Happy Lunar New Year! 🧧
Thoughts on LNY and my progress on the Ship30 challenge
Greetings, and to all of you who celebrate: Happy Lunar New Year!
I was just thinking this morning how nice it is to have the opportunity to celebrate something in every month of the winter. First Christmas, then LNY… Celebrations from different cultures that string together and become moments of light and fun with loved ones throughout the darkest time of the year.
This year a friend of mine sent me an image over IG of new year snacks being sold in these wonderfully decorative tingkat, or tiffin boxes as some might know them as. Tiffin boxes are very common in Asia but I know them especially from an Indian context. The movie “The Lunchbox” (2013) is a very cute and endearing drama set in Mumbai of a daily lunchbox delivery gone awry… for months.
While tiffin boxes are a household term in Asia, it was a word my fiancé was unfamiliar with. (It rarely happens that I’m the one teaching him about English words, so it was a special moment for me 😂) Anyways, back to the fancy-ass tiffin boxes… They were filled with Chinese traditional snacks from a bakery in Scarborough (this detail is important because Scarborough is a suburb in east-Toronto known for its diverse, authentic ethnic food), and every snack is steeped with symbolism of luck, prosperity, and good fortune for the new year.
It was a priceless moment to watch Apho (my grandma) open the tiffin boxes and to witness her delight at seeing the snacks. I had her describe every snack in the box, and I learned that many of the things I had never seen before were in fact staple snacks for New Years celebrations when she was younger.
I think the Chinese New Year snacks delivered in tiffin boxes was just perfect for my family: an ethnically-Chinese group who all were born and lived large parts of their lives in India and Bhutan.
So once again: Happy Lunar New Year to you! 🌕🏮🥟
Ship30 updates
The past week has been challenging for daily publishing, but here’s what I was able to churn out!
Day 15: Lessons learned from the maiden voyage of a D&D PKM
Yesterday was my first actual D&D session. While it was a lot of fun, my best intentions for being prepared turned out to be a bit of a disaster:
I had gathered information that I never used
I failed to quickly locate specific information when I needed it
My in-game note-taking was sporadic
I gleaned some larger lessons from this sub-optimal experience.
No amount of preparation can prepare you for the real experience
I may have consumed a lot of PKM information, and set my system up according to all the best practices I know. But when playing the game, and actually feeling the interactions out with my co-players and observing the flow of information - none of this in-game experience was reflected in my PKM. The fact is that there was no way for me to know what it would be like until I tried it out. This is a strong feedback loop I'll be feeding from as I improve my D&D PKM for future sessions.
Starting small can be better
Instead of trying to plan for every scenario and eventuality, scaling back and focusing on providing core information can be a better starting point for a new PKM. I sacrificed speed when I prioritized information documentation over practical use. For next time, I have a different idea of how to organize my information, and it will be according to how often I need something. I won't delete anything, but I will prioritize information differently.
PKM fitness can only be measured through use
PKM fitness is built over time through use. Until my PKM is given a job of strenuously interfacing with my brain to help me perform at my best, its fitness is unknown. It's like equipping a brand new kitchen with all new pots, pans, condiments, spices, tableware and so on, and then watching over time what you reach for the most, and what proves to be a reliable companion to you in the kitchen. Real estate in the kitchen is limited, so you may promote some spices to the counter for easy reach, while stashing others in a less accessible place. This pattern of optimization can only emerge through use.
I had a lot of fun preparing a new PKM for playing D&D. I am excited to further refine it for play in a fantasy realm, and bring lessons learned from this PKM to my actual PKM.
Day 16: Why housing affordability is fundamentally a cultural problem
The question "does every human have the right to shelter?" is an interesting one. At the outset, the answer would invariably be "Yes".
Most of us could never imagine ourselves being unhoused. It is inconceivable for us to not have shelter from weather, to not have a safe place to live in, to not have a home you can call your own. How do you even hang on to a job, or raise a family, without a home?
I think we can all agree that it's important for everyone to have a place they can call home.
Shelter is, after all, listed as a basic human right.
So why do we continue to nerf housing production in Canada's largest city during a housing affordability crisis?
In a thriving city like Toronto that continues to attract a lot of people who want to live and work here, a proactive approach to providing new housing ought to be lauded.
Instead, it seems that every effort is made to oppose new developments, making the task of building new housing a gruelling one:
Shadow impacts. Height restrictions. Road width. Wrong zoning. Blocked views. Angular planes. Setbacks and stepbacks. Glass. One bedroom units. Traffic. Parking. Heritage. Fear of apartment dwellers. The list goes on.
