trisected

Tag: 100 day challenge

  • A Busy Weekend

    This weekend had really passed in a blur, starting with Clarice’s birthday on Friday. We had gone to the beach again, in our current birthday fashion, and spent the time chilling and having a nice time relaxing. I got sunburnt, and we took a nap in the shade. We were also trying to catch the supermoon, but it was hidden behind the clouds.

    On Saturday, Clarice’s aunt came to stay with us. She’s the lady we stay with when we go to Melbourne, so it was a nice treat for her to stay with us finally. I think she also enjoyed the coziness of our house, I hope. My dad helped with the driving around, but he left us to have dinner with Clarice’s family.

    On Sunday, I had lunch with two of my friends, but also came back to have dinner with Clarice’s aunt.

    Today, I made coffee for both Clarice’s aunt and myself, and then I headed to work for an early meeting, a lunch meeting, and an afternoon meeting. We had dinner with Aunt, and then she headed off to the airport for her night flight.

    Between all this, I was tidying the house, finishing up emails and texts needing to be sent. It was quite a hectic weekend. For the first time in a long time as well, I purchased a mini PC. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a PC, but this little PC has been really fun to play with.

    Also this marks the 100th post in my 100 post challenge. I am sure I missed a few days here and there, especially in the last week. I don’t know if I will keep up another challenge like this, but I’ve been thinking hard about writing physically, and maybe keying it up here.

    I’ve also been thinking about writing stories more intentionally, starting with my own. It’s on Bird by Bird, a book about writing by Annie Lamott. It’s great.

    I’ve also got some books to finish, hopefully by this year end and I’ll try to get as close to 100 as possible. Next year’s reading goal is definitely 100, and I hope to hit it early!

  • Busy days of busy days

    In the past two days, I’ve had some of the most packed schedules of all year. It was back to back meetings and sessions, and all I did was go home to sleep and repeat. Tomorrow I have a slightly later start, but otherwise the schedule is just as heavy.

    Life is full of choices about what you can do and what you should do, and sometimes what I should do takes up a lot more time than I have.

  • Working off the phone

    Every now and then I remember how Virgil Abloh had created and managed Off White on his phone. It’s always inspired me to get a new iPhone with all the bells and whistles, but I mean I’m definitely not Virgil Abloh.

    Instead, today I spent my day working off my iPhone 13 mini because my work is a lot smaller. But at the same time, there’s a bigger dopamine hit from being able to finish so much work on the go, on the phone. It was actually quite satisfying.

    On my commute to work, I organized three group meeting dates, I prepped my to do list for the day, and started working on actually setting up the week ahead. On the way back from work, I settled purchase orders and also sent out more coordinating emails.

    Maybe design itself would be tough for me to do on the go, but I made my GBA zine on the go, drawing on the iPad whenever I had a moment to. Maybe if my phone was bigger and had an Apple Pencil attached, I might try.

    Right now, to end the day, I’m writing this post on my phone, just to bring things full circle. Cheap thrill, but honestly really quite a fun thing to try. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow and see what happens to my productivity.

  • Catch Up Rest Days

    Yesterday and today were definitely days of catching up on sleep, among other things. After the ark book fair, I regained some semblance of normal life. Like going for a sketchwalk on Saturday mornings again.

    We were at Bidadari Park in the morning yesterday, and I squeezed in one prep sketch before it started to pour really heavily! Then we sketched at a corner of a shelter before the throwdown.

    Then I grabbed lunch with the people I was sketching with: Kim, Dawn, and our new friend Cara. It was a fun Pepper lunch.

    I went home after that, and took a nap before dinner with Clarice’s parents. We had dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant, and we had a nice early night.

    This morning, Clarice and I woke up a little later, and went to Tiong Bahru Bakery nearby to get some pastries and coffee, as we reflected on the week, reading and journalling. We walked around to get some lunch from Donki and came back home to eat.

    We did a lot of cleaning for the week ahead, and had a nice dinner of leftovers and beef from Donki. Great end to the week!

    With rest like this, the working week feels a little bit more enticing. I do have things I want to do this coming week, and hopefully I get it done well.

  • A Dinner

    I joined a fundraising dinner today, and it was quite an interesting one because I sat with the children of the board members. It was a fun time because I really enjoy hanging out with kids, and they’re my level. There’s a part of me that is literally still 5 years old, and that’s also the same part that says really smarty pants things. I am doubly sure of that persona today.

    But I got really ticked off at the last part, because the venue really forced us to write a review for them. The food was mediocre at best, and while one of the guys was attentive enough to me, the rest were also ignorant. It was quite a sad show of service, coupled with forced reviews, it was just not a fun experience.

    As a service provider, in this day and age to ask for reviews is really quite a bad show. It reflects badly on how one expects to be respected, and honestly, I wouldn’t respect the establishment.

    In fact, I think I am quite offended to the point where I would want to write in to explain how a bug was found in the soup and the other staff were not able to even tell us what the meal was.

    It was quite a crazy situation actually.

    That’s what happens when you force a review.

  • The Wild Human

    I watched The Wild Robot with a friend today. It was a friend I don’t get to spend much time with, but I thought it would be nice to catch up and watch a movie together with today. Also because today had freed up somewhat, so I decided it was a pretty okay idea.

    But the movie was really great. It was a painted movie, and there were many beautiful scenes. The story was well paced and well crafted, and I thought it was apt for this current era of the world. A bit too much on the accepting community, but otherwise a great story about learning responsibility in this world.

    A key word used was the “programming”, and how this robot went against her programming. There are many times I am so aware of my programming, and how I would end up choosing something because I just know that is what I am supposed to do. But as I grow older, I learn how to choose things wisely, not because I am taught to.

    There are a lot of scenarios in creative training where we are taught to question, and we do think critically of different situations. But the question I think about now is how much of the critical thinking I employ now part of the creative designer programming? In any case, I hope to say I have incorporated critical thinking well enough, but it is not as programmed as it is supposed to be.

    I am not sure if that paragraph really made sense, but then again, I don’t aim to edit these posts much, I just want to have my thoughts out here, in the wild.

    I also watched an interview with Casey Neistat, and it was a good reminder about my creative practices and what I am good at, and what I like to do. Every few months, I really am reminded of these parts of myself.

    The Wild Human

  • People Time

    After the busy periods of work, I realised how fast I have filled up my time with people instead. I keep making time to speak with people, maybe listening a lot more than speaking.

    Today was a good day catching up with XY. I had an interesting time listening to what life is like as a teenager once more, and sometimes being an adult looking back at teenage life gives me a lot of happy memories. I am sure there were many down moments too, and I heard some of that today as well. But both ways, some portions of humanity remain the same, no matter which era. Although I do think society is a lot more harsh right now, in the name of being nicer. The need to be careful and cautious about what to say has made everyone very afraid of saying the wrong thing, and therefore, the moment anyone says something wrong, it is an immediate strike against the person. A bit too fast for my taste, because it doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

    But that’s life now, and I guess I’m happy to be an adult. But we do have different fears of societal pressure that might be quite similar… hm… have we grown past it then? Who knows.

  • Daily Interactions

    Today was an interaction day. Yesterday was also an interaction day, but today was really a lot of unplanned discussions, talks, thoughts, the whole she-bang.

    I enjoy casual conversations with my colleagues, and because most of the time, I am not sure what they are really like. I appreciate the times when people can speak casually with me at work, because our teams are quite separate, and being able to speak with my colleague today was great. We basically chatted for half an hour, about anything and everything.

    After which some creative partners came by, and it was quite a fun discussion I had with them about printing and publishing in Singapore. I also had a good time of talking about the RISO printer, and what I was hoping to try do with it.

    Then in the afternoon, I spent a couple of hours with two new friends, and it was such a deep political type discussion at one point. I haven’t had a good conversation like that for sometime, and I enjoyed the talk. It was also great just getting to hear a novel experience, which I rarely come to these days.

    Then at night, there was a prayer meeting online. More talking, more sharing, but more specific. We covered spiritual topics and God’s directions, and as the meeting title suggests, we prayed together.

    On the flip side, Clarice had little interactions with people, and a continuous intentional interaction with our daughter in her womb. Pregnancy is definitely having its fatiguing effects on Clarice, and I am helping to ease her burden as much as I can. She is now comfortably lying in bed, playing Wingspan on the Switch.

    What a day

  • Catching up

    Today was a good day of talking with people. I caught up with a colleague, I caught up with good friends and made new friends.

    Sometimes when I think about peoples and relationships and communicating, it tires me a little bit. But then when I am actually there talking I enjoy the moment as it is. After I might be drained but for some reason, I take each meeting as if it’s the last and I hope everyone leaves happy after talking with me.

    Very big expectations, but I like my life like this.

  • What makes a weekend?

    I had really bad sleep last night, so I decided to sleep in today. And as I made the decision to sleep in, I struggled with it for some reason. There’s this whole notion of seizing the day, and getting all of your time meaningfully spent. But sometimes, just like today, I had to learn how to just chill about it. It’s okay if I didn’t wake up at 730AM to seize the weekend. I haven’t had at least 3 weekends to rest, they were all busy rushing something, doing something. And at least for once, I could sleep in without worry.

    That’s what we did, sleep in, have McDonalds for breakfast, and delivery at that. I even watched online church (as I’ve had to for the past few weeks because of my busyness). Guess what, the world didn’t collapse, and instead of feeling guilty, I’m actually rested, well fed and happy. I even cooked today, and I haven’t cooked in months. It’s just been busy and the type of food I could do easily was all food that was boiled or just made quite easily.

    Maybe sometimes, more often than not, I’ve placed way too much priority on getting things done and checking things off. And having a day like today is a good break. Maybe I need this break a lot more than I think.

  • Not Halloween Candy

    A bit of a chill day today, so I’m doing a little bit of a memory dig of my childhood. A friend gave me some halloween candy, and I remembered how my dad would get me candy when he travelled to the States.

    I was about 10 years old, my dad was working in an American company, and I think they were based in Utah. He also went to other cities, like Portland, Oregon, and picked up stuff for me there. He would email back or call back and let my mum know when to expect him back. I do remember some calls from him overseas, but I definitely remember picking up him from the airport as a family.

    We would crawl slowly along the highway, because my mum is terrified of driving and she would blast Christian music, as she drove 60km/h towards the airport. We would reach just on time, and wait in the arrival hall for my dad.

    He would come in with a coat and a huge luggage full of goodies for us. If I remember correctly, the time he brought back the skateboard was also the time he got buzzed on the Business Class dessert wine and cheese, and my mum had to drive us back home too.

    Anyway, when we reached home, he would unpack his luggage and there would literally be a few shopping bags worth of candy. Butterfingers, Three Musketeers, Whatchamacallit, Baby Ruth’s, Milky way, Twizzlers, Payday, Airheads, and probably a lot more. He would also get seasonal candy, like Candy Corn, I remember Peeps as well.

    I would ration my pack slowly over the days and weeks, and sometimes tie it in with some of the candy bars we could get at local candy stores. There was a party shop in Holland Village called “In The States/Party With US” or something like that, and I would spend my allowance there too. There was Cold Storage at King Albert Park before the renovations, and it was also another favourite haunt to spend my sugar money at.

    Definitely a sweet childhood, and thanks to my parents for my absolutely crazy sweet tooth.

  • The Start of November

    Yesterday’s Deepvali break was very real. I enjoyed the rest at home, and especially spending time with Clarice the night before. It’s moments like these that remind me to cherish the random days and nights, where we could have a plan-less day, because baby still isn’t here yet.

    Today was a great day, because we had the morning to work together. Technically I worked a lot earlier, and by the time Clarice got up, I had done 60% of my work for the day. The other 40% involved calls and meeting people, so it was pretty much good to go.

    I had a meeting with a daughter of a friend, of whom is now my friend too, I think. We had a good time talking about art, and honestly there’s a lot more to hear about her and her art scene. There are so many things to talk in detail with other artists, and it always feels like there’s never enough time.

    After printing some stuff with her, I sat down to reflect on some things, and I was really emotional. I reflected on the war, and on the way we live in Singapore, in the midst of the world on fire. There are many things I don’t understand, and one of the deepest things I don’t understand is how we don’t really care much for anyone else but ourselves in Singapore. I feel that for myself too; I can easily forget there are other people with their own lives in the world, and just want to have my life perfect. But my time of reflection really made me feel so sad and small inside. What kind of person thinks that they are the most important in the world, and that they deserve praise and honor? We’re all really horrible people, and the more someone demands respect, the less likely they are to get it. And yet, in the modern day, everyone is asking to be respected for themselves, their rights, and everything with it.

    I don’t deserve any, because I think I have also asked to be respected for my rights and my actions. Therefore, my own logic on myself, I should not be.

    This philosophical musing went on for some time, and it’s still lingering somewhere in my head and heart.

    I had a burrito for dinner, with the attempts of weighing things down with some Tex Mex, but here we are, still writing about the feelings on the day. My personal small treat for myself was a bottle of Perrier. A green bottle of sparkly water would be a treat. And there are people still dying of thirst somewhere else in the world.

    Sometimes I really wonder where my brain goes to when I start writing these things.

    Anyway, the day hasn’t ended, but I might not remember to write later tonight. So here’s my thoughts for today, raw, unfiltered, and still very confused.

    Please don’t take me too seriously.

  • A Day of Rest

    Having a public holiday in the middle of the week is always quite fun. We visited Clarice’s parents today, with my parents, and it was a nice catch up. Then we went over to Holland Village for lunch, and again, I napped mid day.

    My sleep in the morning has been quite scheduled– I keep waking at 630 and 730, which are my alarm timings. Despite a late night the day before, my body is just awake, and I am moving around getting things done. I do get tired half way through the day, but if I’m in office, the conversations go on, so I don’t have the feeling of napping.

    I am also constantly thinking about the range of people I have to catch up with in the weeks ahead, and scheduling a lot of these meetings in. Maybe that’s what wakes me in the morning.

    Anyway, we had leftovers tonight, and finished up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It’s interesting watching Harry Potter when you’re older, and the effects are still as cool to watch. I hope one day I’ll get to watch these shows with my baby.

    or babies, if we have another few.

  • Working hard from home

    Today was a long day of work for me, starting with housework as soon as I got up. Didn’t really expect to start the day so fast but it was just that way. After clearing up the SGABF logistics, and packing away my old stock of things, the house felt cleaner, my headspace much better too.

    I started clearing out all the administrative work: texting everyone who had written their name on our interaction list. Not everyone replied but it’s cool, it’s not a do or die scenario and I just really wanted to mentally clear up the “to do”. Not that people are a to-do, but texting people is sometimes, especially when you don’t know them too well yet!

    Then I continue to plough through the rest of the to-do’s. Recapping all the experiences of the weekend for publishing on the TTR side, and catching up with my inktober drawings. It was nice, that I caught up with about 60% of my work.

    The afternoon hit me hard, as most afternoons do, and I took a break to eat lunch and rest a bit. Then continued texting and arranging meetups for the coming month.

    Clarice came back home and I was generally not really feeling the need to get out so we ordered really good Korean in, and watched Harry Potter for the rest of the night.

    I write this in my bathtub— a little luxury we bought as part of our HDB, and it’s not expensive as one might think. It is also not big and only fits me in a seated crouch position. I like my baths and I like that I ended a lot of good work this season with a good bath before a public holiday tomorrow.

    Have yourself a good rest.

  • Experiences of Art Book Fair 2024

    There are many ways that one might feel they “made it” as an artist or a designer. I think SG Art Book Fair was one of these as well. Participating at Art Book Fair was truly a mark I never expected to reach, and I am thankful for the opportunity we had to participate in.

    To start things off, we were rejected. I had rushed the publication of a few things, and sorted things together, and we just didn’t get through the first round of things. I understood there were many people, and we could only hope to be half as good as someone like Holy Crap or Temporary Press. It was humbling to come to terms about the rejection, and I was ready to just wait for the next year to start applying again.

    But then an email came in, asking if we were keen to participate in the Artist Support Table, and it would be a smaller table, but at a lower rate from the other tables. The team thought through and thought, okay let’s just try for that. But the work didn’t really get in, and I was ready again to just throw the towel in for next year. I already did after all.

    As another month went on, I had one more email come in. Someone had dropped out, and I was asked by the Art Book Fair Team if we wanted to take the spot still. Another team meeting, and we went for it. We transferred the money, and by the next day, the confirmation email came in.

    Through the months, Through The Roof acquired a RISO duplicator, through the means of well meaning supporters who knew about our work with creative youth. I started to work on RISO prints, but still, there was quite some work we had to finish before the start of Art Book Fair.

