coriander in pho

not a food blog

Expenses and subscriptions

April 28, 2026 1:43 pm

I was blogwalking and found a post by swissmiss (Subscription Cost Visualizer) so I wanted to give it a try. While I couldn’t find subscriptions for website host and domain name renewal (Hostinger and WordPress.com) readily available, I was able to added them manually along with additional subscriptions such as Kinokuniya Bookstore membership. I also need to point out here that some subscriptions that I enjoy are taken care of by our subscription to cable TV and Ari (hahah!).

It was pretty interesting.

Those are the ones I could remember for now, though. Some of them are renewed on a 3-month/quarterly cycle (IQIYI) and 4-year cycle (Hostinger website hosting).

When I was still a Happiness Engineer in WordPress.com, there was a discussion on hosting pricing. Some US-based HEs shared their confusion about why there are users who asked for a monthly subscription. Apparently, it was not super common in the US. The monthly subscription method, however, is pretty popular elsewhere, especially in South American and Asian countries. The reason being: It has less “commitment”; as in, you are not being bound to a service/company for 12 months, and you can bail out anytime without losing too much money. That said, economies of scale do exist, and yes, the yearly subscription method tends to have lower prices than the monthly one. While now WordPress.com has been offering monthly subscription for quite some time, I can vouch that the fee of yearly subscription is way cheaper in total sum.

I chose 3-months cycle for my IQIYI subscription because I am not a big of drama viewer afterall, be it C-drama, K-drama, or any other series/drama out there. I did enjoy C-dramas, but I’m still unsure whether I can commit for yearly subscriptions or not, hahah. The difference between a quarterly subscription and a yearly subscription is RM 10, though, so I miiiight still thinking about it (also, in this economyyy??)

In case you want to check yours, you can visit this site: Subscription Cost Visualizer.
Le wild multiple templates appear!

April 28, 2026 10:46 am

OK, so, yesterday I revamped this blog, right. I’m not sure what happened, and it might be due to me opening several tabs of the same thing (Site Editor) at the same time and saved stuffs on some tabs without, you know, saving the others which caused cache hijinks, but I noticed weird things yesterday.

First, this blog’s template — template Blog Home — got reset to its default mode on its own. I don’t know what happened. No recent update on WordPress, Gutenberg (last update was 4 days ago), nor the theme Twenty Twenty Four (last update was December 2025), so I chalked the issue on cache gremlins. Not only the template Blog Home, but nearly every single template was affected, too. I got so stressed out because it was almost dinner-time and I haven’t made dinner (priorities, priorities…) Luckily, things were under control as I made most of the changes on the Site Editor’s Style section, so a lot of the style setup was still intact/saved and less minuscule changes on the small things. People who said, “don’t sweat the small stuffs” clearly haven’t seen bloggers.

Second, this still confused me a hell lot, multiple templates/copies of templates. Like, multiples, with the same name, even. Eh, hello, system not confused meh? “Which template Pages issit she wants to use? We have like 2-3 templates with the name “Pages” here!”

And you can bet that it was not me who made it. I have enough dignity to give files proper names, okay. At least I can put additional S on my files so I can differentiate between “final_versionsss” and “final_versionssss_ver_final_for_realss”.

I did check the issues list on Gutenberg’s GitHub in case there were any recent reports about this, but I couldn’t find any, so it might be an isolated, rare case (again, cache.)
Bring it back to the 2000s

April 27, 2026 12:23 pm
I have been busy redesigning this blog after several obsessive visits to Neocities. I thought Neocities was just another website hosting place, until I found out that it’s not just a website hosting place. It literally a place where 2000s blogs thrive. I even found most of the bloggers are using imood! (~~and yes, I’m so tempted to re-sign up!~~ I did)

I just love how unapologetic the Internet and the blogsphere were back in its heyday. True that folks with interests in blogs, anime, mangas (those three were usually intertwined), and 1st or 2nd-generation KPop stars were deemed as outliers back then, but that was when things were genuine. We read blogs of someone battling with mental health and sadness and cheered them on, we also followed someone’s classes and exams, and everything was mostly with pure intentions and friendship. Blogs were diaries and opinions, instead of “5 Ways for You to Have Summer-Ready Body!” or any SEO-related articles. Bloggers experimented a lot back then; colorful explosions of JavaScript, iframes, glitters, and <marquee> were the “it thing”. Suffice to say, I’m so so glad to see those online diaries and musings and writings are coming back. I know they never left, it’s just that… It’s beautiful to finally find them again, you know? It feels like meeting a long lost friend.

On my blog, I added some pixels/tiny pixels as I really love them, hahah. I also used Bitmap-style font (“rainyhearts“) in some areas, and I really need to find time to make myself a clique/pixel banner! I also found out that to give the “retro” vibe on your site (that overlay diagonal transparent lines), you can use 100% CSS. I mean, the last time I worked on such thing, I had to create a transparent image on Adobe Photoshop to be set as an overlay image, hahah. How the technology has advanced! This is what I use for this blog:
```
body::before {
content: "";
position: fixed;
inset: 0;
background: repeating-linear-gradient(45deg,
  rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.02),
  rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05) 1px,
  rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.03) 3px);
pointer-events: none;
z-index: 1000;
}
```
I took the code from itinerae‘s website with some adjustments (and refresher) from CSS Tricks.

I also added background image and worked on the layout. I really love itinerae’s and rem’s planet’s designs and layout! Their blogs are so pretty and I love the small details on it.

I’m so excited to blog again, thanks to the bloggers on Neocities.
Red onions

April 27, 2026 10:30 am

I found a couple of red onions, tucked under regular onions, sprouting in my kitchen. I did realized them have been sprouting for quite some time, but just now I found the time (and the will) to plant them, in case there will be green onions later on.

I also took the time to tidy things up in the balcony. We are moving into a much hotter, and much much more humid, weather recently, which means some placement rotations are in due time.
“Abdijiwo” by Retno Widya

April 26, 2026 10:59 pm

She handed me the comic book, “finally! It’s a shame that the publisher didn’t make it available outside Indonesia, hahah!”

This is a comic book, Indonesian comic book, titled “Abdijiwo” by my sister.

I honestly don’t have any words to write here, other than an immense pride of having my own little sister publishing a work, her own original characters (OCs), under one of the biggest — if not, THE biggest — publishers in Indonesia. “Abdijiwo” is a fantasy comedy comic, telling a story of a boy named Surya and his soul servant (abdijiwa) named Raden, and Raden’s adventures in finding other soul servants that were scattered all over Indonesia so he could go to the afterlife. The story is peppered with Indonesia’s local lore, ghosts, and ghouls in such an entertaining way. I particularly love how her drawings follow Indonesia’s traditional designs. This work initially started as an online comic under LINE Webtoon Indonesia, which I once wrote about here: ‘Abdijiwo’ by Retno Widya

Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t continue the contract, so there is only one edition of the comic. That said, if you would like to get this comic, you can look for it on online marketplace or indie bookstores.

Also, in case you want to check the initial version of “Abdijiwo”, you can check it on LINE Webtoon Indonesia here.

Quick blurbs

Saw this site mentioned the other day on Slack: neocities.org.

Scroll down and you will see “Featured Sites”. Never knew it brings back early 2000s, and it makes me so, so happy.

April 23, 2026