffet breakfast later that morning, which we remembered liking. Breakfast was good. They have a nice international spread, with the usual American, Continental and staple Malaysian options, plus sushi. My go-to was their congee station because that was a greatly comforting memory from the last time I was here. It only had all my favourite toppings, including braised peanuts, century egg and yau char kwai. They even had hot soy milk. And necessarily bracing teh tarik, the lifeblood of my people.

So, given my current tubular format, my plan before the trip was to eat relatively healthy and indulge some while I was in KL. KL only ever grows as a maze of gigantic shopping malls. You can't walk five feet without whacking into something tasty. I'm not saying San Francisco lacks good food because seriously, it has some of the best food. But beating KL on good food is not going to happen. Ever. Okay? The reason for that is because KL has a street food culture. With the advent of massive malls, this just means the walking spaces are landmines of random tasty things surrounded by restaurants. This means we have many small cafes between all points serving delightful Asian-style cream cakes. Whereas American-style cakes tend towards butter creams and can get overly sweet, Asian-style cream cakes mostly use whipped fresh cream fillings, possibly with fresh fruit. They're usually lighter than what I'd get in the US and definitely not so heavy or sugary. After many years abroad, I was craving fresh cream cake. Our transit point for this trip was through Narita Airport. You know what Narita Airport is like? It's a gauntlet of Japanese cheesecakes from across the great Nippon along with an army of high-end bakeries displaying sable cookies, mochi, custard-filled pastries and stuff so twee and fragile you'd be scared to eat them in glass cases between every single gate. Seth was practically holding me by the collar like a naughty hamster to stop me from rolling into them. Also, their delicately crisp butter-filled sable cookies are extremely elegant and will make you feel like a high-class lady of good standing after trying one. (I got a box to thank my spouse for surviving this trip with me.)

I did not get to eat cake every two hours. I did not even get to eat cake for breakfast. Seth gave me this weird look when I tried, like I somehow am not supposed to use my disposable income as an adult to make horrible life decisions. I had two slices of cake on a trip of ten days. One was an okay black forest gateau (my favourite cake) and another was an astoundingly amazing tiramisu mille crepe. The black forest was from a hotel (not all hotel cakes are equal), whereas the mille crepe was from a cake stand inside Isetan's supermarket area that seemed to specialise in "all the cakes and pastries you've ever read about in a manga". That mille crepe turned out to be just what I needed to remember that cake is wonderful and now most cakes are inferior again so I don't need to crave them.

Apart from my husband coming to retrieve me when he's realised I have yet again left him to keep walking while I stand longingly in front of a cafe menu board, the other reason I didn't get more cake than I thought I would was because there is too much good food in Malaysia in general. My parents wouldn't stop shovelling rich food at us virtually every day. At one point, I had to convince my mother not to make me pack home a large jar of pineapple tarts and some other random cookies we were getting at the same place to the hotel. In spite of her reassurances, we were not going to ever finish that before we left. Instead, I got the "small" sample, which was still eight tarts, ten kuih bahulu (Malay madeleines) and two small chocolate-covered butter cookies. Oh, they were delicious. But we really could have done with just four bahulu. (FYI, traditional non-biscuit cakes in Malaysia are variations on sugary coconut milk custards thickened with glutinous rice flour, steamed, baked and fried.) There was also the exquisite-but-too-much dim sum, very good but slightly different Beijing-style cuisine (my bias towards Cantonese cuisine holds) and incredibly rich and perhaps a little too spicy authentic Malay dinner. Doesn't help that my family orders way too much food by default, as it is more polite to overfeed guests than underfeed them. And that's outside of the things we managed to eat on our own! I had intense cravings for tofu fa (very soft custard tofu in sugar syrup), strangely muted cravings for roti. Seth even endured what he called, "your thing for runny eggs", our traditional Chinese coffeeshop breakfast of soft-boiled eggs with soy sauce and white pepper, usually served with a tall, buttery kaya (coconut egg curd) toast and bracing tea (or coffee) laced with sugar, condensed milk and evap. Seth loves Malaysian kopi, yet we both came home appreciating our usually sugarless morning caffeine with half and half. (Is this why fresh cream cakes seem like the least of our evils to me?)