    In the month of September, other than celebrating my birthday, I spent the rest of the time finishing up production work, and also fulfilling my duties to my head organisation, Singapore Youth for Christ. It was a gruelling season of extremely long work days, but as October rolled in, the work pace lightened up a project at a time.

    Then the weekend of Art Book Fair came. Suddenly.

    I needed to rush my social media, I needed to make sure people even knew I was going for Art Book Fair because I barely said anything. My Instagram was still just used for me to meme away. I churned out some content just a week or two before the actual weekend, and there we were, rolling into Singapore Art Museum with our stacks of prints and zines.

    It was surreal; the feeling of always being the participant there, overwhelmed by the mass of people and booths. But the set up took away a little bit of the magic. Perhaps the better framing would be, the set up made me realise the boothers were humans too. I’ve always placed the creatives on a high pedestal, and it was a great experience to see the creatives in a state of uncertainty, as they panicked about their own set ups.

    During the fair, there were uncountable moments of synergy, and just creative connections firing off like new synapses of a brain. I did not realise many of my friends were actually well established within the creative fields, and representing their creative organizations. I was able to have casual conversations with creative leaders I semi-idolised growing up. I don’t think anything really prepares you for that, but I stole the opportunity to ask about parenting, and about regular everyday life. What if I never get the chance to again, right?

    During the fair, I was sharing over and over again the origin stories of how each zine was made, and how we creatively approached the limitations we had set. People listened, and they bought. They saw the posters I had made for fun, and they laughed at it, as how I had hoped for. It was such a trip, being there and being able to share my creative self somewhere, somehow.

    But through this whole thing, I still never assumed I got there because I was That Good. I never assumed that I was the most creative, or anything along that means. I just wanted to be a contributor to the creativity in Singapore, and I think the rejection letter helped me understand my role the best. In many ways, if I had gotten accepted the first time through, perhaps I would have assumed I had “made it”. But I know thankfully, it’s a journey I’m going through. The humility to accept that is key for me, knowing who I am, and how easily I could puff myself up.

    But, in my Christian experience, it’s God’s hand in this, to teach me so much more in life.

    I am extremely thankful to the SGABF team for giving Through The Roof and myself the opportunity to participate. I am sure there were other creative outfits with much more swag and style, and they took a chance with us. I hope I contributed, and I hope I brought some hope to the creatives in Singapore.

    Hopefully, we could bring everyone through the roof!

  • Fair Weather Friends

    Yesterday was the end of the Art Book Fair, and we spent the day talking with so many people. It was a range of creatives, students, and some were even business owners. It was quite a scene.

    Today back at work, I was reflecting about the whole range of people we got to meet and it was great. But even better were friends we had lost contact with over time. Thus the title of this post – friends that catch up during fairs.

    I remembered having moments with each of them through my life, and because of my sense of memory, I remember them quite clearly. It’s funny how time moves, and some friendships are stuck in the past until you catch up with them.

    It was also a reminder to get in touch with them, so that we can remain friends beyond fairs. It keeps me thinking about the work I do in Through The Roof, and what I hope to achieve with it. It’s something else ey.

    Anyway, my eyes are still absolutely dry, and my voice is mostly gone. I am still recuperating and recovering, but I’ll spend most of Wednesday and Thursday asleep.

  • Day 2 of Art Book Fair

    I woke up and prepared for another day of art book fair. Just that today, we had lunch, instead of my own brain running on 150% and forgetting that my stomach exists.

    It was a nice time of chatting with a good number of people about gaming today. It was a great experience, and I got to share my own experiences so far in a personal way.

    Along the way back, Clarice and I picked up some pizza, and wrapped up the day watching the new Jolly, as we would normally do on a weekend.

    It was an exhausting day in many ways, but I am glad, extremely thankful, for the experience of it. It’s giving me a framework of how to approach next year as well.

    Fun Stuff.

  • My First Art Book Fair

    I woke up today really filled with energy to go out there and make it work, and man, it was such a hectic day. I only ate food at 4pm and I didn’t even know I was hungry. Then again I ate at 6pm. But shucks even then I thought I was totally okay.

    What a crazy day, and I met such funny people. It was such a good show case today. I really enjoyed myself.

    Tomorrow’s not gonna be easier but it’ll be more fun for sure. Time to make the best of the day, and to sleep now. So at least I’ll have energy tomorrow!

  • BIG DAY

    I tend to be really dramatic when describing things, but today stands really different. This morning, we went off for our baby check up, and it was a detailed scan. We found out our baby is a girl, or at least with 90% accuracy.

    This is mad because the past few months, we’ve been assuming its a boy because of the high activity. I’ve told friends, it better be a boy, because if it’s a girl, that’s a crazy active girl, and I’m gonna have so much to worry about.

    And it’s a girl. For now.

    I think this experience is really making me think about a huge load of human interactions, and the way the world is made. The amount of things I feel the need to prepare my girl for is intense. One of the biggest things is to protect her from Boys Like Me When I Was Young. There are so many ways I wish I was a better human being growing up, but man, now I have a daughter coming into the picture, I am really in such a weird head space.

    In any case, we are now workshopping girl names, instead of guy names from before. Also my parents had lunch with us, which gave me a good way to just throw some reflective thoughts out and to get some good feedback. My parents are great for that, and I would like to be that for my children.

    After lunch, I made my way down to SIngapore Art Book Fair 2024!! Where I am a vendor this year!! And it is insane.

    I sat down for at the table, and looked across, and there was Pann Lim, at his booth. I’ve attended SGABF year after year, being in this really fan-like state looking at Pann’s stuff. Now we’re boothing in the same room. There are so many emotions going through me. I cannot expain, even now.

    We set up, rearranged things, and re-arranged more. Everything was at about 90% done, and tomorrow there would be a few more things to finish up. But otherwise, there was really so many things to consider, and I am so thankful for both Dawn, my colleague, and Clarice, my wife, for being there. I was really in a state of “I need to put things up” and “I can’t believe I’m here”. It was crazy. It was really crazy.

    Anyway Clarice and I took a very emotional bus ride over to Tanjong Pagar, and sat down to recalibrate things over a Hojicha Parfait at Nana’s Green Tea. There were a number of good memories we’ve had there before, and it was nice to be there again today. We made our way back via train, and worked out before dinner.

    For some unbeknownest reason, I decided it was a great day to watch Brandon Sanderson’s lesson on writing as I trimmed my buzz cut. Now I can’t wait to start writing on top of my emotions from the day.

    What a big day, and I really need to learn to chill in life. But then again, maybe my role in life is not to chill, but to just keep doing things. I’m actually really okay with that.

  • dried eyes

    The past few days, my eyes have been open for so long that they’re so dry. Let me begin my daily recap again.

    Today I woke up, and got ready, and started on social media posts early. This gave me time to work on the train, and start some posts going.

    Then I went to pick up some prints, at a printer, and then at my office. I finished up a bunch of emails that needed some personal touches, then made my way to Bras Basah to do a little more last minute purchases.

    Came back to start ironing and putting things together, and kept packing all the way until 830PM.

    My lunch and dinner were both really random Korean inspired dishes: Lunch as Chili Oil Shim Ramyeon, and Dinner as Kimchi Grilled Cheese sandwiches

    I don’t really have the mental space to work out today, and yesterday too. But for some reason this morning I played an excellent game of chess while taking my morning poop.

    That’s about it, somewhat uneventful, but my eyes have not been able to rest at all.

  • A Day Delayed

    Today started as a standard Tuesday morning, getting up earlier to make my coffee, and then making my way to work. But soon, it was a little non-standard, as I deviated to pick up some breakfast buns from the Chinese food stall at Chinese Garden MRT. I accidentally purchased the Chives and Egg bun instead of the meat one, but it was still tasty anyhow.

    On Tuesdays, my office has an office wide gathering, in a very Christian form, because we are still a Christian company. And this was quite a nice recap after our planning retreats over the weekend.

    Initially, my day was set on getting some of my prints, then making my way home to finish up the folding necessary. But after half an hour of trying to get updates on the printers, I decided my time was better spent at home, and I pushed my schedule up. Within 10 minutes of my arrival home, the printers emailed to say they were ready. To which I replied, I’ll pick it up tomorrow if that’s alright.

    I continued along my day, folding, cutting and sealing all the zines from the weeks of printing. Productivity guide Cal Newport spoke good ideas to me, and Sean Connery as James Bond accompanied me in the later part of the evening, leading to the night.

    Clarice helped me with a ton of inventory management, and then we’ve actually only just wrapped up. It was a long night indeed, and extremely productive.

    The day was delayed, but thankfully, it worked out well in the end.

    More to print and pick up tomorrow!

  • 3AM Days

    I woke up really early today to catch the race. It was the race in Austin, Texas, and man, it was quite an exciting race. There were tons of twists and turns, but honestly I still dozed off at different moments.

    The race ended at 5, but I just could not get myself asleep. I tossed and turned for a good half an hour, and decided to get up and just write and design something because I really had it in my mind.

    I came back to bed and tossed about for another half an hour, and decided to just get up and make my coffee for the day. Did my drawings as well, and got myself showered in time.

    After all this, I went off to work.

    At work, there was a weekly coordination meeting, but it started a little late, so I started on some of my printing work earlier.

    Lunch was at a favourite place we haven’t visited for some time because it was under renovation— Victor’s Chicken. Unlike Victors Kitchen, this was just fried chicken with garlic rice. It is still really tasty, and I’m glad we had it for lunch.

    After lunch, I finished up my printing, packed up the prints and brought them home. I had to start cutting and packing them, and this was just the first part of another set of processes that are due this weekend. I also sent out some files for printing, so that I could pick them up tomorrow along the way home.

    Basically I stacked my day really tight. I can’t afford to fall sick.

    When I got home, instead of working like I had planned to, I decided to get some exercise in, and went for a jump rope workout. After which, I took too long to cool down and shower, and by the time I started work again, it was about 5PM.

    I worked for an hour, and then went over to my parents place for dinner, because they’ve just come home from the UK, for a holiday. After sorting through bags and bags of presents they’ve gotten for Clarice and myself, my dad dropped us off at home.

    All of a sudden now, my tiredness has set in deeply. I can feel the strain on my eyes, and how my body is just wilting away slowly.

    I’m writing this now as fast as I can, so that I can go to bed real soon. It was a long day indeed.

  • The End of a Week

    It’s been a few days of writing these posts as a day by day, blow by blow type of blog. I’m used to being a lot more reflective on my own self. It’s the most I’ve ever openly shared about my week because of this event based blog.

    It’s a little crazy to see how fast and how packed my week at times. I don’t think my time slips by in any way, and it’s a clear sign for me to take real good time to chill every now and then. Learning points for myself for sure.

    Today, Clarice and I attempted to wake up for the F1 races, but it was not very successful. I managed to stay awake long enough for the Sprint Race, but I definitely missed qualifying. Clarice woke up at the end to tell me that we were both asleep, but at least we could see the confirmation screen of which were the first, second, and third place drivers.

    I might attempt to watch the race itself, but it starts at 3AM, and it’s supposed to end by 5. Technically, I would be able to watch it, but it’s definitely going to take some part of my brain away for the day of work. I’ll decide later I guess.

    Had a catch up mentoring lunch with two friends I meet monthly. We’ve been meeting for the past two years at least. It’s been a good journey, and I look forward to talking with them. A social space existing out of my normal circle of friendships, and I would like to think we learn from each other quite a bit.

    I also caught up on my Game of Thrones reading. It’s a lot of book to carry around, and because of the week of moving about, I haven’t had energy to carry the book all over. Today I caught up at least 40-50 pages worth of reading. It’s really such a trashy story, but really good at the same time. What a fun read.

    Let’s see how the rest of this week goes along.

  • More planning days

    Today was a continuation of yesterday’s planning, so I woke up early, made my coffee, and made my way over to the retreat in the morning. My international colleague left for another leg of his Asia trips, and we said a quick goodbye! It was fun having him stay for the past few days.

    The planning retreat sets the tone and direction for the next few years, and it was a good to plan things through. But after all that planning, I came home and took a three hour nap. I think the tiredness from the past few weeks straight of running at high energy all the time had really taken a toll on me. I was quite happy to find some rest in the afternoon and later in the evening.

    Now, it’s time to catch up on some housework before the week of artbook fair kicks in.

  • A Long Day

    It was a very straight forward day today. I got up, made coffee for my international colleague, my wife, and me. Then we left to go for a full day of a planning retreat. It was planning what work would be look like 2 years in time.

    It started at about 9AM, and it ended at about 930PM. It was a long day.

    At lunch, I had gotten duck rice from an extremely incompetent and rude duck rice shop owner. He blamed me for not telling him what method of pay I was going to pay with (digital), and next he forgot I had already ordered, after a 5-10 minute wait. It was quite a ridiculous situation, and I was not impressed with him at all. The duck could have tasted really great, but his attitude left a horrible impression.

    That aside, the retreat itself went pretty well. Everything was conveyed, and we have things to work on for sure.

    On the way home, there was a couple hugging each other in the train, for the entire ride. Entwined in the middle of the cabin. At the bus interchange for the ride home, there was another couple locking lips at while waiting for the bus. Another strange scene for sure.

    Right now, my brain is so tired from thinking, and I’m glad I adopted this style of recording-the-day type of posting.

  • Family Friendly

    Today was quite a simple day, but with some nice surprises.

    With my international colleague staying at my place, I made some coffee and breakfast for him in the morning. Clarice got to have some of that too. After which, we made our way to a mall nearby for him to meet with my boss, and they went on their way for official meetings with local representatives.

    I went on my way to local stores to get things I needed for the coming week of Singapore Art Book Fair. I needed paper to print, and some plastic to keep things neat and tidy. But the stores only opened at 11, so I sat down at a Starbucks, with some groceries on hand.

    At the Starbucks there was someone who was a little off, literally lurking at the side. He claimed a table next to a girl, and literally kept staring at her. He got up to walk around a bit, and then he got upset when another couple had shifted a tray to the table he had left. There was literally no indication that he was coming back, and he did not buy a drink that entire time.

    It hit 11AM, and I got weirded out enough watching this scene unravel before me so I left.

    I picked up the things I needed at the bookstore, and received a call from my aunt, asking if Clarice and I would want to have dinner together some time. Our night was free, so we arranged for tonight! I went back home to finish up work and have some lunch.

    I put together a quick jump rope workout again. By put together, I mean I put myself into a workout outfit, and made myself go downstairs and do the exact some jump rope workout from the day before.

    Just as I started, a neighbour came down, sat opposite where I was skipping, and started cutting his toenails.

    This is not a common sight, and what shocked me the most was the speed he came down with, and how he sat himself down, only to start cutting his nails. It was a very strange sight. I kept on with my jump rope routine, and huffed and puffed as it went along. He kept on cutting his nails. I took 15 minutes for my jump rope routine, and he took 13 minutes to cut his toenails. I know that timing because my workout timers buzzed at that time.

    Enough strange for the day, and I went to shower, and got myself over to my parents place, where my uncle and aunt were house sitting. I played with my family dog for a bit, then we went to pick Clarice up, and went off for dinner.

    Dinner was at Two Chefs, at Commonwealth. I ate a lot at this Zi Char restaurant in my teenage years, and it was fun finally bringing Clarice to eat there. My family doesn’t eat there much mostly because of my mum’s allergies and my sister’s vegetarian diet.

    We ate a ton, and by we, I mean me. My uncle told me to eat as much as I wanted to, and I really did. It was quite crazy. It was so good having rice meals together as a family, and it was great getting to spend the evening with my uncle and aunt.

    They dropped us back home, full, and now I write here, ending my day.

    It was a strange day, but nice to have family around, even when we’re having guests stay over at our place.

  • Another Day, Another Sequence of Events

    Today’s post has to come earlier a little, because I’m gonna be running around a bit tonight. Maybe I can try to write every event again, and see how it runs.

    It’s a work from home day today, and usually I change my bedsheets on my work from home days – Wednesday or Fridays. I do aim for a weekly change, but sometimes it’s hard to get the wife out of bed especially when she’s still asleep. Even more so when she’s pregnant. Waking someone up just to change the sheets in the morning is not a nice thing to do. But we timed things just nice today, as she woke up, I got all the bedsheets and pillowcases off.

    By the time I got most of the things out, Clarice left for work. I continued the tidying with vacuuming and mopping. Very much like a Jack Designs’ video where I tidied everything. That was in my head at least.

    After all that cleaning I decided to make the most of the sweaty situation and I went down for a jump rope workout. It’s been the most efficient for me, because within 15 minutes I’ve got a good cardio workout in. It’s supposed to end with push ups, but I have a fear of push ups after cardio because I heard someone died because of that. Not that I fear death, but man, what a sad way to go.

