trisected

Tag: life

  • 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…

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • My Observations on Life: not so smart devices

    I’ve been listening to an audio bible in the mornings as I commute to work. As I travel, I realise that the entire train cabin is looking at their phones. This has happened so many times, to the point where I find it surprising if someone is not looking at their phone. I stand there listening to a really dramatic reading of Psalms (a book of poetry and song), and observe the bowed heads of everyone just in their own little worlds, in the palm of their hands.

    Because of that, I wanted to intentionally not use my phone on the train, but instead to do something else. It became a little awkward to stare at people’s demeanors as they blocked their way on our MRTs in Singapore, so I just read, or play games on my handheld emulators.

    In some ways, its not that different. I am still looking at a screen. I am still in a world of my own too. But in other ways, its the most different thing in the world because its so disconnected from everyone else.

    Palm sized smart phones bring us and connect us to our work, our travel, our life goals and dreams maybe. But an e-ink device is just not. It’s still a book, but in a digital form. The same goes for the handheld emulators. It’s something else. Its an old game, remembering the times before. Digital too, but just disconnected.

    During one of the rides, someone actually stopped me and asked me what was I playing. I thought they meant the game, so I said, Pokemon Jupiter. The person said, “No, I meant the device” I told him about my own device, the Ambernic RG 35XX, and the other device that one could find, the Miyoo Mini. I also directed the person towards AliExpress, where I got mine at a good discount.

    So maybe the disconnected do connect people, but in an old fashioned way of just talking face to face.

  • What should I take seriously?

    It might very well be a point in my life, but it’s a point nonetheless. How does one decide how seriously to take something?

    There are many downsides to taking things too seriously. For one, I might be extremely easily offended. Imagine if I took my wardrobe seriously, and someone mentions in a passing statement how it looks normal. The stylist, who imagined the best things in the world, would only hear the disappointing realization that it did not work out. That would be a serious implication of someone’s passing statement.

    What if I took all my educational exams too seriously? My gauge and self worth would be pegged to how well I was able to score. My practical competencies would be totally questionable, if I did not do well. But if I took the studies seriously, then perhaps I might not have done well for the exam, considering the exam focusing on specific portions of the field of study. Esoteric information might speak out more than the mass of information, and perhaps in taking it seriously, the fringe ideas gave better shape and understanding.

    But maybe most importantly, what if we took our relationships too seriously? Would it mean devoting all our time, space, and efforts, to just building our friendships? To what end?

    But I definitely ask all these things, because I definitely do not take things too seriously. It’s a struggle. But that’s life for me now, huh.

    Don’t take this post too seriously too though. Because I don’t.

  • Creative Self Help Galore

    I’ve been reading a bunch of creative self help books, for work and personal curiosity. Emailing lists are apparently the best way to capture an audience, and it’s also a great way to inform someone who actually wants to know about your work. Something like securing your 1000 true fans the right way.

    I used to do an email, back in the day. I had time to write it and mull over the different things, then decidedly update everyone about what I was thinking and doing. But now, it feels a bit of a pain to set everything up. Should I do it on Substack or Mailchimp? Maybe I could just create a BCC and work it out from there directly.

    Then content wise, what do I write about? And how much can I really capture on my own creative journey? I already feel like I have way too many things to do, and to put another camera up just to catch things happening, maybe that’s a little too much for me.

    But then again, it’s the recommended things to do for creatives, to get people involved in your work.

    Funny enough, I’ve also been reading about society at large, through the lens of different people. One book is about commodity traders, and how they buy the world. The other is about poverty and sharing finances in any way possible. Yet another as an observation about technological changes and its impact on the world.

    So what does an artist do? Or how should a creative behave? To create more and get more eyes on?

    I was really stuck at how weird it is to live in the current times, and I wrote about it on Medium. I don’t know what more I can contribute to the world, other than my thoughts and my opinions. It feels silly, because everything has been said already, and if not, said better than what I can say. And yet, we’re advised to put more process out, more content out for more eyes to see.

