In the house we visited today I was mesmerised for ages by the contents of three large bookcases. Then I was told I could borrow whatever I wanted. With difficulty I limited myself to just 10 books, which I thought very well-behaved indeed. 📚

Finished reading: Dune by Frank Herbert 📚 ★★★★★ / #22 My first audiobook, as a one-month Audible trial, and I’m a convert. It’s a great way to use the time on public transport, and while cycling the riverside paths.

Parking is forbidden! Please don’t park here!

☕️

Okinawa, nine years ago today

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.

– Joseph Conrad

Kaohsiung (高雄)

Home is not where you are born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

– Naguib Mahfouz

A couple of days ago I booked a Genius Bar appointment for this afternoon at the local Apple Store in Taipei to ask them to check my AirPods Pro. I’ve been having intermittent crackling in the right one over the last few weeks, and the noise cancellation just didn’t seem so effective anymore.

The nice man took them off for a while to test, and when he brought them back out he showed me the results from a suite of tests they’d performed, and said they’d both failed. He then produced two small boxes, each containing an individual AirPod, and said they would replace both of them free of charge under the AirPods Pro Service Program.

So I’m pretty stoked to have a new pair for nothing after 18 months of almost-daily use!

One of many new graffiti on the homebound route. Day one, ride one.