    Showered then made my morning coffee and I got to work on a video clip that came out on my instagram today. I always have this fast jump cut idea in my head, because I think that’s the fun of a video edit- you want to see something magic like happen. Like a snap of the finger and things are done. The video was done, and I prepped the post all before lunch.

    Lunch was instant noodles, but with lettuce, tomatoes, a strip of bacon, a fried egg, and a bunch of chicken karaage. I like making simple dishes complicated. It elevates the Dish.

    Tidying everything up before leaving, because an international colleague is coming to stay at my place for the next three nights. I had stayed at his place earlier this year, in Chiang Mai. It’s nice to return the favour, especially before Clarice becomes more pregnant.

    I’m at the airport now, waiting for him to arrive. It took a little more than an hour to get here from my place, and along the way I played Fire Emblem, that I bought for the Nintendo Switch during the Prime day 10-10 Sales. It was funny, I almost walked into people while trying to get myself from the MRT towards the right terminal.

    The airport is full of people now, even though it’s a weekday afternoon. The hardest part was finding an affordable place to sit down. Everything is super overpriced, and for the life of me, I can’t remember how Clarice and I survived the staycations here. Maybe having a meal is a bit more affordable than just having coffee.

    But I’m snacky now, and I think I’ve literally gone through most of my day. The only thing that’s left is to meet up with my boss, and my international colleague, and then to travel back to my place for dinner.

    Extremely strange for me to write this way two days in a row. Not complaining, because the content is producing itself as I live. And just a lot of small thoughts along the way. Maybe I should write this way more often…

  • Time after time

    Today was a busy day of constant talking and standing, to the point where my knees literally hurt. It was such a day.

    (Also this is me trying to write a blow by blow version of my day.)

    I had a speaking engagement at work, where I shared things about God and Sin in the world. It was an hour of talking to 12 year olds, which proved quite enjoyable.

    After which, I had some time to chat with two colleagues over lunch, and bumped into an old schoolmate who worked nearby. Hadn’t seen the dude for quite many years.

    We went back to work, and continued some conversations from previous days, just to hear and see some of the work done before. It was a nice time of discussion and thinking about possibilities.

    Then I met another friend I whom I haven’t met for some time to get coffee beans. He had roasted his own beans and it was awesome getting a chance to get some beans for him. I’ll try some tomorrow for breakfast, and I’ll write back about it, maybe.

    I finished up the work day with more printing, which required more standing and moving about.

    On the way back, I picked up groceries, and took a really noisy bus back home. It was crowded, and the noise came only from three boys playing Brawl Stars on the bus. They were cursing and swearing, and most probably students who had bad results that day. I quote “You still have your phone because your mum doesn’t know your results yet” “Yeah, so we should play as long as we can right now”

    I came back and made a BLT for dinner, for Clarice and myself, catching up about the day so far. BLT stands for Bacon Lettuce Tomato sandwich, but it was with caramelized onions, cheese, and a Big Mac sauce.

    Right now, we’re catching up on old Bond shows because of Prime Video recommendations, and it’s quite a blast from the past. Funny to see the sexualization of women from the past, and the desexualization now.

    Anyway, very awkward writing this way. Or at least I’m not sure how it makes sense. It feels somewhat boring. But it does cover the intensity of my day for sure. It was quite an eventful day.

    Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow…

  • Fleeting Ideas

    Every morning I wake up with these pretty solid ideas for the post of †he day. It’s there in my head, stewing and I know it’ll be a smash hit. In fact, I think it would be so great that I might make a zine out of it. Maybe an article on my Medium to revive it. Maybe even a book of Good Ideas.

    Then when the night comes, the idea is quite far off. It’s run away somewhere, only to appear tomorrow morning yet again. Some of my morning posts are really quirky and well written because those are the great ideas of the morning. Other times like now, they feel like random ramblings of the day.

    I keep rethinking the format of a blog in itself, meaning one that tracks my daily comings and goings, and perhaps that would be the aim one day. But currently, it’s still running as a side brain. The brain thinking aloud. But one can dream. And right now, I am dreaming of a possibility of not writing such heartfelt thoughts, but keeping it to something every day to day.

    Today I dealt with cancer. Not mine, but my family member’s. Is that too much? Ok, then the other one, Today I dealt with another family member’s heart bypass. Perhaps that’s also too personal and real. Today, Clarice and I played Wingspan on the switch.

    That sounds a lot more YouTube and Instagram friendly. Something that would catch some views and gain some traction. Not the personal life things that affect life and death. Those are too difficult in this challenging world.

    Jokes aside, it was quite a heavy day today. Maybe that’s why the ideas ran away.

  • Writing devices

    I’ve been having a conversation with a good friend about writing devices. I think I talked about this awhile back, but the conversations are still going on.

    It’s been making me wonder, what is it about writing that I’m avoiding, that I think will be solved by buying a new device? Is it the fear of actually starting to write? Or maybe it’s the lack of inspiration, or a lack of a subject and topic.

    I think it might be the fear of actually producing something. I know my friend has no issue with that, she has a full site and publishing thing going on now. But for me, I think I’m afraid of what I would need to do if I start writing. I’m afraid of doing more work, and I’m afraid of the successes of doing well in writing. It’s not what I’m known for, and I guess it takes a lot of effort to start meeting the “writing crowd”. I’ve already committed much time and effort into the art groups and I don’t know the writing guys in Singapore.

    But that’s not why you write, right?

    And that might be my slow struggle. I don’t know how to “be successful in writing”. I don’t know what that looks like, or how it feels. There are too many unknowns.

    If I can sort out how I am thinking and feeling about these things, perhaps I would be able to get myself going better in my writing. Not really going better, but to just get more confident, and to actually start writing properly. In a way that I would aim to be published somehow.

    One post at a time I guess.

  • Missed a day!

    I did get quite lost in work yesterday, but it was also a day of meeting friends. Perhaps it would have been productive in other ways if I didn’t meet my friends, but I would have spent the time slightly aimlessly as well. At least I had the benefit of catching up with friends.

    There are many paths one takes in life, and sometimes, the one we’re currently on is quite up and down. I think the path I’m on now is one where I have to run, and at the same time, the width of the path is extremely small. There are tonnes of things in the way, and I find myself getting tripped up at things coming in the way, or I am just having to squeeze past, by the skin of my teeth.

    What a path.

    I’m also in the middle of The Long Walk by Stephen King. It’s quite a solid book, I’m quite stuck on it. I don’t have much time to read, but I have to travel and I get through the train and busses with my books. It helps me for a bit.

    The Long Walk has so many insinuations to the way life works. Its easy to see the pointlessness of many things, but what motivates us for the next stage ahead?

    My motivations currently are purely to rest for a week before I have to pick up the pace again for the year end.

  • Getting Lost in Work

    I’ve been really keeping my head down and trying to focus all day, but it’s been a mix of creative work and planning work. Worst combination to work through, because it needs to actually use my brain 100% of the time. Really high energy stuff, but my brain is tired but my body actually needs the exercise. So I’ve been doing jump rope workouts again, and it’s been a good 10-15 minutes of just jumping rope.

    Getting lost in work means that for a period of time, I have very little friend interactions. I enjoy hanging out with my friends and intentionally catching up. But during this heavy work periods, I actually can lose days or weeks working. I blink and all of a sudden, hours have gone by, and I wonder what Clarice is up to. She’s mostly asleep if I’ve been working in the evenings, because I only notice the time at midnight.

    I might clear the dishes very late at night, and I’ll be thinking, What is everyone else up to today? What was happening in the world? I have no idea, and I just have to guess. Then I finish that, sit down to clear my daily things: This post, a drawing for Inktober, and my Duolingo Russian streak.

    Then I might read or just distract my thinking brain enough to go to sleep. Then I wake up the next day and head back to work again.

    Just getting lost in work for a period of time.

  • War Movies

    I just finished 1917. It reminds me of Band of Brothers, of course at a completely different age and time of war. But the common thread is the emptiness and loneliness of war, especially after the troops move off a place.

    It is always strange to think about it, especially in Singapore, because we are very distant from war. There is a sense of peace in Singapore, very well maintained, and I guess we live lives not considering the war of other countries.

    There’s just something about conflict we avoid, as a people. I say this because I’ve seen Singaporeans avoid conflict by any means necessary. Actually we avoid most confrontations, unless we’re extremely upset. It basically means we tend to talk only if we’re very upset, which immediately leads to blowing up at people. That’s been my experience, I am sure everyone has variations of it, and of lesser degrees.

    But in the show 1917, you see this guy push through people over and over again, and how he just runs through warzones, in order to do his mission. It’s not easy, and it’s so lonely. It is sad when the people next to you die. It is hard to stomach.

    I don’t know why I watch war movies every now and then. I supposed I hope to empathize with the countries around the world, and the people from there, but all I can really experience is the Hollywood drama, and my own knowledge and experience of military conscription. It is still painful, and I would not wish it on anyone in the world. There must be better ways to solve issues than to go to war.

    My own simple minded conclusions after watching war movies. I am sure everyone’s reached that too. I hope.

  • Late Night Tales

    I used to really enjoy listening to this series of Late Night Tales by different DJs. They would curate a playlist of songs, and I guess the title of it made me think of stories told past midnight. At the height of my obsession with design, Late Night Tales and super clubs were the epitome of what designer life would look like. It was what I hoped to have in some way or another, as part of my life.

    Maybe that’s what led to how my house is now; made in a way to cater to late night tales, and a hyper idealistic view of what cozy super clubs would be. Maybe more supper club than super club, for the lack of glitzy glamour.

    I would like to think Clarice and I also compliment each other’s tastes really well. It makes our house balanced, and not heavy on the collectors end, and also not too sparse on the minimal end. We’ve got a good thing going on, and I like the late night tales we tell each other. When our kid comes into the picture, there’ll definitely be some late night tales.

  • Knowing when to stop

    I might have reached the point where I’m just too tired to do any work tonight. It’s hard because I really like to work. But mentally I can barely figure out what to have for dinner, I’m not hungry actually just really sleepy.

    It’s a long day of walking around the National Gallery of Singapore, and then catching a friend before he flies off. But I guess it’s just a lot of walking and thinking today.

    And I really need to learn when to just stop.

  • Busy Days

    I have busy season very frequently. I’m trying to get something sorted, or trying to finish up work, or just having to meet a lot of people. It’s not really by choice but I guess it is.

    A busy day for me would be a morning meeting, a lunch catch up, an after lunch meeting, an evening meeting, and then a night meeting after dinner. It’s a crazy pace for sure, but that’s my maximum. Add ons would be needing to produce artwork, which takes up more mental space than actual calendar time.

    The past few weeks have not been as busy, but still quite. The artwork needed to produce is a lot higher, so I’ve literally cleared off my whole week for no night meetings, and yet I’m still sleeping at midnight or later. Sometimes it just takes time to sit there and work at it.

    Writing everyday gives me a short 5-10 minute break to just make sense of life a little. It helps greatly.

    I honestly will just space out for a period after the busy season, and I’m really quite looking forward to it. Just gonna chill out and wait a bit before planning the next month ahead. (This chill out space is gonna be at the end of October, after the art book fair.)

  • Recording why I think

    I love to watch videos of people explaining their commonplace notebooks, or some recording device, or just their vlogs straight up. Process videos are also a great jam, and I spend quite a bit of time watching these. Because of that, I have a bunch of notebook types. I also jot my thoughts down digitally, in this very blog for example.

    But a key point I want people to take away is why I think. It doesn’t matter my thoughts as much as why I am making note of them in pen and paper, or online. I am thinking out loud because it is necessary to think.

    It’s not noting indecision, the times where you stand at a counter and rattle off the list of menu items before you order. Everyone can read. But what you’re not saying at the counter is why you are choosing. “Is this within my budget?” “Is this healthy, or matching my diet?” “Is this what I feel like having today?” “Will I still have space in my stomach for dessert?” – Mostly yes no questions, but it gets you to arrive at the food you want to order.

    I do that in my notebooks, or my blog here. I am writing what I am thinking, because there is a need to think about many things, not just food. I want to recall how I came to a decision or how I felt at different times and what led me to those points. It might sound exhausting, but the same question reverts back, do you feel exhausted choosing food? At times yes, but most times, it’s second nature. At this point, sharing my thoughts has become second nature, so I do it with ease.

    I don’t remember when I really started journalling and tracking my thoughts. But I know I need to very often if not I literally feel quite mentally strained. It’s a good cache cleaning for my brain, and I have mental bandwidth to think much faster after that. Amazingly great practical steps to take.

    But honestly, I hope more people think, because I know a lot of people don’t. lol.

  • Milestones

    I got to catch up with a friend over lunch today, and I finally got to ask some questions about his life that led him to his current career: as an educator. It was something I was always curious about, because he didn’t seem like a teacher type when we were much younger. But he’s definitely stepped into the role very well, and even as a friend, I feel I can understand better with his approaches to different things.

    It made me think of all the milestones in life that I’ve gone through too, shaping me to who I am today. Everyone has their milestones and everyone’s version of what makes a milestone is slightly different.

    One of my major milestones was finding out I could do something else other than design – doing accounts servicing for the designers. I could talk with clients because I could understand the scope of things, and I could talk with the designers because I understood what the clients were looking for. It was quite a mind blowing moment to also find out how much more everyone else was earning, as compared to designers. Designers are really severely underpaid.

    Another milestone was coming into full time ministry. It was when I gave up a certain sense of self, and I traded it for something more meaningful. Or so they say. I think I was just very sure I wanted to do something for God, and I had to live it out. It wasn’t enough just to talk about it.

    Which led me to my next milestone about arts, because I’m more design trained than art trained. I think about things from a problem solving angle, more than anything else. Art wasn’t much of my jam, and yet it became what my plate is today. I’m not upset about it, I’m grateful about the journey it has been to come to this point.

    I really enjoyed thinking through today, and it was a tough yesterday, but tomorrow will be better for sure.

  • Reminders of who I want to be

    I had a horrible experience with a printer today. Just not a very pleasant man, and not a very pleasant process. This is shocking because in the past maybe five years since Peace Centre stopped their printing services, I’ve not had a rude printer that only wanted to print things his way. Today was a very rude throwback to the times when as a student I would get told off for not doing a file correctly. The hardest part to swallow was the “incorrect way” was based on the printer’s own direction. It was really really frustrating.

    There were so many ways I know how to tell him exactly what to do, like I did the first time I printed with him, that resulted in a good print. But instead I had swapped to his preference of how to align a printwork. And the file just didn’t turn out right at all.

    I was really peeved at the moment, and honestly, stressed up enough that I wanted to cry. As an adult to cry, I feel I reserve for people dying, or very dire moments where there is no hope. I felt helpless for real at that moment. It was frustrating, and my feelings were really all over the place. Thankfully down the road, the printers were great, and I sorted out my prints well.

    It’s not hard to know which printer I am going to be. I want to be the nice guy printer.

    It’s not hard to also know that my pricing is too student friendly, and I would keep it that way. But a huge part of me felt the pains of having to deal with the prick of a printer today, that I want to help people print as a whole.

    But my main job is not as a printer. But that’s literally how frustrated I felt today, that I wanted to just print so that I could do a better job than the printer I was at today.

    I want to be a better person.

  • Scents of time

    In case yesterday’s post got too religious for you, here’s a deep memory I had today, while leaving my house.

    There is a perfume a friend passed to me, its an Hermes scent, but I can’t remember the name of it. It might be Galop d’Hermes, but it has a strong scent to it. I wore it in the morning, and it’s still stuck on my right now. Clarice doesn’t like it too much, and neither did my friend, thus it came to me. I have no preferences for scent, only the appropriate day for the appriopriate scent, so I’m totally fine with any scent profile.

    But its the memories it brings. I’m reminded of the days in Jalan Minyak, where Clarice and I struggled for sanity. It was not the easiest start to our marriage, but I think we grew in huge ways from there. It was challenging, and I remember I wore this scent out on a day where I was alone working at a cafe. Because Clarice didn’t like the scent, I would wear it on days when she wasn’t around. So on an afternoon, walking around the Clarke Quay area nearby, I’d wear this scent and sit a cafe and work.

    The scent reminds me of how I grew, and reminds me of the person I left behind. It brings memories of the dark night, lying in our hot bedroom, because there was no aircon. The hotel next door would suddenly rumble to life, with the smell of someone’s room service wafting through the forest separating our apartment and the hotel. Later, I would also have some afternoons at said hotel because of the Work From Hotel packages they would have. For a very decent price, you could work at the hotel the whole day, with wifi, and a certain credit amount for food. It was a super good deal.