    I don’t know how to feel about that, so I did my Joel thing, and wrote in my journal about how I was stuck, and then decided to write a Medium article about it too. And here I am today, writing about it on my blog.

    Maybe the creative self help advice should be to dig and explore as much as we can, until there’s nothing left to uncover. I think that would be more interesting sometimes.

  • Recovery Mode

    Ok, so just to recapitulate, I’ve finished 4 projects in the past week since returning to Singapore, from Wednesday to Wednesday. Just before I left, I fell sick and I was also preparing to leave so there were other things I was rushing for as well.

    Now, Today, At This Moment, I am quite happy on completing them, but I have to come back to my regular everyday life, and remember I have other weekly commitments on pause for these major projects to finish. Not to mention, there are other people and meetings cancelled because I fell sick.

    But then where is my rest? Where is the moment to pause and not do anything to recover? Funny enough, I realised I recover by writing things like these blog posts where I throw my thoughts out. I’ve got a few journals where I write many things, and rant as well. Creating more output recovers me, especially when it’s unguided.

    I don’t really do much art to relax, but there are moments where I am stressed beyond a certain point, and then, I paint something out. As much as I do visual art, I am actually not a natural visual art expression kinda guy. I can do it, but it’s not my natural leaning.

    I enjoy music as expression; singing songs, playing things out, that relaxes me greatly. I think playing games relax me as well, but I don’t play as much as I ought to – considering my backlog of games.

    I enjoy housework to relax. It sounds crazy, but doing the laundry helps me clear things up, and creates a mental break, so I do get decompressed.

    I’ve been also learning to take my baths at the right time, to really maximise on the relaxing and not doing anything. It’s not easy, so the longest bath I can really take is about ten minutes. Sounds silly, but for me to pause and sit in water for ten minutes is really hard. I have to do something; I can’t sit still.

    Reading is always there, somewhere. I read to relax often, and I read to entertain myself. I read to learn too, but sometimes I don’t read properly, and I fill in the words especially if the writing allows for it. Like Jack Reacher novels. I can guess what will be written next, because it’s a very simple action sequence, explained in a very direct way.

    Exercise is a great relaxation tool too. But I don’t do it if I’m sleep deprived, for fear of dying by exhaustion. I have scared myself enough times in army doing that, and I am choosing never to work that hard mentally and physically unless I am forced to. That’s the hard line I draw.

    Anyway, this has been a relaxing post to write, in my recovery state. Hopefully I write something more exciting soon. Lol.

  • Making it count

    But what is it?

    I just started reading The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, and there’s this whole universal mission and plan that The Boy sets off to do. I feel like the world has told me that much of my life growing up, and honestly what does it really mean at the end of the day? Maybe the book answers it later, but today I write a little post as I question the world around me.

    I did a lot today. I drew, I talked, I made sense of my work to a friend, and I think I made some impact on the world around me. But what does it mean to make it count, when all I feel like doing tomorrow is to stay in bed and play games?

    I won’t actually, I think I am unable to. My mind and my body physically cannot handle being inactive or unthinking for too long, and I end up writing a post, or just doing something somehow.

    But what makes it count? I don’t think its the amount of things I’ve done, and what success it leads to tomorrow or in the future, or for any universal goal I am directed to accomplish.

    I think sometimes I find aligning myself as a Christian and the goals of the Christian God in His story represented in the Bible is literally the only thing I can agree with in a moral direction of life. It is the only logical thing I can end up anchoring on again and again.

    Making it count only counts for the afterlife, not this current one because someone will just do better than me later on. Making it count in this present life is just not good enough sometimes, and we all know it.

    But maybe the book will share some answer. For now, I just keep the biblical answer as my reference point. Again.

