hi there.
Thanks for continuing to read this newsletter! Most of you have been here for a while, so I’m grateful you haven’t kicked me off your inbox yet. I’ve made a couple of minor cosmetic changes here — it’s no longer “Footnotes from the Void”, but just“Footnotes”, because someone has already taken the Footnotes URL (a really annoying site about product management that hasn’t posted since 2019). So, very simply, the new URL is footnotesfromsam.substack.com — thanks to buddies for group-testing the phrase.
The current plan is to post a Five Things essay every Monday, and a long-er piece every other Friday. My track record with consistency has not been good, to say the least, but I am hoping momentum will help me along. In any case, I’m happy you’re here.
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29 January 2024.
I.
I say I moved out for the first time in 2021, but really the first time was in 2013, to London for university. Talking about the kind of luck and privilege that enabled me to spend three years studying in one of the most expensive cities in the world makes me want to instinctively tell you about how hard my parents worked/my dad’s childhood poverty/the stock market goose egg. It’s the full-body cringe of an upper-middle class kid from Petaling Jaya.
I had drinks with a former work colleague and her boyfriend, and he told me stories about going to Sultan Abdul Samad, the epitome of a PJ all-boys secondary school where every teacher was also a disciplinary teacher. Samad sits kitty-corner to Sri Aman, where all the rich PJ girls and daughters of minor diplomats and rich businessmen went to — my big sister went there. I’ve heard plenty of stories about students trading boyfriends and girlfriends with each other; how the guys would skip classes to cat-call the girls over the walls of the canteen.
Now, as I approach 30, it’s easier to see how young secondary school kids really are.
Anyway, I told this guy that I went to Damansara Jaya, and he laughed and said it was basically the same thing as going to an international school. I disagree — but understand the sentiment.
II.
I spent most of the last week uprooting my life in Bandar Utama, where I’d spent the last two years-ish with a friend I made on Twitter. Growing up on the internet has made me hyper-suspicious about how much can be gleaned from even minor photos of my living spaces, so it’s probably safe now to tell you about that home.
It belonged to a close family friend, and when they heard I was trying to move out, they offered for a relatively small amount of rent. The house is within easy walking distance of Centrepoint, where I’d go for a drink or to hide from the heat when I had looming deadlines. My local bar was manned by a trio of young women — Saparna, Mimi, Raquel — who always kept tabs on what I was drinking , and obliged whenever I asked if they could turn down the pumping music in the evenings so I could work. The chef did a wicked pork sisig, and a wonderful fried rice. I’ll miss these folks the most, I think.
The house was a bit of a fixer-upper — there were horrific kitchen built-ins from the 80s, ugly lights and plain white walls — but it was — for me, for the first time — mine. I looked at this place and thought of parties, and sleepovers, and movie nights, and pets, and big, time-consuming cooking projects. All of those things happened, far less frequently than I’d have liked, but after a pandemic spent inside, longing for a party and company and space, the potential itself was a blessing.
Our neighbours were super nosy — a couple with children living abroad — but they were kind and often passed brownies, freshly-baked bread, and fruits over our shared wall. They took in our parcels and, on one occasion, a massive order of sushi. They were also a blessing.
Now, I’ve moved out on my own, with a cat and books and furniture, and it’s a different kind of blessing. I’m paying more rent, and there is still too much cleaning to do. The year has opened with sourness, and it’s been a bit hard to find the hope for what a new chapter in a new home looks like. My body is a collection of aches and pains from the physical hell of moving boxes, and packing books, and reaching for window corners I desperately want to clean. I’m tired, and migraines have come calling every evening this week. I keep imagining dust bunnies hiding behind the sofa legs.
But my cat Arthur has been settling in — he’s not tried to jump off the balcony. The downstairs neighbour is friendly, and so is my next-door one. She has two large dogs, and an easy smile. This evening I did battle with a cockroach and won. So that’s something.
III.
The History of Rock Twitter account shared this video of a live performance of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”, and a novelist noted Steve Perry’s pure belt. It’s really an awesome performance, but his comment made me think of Billy Joel’s “An Innocent Man”, which we listened to late one night.
“His voice was so pure!” you exclaimed, eyes closed, doing an weird, awkward sway.
Apparently Joel was considered something of an “anomaly” in his time because, in part, of his choir boy’s tenor. I’ve come to think of this song within a very specific context, but I was re-listening while coming down a stretch of highway and just burst into tears.
That isn’t the first time a song has made me cry on the road — there is something specifically melancholic about transportation and music. Like if you’ve ever sat on a bus, or in the back of a car, with the rain pelting the windows and distorting the city lights, any song is its perfect soundtrack. Doesn’t really matter where or when. Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” as you pass Dalston Overground on the No. 38 bus? Complete. Frank Ocean’s “Pink + White” down the swerve of the Karak Highway? Devastating. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” as you pull into Port Authority? Destiny. "It’s All Coming Back to Me” by Celine Dion” as you head home on the SPRINT? Just give me the VMA already.
I have an essay in mind about all the times I’ve cried in my car that’s still half-forming. But in the worst times, it always goes back to Fiona:
IV.
My favourite thing about my new neighbourhood is my “diner”.
My diner not actually a diner, it’s a cafe with nice, unfussy chairs and plastic blinds that mute most of the sun. They make me think of noir detectives and gossipy regulars peeping out the window. The coffee is good but expensive. My favourite table is a four-top at the back that perches just behind the counter, hidden by a pillar — I feel little guilty about hogging it all by myself, but not enough to care. As I’m writing this to you, I am thinking of all the bartenders and baristas I’ve ever flirted with. In 2022, I spent six months waitressing for a small cafe with a dinner service, but I’ve always loved watching the careful choreography of pulling espresso shots, cleaning countertops, restocking napkins and plates — the scenes conjure warm feelings of familiarity. I call it “competence porn”, but it’s also the vibe of a kind of home. Of knowing where your place is — seated at the bar, nestled in a corner, watching the pass-through window. I loved doing the settlement at the end of service, so you saved the receipts and tallies for whenever I was on shift.
American YA novels and TV shows have familiarised the concept of the diner to me. In Sarah Dessen’s Along for the Ride, the protagonist Auden spends late nights reading in a diner as a coping mechanism for insomnia. In Station Eleven, Miranda Carroll’s character dreams up her lonely spaceman from the warmth of a Chicago all-nighter. Luke’s Diner in Gilmore Girls is way too noisy for my tastes, but I liked the idea of running into all your friends while you got your morning coffee. I’ve always fantasised having a space like that, where I could hunker down to write in the company of strangers; for a while, the Coffee Bean near my mom’s place provided that during the stop-start early months of the pandemic. In 2014 and 2018, I spent three weeks in America with an ex-boyfriend, whose mom lived in New Jersey, and she took us to a diner that smelled of burnt coffee and syrup-drenched pancakes. I experienced a full-body jolt when, in response to my order, the waitress said, “You got it, honey!”
My new diner does dinner service too, and the servers are nice. It gets busy at meal-times, but one of the luxuries of working from home are the pockets of quiet at odd hours of the day. These days, after I feed my housemate’s cat, I wander over to read or to write this newsletter, before coming home to hang out with Arthur. I am planning to have dinner there one day, to sit and read or write, and pretend like this is another town, another life — a little less claustrophobic, a little less known.
V.
Much love,
Sam.