Surprising food trend: Biscoff biscuits as a flavouring for coffee and baked goods. Lotus-brand Biscoff biscuits are sort of like a much sweeter, slightly thicker, cinnamon-flavoured pepparkakor. They are insanely addictive and great if you can't find pepparkakor (and still less sweet than most American cookies). I was vaguely aware that Biscoff is ground into a paste for toast. It turns out that the actual European biscuit this is based on, speculoos, has that usage when not eaten in biscuit form. So it makes a certain logic that you'd put it between pastry. Seems like a waste of crunchy biscuit, but it's probably easier than mixing sugar, cinnamon and butter.

Less surprising food trend: Korean food. Korean food, like Korean dramas and K-pop, seem to have really crept into the local consciousness. It was here when I left, but is more pronounced now. Actually amused us to read the menu of a popular Korean fried chicken chain and realise that all the specialty drinks were clearly mojitos with the alcohol removed to meet local tastes. When you know something probably started out with shochu in it...

Malaysia apparently still has trouble coughing up a burger worthy of an American. Yes, even Burger King and McDonalds. On the other hand, McDonalds sells nasi lemak with buttermilk fried chicken chop covered in gravy, so take that American McDonalds. No, I never got to try it because there was just too much food.

Anime is big in Malaysia. We were always more exposed to anime to begin with, since no Malaysian child born after the 1980s cannot not know Doraemon and Ultraman, but walking downtown across giant ads embedded in the sidewalk for an Attack on Titan finale art exhibition is next level. Pharmacies sell SPY X FAMILY stationary box sets. Kinokuniya in KLCC, one of our favourite must-visit places in the whole city to this day, has an expanded manga and light novel section to rival the one in San Francisco. The visitors are from all sorts, students debating which latest volume of what to spend their precious allowance on, working age adults, even families with children where the parents know what they're doing. We bought some cute gacha toys at Lot 10, claimed to be the Japanese mall in KL, and the selection had changed by the time we came back less than a week later. This means turnover is fast. There's a scary Don Don Donki (Don Quijote, as seen in Yakuza games) with four floors of Japanese snacks, instant mixes and fresh mentaiko what made me want to cry since I can't take that home with me in Lot 10. I recommend it for the trippiness. Japanese food is everywhere. Never hard to find in KL to begin with, it's clearly still much loved. Our convenience stores now carry rice balls alongside the usual hot drinks, steamed buns, fried assortments, sandwiches & co., making them basically konbini without the booze.

Early in our trip, Seth found out we were a few doors down from one of the most highly rated omakase sushi establishments in the city. Well, this meant I had to have a cute date with my husband, whiskers fully twitching. Omakase experiences are about enjoying the food regardless of what you get served. Actually, it's about trying something new and realising you've found something fascinating you never knew about because of the challenge. It means discovering even though you don't like squid, firefly squid (hotaru ika) has a nice crunch and a mild seafood taste, and even though you've written much copy about the notes of cream in uni and you personally find uni too sophisticated for you to appreciate—er, it still tastes like high-class snot. But it did initially go down mild and creamy, I swear. Seriously though. The staff at Sushi Oribe were incredible and kind, service is impeccable to the point of being psychic. I had previously swum right before and came out with a severe allergy to the pool water yet not fully realising it. This meant I was sniffling with pink eyes while eating. The poor servers worried I had a food allergy, discreetly put a box of tissues beside me and I felt like I could not reassure them enough it really wasn't the food. The friendly chefs had a flip chart with labeled pictures of every seafood they could possibly serve, so we were given brief explainers of each item's provenance. It was fun! I got to try fishes (or fish parts) I never had before, like sakura ebi, something I knew about which just never came up in anything I ate. They added them to a sublime chawanmushi. I already love chawanmushi to bits, the fine wee shrimps added a nice texture without being too prawny at all. They served halibut fins two ways, one deep fried (totes okay with deep fried fish fins and bones) and one marinated into a lovely sweetish-sour tenderness. I never knew salted fish intestines would be a mild sea flavour on top of sashimi (I'm pretty sure they're usually quite stronger). We were even shown a mini tuna model to teach us which specific cuts were served at any time. One of the dishes were served with what the chef called, "Japanese sambal". I asked if it was a shishito pepper, and he said it was an actual Japanese chili. It had a nutty flavour I thought was nice if I could find it. Chile Japones is apparently a real thing. Will keep eyes open for it.