  • Possibilities are endless

    If you knew that you had the chance to have something in your hands, would you grab it? Hold on to it? Like it could actually be there in your grasp, and its just a matter of whether you chose to do it or not.

    Like when you’re at McDonald’s, and there’s the whole menu list of items, and you’ve got money in your hands. What’s actually stopping you from ordering the entire list of burgers, fries, and sides? Your appetite probably never stopped before.

    I feel that moment a lot of the time. I don’t know if anything other than actual cash in my hands stops me from trying something that I want to do. I don’t mean making money, because I think money is false in any case. I don’t mean owning property, or driving some fancy car. I actually mean building something with my own hands, so that I can say that I had made something myself. A part of me wants to learn how to melt metal down, so that I can learn how to make my own engine, and from there, weld out something that might run as a motorcar.

    It’s a weird part of my brain that says “the possibilities are endless! You just need to try it today.” Perhaps blame lies in the millennial education, where we’re told constantly that we’re special and the world can change because of our actions. If the world could change, then the world would have also collapsed with the lack of my homework in secondary school.

    In any case, I rebuilt one of my old keyboards today, after not touching it for quite a good many months. Why? Because I could I guess. I knew how to get something going, and to make something again, man, it feels good. It feels great. That might have been why I really latched onto keyboard building. It just makes life feel really different. Maybe that’s why I’m very happy doing art, because I’m actually making something, instead of buying it over from someone else. I’m making something special, or so I tell myself.

    It’s quite a nice night tonight, and I’m glad I sat down to rebuild my keyboard.

  • Managing my expectations

    I expect myself to not succeed sometimes.

    I think that there are many other people who have worked harder than me, and they’ve produced a lot better than mine. But at the same time, I’ve gotten access through friends and other social networks. Other times, I’ve been told that my work is good, and I receive praise for it.

    But I receive it badly, I am shy, and I thank them, but I also turn them to the faults I see in my work.

    Then two or three years pass, and I look at my old work, and I wonder how I managed to create something that looks that good. I wonder if I could ever make that work again, and I understand that my work was indeed good.

    I need to manage my expectations for success, and to allow myself to succeed more often.

  • Growing older

    One of the perks of growing older is deciding to say no to a lot more things than before. I’ve said yes to many opportunities in my twenties. I’ve tried and tested out many things, joined many committees and working groups, talked with people of different ages, backgrounds, and professions. And my take away is learning how to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing.

    But I guess it took all those opportunities to figure out what I wanted to focus on too. I don’t think I came to it easily, although every time I was doing something, I wanted to try my 100%. It was tough, mundane sometimes, or just difficult.

    And now I’m finally at a place where I think I can stop saying yes to things, and to start figuring out how to say no more often. It’s more about treasuring the time I have, and making the best out of it.

    But there are days where I feel like I should have said yes to more, just for the companionship to hang out with other people. It’s fun to be around people sometimes.

    As I write this, a kid is screaming in the playground downstairs, and maybe I take back what I said about people.

  • Why 35

    My sleep deprived brain decided to write this post about why I chose this year to start doing this. I have a range of answers.

    First,

    I think it was Casey Neistat who started doing his vlog when he hit 35. I did actually think about vlogging, but then I thought about all the editing I’d need to do, and I decided to say no.

    Second,

    I really wanted to create something, to write something down. Like making my own mark on the timeline of humanity. I guess at the end of the day, there would be this version of the things I make this year to be a super zine of some sort. Sustaining the momentum of the creation would not be the consideration, but just a theme to center me for the year.

    Third,

    Taylor swift had her Eras tour this year. She’s my age. She definitely feels it too. Nuf said.

    Fourth,

    Along with creating something, a part of me really wants to sync the things I have together. Like it should be that simple, and it kinda is. But why is it so hard for me to pull the different strings of my different hobbies in the same direction?

    I thought I should try to do it at least once, and I have no idea how it’ll work out, but I’ll try it.

    That’s all for today, I hope to survive Open Fields well, and hopefully we get by safely today.

