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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
foodthought

The nasi lemak at the back of Hyde Park market

Found a Malaysian stall tucked behind the Saturday market — proper nasi lemak, the kind with a boiled egg and enough sambal that it sits in your chest for a while. I stood there eating it from the paper wrapper in the cold and couldn't decide if it felt like home or just like a good memory of home. Both, maybe.

The woman running it was from Penang. I told her I was from KL. She said "same same lah" and I laughed and didn't argue.

photo — nasi lemak, Hyde Park market
The paper wrapper was doing too much work in the wind.
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

"Suitcase" by Boy Pablo. On repeat for three days. I don't know what this is doing to me but I'm letting it.

walk

Roundhay Park, early

Got up before 8 and walked to Roundhay because I read somewhere that the lake is better in the morning. It is. Nobody was there except a man throwing a ball for a spaniel who had no interest in returning it. Just wanted to run laps.

The trees are doing that thing where they're so new and green they look unreal, like someone turned the saturation up. I stayed for maybe forty minutes, walked back, and felt like I'd done something good even though nothing happened.

photo — Waterloo Lake, Roundhay Park
Before 8am. That green is not edited.
food

Learning to cook dal

My flatmate Priya showed me how to make dal properly — the tempering, when to add the spices, how long to let things sit. I had been doing it wrong for two years. We ate it with rice we overcooked slightly and it was still one of the better meals I've had in this flat.

I like that cooking is a thing you can just get better at by doing it with people who know. No formal instruction required. You just stand next to someone in a kitchen and watch what they do and remember it. Very different from how I spend most of my day.

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

Edinburgh for four days

Took the train up with two friends. Four hours, which is long enough to read something properly and short enough that you don't feel cheated when you arrive. The city hits you straight away — the castle up on the rock, the stone everywhere, that cold that comes off the North Sea and doesn't apologise.

We walked up Arthur's Seat on day two. I was not prepared for how hard it is for something that doesn't look that high from the bottom. At the top I sat on a rock and looked at the Firth of Forth and thought: this is a genuinely good thing to be doing on a Thursday.

Good haggis. Good whisky. Rain on day three. Would go again.

view from Arthur's Seat
The Firth of Forth, Thursday morning.
Old Town rooftops
Looking down from the Royal Mile.
photo — Edinburgh Castle from Grassmarket
Day one, around midday. The light was doing something good.
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.

walkfood

The long way back from the market

Went to Kirkgate market to get vegetables and ended up spending an hour just walking around. There's a section at the back with the old Victorian ironwork ceiling that I don't think tourists find because it doesn't look like anything special from outside. Inside it's enormous and slightly dark and smells of fish and bread and something I can't identify.

Came back with too many tomatoes, one bunch of coriander I didn't need, and the quiet feeling of a morning well used.

photo — Kirkgate Market, Victorian hall
The ironwork ceiling in the old hall. Nobody looks up.