Silence, Slideshows, A Home Cooked App
June 1, 2026
Hello C'mon-ers —
How’s it going? Welcome back to a smokin' hot Summer edition of C'mon C'mon. Temperatures have been rising here. We touched 46C. Road temps are nearing 50C (!!). Thankfully, there was some rain this week which helped calm things down. Can we have monsoon now? Please?
It was yet another hectic month at work. Lots happening. People shuffled around. Projects picking up steam. Plans getting solidified. A fun but tiring month. Social engagements were limited this month which enabled me to rest and recover over weekends.
The Silence of Storytelling
As I mentioned last month, I've been watching a lot of GOOD STUFF these days. Finished watching The Pitt. Brilliant watch. Give me season three NOW. I also watched five great films in May. The stand-outs were Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) and The Drama (2026). Saw The Drama with my Movie Club. All of us loved it. It made for great post-movie-chatter.
Kiki was a more recent watch. And by recent I mean last night. While listening to some Bossa Nova yesterday afternoon, I had a sudden urge to watch a Studio Ghibli film. Kiki had come up in conversation with Arun recently so I decided to pick it. Texted the girlfriend and we made plans to watch it at night. I really enjoyed the movie. Definitely an all time great for me. The movie was warm, fuzzy, and just so cute. It (obviously) had great music. One to revisit for sure!
While thinking about The Pitt and Kiki for this month's newsletter, I realised that they have something in common. For the people who don't know: The Pitt is a medical drama about an Emergency Department (ED) at a hospital. Each episode of the show is an hour in the ED. As you can imagine, the show is intense, chaotic, and often sad. Kiki's Delivery Service on the other hand is a warm and fuzzy parable showcasing a young girl's coming of age story. It doesn't get loud or chaotic at any time. While so different, the use of silences in The Pitt and Kiki's Delivery Service is something I loved.
The Pitt for the most part doesn't have any background music. The sounds of the show are the sounds of the ED: doctors talking, medical equipment clanking, people in the waiting room. This makes the show so immersive. You really feel like you're in the ED with everyone. Moments when there is an emergency, the audio levels increase, and calmer moments are naturally quieter. It works so well.
Kiki's use of silences is to let viewers feel and introspect. The movie places them strategically at moments where something happens to or with Kiki. The music cuts out and you only hear ambient noises from Kiki's environment. You get to process things with Kiki. You experience life with her in lock-step.
Filmmmmm
Another thing I love: discovering forgotten (historical) meanings of words. Groove is a classic example of this. When I initially learned about vinyl records, I found out the word groove originates from the grooves found on vinyl records.
My continued descent into the film photography rabbit hole taught me about another such word.
I learned that there are two kinds of colour-film stock: negative and positive. Colour negative film is what most of us probably grew up seeing. When exposed to light, this film gets imprinted with a 'negative' of the light particles hitting it. Negative just means that whites become black, blacks become white. When negative film is processed and scanned, lab professionals use chemicals to produce a negative of the negative i.e. a positive for us to see.
Colour positive film works differently. These film stocks get imprinted with actual light particles in all their colourful glory. Once a positive film is developed, you can hold it up to light and see the photo you made. People stored their film positives in small plastic casings called slides. The slides helped protect the positives from dust and damage. But, more importantly, it allowed people to use slide projectors to run ... slide-shows! :)
A new home cooked app
For the last couple of months, I've been working on a home-cooked app called CRUMBZ.
CRUMBZ started off with the name MenuMaker. I wanted to build MenuMaker to help reduce my mom’s cognitive load when deciding what to cook each day. The app was meant to function as a repository of dishes you've made before. You could refer to it anytime you wanted to spark an idea for what to cook. I built an early prototype and got the basic functionality working, but then never got around to finishing it.
I revisited the idea recently and started hacking on it over weekends. I cleaned up the app's interface, polished the rough edges and shared it with a few friends for feedback. To my surprise, they loved with the app's idea and wanted to use it as well. This was a good signal. I decided to elevate the app from something I was making for my family to something more broadly applicable.
This is how MenuMaker became CRUMBZ. I introduced the idea of 'kitchens' to the app. Users can now create a kitchen when they start using the app. Kitchens store dishes and friends and family can be invited into kitchens. CRUMBZ also has an adorable lil app icon that my girlfriend painted.
I shared CRUMBZ with my mom on Mother's Day and we've been using it ever since. It's been a hit!
If you're interested in trying out CRUMBZ, send a reply. I'll reach out when I'm accepting testers ^_^
That's all for the month of May. Five months of 2026 are over already. Whoooosh! How are things with you? How's the weather in your country? Hope you're coping well with whatever you have going on. I'm coping with the summer heat by relying on iced coffee and air conditioning. So grateful for both.
June is here and the football world cup kicks off soon. I'm supporting Portugal 🇵🇹 for my boi Bruno Fernandes. My sleep schedule is about to go for a toss. Wish me luck! Until next time... C'mon C'mon!
More soon,
R