    The smell of it reminds me of a friend who came over for dinner, and she shared parts of her life with us at different times. Not easy things to share, and not easy things to hear, but that’s what friendships are made of. I split the bottle of perfume out for her, and gave her a bottle of it. She would definitely suit the scent a lot more than I would. I remember seeing her face in our warmly lit kitchen dining area at home, and looking quite at ease. It was a chill vibe our place carried, despite the heat.

    I remember a bag I carried with this scent– I do pair my bags and outfits with my scents, and this particular bag suited this scent. It was a green tote bag, given by another friend. It seemed the most appropriate match, and I still think it is the next best bag to wear with the scent. I would stuff in my denim jacket, and find my spot at the nearby Starbucks, and churn out the range of projects I had to finish then.

    A scent brings memories for me. But a scent is really passing. It’s invisible, but it’s there. It’s not much but it can change moods. Isn’t that our lives on other people? As people pass on, they were there for that moment. The Now. But they’ve moved on. They leave such an impression on us, and make us think and remember so much.

    I hope I was a nice scent for the people around. Both literally and figuratively for today.

  • Choosing Right over Good

    At work today, we had a really interesting bible study session talking about letting our rights go, for the sake of the Christian gospel. It’s not a popular topic out of Christian circles, but in the recent year, I think there’s really been so much confusion over what Christianity really means and what it stands for.

    For one, it doesn’t force its way into people’s lives. Being a Christian isn’t about standing in the street screaming the name Jesus Christ and dancing to it. I get the meme of it, but in its practical application, I don’t read where Jesus told us to do that.

    It’s mainly about understanding of our lack of as humans, and to accept the help of someone bigger, namely God. Christians do believe God as the creator of the universe, and in our human freedom, we chose to go against God. There are so many options discussing human freedom, but in most cases today, we practically live with human freedom as our baseline. But our going against the Creator, it runs us into this competition: which human will rule over the rest? Which one decides their ways are supreme over the rest, and ought to be followed? The endless competition of it leads to everyone wanting to be king, in whichever way possible. But we’ll never be able to sort this out, because only the Creator can make a command decision over all creation. Then comes Jesus, who takes the form of a created being, but with the creation power and abilities of the Creator God. Proven through his miracles, and the prophecies of old, he does whatever the Creator can do, but doesn’t choose his way over the creator’s. Instead, he follows to the point of his eventual betrayal and death. As an act of atonement, the punishment humankind deserves is placed on him. He is brought back to life three days later, and as Christians we follow the rest of the teachings Jesus left with the disciples before his ascension into heaven. One of the key things is to live in a way acknowledging God the creator, and to not choose the human way of leading our own lives. The eternal life part comes before, when he atones for our sins, our wrong against the creator God.

    Now, which part of gives anyone a sense of entitlement often portrayed in modern day?

    Christians were known for the self sacrifice in the earlier years, and the hope for eternity when the rest of the world just saw emptiness and void. We knew there was something after this life because Jesus was our proof of it. Therefore, nothing would hurt us in this life, including the loss of our own lives, because it would all be in Jesus’ charge.

    It’s tough these days because everything doesn’t seem to speak this truth about Jesus’ Christians who would go out of their way for their neighbour, to any extent. Reading books like “The Life You Can Save”, written by an atheist, but has made me think more about self sacrificial care for the poor than any Christian author has so far. It’s not the same.

    I deeply enjoyed my discussion at work today, because of the deep dive into this. It’s what I hope to do with Through The Roof, and it’s what I stand for as a Christian. It’s a hard line to take, but I am happy to work on my journey to learn how to be more giving of myself, for the good of the gospel, and not for my rights.

    Perhaps its the idealism of a 35 year old, but I hope to keep it somehow, this deep knowing of Jesus and God.

  • Stressing about time

    I keep thinking about the many things I have to do and sometimes I don’t have time to do it. Right now, I have to wait a whole night to test something out for print but all my other tasks require me to be working at a certain thought level. But because of the range of things I’ve done today, I’ve exhausted my energy in said areas, and I just have to rest to get back on track.

    It’s tough because I haven’t climbed, I haven’t ran, I haven’t done much exercise with my mind this tired. And the weather has been crazy so I have no way to consistently predict what to do.

    So here I am, stranded between tasks. Maybe tomorrow I might find a mistake I could have fixed today and gotten annoyed with myself. But that would be for tomorrow’s Joel to fix I guess. Today’s Joel is all tapped out.

  • Soundtrack of Life

    There was this period of COVID lockdown where I would watch night time routine videos, made by the Japanese home and lifestyle YouTubers. They would always play this same soundtrack, and it would always involve this process of relaxing in warm lighting, as they sorted out their homes, or made themselves a midnight snack.

    The other day, I changed upon a video using that same song, and It used to be a lot more calming than I remembered it to be. For some reason, I recall more of the anxiety and panic I had about work and other things.

    Today, as I was keeping up the house, and winding down on my own, a little part of me wanted to try and watch a wind down routine video, with the same soundtrack. Is it because I’m feeling anxious about work again? Or perhaps I am indeed in a different place, and I feel like revisiting the concept of wind down videos as part of my own wind down?

    I remember wishing I had a calm room to wind down into, because we were staying in a very hot and small apartment. Our fridge was smaller, our working spaces were smaller. There was no air conditioning, and in Singapore, that’s tough.

    I feel like I’m living my wind down routine life in some ways, being able to make drinks and just chill in the living room comfortably.

    Maybe I want to watch a night time routine video to see if it would match my own life now.

  • a day at a time

    Woke up early today to go sketching at a mall, and it was interesting to think about many things I’ve gone through in life. I’ve had a lot of near death incidences since I was young, not by anyone’s fault, just some bad luck in some sense.

    At the end of each of those moments, life seemed to rolled on immediately, because I had no visible scars, or nothing really showing the close shave.

    I was recounting this to a friend, but I remember the people who have passed before. There’s nothing to show anymore even, because they’re not here. But the pains of the memories are still there. It’s hard to go on sometimes. But we just have to go on with it.

    Remembering the days, the memories of before. And now living a day at a time.

  • Ran

    It’s been awhile since I’ve gone for a run. I’m not sure what raw dogging a run really is, but I know it’s mostly about being quite unprepared and just dead on about it. In any case, I kinda raw dogged this run. I chafed a little by the end of the 2 km, but it was still good to get a run in.

    Running really gets my mind in a certain state. I have other good habits, like writing here daily, that give my mind some clarity and rhythm. A little something to mark the day, to give me a frame of reference. But when I fall off the horse it takes quite awhile to get myself going again.

    Like not having a running goal doesn’t give me a motivation to run. Not climbing with friends makes me not feel like climbing. And I guess sometimes it’s just the busy schedule cropping into my life, and I have to push the disciplines away.

    But that’s not a good excuse, and I should recognise how much happier I am when I have these systems in place. I am both happier, and in a better state of mind, when I’ve run and when I’ve done some cleaning in the house. And my journalling too. That always helps.

    I hope I can maintain my running again, but something managable in my schedule.

  • Writing in the middle of the day

    I don’t usually write in the middle of the day because my brain is drained, and I just don’t have much creative space. Today has been a good day at work so far. I’m about an hour away from finishing up for the day. But I have a little bit of flexibility to leave a bit earlier if I need to.

    But I decided to write now, because there’s another part of my day that spreads into the night. It’s another portion to use my brain for, and when I get home, I definitely won’t have time to write.

    What am I supposed to say about the day as it develops? Today’s quite unique because the train lines are affected in my area. In Singapore, it’s quite a foreign experience. Our public transport is almost always steady. People are very dependent on a fully working public transport system. Having been to London, I’ve seen public transport not working because of strikes. It’s got nothing to do with power, but people just don’t want to work. I’ve seen faults in Australia, where a line is affected. In Amsterdam, a tram wasn’t working because the driver decided not to show up, and the whole bunch of us were standing there in the cold, waiting for the day to start.

    Anyway, I got to work on time, about 10 minutes late. But with the buses in my area, I’ve kinda got used to the idea of that already anyway.

    Now it’s time to reserve my brain for the rest of the day, and we’ll see what happens after that.

  • Cutting Time

    Just a random update on my SGABF2024 stuff:

    I’ve actually been printing and test printing different things. Some are about done, and others are still in the works. It’s honestly quite frustrating how long some of the processes are. There’s a lot of adjustment for printing RISO, so I’ve had to adjust multiple times, just to get some prints to align properly. I understand the price of it now, because it really does take quite a lot of trial and error to get everything just right.

    It feels like I’m in school again, and rushing work. There’s the sense of panic, but at the same time it’s moments of mindless cutting, or just folding my life away. Or just the frustrations as well, when the prints don’t go as planned. It really makes me recall moments of the past, and how it was So Frustrating, trying to get these things out.

    It also totally reminds me to keep humble, when I talk to students about their work. I forget sometimes the amount of hurdles I had to jump through to get good at something. I’m remembering now for sure.

    Back to cutting now…

  • A Fresh Start

    There are many things about the start of the day I love to experience.

    For one, the morning air has a certain cool to it. When I open my windows and the cool night breeze wafts in, it feels great. It’s still dark out, but I’ve slept enough, and the day begins somewhat.

    I understand the allure of the 5am club, but I wake up early by accident most of the time. Unless I’m training for running, then I very intentionally wake up early to get my run in before the hot sun rises.

    My head has also just come out of dream state, and there’s a certain creative clarity to it. I don’t really understand why, but I know after a coffee, and after some writing, I have a really refreshed brain put on. The worst thing to do would be to doom scroll at this point, and sometimes, I drop into that dark neverending hole.

    But today, I’ve got my coffee in hand, I’ve got three pages of writing, and I’ve even got my bible reading and some pauses of prayer in. I consider this a 5 star start to the day, including writing this post as well.

    I hope the rest of the day rolls along well, but it probably will because the start was restful enough. Thank God.

  • Inconsistent!

    The current world really enjoys this sense of justice where someone ought to behave the way they have, throughout their life. Celebrities are brought to this scrutiny, and so often we are forced to think this through.

    I feel this sometimes, thus again, talking about how I express myself here. I feel the need for transparency in my own life as I publish my works on Instagram, Medium, and wherever else I appear it.

    But at the end of the day, honestly, no one is ever consistent. The amount of times I can call bullshit on so many normal people is just incredulous. The amount of hypocrisy we through out day to day is just too much. And whenever I ask the people around me about it, the answer is usually “but who’s checking”.

    Me.

    I’m checking.

    Just because everyone else thinks they can check on celebrities because they’re in the limeline, therefore the layperson is off? No such thing.

    At the same time, who’s checking on me? you might ask. I’m checking on myself. I’m a hypocrite full of bullshit too. So what are you gonna do? You’re a hypocrite too.

    The comedy is unending.

    Basically, everyone’s not consistent, and honestly I don’t think it’s worth calling people out about being inconsistent anymore.

    I said everything and nothing in a post, because apparently that’s what media is supposed to be these days too lol!

    #satire

  • Creating out of Something

    I am not the most comfortable with sitting somewhere, and waiting for creativity to strike me with some divine inspiration. I am also not the most adept at process work, because whenever I do a process based painting, everything just turns out black at the end of it. I tend to be quite bleak about my outlook on life.

    So when I do these types of 100 day writing things, or just aiming for a daily discipline, I enjoy them a lot. It’s nice to just force myself to make something, even if I don’t feel like it.

    In the past week I’ve needed to force something out, but nothing is coming out. It’s weirder when I force something out, and I struggle to find the actual shape of it. It’s not a discipline moment, because I don’t have a daily art aim; I have a daily writing aim. So I’ve had to sit there and wait for my inspiration to come.

    It was so challenging, and I hated doing it.

    It made me think about going back to doing a daily artwork, just for me to be fluent with producing whenever again. But it takes time, and I don’t have the time these days.

    That being said, while sharing with a friend today, I realised my perspective on time is something that needs adjusting. I want to change how I view my time because I think I’m just taking everything as a challenge to my time, but not actually making something good from it.

    Creating out of something is always needed. I need to create out of an experience, and currently, because of how I view my time, I’m not letting myself have experiences. It’s not beneficial for me creatively, and more so, I don’t give myself a break. That’s not helping.

    Anyway, just some creative lull thoughts. I’m making myself not work today, just to experience life a little.

  • Appreciating typing again

    It’s been a long time since I’ve played around with my keyboards. After getting a new mouse, a certain part of my person clicked again, and I found myself wanting to make some keyboards again.

    I remember my preferences, I remember the ways to get them. But honestly, I’m typing this post on my laptop again because it’s easiest. Yesterday I didn’t but sometimes, that convenience is key.

    I would love to be able to type on nice keyboards all day long, but there’s just a lot to manage, to organize.

    I’ve been looking at other keyboards once more, but man, I have so many already.

    It’s really fun to have to choose how to type again. It’s really wild.

  • Stories Untold

    There are days like today where I have written too much in my journals. It’s 930am, but I’ve already thought many things, and I’ve processed through a lot. I actually overthink most of the time, and based on some discussions with my counsellor friends, it’s likely stemming from OCD. I scored 12/10 for that, which probably means it’s kinda high.

    I don’t think it’s honesty I’m aiming for, but more to express what I am thinking thoroughly, so it can be understood by myself later. Maybe it comes out as honesty, but I don’t intend the moral attachment of honesty. I also don’t intend for the clinical scientific-ness of objectivity. I just want my thoughts to be heard in a way that remove the viewer’s lens, and replaces it entirely with my own.

    But that’s never possible.

    Therefore, no matter what I write in my journals, or what I write in my blog here, these thoughts will always have a presumption “you will never really understand me”. I still express myself, because it might change the way you view the world. But true understanding? I don’t think that is ever possible between humans.

    We attempt that in so many ways, but there are a million stories, billions, never to be heard or understood by anyone at all. It’s just how life works, and that’s okay. The modern world demands all rights, for all people, but we weren’t all born with a cell phone in hand, or with a voice that would speak across the world. We just have our immediate, and that’s all that really matters. The people within our context will understand our context, and we express within that context.

    We’re trying to live out of our context when we’re misunderstood by the people nearby. The modern world says its okay, but previous generations would kick out the outsider. Hermits, exiles, people who didn’t fit in. They just left. Died with their untold stories, while the majority continued on.

    My balance is to accept that I will never be totally understood, but to share my person as much as I can, so that perhaps my immediate context will understand. But I take the cynical view of never truly being understood. It’s okay. I am happy with being at least half understood at times. We have to take what we can get yeah?

    So do you really need to understand this post? Maybe not.

  • Bad Habits: Distractions

    I have a ton of work to finish. I keep saying that, hoping my brain actually registers the work I need to start doing. But honestly, I have been working. The trouble is getting started. I take a long while to put my hands to the plough, and to have myself running in the direction of “Work”.

    As much as keyboards were my most expensive hobby, I think the daily routine of picking a keyboard to work with for the day actually made me a lot more aware and conscious of the work I needed to do. It was a clear mental indicator for me to start work. Also because by the time I finished deciding which keyboard I was using, there would be a sufficient amount of time passed, which pushed me intentionally to start. The lag made me feel the need to actually do work.

    Anyway, I’m saying all this because one of the worst habits I have is my lack of attention and focus. There are so many times when I’ve started something only not to finish it, and it just lies around in an unfinished mess in my computer desktops.

    I try to accomodate my distractions by having multiple computers, so if my attention fades I hop onto another computer and I can focus again. It’s just that sometimes, when I hop on, I’m off track. And then I need to reset and realign to work once more.

    Writing helps me focus, that’s for sure. So writing here is helpful. and also I clear a post, so win win.

    I have work to clear today, so I feel like I hammered enough words on my keyboard today. Will start again now. (This is my 3rd hour back at home to work, and I’ve worked on three projects since. I just can’t focus on one main one to finish. It is quite frustrating. Maybe I do have ADHD.)

  • Space and Time

    are things I will always need. Not that I need space by myself, but I need space to store things. And not that I need time alone, but I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do in life 80% of the time.

    I have a little sticker on my computer now that says “My greatest wish is to do 5 times at the same time.” I made the sticker myself, and I wish I could really do 5 things at the same time.

    I woke up this morning, hoping to accomplish so many things. I’ve done about 2 or 3 of them by now, but I still need to do so much more. It’s not that I don’t do enough work, or that I work slowly. I’m just trying to manage between the many tasks, and deciding which are the time critical ones to clear first, and on the priority of things to do.

    Right now, there’s still other things to do, but I don’t have time to do them. But they’re distracting me still from the work I’m trying to do. Which is annoying. Thus, I write, to reset my brain, back to doing work.

    Back to work.

  • Singaporean Mall Checklist

    Clarice was saying the other day, how un-Singaporean I am. There are many times where I struggle to find my place, and maybe it’s what gives me space for my expression here.

