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Diary

UOB Heartbeat Run 2026: My 10 km Race at Marina Bay

10 km finisher medals
My partner and I have earned the 10 km finisher medals!

Ever since I signed up for the year-end Singapore half marathon, I have been training with my AI coach. At my current stage of training, my outdoor run distance ranges from 5 km to 12 km. Hence, the 10 km UOB Heartbeat Run was very doable.

I was particularly excited about this run, held last weekend. First, my bank was the organiser. Second, I was one of the volunteers involved in the fundraising effort that raised S$1.4 million for charity. Third, unlike last year’s Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon, this Heartbeat Run was only open to staff and their families.

And the flag-off was during daytime. Not some wee hour like last year’s SC Marathon, or the 4:30 am start for this year’s BYD Marathon. It was much easier logistically to get there. And much friendlier to my biological clock.

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Diary

Reviving My Marshall Headphones: From K‑Drama to WH‑1000XM6

Restored Marshall Major III headphones with replacement ear pads and a fabric headband cover on a light-coloured surface.
My Marshall Major 3 after a simple DIY restoration. A few dollars, a bit of scrubbing, and eight years of music gets a second life.

What do Netflix’s Korean drama We Are All Trying Here, the Sony X1000M6, BLACKPINK’s “GO,” and a soon‑to‑be‑trashed Marshall Major 3 have in common?

A restored Marshall.

The Marshall that refused to die!

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For the Geeks

Expanding My Desktop App: Backups, Emoji Search & Clipboard Cleaner

**Alt Text** Concept illustration of the Chrono Babe desktop companion app featuring an anime-style virtual assistant, a festive Bongo Cat mascot, emoji dictionary code, development chat history, and utility tools including Garmin FIT conversion, image conversion, safe backup, emoji search, and clipboard cleaning.
Every new button tells a story. What began as a simple timer slowly evolved through countless chats, experiments, and small improvements into a personal desktop companion packed with practical tools.

From Timer to Toolkit: A Quick Recap

Transforming my Python desktop app from a cute little timer into daily helpers — like a Garmin activity decoder and an image resizer for web publishing — was both fun and satisfying, as you saw in my previous post. No more manual steps when prepping for my half‑marathon run in December or uploading blog photos. Every minute saved frees me to do something else. Imagine not spending a few minutes each night making overnight oats! Welcome, my robot — where art thou?

So what else do I want to add to this Bongo‑Cat‑inspired app? A safe backup utility, an emoji search, and, as a bonus, a clipboard cleaner — little things I’ve wanted to build but haven’t. Until now.

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For the Geeks

Second Time Around: Building My Garmin Telemetry Tools with AI and Python

Concept artwork for the Chrono Babe desktop companion app, showing an anime-style virtual assistant in a red dress beside a refreshed Bongo Cat mascot, with Python code and Chrono Babe conversion tools displayed in a futuristic dark-themed interface.
Chrono Babe’s latest evolution: refreshed visuals, smarter conversion tools, and a mischievous coding companion keeping watch beside the timer.

Nearly two months ago I found myself hacking together a little Windows timer app with an AI assistant. It was inspired by Bongo Cat – a cute character whose outfit changes while a clock ticks away – and it carried lots of small, subtle touches that delighted me. But that weekend of coding took everything I had. I was adamant that this would be something the machine and I built together, not just an AI‑generated programme. By the end I was exhausted and the idea of improving the app sent a chill down my spine.

A few weeks on, the pain has faded and the fond memories remain. For my second round of tinkering I decided to add something genuinely useful: a tool to turn Garmin’s raw FIT files into workout telemetry I could actually read. Once I have a readable summary I can feed it back into ChatGPT and ask for tailored training advice.

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I See I Write

We Made Some Bold Predictions About the Garmin Fenix 9

Concept infographic imagining the future Garmin Fenix 9 smartwatch lineup, featuring titanium models in carbon gray, burgundy red, and silver, alongside speculative upgrades such as improved battery life, next-generation sensors, AMOLED and solar refinements, and enhanced navigation features.
A fun speculative poster I created while my partner and I spiralled deeper into the Garmin Fenix rabbit hole. What started as a broken Venu touchscreen somehow evolved into philosophy, ageing, identity, titanium screws, AMOLED debates… and perhaps future matching watches.