Other random closing thoughts:

How big is video games in Malaysia? I don't know, weirdly. Since the pirated video game boom of the 90s and 00s dried up, it's hard to tell. Original software is expensive for Malaysians, but so is manga. Most PC games are sold online-only anyway. There are stores selling Playstation and Switch games. Me and Seth were looking hard for region-specific releases we couldn't find in the US. Last time we were here, we found Shinovi Versus and Dark Souls before they were localised for North America. I know Malaysians play video games online. I've run into them on FFXIV. This might be where the market has leaned into.

On my earlier point, KL really can't stop growing giant malls and tall buildings. Malaysia doesn't get the natural disasters prevalent in the very nearby Ring of Fire, so making 50 to 100-floor towers is how we do modern. Seth took photos that suggested my city is getting more cyberpunk over time. Cranes and wire-scaffolding soar across the whole downtown. We still suck at pedestrian-friendly streets though. This is ironic, since KL is now extremely well-connected by rail, even to satellite towns I wouldn't have thought possible in college. Generally, you'd think this means people would be incentivised to park and commute, but we also have haven't stopped building fancy highways and elevated roads. Our traffic jams continue to be epic. Convenient zebra crossings and pedestrian walkways are not to be expected, even in the city centre, which can be said to have more of these tools than other places. Our streets in San Francisco aren't pretty, but damn do we have zebra crossings. Back when I first moved here, I appreciated not potentially being run over while dashing across a four-lane highway every day. This is probably why I still assiduously insist on crossing at a zebra crossing when I can, even if I could just cross from the middle of the street, just to appreciate this luxury.

By the end of ten days, we were genuinely tired of exploring high-end malls. It's not like we were going to buy from Chanel. Neither of us genuinely felt a need to shop, even though Malaysia is a major shopping destination. We tried to supplement our visit with an actual trip to the national forest reserve in the middle of KL. Unfortunately for us, the eco-park was closed due to bad weather. Walking in 35C heat has its limits, never mind I used to walk in it all the time. We did have a lot of fun just walking everywhere though, remembering how much we like doing this. Next time we go, we'll probably opt to stay closer to downtown, as we also explored KLCC and its surrounds to a nub. I really wanted to visit the National Gallery, which I haven't gone to in years and couldn't. In fact, if we go again (we will), I'd like to stop by more museums. I got to taste a lot of things I could only find in KL, which Seth was very pleased I could do, but I definitely did not try everything, nor some things more than once. It is also necessary to go to KL with my husband. He is a reassuring presence that is irreplaceable and my adventuring companion. But most of all, he noted that twice during our trip, I managed to yell out loud, "Thank the dark gods!" in a crowded place and somehow...people ignored it.

He looked. People ignored it.

Donut worry. I have not recently gained an allegiance to any gods, dark or otherwise. That was just due to high exposure to WAR40K media.

He also told me about it only a week after we got home.

[Trigger warning: The following text contains descriptions of gore and dead animals.]

We have a protocol around the house for when our cat catches mice. First, the person who discovers the mouse goes to the other person and says, "Dear, our cat caught a mouse." The informant is usually Seth. I am usually half-asleep when this happens. Seth will catch our cat, who will be fighting like hell to keep its new self-propelled toy. I will go fetch a box and try to free the mouse from the cat's jaws so it drops into the box. When I get the mouse in the box, I will take it outside. If it is alive, I will release it at the back of the yard. If it is dead, I will bury it at the back of the yard. Back inside, Seth will carefully soothe our upset cat by dispensing treats, pets and reassuring him that he is the goodest boy. We don't blame our cats for being cats.

This system works out pretty well, since mice are either Dead or Alive. Moggie has brought home eight mice since the start of the year. My strong suspicion is that three of these mice were brought to us twice each. It's like the mice bounties where the mouse catcher releases their catch and counts it twice. I'm not saying our cat is doing this with any intention. He's not the brightest bulb on the string. But I concede our local mice aren't going to take over the world either. I stepped on one once by accident in the middle of the night and broke its foot—that's how dubious I am of their intelligence. Seth had to talk me out of trying to keep that mouse in a shoebox because Dorian was around at the time and it would simply have wound up as a snack by morning. So I tried to let it loose in the yard. The next morning I found the mouse's corpse without a head. One of the neighbourhood cats got to it.