    I am exploring some ideas about what makes my local areas so special, and I personally think one of the most Singaporean aspects I have come to realise is the Singaporean Mall checklist. We have the same set of shops in every, if not most, of our malls in Singapore.

    1. Uniqlo

    There is definitely a Uniqlo somewhere in the building, and it’s got the Singaporean uniform on sale. The crucial part to Singaporeans and Uniqlo is the sale section, where we have to see the red tag, and we’ll fluff through it until we find something in our size.

    2. Decathlon

    “Click and collect within 2 hours” is part of Decathlon’s selling point in Singapore, but also because you can get sportswear at a really cheap price. We’re all about the discounts, and you’ve got to at least have one quick dry towel from Decathlon in your house. If not a cheap backpack to keep your water bottles in.

    3. McDonalds

    I don’t know a mall that doesn’t have a McDonalds (pronounced MAX, in Singlish). It’s where you go to sit down and wait for your friends or for a McSpicy burger. Both ways, if you’re in a mall in Singapore, there’s one of these.

    4. Hock Hua Tonic (or similar brands)

    These are a Chinese Herbal Tea shop, selling Chinese tea. Chinese tea would carry “cooling” properties to combat against the “heaty” foods and lifestyles. An example would be to drink some liang teh after a very stressful and hot day.

    5. Supermarket (Cold Storage/NTUC Finest/Sheng Siong/Giant)

    Malls do need a supermarket main around for sure, and the Singaporean staples are the four named above. Most have self check out counters now, but everyone knows you’ll have to get checked still for alcohol.

    6. Bubble Tea shop

    There is one, but it ranges from location. Sometimes there are two. The bare minimum bubble tea shop is Each a Cup. The higher end ones would be Hey Tea, where you could sit down and drink your overpriced mango cheese ice blend. I’m not judging, I’m speaking from personal experience.

    7. Sketchers?

    Why? I don’t understand? There are so many Sketchers shops, and they’re always with a Korean idol standee in front. I get we always need shoes, but this one is really a little beyond me.

    8. Chateraise

    This Japanese pastry shop is just all over the place. After the double fantasy recipe change, I’ve stopped getting them so often. But it’s still a very easy way to get a quick cake before going to a friend’s place. Impressive looking, at a cheap cost. Singaporean.

    9. Daiso/Threepy

    Daiso is a great place just to sit there and soak in how cheap everything is. Not 2 dollars, but about 2.18 now, and it’s still quite reasonable. In the Threepy versions, there’s so much more quality, but you do pay a price for it.

    10. Handphone repair shop

    A little harder to find these days, but there is one somewhere, if not just outside the mall. They carry phone cases of all sorts, and they have impeccable skills in replacing your phone screen covers with tempered glass options. If you’re daring enough, you could even buy a phone from them, but being Singaporean, you’d probably get it from Shopee.

    I think I covered most of them. DM me if you think I’ve left something out. I might make a zine out of this one. lol.

  • Celebration Break!

    I was not updating for the past few days because I was happy celebrating my birthday! This breaks my streak, but guess what, who’s really checking? I’m super happy about how I have learnt how to manage my own expectations about myself, including how to tell myself to chill out if I don’t do something I’ve set out to do.

    I mean I have already been able to run the marathon distance. I’ve already read more than 52 books this year. I have been writing consistently for a good amount of time, and now I’m also getting my work properly put together for the coming Singapore Art Book Fair. So it’s all coming along nicely. Just because I missed three days of writing here doesn’t mean the world is going to end. I am okay with that.

    The past few days has been a fun time. I went camping with Clarice and Mark, and my parents crashed for lunch on both days. Wallace came along too. It rained out in the middle of the night, so that was pretty darn fun. It was so pleasantly cooling, but just before the rain, I was sweating buckets through and through.

    When we got home, I spent most of the day playing games actually. Just having a ton of fun. What else would you want to do on your birthday?

    Also, this is the last birthday without a baby. Who knows how the next few years of birthday will be, but I just know it will not be the same. Not that we can’t do the same things we did this year, but it just would be a change for myself to go through. One year at a time ey?

  • Early Morning Thank You Post

    I woke up feeling extremely grateful, and I think in the past week I’ve felt the guiding hands of God for sure, but the people that have been nudging me, or pulling me along.

    I am extremely thankful for my Temasek Polytechnic friends – lectures, seniors, friends, juniors, and basically the whole group that pulled through together over the years. I have no idea how or why anyone would stick with me through my years of being a horrible human being, but everyone was really too kind. Maybe not, but at least to me, I felt and still feel comfortable asking for help. It’s such a journey to go through life with creative people, and I truly cherish my years with them.

    All the art and creative people sprinkled into my life. They truly colored the whole landscape of the world for me. And a lot of the times, I just hope I was colorful enough to add color into their lives too. Thank you for being there, and for being willing to share your life with me.

    The Perfume fan group honestly was a very interesting part of my life, and it’s a group I still enjoy catching up with every now and then. I guess in many ways we’ve grown up and hopefully not past Perfume, and I guess we had connected then because we saw life different from everyone else’s paths. It’s great to see everyone stabilizing in life one way or another.

    I’m thankful for the Christian groups I walked with over the past years. It was amazing getting to meet other like minded people, and to be spurred on to do more in my Christian ministry and in life. I think my church groups had played a huge part of forming a space for community, and I wish it could be shared with even more people.

    My parents for sure: I don’t think I could ever ask for a better set of parents, and many people enjoy finding my parents to be their guiding posts too. I know I’m the person I am today because they let me be at the right times, and they pulled me back at the right times. That takes a lot of careful consideration, and I hope to learn it well for my own child.

    My Wife!! who has been the most patient over our 5 years of marriage so far. I’ve learnt a lot about grace and patience, and also about how to work on impulses at different times. Creatively, Clarice also has been really impactful on how I consider a direction or approach. If you see my artwork becoming more clear, usually Clarice is assisting with some comments there.

    What a strange post to come out of me today. I just felt the need to really write some thanks out. Maybe one day I would write my own “Boy” like how Roald Dahl did.

  • depth

    I wonder how deep my posts here are supposed to go, or if they are supposed to be shallow and easily relateable. In writing this question out, it became rhetoric because I want to do whatever I want to do, and it doesn’t matter if I feel like being deep today, or if I want to be shallow.

    It’s my blog, and I can do what I want.

    Without any publicist or manager lol.

    In any case, I’m of no celebrity, and I am just a man sharing his life journey. That line reads so weird, coming from me. I am sure most of you don’t see me this way. “Most of you” as if I have a horde of people reading this.

    I wanted to write about getting a new mouse, thus the question about how shallow or deep to be. I figure if I get shallow enough, this blog will end up becoming a review page, for books, tv shows, movies, and other nonsense.

    But I got a new mouse because I saw Clarice’s new mouse, and it looked so pretty compared to the old greying one that I have. It also made me think about the mice I have gotten over the years. I had a Logitech mouse I bought in 2011 when I joined SPOC. It was my first intentional mouse purchase for something small, and business like I guess? Before that I had gotten some Targus mouse for cheap at a PC show. Later, after SPOC, I got myself a Microsoft Sculpt mouse, for it’s great reviews, and it was pretty good. These mouse stuck with me through the years, and when I started my keyboard building, I realised no one understood what mouse I was using because it was that obsolete. It worked, but it was just really not something anyone would be able to find in the market. I had really wanted a trackball while getting into the keyboard life, so I got myself the Deft Pro. I got myself a new mouse to match my MacBook Air, and moving between work and home. So I got a Logitech two device bluetooth mouse with quiet clicking. Funny for a guy who ran a keyboard channel to have a quiet mouse. This was in 2021-2022.

    So now, in 2024, I’ve gotten myself a Logitech G304 hyper light mouse. I have no idea what it really means, but from what I understand, it will be a super light and easy to use mouse that I can bring around easily. But I am honestly just glad to have an affordable peripheral to mess around with. It might add to my reason to play Diablo again this year (reference to the posts about playing Diablo every year lol)

    It’s silly, but it makes me happy a little to use a new mouse. I love my greying quiet clicking mouse, but I will also love my new mouse with its lightness and easy clickability. Or so it says.

  • Personal

    This was the title of a Jack Reacher book. Not kidding.

    And it was a pretty well written Jack Reacher book. I’ve talked about my whodunnits and trashy books, and maybe there can be something to be said about this post.

    I’ve always toyed with the idea of what makes something successful, and if I’ve ever hit that level. I think I’ve reached my personal levels of success in many ways, and one of them is staying alive actually.

    I’ve always thought I was going to die when I was 12, or that Jesus Christ would come back and I wouldn’t need to go to secondary school. The world continued on, and I had to go to school the next year.

    I thought I would die after my O level’s because I wasn’t sure if I would have made it into design, and my preliminary results from the internal tests were shit. And instead, I did well enough to get into design, and continue on.

    I thought I was going to die in army, multiple times. I thought I thought I was going to die in BMT, I thought I was going to die in OCS, I thought I was going to die Brunei, Taiwan. I thought I was going to die in Tekong. I thought I was going to die in Reservist too. I’ve been lost in the jungle on my own a few too many times.

    I thought I was going to die on the plane a few times. One of them was when there was a sharp descent, and I had a few beers on the flight. Sinuses were clogged, and I could not function at all. I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of my skull. It was horrible. Other times were turbulence related.

    I thought I was going to die a few times after drinking and eating. Death by over eating or alcohol poisoning. I tend to binge when eating and drinking with friends and family.

    I thought I was going to die exercising. Either the heat was too much, or my legs were just aching beyond belief. Once I was dropped from a rock climbing session, and I thought I was dead then for sure.

    So in some sense, big personal success just for staying alive.

    Good thought for turning 35 ey.

  • Review of James by Percival Everett

    I picked up this book after listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour, and they had interviewed Percival Everett about his book, James. The way Perival had came to write the story was after multiple re-reads of Tales of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and he developed the black slave character, Jim, into a full story.

    It is a very interesting book, but unnerving to read if you haven’t watched shows like Django Unchained, or read books like 12 Years a Slave. There is something quite dark about American Civil histories, and these stories give a big voice to it.

    I enjoyed the book because of the portrayal of a thought process in a world expecting you to behave otherwise. It is quite wild to imagine, but the world shown in James is one where black people would talk normally between each other, but when a white person is around, they would speak as if they lacked understanding, and with poor grammar. They spoke with wild exaggeration, just to pretend to be lesser, so the white person would continue in a state of ignorance.

    It was a really good book.

    A big implication for me was how I would expect people to act or think a certain way, and if they didn’t, would I be surprised? What if a Chinese National would speak to me with perfect diction and understanding, would the mannerism throw me off? What if they were more fluent and understanding of English than me?

    That being said, I enjoy throwing everyone else off by speaking Chinese, and reading it through as well.

    Perhaps I understand James different, because it’s a scene from my life. I know how it feels to be expected to sound or talk or behave a certain way, but it’s not me, and I don’t like to pretend otherwise.

    Perhaps, you could catch that glimpse of my life through the book.

    Just maybe.

  • Hobonichi update + Nostalgia

    Ok, for all my hype about the hobonichi yesterday, as I was setting up my hobonichi, the paper bleeds a lot more than the current one I have in my hands. That kinda sucks, considering how much I was hyping it up. But life goes that way sometimes doesn’t it.

    I was doing a workshop today, with some youth from my church, and they were all of 15 years old. I remember thinking I was definitely on top of the world at 15. I remember having a horrible time too, navigating a lot of teenage angst and awkward social situations. Honestly, a lot more regrets than sucesses, but that’s life.

    I think I said sorry so much throughout my growing up life, or I tried to and got hung up on. I was really in a bad place, and it didn’t get a lot better actually. Maybe only in my mid twenties was when life started to level itself out a bit more.

    Life really runs on trial and error so much of the time, no one really tells you that. Everyone tells you to aim for success, but there’s a crap ton of failure leading up to any form of just passing. Success is really for the 0.0001% of the world. I don’t mean getting money, because there are a lot of people with money, and with moral failure. But to have everything running smooth, that’s a tiny tiny tiny portion of the world.

    Anyway, I’m glad I’m not a 15 year old kid anymore, and I’m happy to move past all that.

    If anyone here reads this, and I pissed you off or made your life horrible at 15, I apologise. I might have said sorry already, but in case I didn’t, I’m sorry, and its my bad.

  • Hobonichi for 2025

    I am a stationery nerd.

    Everyone has different levels of their stationery nerdiness, and I think I had peaked quite early. As a small brag, I had started purchasing Moleskine in my teens, and for the longest time, I was purchasing Leuchtturm 1917 in bulk (before they brought it into Singapore).

    I have a leaning towards good paper because good paper trumps good ink. Meaning, if I had good paper, even bad ink would sit well on it. But if I had bad paper, the best inks would just slide or ghost or bleed and feather in the worst ways possible.

    This is also because I put money and time into good inks, or at least inks that I enjoyed to use. Having a nice range of inks doesn’t mean they are all waterproof, but it means I have a nice palette of colors to choose from for writing.

    And then comes the pens. I’ve got a basic set of fountain pens which write in a comfortable flowing way. I did not feel enough of a difference in the fountain pen use in more expensive pens to justify their cost, but they’re just really well made.

    So Good ink in a good paper, with a usable pen.

    Those are the fundamentals I look at when writing and journalling physically. I do this very often, daily actually.

    Which brings me to my endgame: the Hobonichi.

    The Hobonichi is a daily writing notebook, which had been in my radar, but I never really understood what the draw was. The use cases always looked to thick, and unwieldy as a diary or a journal.

    But in the past year, I tested out their range of smaller journals and I found it AMAZING.

    First, the paper is Tomoe River paper. This is the thinnest paper you can get, that can hold ink well. It is also extremely smooth, which means if you have a mediocre pen, scratchy or just not that great, it would still work as if it was smooth. Leuchtturm1917 used to have good enough paper to handle watercolors, but over the years, the quality has gone down. Now, even scratchy pens might make a dent in Leuchtturm. But I digress. The Tomoe River works awesome.

    Next, the sizing of Hobonichi. Currently, I use the Hobonichi Weeks Mega Sneaker. This is after 6-7 years of Leuchtturm bullet journalling. As the quality dropped, I was disappointed, and I slowed down my journalling tremendously to manage the existing journals I currently owned. Then I started journalling in the Tomoe River Journal I had, but found the A5 size still a little big. It would also get heavy, because you could fit more thin paper in a notebook at the same width, but the weight goes up.

    The Weeks Mega Sneaker is trimmed to a long shape, like an A5 folded widthwise. It fits into my bag perfectly, and you can really write on the go, because it’s so much easier to balance. This means I can write whenever, wherever, with any pen.

    Last point (because I’m a little tired), the layout and prompts of the book. Unlike regular bullet journals needing you to set it up, and having pages of messed up and miscalcuated dates or days, the Hobonichi has everything there already. The grid lines are there, but not too high contrast. There are dots indicating columns, but you can use them for anything you’d like.

    The prompts within the book are really heartwarming. Every day has a quote to encourage you, and there are portions for you to note your favourite lists and even an interview for yourself. There’s a tracker for you to mark the days of the year as you go past them as well, it’s just a super well done and well thought of set of things to think through.

    Thus, in 2025, I’m going to be using the Hobonichi Weeks Mega (not the sneaker version, the standard one has a hard cover). I have also gotten a 5 year diary from them, as my current one from Midori is ending. It also has an amazing layout and is totally well made.

    So for the next few years, if anyone ever asks, I will definitely recommend Hobonichi. It is super awesome.

    Tips:

    • Order from the site itself, if you want some free goodies every now and then. They will have specific seasonal items. https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/
    • Think at Funan also sells them, and I like the shop. I got all my Hobonichi from them so far. But I did buy the 2025 editions from the online store.
      • The pricing in Think accommodates for shipping, but if you’re getting with friends, then you might wanna consider the online store for cheaper pricing.

  • Managing too many timelines

    I think I’ve hit the point where I’m managing too many things at one time. Some parts are because I’ve agreed to them, and others because I felt the duty of it.

    I am looking forward to all of them, but sometimes, just sometimes, I think I’ve taken too much at a go.

    Other times, when I don’t have enough, then I get bored and lose my direction.

    What a difficult process!

  • Simple Creamy Recipe for 30 Something Year Olds

    You are in your thirties, and you’re looking for something for dinner. Do you order an overpriced pasta at an overpriced restaurant, only to scan a QR code and eat something you could have made at home, only if you knew how?

    Have no fear, your friendly lazy chef trisected is here to help.

    Jokes aside, I make this really lazy pasta whenever I feel like having creamy pasta with some great flavor.