Thousands and thousands of words have been exchanged between ChatGPT and me about one topic: the next Garmin flagship watch. I won’t drag you through the whole labyrinth we built together, but after hours of back‑and‑forth I found myself fantasising about a Fenix 9.

This fascination began when my first‑generation Garmin Venu appeared to die while we were in Jeju. Its touchscreen stopped working and it wouldn’t reboot. I was almost delighted: perhaps this was my chance to upgrade. I have become more active in recent times and could use a better watch.

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Reflection

Crafting a Second Life Beyond Work with AI

Vintage cassette tape next to a modern tablet amid gentle greenery, symbolising the author’s journey from past creative recordings to AI‑assisted projects.
From demo tapes to AI‑powered days — my creative life keeps evolving.

Introduction: From AI Chats to Personal Projects

My conversations with AI are rarely transactional; they drift from one topic to another. Often a chat will spark a new project with its own theme and category. At work I manage a portfolio of tech projects, while at home I’m building a wholesome collection of everything that interests me and is good for me. This, my friend, is me building a meaningful second ecosystem outside work.

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Diary

When My Travel Insurance Policy Went Missing via Standard Chartered Singapore

Semi-transparent travel insurance policy dissolving into green and blue digital glitch pixels against a dark background.
One policy arrived almost instantly. The other seemed to dissolve quietly into the digital void.

I had a rather strange customer service experience today with Standard Chartered. Strange probably isn’t the word — frustrating perhaps. The missing insurance policy itself isn’t even what bothered me most; it was the feeling of being abandoned by the platform that sold me the product.

A Simple Purchase That Went Wrong

On 27 April 2026, I logged into my Standard Chartered banking app. There was a promotion to purchase travel insurance from Allianz. With upcoming travel plans, I bought two policies through the app – one for a trip in May and another for a trip in October. The bank deducted the money for both transactions immediately. Shortly afterwards, I received the May trip’s policy certificate and everything looked normal. The October certificate, however, never arrived.

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Fragments of My Dreams

The Infinite Self Beneath the Surface

Minimalist illustration of a woman standing before a vintage TV displaying an eye with infinite reflection
A quiet reflection, seen from the other side of the screen.

I had just checked into an Airbnb by the shore—Panpo, Jeju, a shoreline dotted with offshore windmills.

The night air carried a faint saltiness. The kind that lingers quietly, not sharp, just present. Through the slightly opened window, I could hear the ocean—steady, rhythmic, almost indifferent. Waves arriving, retreating, repeating themselves without urgency.

I lay there for a while, listening.

At some point, without quite noticing when, I drifted.

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Diary

The Meals I Didn’t Return

Black-and-white illustration of a man dining alone while surrounded by thought bubbles of hesitation and small everyday decisions, alongside comic-style panels showing moments of uncertainty with food.
Small moments. Small choices. The ones I let go.

I’ve been thinking about food lately. Not the kind you photograph, recommend, or complain about on Instagram.

Just… ordinary meals—the kind you buy, sit down and quietly finish even when something isn’t quite right.

Over the years, I’ve had a handful of these moments. None of them were dramatic, but for some reason they stayed with me. I think I’m only starting to understand why.

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Diary

My ChatGPT × Apple Music Experiment – Part 1: What Doesn’t Work

A sage-like AI figure attempts to repair a giant Apple Music machine labelled with limitations like “25 track limit” and “poor song matching”, symbolising frustration with playlist automation.
AI: “I can fix this.” Apple Music: “Best I can do is karaoke.”

If you stream Chinese or Korean songs on Apple Music, you’ll probably know my pain.

Around the time I moved from Android to an iPhone in 2021, I also switched from Spotify to Apple Music. It was cheaper then, offered lossless audio and slotted neatly into the Apple ecosystem. Yet I still miss how well Spotify curated a New Music Mix and served it up every Friday. I love discovering new artists and genres while keeping up to date on the latest releases from my favourite artists – a list that grows week by week.

At least for me, Apple Music’s New Music Mix is a pain to use. That’s my opinion, of course, but it’s deeply frustrating. Imagine waiting a week, opening your 25‑song mix and finding that more than 20% of the tracks turns out to be karaoke versions with no lead vocal. Why on earth would I want to hear a “new” song without a voice and without lyrics?

Duh.

Are Team Apple Music aware of this? Or is the engine that powers Apple Music really that arcane and limited? I have some evidence for this later when I tried to match songs using the app, external sites and ChatGPT Plus.

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