Issue #18

Hey friends 👋🏽,

Welcome back to Thought Caffeine, a weekly newsletter where I share my favourite discoveries during the week.

I realise that this week's issue is being sent out two days late (oops!). I flew in from Jakarta two days ago after a hectic afternoon at home and so drained as I was, I wasn't in a writing mood.

I also noticed something rather strange about my flight two days ago. Instead of the customary distanced seating arrangement that I experienced last year, the airlines decided to jam the passengers in the middle of the plane even when it was half empty! I do not know why airlines are doing this, or if it is just the airline I flew with (poke Citilink). If you're experiencing the same thing, go ask the flight crew if you can move – they have to let you, as they did with me.

🍀 On embracing serendipity

Another one of David Perell's gems appeared in my inbox yesterday.

"Our best ideas rarely come alive in busyness. They spring to life in calm and aimless contemplation. In beer mode, you find inspiration. And in coffee mode, you harvest that inspiration. If you only spend time in coffee mode, you’ll shut yourself off to transformative ideas because the fruits of genius are sown with the seeds of beer mode wanderings."

Creativity cannot be forced. Most times, it is "unproductive" work that will lead us to interesting things, things we can later transform and craft into something productive and valuable. While embracing beer mode can be scary (remember how easy it is to doom scroll or end up lost in a rabbit hole on Youtube), it is necessary for productivity, especially in the creating sphere. This reminds me of something I read in one of Ryan Holiday's blog posts.

"If you want to be a great writer, go live an interesting life."

...

⛷Svalbard: the visa-free arctic archipelago

Youtube has a funny way of making the most random videos pop up in your timeline. Luckily for me, they did cheekily insert a BBC Reel video of Svalbard, a remote visa-free island on top of the world.

Here’s their description of Svalbard:

Located 800km north of mainland Norway in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, Svalbard is full of superlatives: it’s the world’s northernmost year-round settlement; it’s home to the world’s northernmost university, church and brewery; and it’s one of the few places in the world where anyone can live. In fact, of the nearly 2,400 residents who live in Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen, almost a third are immigrants, originally hailing from more than 50 different countries. That’s because citizens of any country are welcome to settle in Svalbard without a visa as long as they have a job and a place to live.

5 facts about Svalbard:

1. The archipelago’s roughly 3,000 polar bears outnumber its 2,926 humans.
2. There are only 40km of roads on the islands and no roads between different settlements – which are only accessible by boat in the summer or by snowmobile in winter
3. The average temperature in Svalbard has risen by 4C since 1971, five times quicker than in the rest of the planet – making it the fastest-warming place in the world.
4. Svalbard’s permafrost and year-round low temperatures – the average high is just 7C in summer – also proved ideal for the installation of the Global Seed Vault, which stands just about 3km away from Longyearbyen’s main road. It has stored more than 980,000 seeds from across the globe since 2008 as a backup in case of a global cataclysm that causes all crops to fail. And my favourite:
5. There are no hospitals for pregnant women, and if someone dies, the local government requires the body to be flown or shipped to mainland Norway!

🙂 Other things I've been enjoying

1. Film: Tenet. This film messed my brain up real good, flaunting a complex plot that’s fast-paced with foreign and disorienting storytelling. Christopher Nolan's insane cinematography has to be the spotlight of this film, it gave me a headache just beginning to think about how this film was produced. (Admittedly, I had to watch an explanation of the plot on Youtube 🤭)
2. Short film: Tenet's cinematography reminded me of Brett Novak's 2016 short film Kyanq. It's made by superimposing two clips together, one reversed and the other in forward motion, and I'm guessing hours upon hours of prudent editing. Human creativity knows no bounds.
3. Book: Intuitive Eating. I'm diving yet again into another interesting area of nutrition. Intuitive eating is in its essence two things: trusting our biological cues for hunger & fullness and eating without restricting food groups.
4. Oreo cheesecake. Intuitive eating allows me to respect my food cravings and lift ban against certain foods, which for the longest time for me has been cakes.

📖 Quote of the Week

"There is no such thing as being completely prepared. Life is an adventure, through which we learn and mature."

From The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim. Resurfaced via Readwise.

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Hope you have a great week! 👨🏻‍⚕️

John