  • The Woes of Preparing for New Work

    Making new work is always the most fun, and also the most scary part of doing artwork. Like I know that my watercolor work is pretty good to go. I know how people take to it, and how it could be received. But I get bored of it, and I want to try something new.

    The New Thing always trips me out. It feels uneasy, a new cut facet of me that I’m not sure about. Maybe it doesn’t shine and glitter the same way. Maybe it just won’t work out. But I don’t know unless I make it happen.

    I have a whole bunch of new work that hasn’t come out yet, I haven’t published it yet. But I really want to, and I guess it’s gonna come out really soon.

    Another new old part of me.

  • A February Update

    It’s such an interesting time to come Chinese New Year every year. I think everyone knows what to expect, but at the same time, we’re all trying to find ways to survive the arduous journey of it.

    There’s a mix of feelings. You haven’t seen some of your family for the whole year, but it comes with questions that only your family members would ask. Funny enough, this year I didn’t have many questions about if we’re looking to have kids, or anything along those lines. But it was good having conversations about life, and about the values we have in Singapore as a whole.

    I don’t think we always come to the same answers of value in Singapore. I think there’s a majority of people who enjoy life in it’s current state, and I can totally understand and relate to that. And yet, I know there’s an undercurrent of culture changing the future, whether we like it or not. Mentally, I’m gearing for a change in life as a whole. I don’t know what it will look like, and I’m just preparing my mind for a lot of change to come. Celebrating things like Chinese New Year, it might change greatly in time to come.

    Maybe it’s just the way life is panning out for many of us now. Our growing silver generation has its set of challenges, and the systems we place in this post modern era continue to drive a bigger divide because of technology. It’s funny because of how obvious the tech divide is, and yet, we don’t do anything to change it. It doesn’t help anything, because everyone on the tech side of things will continue to build up their virtual walls. And those who are not tech savvy, will build their physical ones. It’s really just plain in sight, and I find it strange that no one really wants to deal with it.

    I just hope to bridge things a lot of the time. I do understand how it works, and the apprehensions to tech and to join two very different groups of people together. It turns out strange really often, but I guess in this Chinese New Year, I really got to see a fun twist.

    It was fun to see how we would have physical gatherings, but we would be on our socials to make sure its documented. One of my aunt’s forgot to pack an ang pao, and I suggested an eAng Pao as an option, and it was funny, because it would really work out quite okay in an era like this.

    Maybe I should think harder about how I want to approach the bridging better, and how I would want to share better with others.

    How I survived most things this year: I was reading in the coolest parts of the houses I got invited to. It was really hot this year, and I had a bunch of books that were going to expire on rental. I was the weird uncle sitting in a corner, reading away. Haha.

    What a fun Chinese New Year it has been.

  • Life updates: Third week of 2024

    Life updates: Third week of 2024

    It’s such a mind boggling thing sometimes, when life turns out in a direction you’ve never expected. Somewhere last year, I told Clarice that I was so sure I have something wrong with my thyroids, and that’s why I have a lump under my chin. Clarice laughed, and I searched and it seems like it was just being fat. But I was still not persuaded.

    But now, after 3 weeks of running 4 times a week again, as I did when I was much younger, I feel the lump going away slowly. So okay, maybe it was just fat.

    It’s also really funny that when I wrote about Q, from the previous post, within a week, they messaged me. I don’t think Q bothers about me enough to search out my site and read my thoughts, but in any case, I received a text to try and reconcile. I was honestly surprised, so I did take that as a step to do something good, and positive.

    I have also been drawing again, and inside, I swear, I think my creativity is going somewhere strange. It’s not that it doesn’t exist anymore, it’s just that I produce work in a way that I don’t totally comprehend right now. And if the work comes out most visually through sketches and sketch walks, I have to be ready and okay for it. I think I am, but I’m honestly a little over it. But I do feel a simple good push by doing a sketchwalk. At least I have some work, instead of putting myself down just to do work that I think would break boundaries or rethink society. I can be happy with just having some work.

