EP240: I Want to Talk to You Properly — Konica Big mini HG BM-300 35mm f3.5 with Yes!Star Supreme 400

Roll #240 — the older I get, the more I value time spent with friends

Film: Yes!Star Supreme 400
Developed & scanned: Li-lai Photo, 2024/12/28
Camera: Konica Big mini HG BM-300 35mm f3.5

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The January book club pick was I Want to Talk to You Properly by Pei-Xia Lai — subtitled "Six Introductory Lessons in Nonviolent Communication." I'm still working through it, so I can't give a full verdict yet. But one idea from the very beginning stuck with me: the words we speak don't just express who we are — they shape who we become, and ultimately become our fate.

If we habitually speak with cruelty, we begin treating others that way without noticing. And sooner or later, others will treat us the same way.

A while back I deleted both my Threads and Instagram accounts. My reason: Threads seemed to be drifting toward chaos, and in that kind of environment, verbal violence spreads fast and wide. For people who no longer need social media for visibility or income, a platform that can't contain that kind of harm offers nothing worth staying for.

To be fair, I don't think any platform today can truly manage verbal violence. It's why some YouTube channels disable comments entirely — not because they want to shut out engagement, but because they know they can't recover from that kind of damage and choose to protect themselves from the start.

The real problem is that verbal violence only gets constrained when there's a genuine cost for the person committing it. In the physical world, hurting someone has legal consequences. Online, the same harm tends to get classified as "a difference of opinion." At most, you block someone. The damage, though, has already been done. And what the person who was harmed needs most isn't punishment for the other party — it's protection from it happening again.

Do we really need social media as much as we think? If you can't remember what you scrolled through yesterday, why are you doing it again today?

This roll was shot on Yes!Star Supreme 400, a color negative film made by a Chinese medical company called Justar Medical. First time using it. Honestly, for someone with an untrained eye for color like me, it's hard to immediately identify what sets it apart from anything else. For 400-speed color negative film, I tend to just buy whatever's most affordable and comes in the nicest packaging. My current favorite in this category is the US version of Fujifilm 400 — three rolls for 24.66 USD on Amazon (roughly 813 NTD), which works out to about 271 NTD per roll before shipping.

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#1
Some inventions pull the national aesthetic down rather than up. Gogoro seat covers are one of them.

 

#2
Traditional Taiwanese architecture — corrugated iron additions bolted wherever there's space.

 

#3
A Huarong Road sliding puzzle — recommended by a classmate's parent. Pretty fun.

 

#4
Mid-workday at MOS Burger — the entire place suddenly emptied. Just me left.

 

#5
Most parents hand their kids an iPad. I used a laptop — slightly more hardcore. Though by the time I'm writing this, I've since bought an iPad, because sometimes I need the laptop for work and need something to hand over. Side note: letting kids watch videos constantly tends to dull their curiosity about everything else.

 

#6
Passing through on foot.

 

#7
This red G-Shock has been with me since my military service — and it's red because I served as a firefighter alternative service conscript.

 

#8
Fresh haircut.

 

#9
Few point-and-shoots can focus close enough for a decent selfie. The Konica Big mini 35mm series is probably the most affordable option that can — minimum focus distance is 35cm across the whole line. At that range, though, if you don't hold it far enough out, your face fills the entire frame. (Or maybe that's just a "getting rounder" problem.)

 

#10
Dinner with old friends from my firefighter alternative service days.

 

#11
First time at a stir-fry restaurant in ages. Took the MRT specifically to have a few drinks. Side note: beer is easy to overdo because there's no nutrition label staring you in the face — so the calories don't register until they do.

 

#12
Night shot test. My Konica Big mini HG BM-300 is one of the rare ones with a broken flash.

 

#13
We tried growing radish sprouts on the balcony for a while. Something ate them all before long.

 

#14
A building facade near Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station, Taipei.

 

#15
Fresh haircut again — asked my son to take a photo.

 

#16
I really like seeing my son in a collared shirt. Parents will know that feeling.

 

#17
Years ago I read a book called What Every Body Is Saying, which mentioned that a slightly tilted head usually signals that a person is relaxed. This is my son's second attempt at the photo.

 

#18
I don't generally use videos to keep my son occupied — instead, when I come across something genuinely interesting, I'll share it with him. Usually animal-related things I've saved up.

 

#19
Lego is reliable alone time. The math: 600 NTD of Lego buys about an hour of focused, uninterrupted building. That's roughly 10 NTD per minute of parental freedom.

 

#20
A very cool set: Lego Technic 42178 Surface Space Loader LT78.

 

#21
The Yes!Star Supreme 400's shadow rendering isn't to my taste — there's a yellowish cast in the darks that I don't love.

 

#22
That yellow in the Yes!Star Supreme 400 is honestly not that different from Kodak's yellow. Not sure if that's a compliment or a complaint.

 

#23
You develop an attachment to a car over time. Unless you never liked it to begin with.

 

#24
A friend once saw a photo of my desk and noticed I had quite a few watches. The truth is I match them to whatever I'm wearing that day — color, style, the whole thing.

 

#25
A rainbow, on film.

 

#26
An intersection I pass through constantly — Wenhua Road in Banqiao.

 

#27
Not sure whether the cram school culture in Taiwan is still as intense as it used to be, but twenty years ago the area around Taipei Main Station was the epicenter of it.

 

#28
All subjects covered.

 

#29
A quiet MRT station late at night — waiting to count down, then head out.

 

#30
Still not winning me over with the night shots, Yes!Star Supreme 400.

 

#31
Cooking dinner one evening — the counter in its natural state.

 

#32
This room is mostly used by my wife and son now. I sleep in a separate room because of my snoring — which is also my son's future room.

 

#33
A Tamagotchi, gifted to my son by a relative. Wonderfully retro.

 

#34
Not entirely sure how this one happened. Looks like a selfie, but the angle is a mystery.

 

#35
Checking whether I needed to shave. By the time the roll came back developed, it had grown too long.

 

#36
The Konica Big mini HG BM-300 continues to out-focus the Big mini F by a significant margin — I almost never worry about a missed shot. Dinner that evening, November 13, 2024.

 

That's the full roll — Konica Big mini HG BM-300 35mm f3.5 with Yes!Star Supreme 400. Thanks for reading.