Skip to main content

Things that happened,
things I noticed.

For the things that I didn't want to forget.

Written when I felt like it. Kept here because I wanted somewhere to put them.

May 2026
food

The mee kari at Zan Asian

Someone told me Zan Asian did a proper mee kari, so we went on Saturday to find out whether that was true.

It was true. The broth was thick enough to hold onto the back of the spoon, spiced rather than just hot, and the tofu puffs had gone soft the way they only do if they have been sitting in it long enough. Fish cake, long beans, half an egg, a couple of wontons. A sheet of crisp bean curd on top that you are supposed to push under and eat once it has gone soft.

It tasted like home. Not reminded me of — tasted like it. That is not a thing I had got from food here before, and I stayed at the table longer than I needed to because of it.

We ordered the chicken rice as a side as well. It was good. It was not the point.

Two bowls of mee kari in dark stoneware, orange coconut broth with shredded chicken, tofu puffs, fish cake and long beans, a sheet of crisp bean curd propped on top of each
Two of us ordered the same thing without discussing it.
April 2026
class

The last-ever lecture

Final statistics lecture today. I sat in the same seat I always do — third row, slightly left of centre — and tried to pay attention in a way that acknowledged it was the last time. The professor said something about how models are always wrong and sometimes useful, which I have heard him say before, but today it landed differently.

Afterwards everyone filed out and no one really said anything. That's probably right. What would you say. Three years of sitting in rooms being told things, and then one Tuesday afternoon it just stops. I went and got a coffee and sat by the Parkinson building and watched people walk past and felt extremely ordinary, which felt appropriate.

music

"The View Between Villages" by Noah Kahan. On repeat for three days. I don't know what this is doing to me but I'm letting it.

walk

The lake at Roundhay

There is a point on the path where the bank turns and the whole of Waterloo Lake opens at once, and today it was completely covered in birds.

Swans, mostly. More than I have seen in one place — forty of them maybe, the cygnets still grey-brown and still trailing their parents, not yet white and not yet interested in leaving. The gulls had taken the middle of the water and were not moving for anybody. Two Canada geese sat slightly apart from all of it, looking like they had turned up to the wrong event.

I stood at the stone edge for a long time. The swans came right up to it, close enough that you hear them before you see them, that low unbothered noise they make when they are not asking you for anything. Somebody further down the bank was feeding them, and every so often the whole flock would drift that way and then drift back.

The far side had started to turn. A few of the trees fully gold, the rest still holding green — the good week, the one before it all goes brown and stays that way for months. The boathouse was shut. It usually is.

Walked home the long way round. Nothing happened, and I was in a better mood for the rest of the day because of it.

Waterloo Lake at Roundhay Park crowded with mute swans, grey-brown cygnets and gulls, a boathouse with green doors on the far bank below trees beginning to turn gold
They came right up to the stone. You hear them before you see them.
thought

Three years is long enough to know a city without quite belonging to it. That's not a complaint. It might be the ideal arrangement.

travel

York for the day

Twenty-odd minutes on the train from Leeds, which is short enough that calling it a trip feels like overstating it. Went with two friends on a Thursday because none of us had anything on.

The Minster first. You come at it down a narrow street and then the street runs out and the whole thing is just there at once, and everybody does the same thing of stopping and tipping their head back. It does not photograph. I photographed it anyway.

The Shambles after, which is as crowded as everyone warns and still worth walking down — the upper floors lean in over the street until they very nearly meet. We got apple crumble and custard from the market and ate it outside on a green bench, in actual sun, which in April here counts as an event.

Clifford's Tower last. A steep flight of steps up the mound and then the city goes flat and wide in every direction. We sat up there long enough that it stopped being about the view.

Back in Leeds by evening. Good day.

A paper tub of apple crumble under a thick pour of custard, on a tray on a green picnic bench
Crumble at the market. The custard situation got out of hand.
Clifford's Tower, a squat round stone keep on top of a grass mound, with a long flight of steps leading up to its entrance
Clifford's Tower. The steps are worse than they look.
The west front of York Minster seen from below, its two towers and the great traceried window framed by overhanging plane tree leaves
You cannot get far enough back to fit it in. I tried.
March 2026
musicthought

The song from my mum's kitchen

Was cooking late and put on a playlist I'd made two years ago, and a P. Ramlee song came on that my mum used to play while she cooked. Not something I'd consciously remembered, but the moment it started I knew exactly what her kitchen smelled like. Onion and serai and something sweet on the stove.

That's a strange thing about music. It's less like remembering and more like briefly being somewhere you hadn't thought about in a long time.

class

Spent four hours trying to understand why my PCA eigenvectors keep flipping sign depending on how I initialise the solver. Turns out this is expected behaviour. Four hours.