    Set a whole bunch of water to boil and throw in some salt. When it’s boiling a bunch, (Rolling Boil), add the pasta in. Use approximately 80-90grams per person. The super lazy version is take some pasta, pour enough water to cover it, and maybe add a little bit more, and salt it and boil it.

    While the pasta is coming to boil, or getting cooked (usually 11-14 minutes, be lazy and call out “hey siri 14 minute timer”) (if you’re not on an iPhone I don’t think you’ve hit peak lazy yet), then you take a block of butter, and chop it into smaller cubes. If you’re in Singapore, use half a block of SCS butter. If you’re not in Singapore, 8 tablespoons. I don’t know what that means, but I know its the right amount.

    Wipe the knife you cut the butter.

    Grab 2 cloves of garlic and either: mince by chopping, or grind it, or whatever, just make it a smaller and paste like.

    Your pasta should be able 3-4 minutes in. If you are lazy, grab 1 pack of shredded cheese (whatever you want), and then loosely figure out how to portion it into 3 parts.

    Oh yeah, before I forget, dump the butter and the garlic into a big bowl that can take lots of heat. Throw in a pinch of salt, literally put your index finger and thumb and pinch out salt, and throw it into the bowl. No need to mix, not yet at least.

    Pasta should be about 7-8minutes in now, and you gotta stir the pot at least once. If you did it the super lazy way, the pasta might be getting clumpy and stuck to the pot. Unstick it a bit, and add a little bit more water if it’s dried out like contact lens left out.

    Super lazy way: after you added more water, stir it a bit, and if the noodles are quite soft, like floppy, then throw the butter and the garlic into the pot and start stirring.

    If you’re not in the super lazy way, when the timer is about 11 minutes (shout “hey siri, how much time is left” “you have about three more minutes in your timer”) then you lower the heat, and use tongs to grab the pasta and put it into the bowl. Be smart, put the bowl next to the pot.

    At this point, for both lazy and super lazy ways, the garlic and cheese will start to melt together, with the hot pasta coming into it. Toss it once or twice, then grab 1/3 of the cheese and throw it in, and continue tossing until the cheese is melted. Throw in another 1/3 after it melts, and continue until all the cheese is done. Keep tossing until everything is melted. Your timer would have gone off by now (“Hey siri stop”).

    If it doesn’t look glistening enough, add more pasta water. It might look watery, but just keep tossing and you’ll be good. If you did super lazy, then add a scoop more water, and stir everything over low heat.

    Grab some Tabasco and squirt it in, and you’re good to go.

    It might have sounded long this way, but you’re gonna have super good tasting pasta in about 15 minutes, and its a fraction of the price of whatever happening pasta place is on right now.

    It always tastes good.

    Ingredient list

    • 8 tablespoons butter (100+ grams? i forget)
    • 2 cloves garlic minced
    • 100g of shredded cheese
    • 80g dried pasta
    • 1-4L of boiling salted water
    • Tabasco sauce (or any spicy vinaigrette. Most of the heat of the spice dies in the cheese, just don’t put too much)

    Tools needed

    • Pot to hold 1-4L of boiling salted water AND fit pasta shape in
    • knife or mincer for garlic
    • tongs to handle pasta
    • scoop for hot boiling water.

    Lemme know if you made it.

  • Movie Review: Downsizing

    Netflix had another movie going away soon, so I watched it with Clarice today.

    Downsizing lands on the premise of the world being overpopulated, and humans being the world’s biggest issue. The solution was to shrink humans down, to the size of a cup, and that way our footprints would literally be shrunk down. It followed the progression of society from the lens of a man called Paul, played by Matt Damon.

    The tone of the comedy lends more towards black humor. A lot of dark jokes, and about how society and humanity are not in a good state at all, and yet it’s quite hilarious. There are moments of righteous clarity, where doing the good thing is done by Paul, and the people around him want him to do good, even though they might not be doing the best.

    I enjoyed the general tone of the movie, but it’s not a super great movie. Didn’t move me to want to downsize for the sake of humanity. Also did not help me feel better about humanity and its goals. But it was an interesting thought concept to play with.

    With our planned pregnancy, I guess a question is what I hope humanity will continue with my child, and hopefully their children too. I don’t know what life will bring, but hope is a key concept. There was definitely a lack of hope, leading to the downsizing. Or perhaps, a very strained view of what would work. I think there should be a Christian response, and maybe, just maybe hope is right answer. I personally have the hope of Christ, and heaven. I lean on the CS Lewis logic flow of “if it is true, then it is the most true, and if it is untrue then it is the most ridiculous.”

    But in any case, the truth of Christianity does provide a good historical basis, along with daily providence that God does actually show me in my everyday life. That’s a story for another day.

    But another day closer to my birthday, and another day closer to the day I expire, which will be some day.

  • What is a Cosy Game?

    After reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, I’ve been really interested what defines a cosy game. Gaming has been a part of my life in some way or another through the years, though not a huge part. But a big reason was because of the change of tech in the mid 2010’s. In any case, this term of Cosy Game popped up in the book, and I think I know what it means, but I’m not really sure.

    I’m still curious into what it really means, so I’ve been googling Cosy Games, and just seeing what they’re like. Currently, I don’t think I totally understand what it means. Playstation had a monthly challenge to “play a cosy game” and there was Dave The Diner. That was a game I had added into my list of games to play, because it sounded like Moonlighter, but in the real world.

    So perhaps what I understand as cosy game is also part of the graphic styles, and it’s something palatable. In my head, I think Animal Crossing would be a cosy game. It looks cute, it’s got easy game play, nothing too difficult but running around and just solving different peoples things, catching things, things like that.

    In a way, I guess Pokemon was that to me. Something simple, catching, nothing too difficult. But it’s a turn based RPG. So I don’t know.

    All this being said, I finally turned on Fallout 4 this week, and I think my gaming life is going to be very focused for the next few months. I really miss the extensive scope of what the game brings. I’m glad I skipped the whole Fallout 72, because I heard it was mad bad. But then again, I didn’t play it and I’m happy playing around with Fallout. I was slightly tempted to turn my Xbox360 back on again just for Fallout3. But we’ll see if we get there or not.

    Gaming, as another new angle to my stories and interests again? Maybe!

  • Book Review: Before the Frost

    Just a preamble: I write these reviews on the spot, just like how I write the blog posts. It’s just a little more useful for me to track my reading by writing some of these blog posts, for me to have a gauge of what I thought about when I read. It also helps to develop a better view of what I take in as a person, from my choice of reading to my review of the book.

    Before The Frost by Henning Mankell is a Linda Wallander book. I’ve read quite a few titles by Mankell, and specifically Kurt Wallander – Linda’s father. Kurt Wallander has a series on Netflix too, known as Young Wallander. As with everything else, the books are better.

    This Linda series makes for some alternative thoughts. I don’t really enjoy Linda’s internal monologues and presumptions. Mankell does drive at this a few times, and it comes off a little annoying. It’s actually the only part of the book I don’t enjoy. Throughout this book, there are moments where Linda has dream states, or there are snippets to other moments and flashbacks, and those are totally fine. It’s just Linda’s internal voice I can’t seem to stand.

    It runs into more detective thriller type books, and I can really spend all day reading these. It’s just something about reading how a sequence of events unfolds, and whether a perpetrator is caught, or not.

    Agatha Christie’s Poirot definitely gets it best. Lee Child’s Jack Reacher too. There are many reasons why those two authors have so much readership, and still continue to draw people in. They’re really well written whodunnits.

    I was looking at my library the other day, and Matthew Reily used to have a bigger spot in my reading life. Now with Reacher, the game has stepped up in some ways. Reily’s usual style has maps and contraptions and some science to it. Reacher has just a simple “I hit things, I find things out”. Why does it work so well? Perhaps because it lacks logic, and it just goes for hard hitting action.

    Anyway, I am reading other things too, but it’s just easier to speed through whodunnits. I really speed through them but that’s how I like it!

  • A Month In, and Bad Sleep

    It’s been a month of daily writing! Or at least a month of intentionally planning for it. It’s not been easy, I recall 2 nights of rushing at 1155PM to push a post out. It’s not difficult rushing because I’m trying to hard to write something out. It’s harder when I have the whole day to write, and I am torn between the million topics I can think of.

    I remember enjoying writing daily, and I think I do look forward to it, but truthfully, it’s not easy.

    Last night, I had really bad sleep. I slept late, and woke up early today, because Clarice’s alarm went off. Bad sleep triggers me worse than anything else in the world. Internally, I need a way to manage my emotions and thoughts especially when bad sleep is definitely on its way with the child coming and all that.

    Growing older, sleep has been something I look out for, and trying to keep my lifestyle around it better. I have my array of tasks to do before sleeping, and I need to schedule and plan my time better. The rant about doomscrolling the other day was in view of this, with a total frustration at being annoyed about how time slips away whenever I just stop focusing properly, and allow distractions to just pull me away.

    In any case, we’re in the month of my birthday! Truly, the month of me losing my youth, including the lack of ability to function at 110% with little sleep. Rough stuff, but let’s make the best of it.

  • Project: Me

    In the past few years, the constant thought is how much focus I should give to the projects that I do. I have also been thinking about focusing my time and resources in the right direction. Thankfully I’ve landed on art as the main thing. But the hard part is showing the work.

    I don’t know which line of publicity to take. If I were my own client, I would have ditched myself because of the indecision. I guess this post in itself as a “thinking out loud” moment, where I want to talk about why and how I get stuck at each portion.

    For one, I am not sure what the timeline is. Everything starts on a timeline, because then you have a publishing goal. Currently my time tag is to the Singapore Art Book Fair. But it doesn’t showcase the other things I’ve been processing. So I guess if I pitch and set deadlines for publishing for myself, I have to make the motivating factor really important. I need something of critical value to get me going.

    Another thing is what I showcase. I have no idea which are the best ideas, because the ideas I’ve shown to people are usually the ones I go with. But I have another ton of ideas in my sketchbooks and notebooks, but mostly in my head. And these might never see the light of day. Perhaps they should see the light of day, in little zines. Especially since I have a very easy and affordable way to make these.

    The frequency and location of where I pubilsh is another bit. I like to publish here on my blog, but its because I know no one will see it. But if I show it on my instagram, there’s always eyes there. More than that, I have to deal with COMMENTS.

    I’m not great with comments because I feel the need to respond to every single one. It’s who I am I guess? I am a very person-type person. It matters to me to have a real conversation with someone, and I think it is crucial to being human. I feel the comments section anywhere is the worst place sometimes, because of the horrible things people assume out of nowhere. And it scares me.

    I guess if I can work through my fears, it would get me somewhere, but comes the last issue I have: do I really need to have eyes on me as an artist now? Is fame something I seek?

    It’ll definitely boost some credibility for me, but I don’t know if it is something I am really looking for as a person now. I might look for it if I were a professional artist, living only on my artwork. But I’m not. I am happy to do art when I feel like expressing specific things. I don’t depend on my artwork for a living. Maybe things would change drastically if I were, but currently, I can choose not to take up gigs because I just don’t want to or if I don’t agree with it.

    So it results in a non decision somewhat. I don’t really have a need to build my craetive career, but maybe a little bit of me really still wants to. I can’t decide, and I’m just lost a little in my own indecision.

    In any case, I have to still create today, so one day at a time I guess.

  • Review of The Road to Red Restaurants List – Zetsumeshi Road

    I had this show on my NetFlix watch list, but I only started watching it because it was going away. The premise is simple: a salaryman has a wife and daughter who attend concerts every weekend. This gives him a weekend by himself, and he drives around the country and car camps at scenic locations. At the same time, he would sample “endangered food” around the area, from diners on the brink of closing down.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the journey I was brought through. Each episode gave me a big flashbacks to times when I’ve visited old diners and eateries.

    In Singapore, the idea of food going “extinct” because of a lack of succession is quite real. We have hawker centres, where a lot of local cuisine is made. Years ago, hawkers would park along the roadside and serve their customers. As Singapore progressed, the government made food centres, where a hawker would now own a storefront, and have seating for their diners. But also with progress, the hawkers wanted better lives for their families, and many younger generations were encouraged to further their studies and become professionals. In recent years, there has been a revival for younger hawkers, but the current rent for hawker centres are not cheap as well.

    The show, Zetsumeshi Road, connects this emotion: the presence of good food was made for the sake of making money, and if there was a choice, sometimes the chefs would not have even started the shop. But because it was necessary, they started it, and it would become successful. But that’s not the life they wanted in the first place.

    Not all the stories carried this same angle, but it does make me consider, how much of the world we currently live in now was made because previous generations didn’t want our generation to suffer? And in our current generation, would we even think that far ahead?

    Perhaps as I approach fatherhood, this is a thought for me to mull on: what I would do for the sake of my children after me?

    And also, they would be missing out on some really good food…

  • Falling Sick as an Adult

    Maybe one of the hardest things to get used to as an adult is falling sick. I think my first real taste of this was in army, when I was deployed to Tekong. I had quite a bit of freedom, which meant falling sick was totally on my own care. If I needed to eat food, I could ask a friend for help but most of them had their own things to do. I moved around and ate whatever I wanted for food.

    I clearly remembered having kaya toast and eggs, with coffee too. And the most interesting part was no one would be there to chase me for anything.

    Now, at least Clarice will leave things for me, or help me out at different times. But throughout the day, I could eat McDonalds for recovery and no one could stop me. I don’t though. I learnt to eat warm and soupy meals to help my stomach fill, or basically foods that make it easier to chew and swallow.

    Just a disclaimer: after army, and before I got married, my parents would take care of me too, but it was different to when I got married. Like if they found out I was sick and I still had McDonalds, it would not have been a good ending.

    But basically, falling sick as an adult is quite a lonely process. Until you get to the point where you can claim your insurances, because you’d lack certain daily abilities by then. Sad, but unfortunately very realistic.

  • Off Day

    Not that I had the day off, but my nose has been running wild today. Feeling really out of it.

    I was marching someone in the bus today, looking at how they used their phone to flick through a comic book. I saw another friend do they once. Just with a single hand, flicking through an online manga, flick flick flick.

    The difference was this person would flick and a notification would come in. The person would pull down the notification, and reply to the chat they were in. And then return to the manga, flicking through.

    I don’t know if I approve or disapprove. I don’t have an opinion, but it was just an observation of how people read now. An interesting way of reading in modern day.

    I still swipe pages right to left.

  • Last Minute Writing

    This is really insane, because yesterday, I was overfilling with ideas of what to write about for the blog, and today I totally lost track of my time and now I’m rushing for a post just before the day ends.

    This really goes to show how time slips away from you, even if you have ideas. It’s whether the work was done or not, by the time ends.

    Take it literally, take it figuratively. If the work’s not done and not published with your name on it, it’s just the same dream you woke up from last night. Literally nothing was done even if there were a million thoughts worth a million dollars each.

    It also goes to remind me how I ought to work on my ideas early. Even if it doesn’t “fit into my rhythm” or system. I just need to get my ideas and posts out.

    Hopefully I do it tomorrow.

  • A Day of Rest

    One of the hardest things for me to do is to stop working, or to sit still. When I was younger, the way my mum would punish me would be to get me to stand in a corner and not talk to anyone or do anything. Or sit in a chair. Either way, being alone, and not being able to do anything were the worst things in the world for me.

    Now with the Internet, and being an adult, I find it even harder to sit still. I keep doing things, and wanting to be stimulated somehow.

    Then there comes a day where I fall sick, or I’m just in such a bad funk with nothing being produced. And then I take a break and play games all day. It’s still doing something, but I sometimes find playing games difficult to do, because I don’t produce something out of it.

    So today, I took a day of leave to pause a bit. Consolidate some of my thoughts that have been running all over the place, and to put them down together somwhere.

    I don’t “achieve” much on days like this, but I do get a lot of mental clarity.

    But it took me half the day to get settled enough to write here. I have 2-3 other journals I write in before I get to these blog writings. It gives me a warm up, and then I launch straight into these.

    It’s nice to have a break before I have a breakdown. It’s also nice to type away at a keyboard, not worrying if it would give me the best typing rhythm or not. It’s just nice to type.

  • Doomscrolling

    I really don’t like the way I feel after doomscrolling my day or night away. It gets me extremely agitated because I feel like I’ve spent my time so irresponsibly, and if only I had read a book, or even watched a TV show, I would have felt my time was better spent.

    Last night I slept so late, laughing away at the little jokes done by creators and their hopes to get viral. Is it worth it? It’s disruptive but what’s the point thereafter?

    I have been continually planning some of these thoughts in my head, about the failure of modern education, or the post industrial post capitalist world, and what these things mean for the young people growing up today. I have these mini manifestos running in my mind, and the philosophical theory is growing and developing.