All of last week, Moggie staked out our fridge. We reckoned a mouse probably came up from the basement through the back of our oven, ran to the fridge and got trapped. Although I checked with a torchlight several times, nothing ever showed up under the fridge itself. On Friday evening, Seth watched our cat do one of his Olympiad leaps across the kitchen onto a mouse (conveniently escaping our fridge). As per protocol, the mouse was safely dispensed outside. On Saturday morning, I was once more roused from bed because Moggie had caught a mouse outside and brought it in. Same mouse. The terrified little guy was running back and forth on the bottom shelf of the gaming manual cabinet. I had a hard time grabbing him while holding a torchlight. Seth had a hard time in general dealing with a gigantic cat howling about the unfairness of it all in his arms. (Hey, we all felt it was terribly unfair!) The cat was locked in the bedroom. I began realising the mouse was bleeding and trailing its intestine behind it. While muttering several "Oh, dear"s in my head, I grabbed my gardening gloves so I could less nervously catch the poor mouse bleeding all over my unshelved comic books and our hardcover manuals. Since Seth wasn't dealing well, I did my best to discreetly pop the mouse into the prepared box out of sight of my spouse as much as possible. Once I took it outside to some good cover, I apologised to the mouse for not being a strong enough person that I could break its neck and put it out of its misery. I told it that at the very least, I hoped it could find a nice dark place to go to sleep. It was in very bad shape. The string of intestine now seemed to include a spleen at the end because it was running around so much. The whole lower left of its abdomen was bleeding heavily. We kept Moggie inside for the rest of the day.

Seth decided we should leave the house for a few hours, get some brunch and exercise. I can't not remember how badly hurt that mouse was. This might go on a few days. Moggie forgot the ordeal after a giant pile of treats. There is still mouse blood all over our gaming cabinet and my comics because I have been putting off cleaning it.

I'm not disgusted or horrified (and I certainly am not blaming my cat for being a cat). But I think I am still out of sorts. The last time I was this way was a couple of months ago when I lost my Dorian Knitty Kitty while grocery shopping. My friend Eekers makes these lovely small knitted cats she calls Knitty Kitties. She's made a few modeled after our family's cats. For over a decade, I had a Knitty Kitty of Sif and Dorian hanging off my bag. The metal clasps wore down over time, so I have been hanging them with ribbons and jewelry wire, but even these things eventually broke. I kept Sif inside my bag while Dorian was still hanging outside. I realised I lost DorDor about a block away from our house. When I got home, I immediately handed the groceries to Seth and retraced my steps back to the store. It was only about four blocks later that I figured I was having an anxiety attack. It was as bad as when DorDor died. It's the same neighbourhood as the vet's office, albeit a different route. I was sufficiently out of it I crossed a street while a fire truck was racing down on me. Felt really bad about that since that's obviously not what you should do when emergency vehicles are going down a street. Ideally, I would have waited on the pavement until it passed like all the perfectly normal folk around me. That just didn't occur to me at the time. I did find the Dorian Knitty Kitty on the street in front of the store. It's now safely locked in a cabinet next to a spare Sif Knitty Kitty, with their ashes.

Moggie is a monster. He's an adorkable monster. I wished he'd kill his prey instead of maiming it and packing it home going forward. But I can't and won't blame my cat for being a cat. And I don't blame mice for living near people either, although they could learn to avoid houses with cats. You have no idea how glad I am we don't live near gophers or squirrels.

In his second year, Moggie is now fully integrated into our household. This means he has had time to develop the bad habits that plague cat owners everywhere while being fully reassured we will love him forever. Such as waking up his humans in terrible ways at 7AM for breakfast. The underside of my bed looks like a toddler with razor sharp claws crawled upside down and ripped apart the entire cloth lining to shreds. (See, earlier statement about waking up humans in terrible ways.) Outside of this, he is still a sweet, loving cat. Many nights, we go to sleep nuzzling heads while he purrs at maximum volume. (Seth: While I am slowly being pushed off the bed.) Moggie loves to lick our faces, fingers and toes. He head bumps to get attention. You may be asking, don't I check every cat before adoption for drooling? How I am happy to be licked by a cat?

