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So, I turned 40 recently. Feels like a big life milestone has been crossed. There’s so much to reminisce over - like how I went from posting silly profile pictures of me on the internet to more stoic ones - that I would need to start writing an autobiography.

For the sake of brevity, I would share that today I feel like a kite, tied on one end to the inevitability of life but free on the other, soaring high, letting go, reaching for the clouds and I choose when to come down. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all who made me feel this way thus far 🙏

I finished a very intense but satisfying workshop in “Characters”. I have been an improviser in theater for many years (not counting the pandemic times) and one of my favorite activities while performing on stage is to play different characters, particularly physical, quirky and emotional characters. This workshop introduced me to a new technique to enhance the “abilities” of a character - the Laban movement. Simply put, choose amongst fast/slow, direct/indirect, light/heavy, staccato/fluid to endow your character with physical attributes. For e.g, play a firefighter who is light with their hands and indirect in their movement towards the goal; imagine seeing them trying to quell a fire 😂

So, I had a bunch of scrap wood from my previous projects (see bottom left in photo) and I didn’t want it to end up in the waste bin. I found this Youtube short about making a pear-shaped wooden coaster. After a couple of hours of templating, band-sawing, routing and sanding, the result is what you see above. I finished it with mahogany-colored wood-stain and coated it with beeswax. Quite pleasing to look at and smells heavenly. The coaster was snatched away by my sister - it has found a happy home.

The need to quantize space-time in order to reconcile the theory of general relativity (i.e. gravity) with quantum physics has met with no success. A new theory being developed by Jonathan Oppenheim and his team will attempt to address this problem by reconciling the current understanding that probablistic quantum fields (which creates particles) can exist on top of a deterministic substrate of space-time (which emerges from classical gravity).

It is very exciting to see a new hybrid theory being proposed to tackle this century-old problem. Read more about it at this article from Quanta Magazine.

While refreshing myself over a cup of coffee and the dazzling drops of the fountain, I met this adorable Australian Shepherd dog who was being walked by a gentleman. I am keen to have a dog in the future. So, out of curiosity, I enquired about the breed. Turns out the gentleman merely walks his colleague’s dog every afternoon. “And you can certainly meet him again, I’m here everyday on a work week”, said the kind gentleman as he bid farewell with this gorgeous animal in tow.

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This hand-drawn sketch is a blow-up diagram of a pencil-box that I am currently making with oakwood at my woodworking space. The box consists of an outer case and an inner tray.