    But then I get stuck into the Instagram loop, or the TikTok black hole, or the YouTube Autoplay, and then I find myself crawling out of it two hours later with my mind drained.

    I hate how it feels. I started my writing challenge here to combat against it myself, giving myself something to do.

    But at the end of the day, it’s just something I slip so easily back into.

    There are probably other things to worry about, but this is really high up there in my list of daily frustrations.

  • Easy Saturday Afternoon

    I had an enjoyable lunch catching up with two friends, whom we share with. Something like an accountability group, mentoring type, but not necessarily. It’s been a great year or so journeying together, we meet every month.

    I picked up some groceries on the way back, and now I’m just chilling on the couch, listening to the Beatles’ White Album and writing this post out.

    I can’t imagine a time where we would not be able to have these luxuries, but just a few years back when we were in our old place, it was a really squeezy time. And definitely frustrating too. Easy Saturday afternoons were not possible because I would be at work, and just rushing things as a whole.

    And now I can take a bath later; we have a room each if we would want to lie down separately; we could just play games, or watch TV, with the air-conditioning on. It’s not super crazy, but it’s good enough for me.

    I’ve finished The Life You Can Save, and I know there are many things I can give up, so that we can help the poor in the world. It’s crazy, because I know I have all I want now in the world already.

    Added with the baby coming in due time, I hope the baby comes into the world more content, and I also hope I don’t stress the baby out on what to do.

    One easy Saturday afternoon at a time.

  • No Real Review

    A slightly early post today, but this came to me while I was doing some artwork, and I realised some things linked.

    In Bible School (where they train Christian pastors and theologians), there’s this understanding that you only get corrected for your sermons and teachings then. There are very few people who would come up to you after a church service and tell you how well or badly you did in your sermon, and where you could improve on. Most people would tell you everything was great, and they would try to make sense of it for themselves. The benefit of the doubt would be given for the pastor or bible teacher, because thye knew better. But in any case, very few people would correct you. Therefore, it was key to learn as much as you can in bible school, testing things out, being willing to be corrected, because there might not be another time after.

    I find a similar situation in art, but in reverse.

    In art, you go through a bunch of training, and personally for me, I was told art school was the best time to fail. Because after art school, if you failed it would just lose a lot of money and contracts. And the opposite effect it would have on people: everyone would tell you where you could improve on. Everyone would tell you what sucks, and what more could be done where, and honestly, not many even went to art school. But they would still dispense information freely.

    Therefore, in art school, you might get critiqued, but at least your teacher is hoping you could improve in certain ways.

    Be kind to the artists, please.

  • Giving

    I’ve been reading this book called The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer, and I guess this would be a review before I finish the book. The premise is simple; if you saw a child drowning, would you go over to help the child? At the cost of your new shoes? Most people would say yes. But yet, most people could donate a little bit in order to help children dealing with extreme poverty. One US dollar could translate into a child getting access to clean water, or four US dollars for one mosquito net, helping to evade malaria.

    The book is filled with statistics over and over on how simple it is to help a child in need, and yet we don’t do it. It is even easier than helping a drowning child.

    In any case, I have been very moved by it and I’m constantly thinking about how to approach it. I will definitely make zines about it, but maybe just for today here’s some direct links so that you can give you see this post. Its literally 1 USD.

    https://www.givedirectly.org

    I gave 5 USD the first time, because I could definitely afford that, and it would go directly to help specific people.

    When you’re donating, you can mention “The Life You Can Save”, its one of the questions in the donation submission because they will ask how you came to know about it.

    It makes me think, could I spend my money better, so that I could give more? Saving not for myself, but for the good of the people who actually need that cash right now, somewhere in the world. There are literally millions who would benefit with a little bit. And I wish I could do it more but I’m just so stuck in my current world.

    This is very personal, but I really do wish I could do more to help. I hope you will.

  • Part of the Process

    Thinking through the whole range of posts I’ve written, I’ve actually done nothing much to publicise how often I write here. I don’t think I want to, but I want this to be a reserved slot for people to chance upon if they dig enough. Or if they just click on one of the three links on my site.

    I like to find hidden things on sites, and I guess I always want this to be here. So that someone can find it on their own, and maybe spend the afternoon, or night, reading all the nonsense my head digs up.

    I’ve been considering my artistic process for some time.

    I don’t think I have a specific method, but I know the medium of watercolors is because I am so impatient. I also know I love using bigger pieces of paper and thicker points, like with the chinagraph, or with a dried permanent marker. Both of them give me the textures and styles I enjoy the most.

    Sometimes I look at my work and I wonder how I came to it. I don’t know what possessed me at those times to make it, but the work is done. It’s complete, and it looks great, all things considered. At that time, I might not have liked it at all. In fact, I would have probably tossed it away. But I tell myself not to, and years later, I think the work is pretty darn good.

    Perhaps this process of hating the work is part of my process. And thus my use of sketchbooks so that my works don’t go missing.

    Some of the works I’ve drawn and painted are lost in the woods of my bookshelves. I probably should get a few more art folders, but they’re expensive, and I ought to frame or stick a few more up.

    Other works are lost in my sketchbooks, and I would enjoy going through the sketchbooks, but I am also quite ashamed of them. But maybe I should go through with them now, with this insight of enjoying my work after it’s done.

    After I’ve had some breathing space away from them.

    After all, what else do I have to show?

  • EMF- The Old Book Store

    I started reading this book called Swimming Back to Trout River, and it gave a fictional narrative about its characters living through the Cultural Revolution in China. It’s a moving story about people, and it also made me think about China as a destination to visit one day.

    I recalled the first time I wanted to visit China, and it was after reading the book Red Dust, by Ma Jian. It was an autobiographical recount of his time in China before he fled to Hong Kong. I haven’t gone to China still, but the book had made me think really hard about how we interact with the world as a country, and a citizen of a country.

    But the focus of this post is about the bookstore I got this book from: EMF.

    I can’t recall what EMF stood for, but I used to go there very often. My parents had brought me there the first few times, when I was young. I don’t remember when was the first time, because I was too young to remember. But I knew afternoons in Holland Village Shopping Centre, whether weekday or weekend, would always include a visit to EMF.

    Later I would go on my own, in my teenage years. It was a place where I would find interesting covers, or editions. My first few Murakami books started from the EMF bookshelves, because they had the Vintage series designed by Chip Kidd. I would only find out later about Chip Kidd, but these book covers started an obsession with Japanese literature.

    Between EMF and Kinokuniya for book purchases, I went to EMF almost purely because of the possibility of returning the book. You could buy the book at the stated price, but if you returned it, you would get a certain amount of money back. It was paying for rental basically. But if you enjoyed the book enough, you could keep it. I kept a lot of them.

    Their section for Japanese literature was tucked away at a corner, past the middle aisle that held the shopkeeper’s view. It was usually to the right, and I could ask aloud if there were other options of this or that book.

    Ma Jian was in the stack of Asian Literature, next to the Japanese literature. And with those introductions, I continued to have my growing enjoyment of reading.

    and now, all I have left is Kinokuniya.

    I’ll do a Kinokuniya post soon perhaps. The outlet closest to my heart was the Liang Court one, but more on that next time.

  • How now brown cow

    So hard to write, especially when I’m a little tipsy.

    So here’s a poem in drunk Joel mind

    What will I be

    What will I hope to see

    Why do we plan for tomorrow

    When we’re not free

    What are we working for

    When all the energy is spent now

    What are we saving for

    When the world depletes itself

    By the time we get out

    There’s nothing left

    Obviously not for me because I travelled a ton already

  • Book Review: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

    Sometimes, I wonder why I read so much Reacher, and it works out consistently. I won’t get disappointed, I know justice will take place, and I guess I know how it would end, no matter how crazy the story gets. Is it predictable? Yeah, sure. But sometimes, if you’re gonna spend a good few hours reading, you want to know how your next few hours of reading will turn out. That’s always Reacher and Poirot for me.

    This story hit on some trigger topics, namely human trafficking. I suppose anyone reading my blog would most probably not read Jack Reacher, so this wouldn’t be much of a spoiler. In any case, humans moving around illegally is really an issue of such systemic frustration. There must be a reason why a human being would feel more threatened in their home state, to determine that moving across country borders illegally would be better than staying in their home country.

    I’m definitely writing this from a place of entitlement and privilege. I don’t think anyone in Singapore imagines being an illegal immigrant anywhere else, even though the cost of living is so high here. We enjoy the safety of Singapore, and also the ideal of meritocracy, where we can earn our keep. We think things should be fair, and that’s how everything should be. But the rest of the world does not work that way. In fact, maybe it’s only in countries like Singapore where we can wiggle away with fairness. And if something is not fair, then we would complain about it.

    But truly, human trafficking is such a difficult and frustrating issue. I have no clue how to suggest help, and it makes me feel sad about humanity. Is there a way out of it? And in my Christian thought, how can the Church, or the Christian change these issues? Or if not, then how do we encourage other world leaders to deal with them?

    Just such a dark world sometimes.

  • Making Meaning

    After yesterday’s post about writing on the move, and also creating works of some psychological push, I guess another edge of what I hope to do is to create meaning in the work.

    It’s such an overused term though, putting meaning in our creative work. There’s random splotches of ink or paint in a a painting, and its supposed to reference some osbcure iconology somwhere. There’s reflections in the glass boubles of Dutch Masters work, because they intentionally meant something inside this or that. I get all that. It’s the one in our everyday sketches or drawings, and we hope to create some monumental piece of work from it. I think that might be highly unlikely at times.

    But I think it is important to create something that had thought and not just an exorcism of a creative demon inside. Not for some everyday discipline having you paint a million circles, and from there you develop the art piece. Not that I disagree with it, but I think the humanness of us is to showcase some meaning in the things we want to communicate. The intention to transmit a long lasting message is the meaning I hope to share in my work. I don’t think it appears when someone spills a pot of paint, and stares at the can swinging back and forth in yet another acrylic spill painting.

    It has to start from a place of emotion perhaps. An event moving me to express. A thought of frustration, sadness, happiness. The WHY needs to be answered.

    (I should really read “Start With Why”, too many recommendations to ignore it any further)

    Today’s post has to teach this lesson to the readers, you, and to myself. I have to remember to create meaning in the work I do, because that’s why I want to make something. I want to be human, and to share a message to share with someone else.

  • Moving writing

    Writing this post on the move because it’s late and I think by the time I get back I would be too tired to write in time.

    I used to write on the train to work. It was a nice way to get some creative words out of me in the morning. I’d write about transit in Singapore, and my feelings about it.

    I probably wouldn’t be able to write about things the same way again. I feel like my writing needs to have a point of learning or something. Like this post is about how I learnt that I wanted a bit more meaning in my posts.

    On my way to work today, I heard the sound of beeping, and I honestly thought it was a bomb about to go off. No one else in the whole train even flinched. I kept glancing all over and no one even cared. It was wild.

    Nothing in Singapore really excites Singaporeans. Maybe a sale, a long queue, food, or financial injustice.

    But a bomb? Nah, it must be an alarm of some sort.

    I don’t think that’s right, especially after National Day. Our independence was hard earned, and I sincerely agree with that nationalistic sentiment.

    So when the beeping was going off, I angled myself, prime to move to be Clarice’s cover on either side. I gotta protect the people I love and especially if Clarice is next to me.

    Gotta be ready to move.

  • Book Review: The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

    I just finished this book today, and I wrote a smaller review on GoodReads already. But it actually made me think and feel quite a lot over the past few days. Here’s a review that’s a little more in depth.

    The premise is the creation of collective consciousness, where everyone shares their thoughts and memories they’ve had all through life. This also allows everyone to hear what they’re thinking, or feeling even. The book follows the main group of people who started it, and their lives over a period of a few decades, including some origin stories. Each chapter is told from the POV of a character, and the end of the chapter links to the next character in an adjacent degree of relationship.

    Within this collective consciousness, there are some who do not agree with it, and they are noted as eluders, because they elude the visibility of everyone else. There is a state or country somewhere, that does not subscribe to it, and is ruled by a general. I might have missed the link of who the general is, in reference to the character developments.

    I sense a deep feeling of shame each of the characters deal with when they uncover or think through their different memories and feelings. There’s this sense of putting up fronts, and also being afraid of what people will think about them. Each of them wanted to be something, or hoped for it. There were moments of hallucinogens, and how it changed the way some of them thought or saw their lives. And of course, its effects on their families after that.

    I enjoyed the portrayal of humanity in its fragile state: people who did not know what they were doing, and struggling to understand the life around them in any desperate way they can. It was quite tragic actually, and painful. But a good book helps you feel those things I guess.

    My favourite chapter was this one where email correspondences were written out between the characters. It was funny to read the back channeling, and the messages aside to and from the different people. It was comedic. There were also gaps where you needed to fill what was happening in real life between the emails, and it made the story telling even more fun. It was a very well written chapter.

    If we could put our consciousness online, and available for all to see, would we? In the book, it proposed the result of having missing persons all found (because you could look at another person’s memories to track other people down), and child pornography was zero-ed (because your thoughts were obviously exposed, so the pervs could not be pervs basically).

    I think a glimpse of it happens now already, with social media and online presences. I actually try to write and share my thoughts openly here, and it’s also because I know very few people read this. I don’t know how I would feel if all my 1,500 followers on Instagram read these posts, or even my Medium posts too. It’s something else when the number is so much bigger, or accessible to strangers.

    Privacy is probably a lot more important to us in real life, and unlikely for us to reach a showcase of privacy to that level. But it’s still an interesting thought experiment to go through.

    I think the book is not bad, quite a fun read. I saw a peek of another person’s review, and they called it the book version of a Black Mirror episode. But we all know Black Mirror is already here in our current world, so I guess this book is just hinting at another possible future nearby.

  • Self Learning

    I left my finger without a band aid today, mainly because I was working from home, and I could keep my environment as clean as possible. This meant my finger could dry, and heal in a faster way. It looks pretty healed up, but I will save everyone from looking at the slice on my ring finger tip.

    I was pondering the point of self learning cars, and the idea of learning something individually. How do we ever come to the point of reflection, unless something happens to us somehow? There are moments when working with younger people that I wish they had ability to pause and reflect on the moment before acting. Humans are a lot less like computers, even though we rely so heavily on our warped sense of logic. We keep thinking we know better, or we can understand things logically. But in the end, its almost always emotional.

    Could we ever become emotionless?

    I don’t think I could ever.

    The way I’m typing right now is already testament to my enjoyment, the feeling of happiness using a keyboard different to my built in laptop keyboard. Also, I am happy to be liberated from writing on my phone from the past few days.

    Chasing my fleeting thought: I was considering getting a larger android phone for cheap again, just to work off my phone. But then I decided not to. Or maybe I would just save it in my wishlist once more.

    It’s such a weird dream to want to work off my phone. Perhaps leaning on an ideal of mobility; being ready to work anywhere at all times.

    The hard part is acknowledging there are some days where I really don’t want to work at all.

    Self learn that, if you could.

  • Stories From Phone

    It’s really something to keep writing these stories from my phone, maybe in my head I couldn’t ever imagine how people like Virgil Abloh from Off-White (R.I.P.) managed his company and direction from his phone like half of the time. I always felt it was because he had a huge phone with the latest things inside but maybe it was purely the limitation of time and convenience, he had no other choice but to make the world work at his finger tips.

    That’s kinda driving me to keep on at it, and also because my finger isn’t completely healed yet.

    When someone really wants to make something happen in one way or another, it works out somehow. It’s not manifesting as much as it’s making it happen. I appreciate the way I get to think through many ideas but really I wish I had all the apps to make my ideas become as real as possible on the fly. I do think AI helps as that assistant, but honestly, I wish I had an assistant so much of the time.

    Maybe everyone on their phone texting is actually busy working, writing to their assistants. And I’m just busy on my phone when the day is over writing these posts out.

    (Also just to be clear, I’m writing on swipe gestures on the keyboard because I use one hand instead of two.)

    Another story from the phone is the amount of people on the phone these days. It’s great to find out everyone is introverted, but I wish they were a bit less ignorant. It makes me highly conscious of how and when I use my phone in public. I keep myself at an angle to allow the best face to phone breathing space, and also I try never to use the phone when moving because I’d hate to get in the way of other people moving. Some people just really don’t care though.

    I’ve actually also tried dictation into these posts. But it lack the thought speed I slow down to when I write. Speaking gets me going too quick and I end up not understanding myself.

    Oh well. I’ll be happy to get my finger use back soon. It’s still very tender.

  • Serendipitous

    It’s another night of me writing these posts on my phone. I can’t type well with one hand even though I have the right keyboards to even attempt it. But it’s also because I give my finger a bit of time to just breathe. It gets waterlogged from the day of plaster use.

