Be No.33 - The circuit board of the external hard disk box and the plants in the water tank (2026)

Rationality: A hard drive is a strange thing. The data inside keeps growing, yet the exterior shows no change at all — as if hundreds of gigabytes of files weigh nothing.

Sensibility: Every time I see a large fish in a tank, I think: if I had to live in a space that small, I would go completely mad. I wonder if, in that situation, going mad might actually be better than staying sane.

Be No.32 - The motherboard of the colleague's desktop and a fence overgrown with climbing plants (2026)

Rationality: I yearn for a digital nomad life, traveling the world with my laptop, so I have never had a desktop since I graduated from college. It's just that this kind of life state can't be fully realized so far.

Sensibility: Even with a two-year window, I still let my gas station points sit until they expired. Do things with longer shelf lives just get left to expire more easily?

Be No.31 - The circuit board of a broken bluetooth keyboard and the stone tiles in the park (2025)

Rationality: “With this bluetooth keyboard, I won’t need to bring my laptop out to code anymore.” That was the original idea. But the phone screen turned out to be too small to make it practical, so I kept thinking about getting a tablet. Years later, I finally got one—but by then, the keyboard was broken. “Should I buy a new keyboard?” Another half year passed.

Sensibility: My son’s good friend gave him a stag beetle. As adults, this species typically lives for three to four months, but ours impressively lived for over six. And yet, during those six months, we also experienced the passing of two beloved family members. There is no better reminder of life’s impermanence.

Be No.30 - The circuit board of a remote-controlled car and a fence overgrown with climbing plants (2025)

Rationality: My most vivid memory of an amusement park is the flying swing ride that required a minimum height of 120 cm. I was especially short as a child, so every time we went, I could only watch my sister enjoy the ride. I should’ve been really happy the first time I was finally tall enough to ride it, right? Honestly, I don’t remember that moment at all, but I do remember the feeling of wanting something but not being able to have it. That feeling can start in childhood and stay with you for a lifetime.

Sensibility: Because of the kids, my wife and I haven't been able to go out for a proper drink together in years. I wonder how old our child will have to be before this small luxury becomes possible again.

Be No.29 - A Hong Kong Orchid Tree leaf and the motherboard of my wife's broken laptop (2024)

Sensibility: I always want to know how to tell a Purple Camel's Foot apart from a Hong Kong Orchid Tree, yet I can never seem to remember. But then again, even if I did remember, it probably wouldn't make much difference to my life.

Rationality: No one holds a funeral for a broken computer. But if humanoid robots become commonplace in the future, with one in every home, might robot funerals become an emerging industry?

Be No.28 - The bark of a paperbark tree and the hard drive from my wife's broken laptop (2024)

Sensibility: The Paperbark tree, though a well-adapted non-native species, seems utterly defenseless against the merciless strangling of the equally non-native Large-leaved Banyan. The interactions between non-native species are truly unpredictable.

Rationality: My wife's laptop finally gave out, but she still had work to finish, so she went straight to the store and bought a new one. Just like that, the old one was replaced. What to do with it, though — we still haven't figured that out.

Be No.27 - A tree on my commute and a photo of Paper Shoot Camera displayed in the museum store (2024)

Rationality: The weakness of photography enthusiasts is the urge to reach for their wallet whenever they see an unusual camera. But with so many cameras out there, does anyone actually need all of them? How much of it is just feeding a collecting habit?

Sensibility: I like taking different routes and modes of transport between two places, because each one brings different scenery. But when all possible routes have been used up and there's nothing surprising left to encounter along the way — does that mean it's time to change one of the destinations?

Be No.26 - Vibrant plants from a garden encountered in the alleys and a part of the mother board of my colleague’s desktop (2024)

Sensibility: I often have this urge to walk down every single alley at least once — I suppose that's a kind of collecting too. Except this collection has no physical form; it can only exist somewhere in my very forgetful brain.

Rationality: I once overheard a debate on the MRT about whether hardware or software is more important. One person said: without software, what can hardware even do? But what I was thinking was: without hardware, where would the software go?

Be No.25 - The mother board of colleague’s desktop and an exterior green wall of Taipei EXPO Park (2024)

Rationality: One summer during junior high, I went to a friend of my dad's computer company to learn and help assemble computers. Even so, at the time, I was still just a tool for playing video games; my status didn't improve because of it.

Sensibility: The year I graduated from junior high, a few classmates, obsessed with Mayday, recruited me, who could play guitar, to form a band. Looking back, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Mayday changed the trajectory of my life.