It was Double 11, so I figured I’d refurbish my old, grimy Kaitian 84 with brown switches — the keyboard I’ve been using for years. By “refurbish” I mean wash the keycaps and the board itself… Naturally, I’m lazy, so I didn’t bother washing the keycaps. I just bought new ones and started cleaning the keyboard body. For the cleaning I used some random cleaning sponge cubes my wife bought — white cube-shaped sponges that look soft but apparently grind like crazy, and they wear down the more you scrub. Wiped the keyboard clean, put the new keycaps on. Perfect! Plugged it into the PC to check. Works! Flawless! Then the tragedy hit.

I never knew my Kaitian keyboard was an 84-key layout. I always assumed it was an 87. Then again, maybe I was just being lazy. The original keycaps were filthy beyond recognition, so I figured I’d swap in something cheap — ordered a set on Taobao that was listed as fitting the NOPPOO choc 84 mini.

The stock keycaps had gone shiny and were collecting grime, to the point where they were about to fall apart, so I picked up a cheaper set of PBT keycaps on Taobao for 140 yuan. Bonus: the PBT caps are translucent on their own.