Nearly every one of these reasons for building less are either arbitrary, subjective, or based on a form of vanity.
These things have a place and time. You can have your ancient zoning codes, your irrational hate for one bedroom units, your extreme heritage setbacks...
Just not during a housing crisis!
While it's easy to take pot shots at developers who dare consider building something new in a community, the real losers are not in the dialog at all: namely, the future residents whose homes are on the chopping block.
If you happen to be safely housed, you are a direct beneficiary of housing that was planned before you arrived.
First, try to imagine where you would be without the housing opportunity you were afforded.
Then, try to imagine all the opportunities that opened up for you and the things you were able to build and accrue as a result of being housed.
Knowing how impactful a home can be for someone's wellbeing, we should be creating a culture where we are stumbling over ourselves trying to find reasons to build more housing, instead of less.
If it is within us to limit it, it is certainly within us to expedite it.
#LegalizeHousing
Day 17: 3 Liminal spaces we need more of in four season climates.
I've always been fascinated by liminal spaces.
This is the experience of the Inside-Outside-Edge between buildings and the outdoor.
Liminal spaces extend the comforts of the indoor environment, especially for temperate climates that can be both moderately hot (25-30°C) and cold (-15-20°C).
These are the three liminal spaces I wish we'd see more of:
1. Balcony conversions to solarium
In places like Toronto and Oslo, balconies have very limited utility other than being used during summer. There's a real opportunity to convert this space to an enclosed solarium and something with greater usefulness for the residents (if we look past the hurdle that balconies are often counted as owned by the condo corp and not the unit owners).
2. Bay windows and other window ledge seats
There is just something so inviting about a bay window to me. Bay windows bring lots of light into a room, create a natural-sized nook for hanging in, and depending on the season, it can be a cooler or hotter part of the room. It begs to be fitted out with seating, so humans can copy cats in their window ledge activities.
3. Large ground floor openings
Whether facilitated through sliding doors, folding doors, stable doors or garage doors, I love to see a ground floor use that spills out onto the street. Because it happens so rarely or for such a short time, I especially savour the experiences where the climate is comfortable enough to allow air to freely flow between the inside and outside of buildings.
In summary, liminal spaces can be
thresholds, like the space next to windows that can be a very different temperature from the rest of the room,
rooms, like a solarium or foyer, or
zones, like when a restaurant facade opens like a garage door and can freely spill out into the street
By intentionally building liminal spaces, we are creating spaces that help us expand or extend the comforts of our habitations, increasing our opportunities to connect with the outdoors during all seasons.
Day 18: Why I fully support tall buildings* (for now)
Knowing that there's a pressing need for housing in Toronto, I am fully supportive of any project that is bringing more housing into production right now.
I do not prioritize theoretical solutions coming our way tomorrow.
I do not care for conspiracy theories about supply being held hostage by X.
I am even willing to let my standards of city building slide a bit in favour of getting housing built.
Why?
Because it's more important for me to make housing insanely available for everyone, rather than keeping the status quo where too many people are desperate for housing.
There's a reason why shelter is a basic human right.
There's a reason why shelter is at the BOTTOM of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs i.e. the foundation for everything else on top of it.
Sadly, as a society, we seem to be unable to set aside our differences and make the provision of adequate shelter the priority it needs to be. Instead, we're quibbling about details that are much higher up in the hierarchy. Details like height, architectural style, type of unit, appropriate character, and so forth.
I'm sorry but...
We do not get to argue about details unless we meet the basic need of providing shelter first.
For anyone who brings up any argument for less density on a project proposed within the urban built boundary (please no more greenfield sprawl)... you can seriously f**k off.
*As such: unless another housing generator is magically made available overnight that can immediately replace the output of housing that tall buildings provide, I am in support of tall buildings.
#LegalizeHousing
While this week we encountered some storms that interrupted daily publishing, I am intent on keeping with it for as long as it takes to get to port - only 12 atomic essays away!
Thanks for sailing along with me on this interesting journey of short-form, daily writing.
As always, stay safe and stay curious.
—Fei 🪢
PS. If the newsletter looks garbled due to the twitter links, hit the very first headline above to view this edition in your browser and that should solve readability issues hopefully!
Loved the tiffin box story! That's the prettiest tiffin box I've ever seen!
Happy Lunar New Year! That tiffin box is so delightfully pretty! So wonderful that you got to hear from Apho the significance of the snacks. Then enjoy the goodies together.