Firstly, there's a difference between a cat that leaks drool every time it purrs and a cat that just likes to lick people. Secondly, I grew up with dogs. Not small dogs, big dogs. Being licked by a dog is several orders of magnitude more disgusting than being licked by a cat. I love dogs, but being licked by a dog still makes me run to wash my hands afterwards. In comparison, a cat's tongue feels more like being licked with damp sandpaper. I find it quite pleasant, assuming I'm not licked on my eyelids or an open wound. (Seth: Being licked on the face by a cat at 7AM is still disgusting though.)

Even though he's the size of about 20 kittens gathered together in a ball, Moggie still behaves somewhat like a kitten. He's excitable and enthusiastic about moving objects. Helping make the bed is his favourite household chore. Hunting Seth's toes under the blanket before bed is the best. He enjoys helping with everything. Due to some weird fight for dominance with Seth, Moggie has made it his job to steal Seth's seat whether it be his office chair or preferred couch. We know he's actively stealing the seats because he deliberately waits until Seth is walking back towards said seat to take it where Seth can watch his seat being stolen. Usually with a satisfactory, "Mrp." If Seth has not yet touched the seat that day, it is beneath his notice. Maybe Moggie thinks he has a chance to challenge Seth because he's bigger than the average cat, but he doesn't quite realise my husband is also somewhat giant. Only Seth can comfortably hold our cat upside down for disciplinary purposes. Seth is obviously the disciplinary parent since I'm hopeless. If my cat has a tantrum every two hours to demand a meal, my idea of dealing with it is to yank the cat off the furniture at the appropriate times and ignore him until he goes away. After about three hours of a flailing toddler tantrum, Seth will either just feed the cat or throw him outside and shut the window. My cat continues to be a leading cause of death in dungeons.

When not echo-locating us with his Moggie Sonar for food, Moggie spends his daylight hours visiting our neighbours to have rude conversations with their cats (and at least one dog). He is a sturdy, muscular cat alongside his chonky bits. Our neighbouring cats are suitably annoyed. The little black cat next door (who we found out is fully outdoors and has a long history of dealing with young upstarts) gets back at Moggie in the evenings when he is locked inside by sitting calmly where Moggie can see him through the kitchen window. That's all he has to do, sit calmly and maybe clean himself very languidly. This sends Moggie into a tizzy of scrabbling at the kitchen window, besmirching his honour as a cat while I laugh hysterically. (Seth: Our cat is a doofus.)

I get to claim my cat is sweet and loving because he's the first cat I've met who thanks me for feeding him. When I bring out food, there's a 75% chance he will chirp, purr and even lean against my feet. Every cat I've fed up until now, even other people's cats, wail at me like a banshee until I put the bowl down. I have low standards, okay? When your cat gets five (small) meals and a nap but still accuses you of mistreatment every single day you need to take what you can get. Oh, he's also finally as soft and fluffy as a cloud, the proof that he receives sufficient pets. Whenever he's on the bed and he notices I'm stirring, he'll come over to purr on my shoulder and put me back to sleep. On rare occasion, he'll flop against me so I can hug him like a plushie. Guys, hugging a fluffy animal like a plushie in bed is my #2 Ultimate Sleeping Goal. (#1 is going to sleep on Totoro's tummy.) (Seth: I won't fit.)

Seth actually hugs Moggie like a plushie every morning the moment he senses him nearby because if he doesn't, he gets licked on the face. This in itself would probably be yucky but okay if Moggie didn't then bite his nose. Yes, Moggie bites for attention. There's a fine line to distinguish when he'll just lick you affectionately and when he'll bite you. If he looks hangry, retrieve whatever appendage it is before it gets bit. I always thought "ankle biter" was some cute phrase someone thought up to describe human toddlers. Little did I expect it was a real description of an actual life form. If we must, human toddlers are also actual life forms. Virtually all of them drool and as part of their growth, they undergo a phase where they need to nibble everything at least once to make sure it is friendly. Thus, Moggie is like a toddler (minus the drool) not in the sense he has the intelligence of a two-year-old but in the sense that he nibbles everything, throws ferocious tantrums and sulks when made to time-out between his people who are ostensibly watching television but really rubbing his tummy while he gets grumpier and cuter.