    There’s many times in my life when things happen in a series of events, almost as if it’s a movie. Based on my Christian beliefs, that’s where I know God is working through or talking to me through it. A non Christian might call it a serendipitous moment, and I don’t mind it, but I like the idea of God of the universe speaking directly to me a little more. There are definitely times when I know it’s 100% true. Today was one of the times.

    I was questioning many things in my head. Work and vocation thoughts, thoughts about friends and colleagues moving away, and I guess just the passing of time in life. And I even thought, man the work I have to prepare for today is so meaningless.

    The work was to present a teaching session for a Bible teaching, and I wasn’t sure of the place of it in my day to day work. I didn’t really grumble but I just did it with enough effort. Usually I would give 110%, but I gave it 100%; something like that.

    Immediately after the session I reflected, and I realized “meaningless work” was exactly what I had been struggling with through the weekend. I was thinking of next steps, and what else I would end up doing especially with life getting busier and me getting older. This teaching was exactly it. I could not have imagined a better answer for a question that was running in my head for so long.

    In any case, super big revelation, and I’m really glad life has continued in its trajectory. I guess I will see where else God leads me to, and gladly appreciate the serendipitous moments with the God of the universe.

  • A Day of Rest

    Today was a day of recuperating. I don’t give myself enough time to rest in a week, so my Sundays are usually especially precious. By not giving myself time for rest, I mean my day can be packed with 4-5 events from the morning all the way until the night, like starting at 8am and getting back home at 10 or 11.

    In any case, Sunday is rest. But for a constantly moving guy like me, I need specific rest tasks. I actually enjoy clearing my room and desk, despite the constant mess I live with. I like the clean, open table. And I also update my notebooks, with how the week has been, or month sometimes.

    I’ll make myself a nice mug of coffee, or two. If I have special beans, today’s the day I bring them out. I also attempt all the new fancy methods too, if necessary. But today, just the beans from Roots Bangkok, and just a 5 pour V60 technique. I did brush the grinders down too.

    I try to play games, and today was a good day of playing games too. It was a generally relaxing day, hard to complain about a rest day at all. Played some brain teasers along with a horror survival game called Remothered. It was honestly quite frightening.

    Caught up on some social media and other TV drama I had yet to complete, and just spent the day resting with Clarice.

    Very simple general rest day routine.

    I do look forward to the work I do, but this week will be especially exciting with the new printer in. I have much to experiment with. Hopefully the lack of my ring finger will be bearable. It’s been a pain, but at least I can get some cleaning done today.

    I almost wanted to take a picture but I shall spare the world from observing the split of my finger tip. It’s a pretty deep looking crack, and I honestly wish it would heal faster. No climbing for the next few days, but Friday will definitely be climbing for a bit. As part of work.

    We’ll see how the week plays out!

  • Time and time again

    Sometimes I wonder why I don’t dare to write as honestly as my brain thinks. I guess there’s always the apprehension of people reading into my posts, and misunderstanding my point of view, but honestly no one really reads all this. It’s really more for me.

    Today we had friends over for lunch, and it was a good time of catching up. Sometimes, it feels like life could really be much easier if we let it. Like just enjoying a lunch, and having a time of catching up. Or having a moment to just be ourselves and silly as we talk about random things. I enjoyed those days growing up, and maybe I should make more space for things like that as I grow older.

    My finger was cut really bad yesterday, but at least it stopped bleeding today. It’s got a deep gash, but hopefully it heals and doesn’t get infected. There’s no pus, or swelling. Just an open wound. Hopefully it closes soon, so i can get back to things.

    Every now and then i’ll get a cut like this, and honestly it’s so annoying. Resets my climb, and my work schedule. It’s just not fun being slow. I don’t like that at all.

    Hopefully this work and rest thing, and this friends things make sense. Anyway, I’m tired and incoherent. Goodnight.

  • Another one

    Happy National Day Singapore, it’s another year passed, another year of figuring out why we continue with the life in the way we have chosen to.

    I remember two or three years ago, I watched the parade, and realised it was my batch mate who was now the parade commander. Meaning he was the dude shouting the commands for the whole National Day Parade contingent to move.

    It feels cool, but at the same time, it really makes you think, how many times will we just keep on doing this, and for what purpose?

    Is it just another one?

    I do believe in nationalistic pride, and my resolve has been to do things like working in a local company working with Christianity at its core, but for the Singaporean youth of today. But it’s hard when the rest of the group feels disillusioned about Singapore, even though we’re a pretty good country. It’s not really just another one is it.

    It might be, but I think it could be a little bit more.

  • Death and Aging

    I was wondering why I had linked my coming of 35 to death, with the words “losing my youth”. While dissecting my own thoughts the other day, I realised I feel a certain way when I remember a friend or family member that passed away, and I have the exact same emotion when I remember I am 35 this year. It’s a mix of nostalgia, regret, a whole bittersweet train of thoughts.

    I think of the times when I was young, and able to do long projects over sleepless nights. Partying through the night, and then rushing out multiple projects the next day was really just so easy, and part of life almost? Good times would come at all cost, but now, I have to stop and pause just to remember I can’t do that so much. I’m cautious of how much I’m drinking and how hard I’m pushing my sleep limits, because I don’t want to feel bad the next day. The next day ends up usually being one filled with housework, and I’m stuck at maintenance a lot instead of dreaming.

    I have the same thoughts of missing the people who have passed. I remember the good times with them, and how I was able to find them, see them, at different gatherings. I would think of the things I would say to them, how I would greet them at the different spots, only to remember that I can’t. They’re not there. I stop, I miss them for a moment once more. A little sprinkle of grief, and I go on with my life.

    I say goodbye to myself every now and then, remembering Me will change, and I will continue on.

    I miss Me, thinking crazy dreams. But my dreaming hasn’t been as realised as I would like. I can’t undo time, and I can’t get myself back. But I have today to live forward for.

    Perhaps I am in constant grief about time passing away, so I keep doing things, or at least I want to.

    I miss my friends, my family who have passed, but I really can’t talk to them to same way. I take the emotions I would have spent on them, and spend it on people who are around now. People who can appreciate it.

    It’s so hard to grow sometimes, and even harder to grow older. But memories will be there, and I will remember. And I will also work on today, because today is here.

  • Worked OUT

    “Seems like you made a series of bad decisions today”, said Clarice after listening to the physical strain I put on myself from the morning until night.

    Today started extra early, getting out of the house at 7AM, squeezing onto the morning train and reaching Ang Mo Kio by 8AM, and catching up with an old friend. Then getting myself to Bras Basah by 10AM, and picking up a 25KG load of paper back to my office at Geylang. Struggling and sweating like mad with this load, in this Singapore heat, I brought everything back by bus, and worked in my office until 1130AM, to reach Dhoby Ghaut by 12PM. A lunch with another old friend until 130PM, to get myself to Kent Ridge by 2PM with another friend. It was an afternoon climb ending at 5PM, and we enjoyed this climb until we squeezed onto our evening train for our dinner appointments, mine at Farrer Road, and my friend went off his way. I was early by an hour, reaching at 6PM. Then I worked at the coffeeshop, and another old friend joined me at 630PM, and then we met the rest of the friends at 7PM. I found out I was missing my power charger, and I texted the climbing gym about it. The dinner ended at 915PM and I went back to the gym to pick up the charger. There were no more buses from the MRT to the gym, so I walked for about 15mins to the gym from the MRT station, reaching at 10PM. Then I took the nearest bus going home, without taking the train , and I reached home at 11PM.

    I should have:

    • not gotten so much paper at once
    • not planned for so many friend meetings in a day
    • not bought so much paper on a day I had planned to climb
    • not forgotten my charger

    There are probably deeper learning and adjustment somewhere else, but honestly, I’m just tired from recapping the day. It was really a long hot day.

  • A Big Day

    Today was one of those days where I sat down and I just couldn’t believe what was happening.

    At work, I have been getting a RISO printer within our offices. I’ve been working with creative youth, as part of my Christian work, and my hope was to make avenues for creative youth to create and start their creative careers in some way or another.

    A RISO printer is quite a trendy way to print now, but its method of printing reminds me of silkscreen printing, where a negative is made, and then pressed onto a page. Stamp making is another way of a similar method.

    But today, the RISO printers finally arrived. Two of them, wheeled into my office building. It was really quite a moment.

    I sat there and just stared at the printers, because they were finally within my hands to print as I wished (somewhat). I still need to work out costing among other things, but I can’t believe that it’s finally finally here.

    One of those Really Big Days.

  • Dressing Up

    Back to work today, and I always look at the people around me as I’m on my way to work. I do my usual judgemental glances of the multitudes of people just staring at their screens. But today, not that many people were looking at their phones. It was quite a welcome surprise when the lady next to me pulled out a book. Then she pulled out printed web articles in A4 paper. I thought that was taking it a bit too far.

    Currently I’m reading Artemis by Andy Weir. It’s got some interesting points to it, but I don’t know if it’s totally my thing. James by Percival Everett just came in my mail, and I’ll be reading it next. But in my head, I really want to read the next installment of Game of Thrones. It’s a great read, and maybe more people should read it instead of just watching the TV show. But TV shows bring in the money, and then authors have a little bit more food to write more stories. So there’s a give and take I guess.

    I like to dress up and wear my denim at home sometimes. My Momotaro Jacket gets the most home wear, because I am not so sweaty by the time I wear it. It’s usually worn after I’ve showered, when I’m clean and dry. And in air conditioning under my control and supervision.

    At work, sometimes the common airconditioning becomes a little too cold, or at little too hot, and outerwear is hard to predict. At cafes, it’s just hot by the time I reach there, and by the time I’ve cooled down enough to wear a sweater, my drink is finished, and I’ve got to go pee.

    So I dress up at home.

    I think other people usually dress up when they’re outside of the house. They want to look nice for the people around them, and they want to contribute effectively to the niceness of everyone’s appearances. I can understand their points of view, and thus, I wear black a lot. This hides ink stains from my fountain pen inks, or watercolors. It hides the age of the tshirts, especially when I’ve worn them for years; it just looks faded and stylish in modern day.

    People usually like to wear things to make them look smarter, or more approachable. They dress up to the role they need to play. It’s hard to rely on pieces of cotton to instill confidence. I find it easier to just be more confident, but everyone would say that’s easier said than done. But confidence is actually a lot about saying than doing. It’s saying something, and then doing it, and this sequence builds a lot more confidence than wearing a piece of clothing, hoping for the best. After all, what happen when the clothing is stained, or wears out? Does confidence end then?

    Outward appearances can never be the reason for your confidence.

    But it does feel nice to wear nice looking clothes. So I dress up, for myself, at home. I instill so much confidence to myself, because as many others have also said, you’re your worst critic. So if my worst critic (me) likes what I’m wearing, and gives me the confidence, then I’ll have a confidence built on me approving of me. If the clothing falls apart, then I can easily tell myself how silly this whole thing was, and I had confidence in myself all along. If it happened with someone else, I’d need to ask them about it, and I might never trust their answers because they didn’t tell me on their own accord.

    So dressing up for myself is okay, but for others, not so good. In any case, I wear black, cause it hides my stains (creative and otherwise).

  • Playing The Fool

    Every now and then, I would load up some load games from my Steam Library and play them through again. Like most of the games in my library, I have not actually finished them. I’ve gotten through some of them, but not to the point of actually completing the game. This is the opposite of what I would do on a console game, and finish them to as much of 100% as I could. I try my best to hit a completionist goal, and most of the games do an option or reward of sorts.

    The silly part about these gaming moments is how I never finish, and I download the games over and over. I wonder why I never finish. It might be something to do with the computer itself, and I don’t actually feel many things finish properly on the computer. But on a console, like the Playstation, or the Xbox, or even the Gameboy games, I do feel the need to finish them. There’s something lacking when I don’t.

    In any case, here I am again, after another year or maybe two without playing, and I’m playing Hades once more. I’ve gotten through maybe half of the game, but I never properly cleared it. I think this is my third or fourth atttempt at playing it. I think it’s a fun game, but perhaps the story of the game is the biggest irony applicable to my life: the prince of Hades cannot escape, and he’s forced to fight against his father’s chambers of hell. Funniest part is my inability to finish the game.

    Internally, I do think of the range of things I have yet to finish. I am not sure if I can complete some of them, but I have no choice, I have to push on and try to.

    I actually want to consolidate some of my creative projects and to publish something. But I’m still moving along slowly. Perhaps tomorrow would be a good day for recapping the year, and to pitch ahead which projects I want to finish ASAP. At the minimum, I would have a timeline to work towards. Life is not necessarily going to get any easier in the months to come…

  • Passing Phases

    Yesterday’s frustration has fizzled a bit. I was really angry at myself for missing out details, because I’ve been thinking about my work pace and my attention to details, or there lack of. At times, I’m highly OCD. I have things that I am looking at intentionally, and the things need to be exact. I’ve lived that to a fault, and in recent years, I have taken efforts to relax, or to just not worry too much about it, because I could spend days looking at it.

    Instead, now I just aim to make something, whatever it might be. And a number of times, it turns out I needed to pay a bit more attention to the details. It might be the language I use, or the fine details between two different things. I just learn to apologise for it now, but last night, I paid 400 bucks for that lesson in details.

    It’s not the worst thing in the world to happen, but nothing was going right. I really wanted to snap at anything.

    But the moment is over, and I am now using it for content for daiy writing. The Anger passed.

    Another thought running in the back of my head is this great need for minimalism. I love it, and I can’t do it. I love having things too much, and I just have so many things around. If you gave me a blank room, I would fill it in half an hour with just the things from my backpack (most of the time). When I travel, the hotel rooms look as if I’ve stayed there for a month or two. It’s such a big thing.

    But it’s the minimalism I crave. I keep imagining this perfect blank phone screen with nothing inside; or this tiny shoebox apartment with only a bed and a laptop somewhere for working. I can’t even have the laptop only set up because sometimes I even carry my keyboards with me.

    And as I processed this today, I thought: what if I embraced the mess better? I do want my stuff, and a lot of the time, its because I want to feel inspired or motivated. I have my thoughts running in multiple directions, and having the right tools directing me to think harder is always key.

    I was looking at the YouTube videos talking about Smart Dumb phones, but in the heart of it, I want my attention to be drained sometimes. It doesn’t make sense to have to complicate my life, in order to make it simple. I should approach my life’s growing complications with a nice simple approach instead.

    So phone home screen is constantly cluttered, and I have widgets I intentionally have to change. This gets my distracted brain focused, because I need to update. Like watering the plants, but the garden is my phone screen. And instead of plants, it’s making sure my little attention suckers are growing in the right direction.

    But like my lack of attention, I don’t stop to think if these posts make sense or not. My aim is just to produce, to make things. So hopefully I made you think.

  • Really Angry

    I missed a flight today because of my own mistake on Clarice’s name when buying the ticket. and even more than that, I was really upset with the flight people for getting everything else wrong with it too. I wish there were ways to change things, but there aren’t.

    Inside me, I really wanted to hurt someone. Physically attack them, and make someone feel the anger and frustration I was feeling inside. A super difficult and hurtful, rage feeling. Inside.

    Man.

    So frustrating.

  • Moving into the new month

    I was just wondering about this today.:

    It‘s the start of a new month, but all I did last night was to close my eyes, and when I woke in the morning and the month changed. The day changed too. TIme moved forward.

    Does time move because the earth moves? Or does the earth move because it’s in time? More specifically, what does time really involve and how do we know it exists? We track it with a watch for sure, but that’s just tracking the movements of the earth around the sun, and the earth in its rotation.

    I don’t really understand, and it’s something I’ve always thought about since I was a kid.

    It begins with the fact that the suns rays that lights our earth comes from 8 minutes ago, from the sun. So how do we really know what’s happening now or not in the world? It was all of 8 minutes ago.

    Or not.

    The same silly crazy thoughts for another new month, just another day closer to 35 years on this earth.

  • Daring Daily

    Short post, but I am thinking how I managed to write every day for a good period of time. I don’t think I was short of words then, and I somehow managed to produce a piece daily. Maybe some of them were a little short, but at least I made something.

    I dare myself to write daily all over again. Because it was pretty fun, and also because it gave me many more words to use and to express myself with.

    I hope I don’t chicken out. lol.

    Let’s set a goal for 100 days straight, and maybe a minimum of 150 words. Today’s post is barely scraping it by, but it’s just to get me started, and to get some words out of me.

    I can’t believe I actually tried to write a novel at a faster pace. Maybe it’s akin to running, where I couldn’t believe how I even ran 2KM, and somewhere in the middle of this year I hit 42KM. That growth was really something.

    Starting small might work in my favour… I hope! 100 days from today, just to see where it lands us at.