Lately I've been reading an insane number of light novels. It's been such a long time since I was able to concentrate on reading book-form fiction that I forgot how much my habits with it are so different from non-fiction. I'm the sort of person who starts reading from the last chapter, or at least a relatively middle to late one. If I like it, I jump around and read the other parts to understand specific contexts I saw in later chapters. Actually, I often get to the first few pages only towards to the end. (But don't worry, I still manage to read the whole book.)

This is why I tell people I am impossible to spoil for plot. I'm more curious about the reason we got to a point than enjoying the process in order. In comparison, I read all non-fiction books from first page to last, maybe going back to reference things that happen later for memory. Jumping around on a timeline would make me miss context! Some of the non-fiction books I've read are so dry as to have been barely edited out of being a thesis and I will still read it from page one. Some of these books take me years to read. Sorry, books. But that order remains even if I have to then start reading from the beginning again!

So do I enjoy the process of discovery more in non-fiction? Probably. I read mostly history. Understanding how the history of something is built up to its present form while learning the context behind each step taken is important to me because the most dangerous thing someone can do with history is to quote it out of context. One of my favourite topics is fundamentalist religions. The development of fundamentalist thought depends on taking history out of context, more often than not in ignorance or malice. But even if it's not fundamentalist in nature, knowing the context of history gives you a real appreciation for how the puzzle comes together. Each piece is no longer just random actor A or natural disaster B, the way they connected matters.

How is this different from fiction in my head? I'm not sure. Maybe I just want to know how we can reverse the process of the stupid things we do in real life because their consequences hurt real things. In fiction, you can be shown pain, but no matter how profound it is, you're the only person capable of giving it context to reality. In non-fiction, knowing something painful has happened is a statement of fact. You can't walk away. You can't put down the book. So how do you stop it from happening again? You understand the process and what drove us there.

(It might have struck you by this point that my non-fiction choices are distinctly cheerless. This isn't always true. But you'd be mostly correct.)

So, light novels. They're a genre I wished would take off in the west. These are what western publishers would call novellas from a word count standpoint. There are standalone light novels and series with dozens of volumes. The genres run the gamut, but insofar as I know, they're only in fiction. Compared to a normal length book, a light novel is designed to be read at an easier pace (though you obviously don't have to read it slowly). Most light novels don't even start off as whole books but as serialized chapters in a magazine or online, further highlighting why they're easy to pick up again when you want. From an author standpoint, I think it gives you more room to breathe, honestly. You can play with a concept but how long you want to ramble (and how long you have to for industry purposes) is more in your control. For someone with inconvenient fiction reading ADD like me, it's comfortable for me to read.

I'm working on the "is it comfortable to write?" part and I don't really have the answer yet. I'll let you know when I'm less trapped in a decadent cat-based lifestyle. (One may read that as [decadent cat][-based lifestyle] or [decadent] [cat-based lifestyle] and both would apply.)

Eventually, I still want to do a post about titles I've genuinely liked from the books I've gone through. Since the light novels were originally Japanese or Korean, some of these titles would probably never be read in English without fansubbers. (Quite a few do have official English translations too.) Also, apologies if the term is wrong. I'm so used to thinking of this in terms of fansubbers and scanlators, which tells you a bit how old I am, but you know who I mean. Fanlators can't possibly be right and probably just sounds kinky.

Finches is once again available on Kindle and Nook! Sorry these versions were unavailable since March—a full explanation follows for those interested. Print versions were and are always available from your favourite bookstore too!

As I mentioned last year, Vernacular Books, the wonderful people who published Finches, has closed down. They did everything they could to do right by their authors so I got all the proofs for my book. Unfortunately, due to some snafus, I wasn't able to get access to the Smashwords version of Finches nor was the ebook version on our main distributor properly transferred with the print version. I got the latter fixed, which was a huge learning curve for me about the epub format and how different distributors published ebooks. The result is that Amazon and Barnes & Noble carry Finches for their readers again. But because of the issues with Smashwords, I fear the version there is gone for good. If I can find a way to convert my proof to epub that doesn't irreparably break the formatting it won't be forever. Until then, I'm still figuring out tools.

Current Mood: anxious

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