    So I’m really back to drawing, one page, one location at a time. I do admit, seeing a completed sketchbook is a nice feeling. Even if the pictures are bad, it’s still good. In some sense.

    I had plans, and I am having plans of creating a page just of all my sketchbooks too. I will aim to have this up by March. It’s just the process of taking photos that’s tough: laying all the sketchbooks as flat as possible, with the most correct color accuracy. It’s a real process.

    I have also gotten through 4 books in the year already, and it’s not even past the third week. This means that I’m pretty ahead of my reading schedule, and I’m still chasing it down. I’m reading this book called “People of the Book”, and it’s not exactly my cup of tea. But it hit a good portion today, so I managed to crawl through the narrative a bit better. Exposure is the hardest part of trying to clear books to read, because it’s really easy to just keep reading the same type of mystery-murder-spy type of books.

    I’m a little scared of attempting Murakami again, as I had planned to, but maybe I should. Because that would give me another framework to think about words once more. The murder mystery types don’t really bank heavy on phrasing, but really a lot more on the smart tricks and the incredulous action.

    I am also severely allergic to cats and dogs right now. I think the lack of a cat or dog in my past year has lowered my threshold to allergies so much. I am just in constant tears and sneezing fits. I sneezed so much this week that my eye lids were sore from having to squeeze and tear. I had about two nights with animals this week, and it was just horrendous for my nasal passage. But it felt really good though, to have pets. Now it will just be limited to enjoying pets in the homes of family and friends.

    That’s about all the updates I have. I’ll be flying around a lot this year, and hopefully I learn how to manage my time a lot better. Prayerfully.

    Peace.

  • End of the Year

    It’s coming.

    I don’t think I expected the year to end this quickly. I feel that there were way too many things I wished I had done, and I am still regretting not done more. The scene of Schindler’s List pops into my mind, but definitely in a very different context.

    I will be aiming to do some bigger reorganization on this site itself for one. It needs to hold a bit more of me as an artist, instead of my blog being the main anchor. I have a lot of other things that I do, that I have done, that I should definitely record and add somewhere. Perhaps I should just add another category. I need a web designer.

    But at the heart of it, if I’m writing this just for myself, and for my own thoughts and processes, maybe it’s okay to just mess around.

    But the site definitely needs an update. That’s for sure.

    Definitely an update.

    Objectively speaking, I’ve done tonnes this year. I think I’ve done more in the past year, than the past two or three years. By doing more, I mean the intentional actions of actually choosing to do projects, talking to people, writing. There was a lot of intention in it. That made it a lot more purposeful.

    What makes me feel regret is that I know I intentionally also chose downtime. I had mornings where I lay in bed doomscrolling. I hate it when that happens, and yet, I choose that often enough. I could have read more, drawn more, done a bit more. But instead, I chose the emptiness of Instagram and Reddit scrolling.

    Funny enough, through the books I’ve read this year (currently 32 completed), some of the authors would have said, it’s okay to not have done anything. I should use those moments to learn more about myself and what I don’t like. Perhaps I should identify the slothful side of me as a villain, and my productive side will come to conquer him more often. The success of the sloth is the strong will productivity that ensues soon after. I do get work done, but some work really just takes time.

    I do have some of those aims for next year, and I’m looking forward to doing my yearly review, based off the Tim Ferriss one. I will definitely set a good day aside for it, and hopefully that helps me to arrange my thoughts in one way or another.

    Anyway, it’s coming to the end of the day, and it was quite a good day of productivity, despite a little hint of doomscrolling in the morning. Goodnight world.

  • Options and Choices: an overload of gaming options.

    I’ve been really stuck deciding where I should publish my thoughts, and if they should even be published at all. But I find this as my safest place, because it is, after all, my blog. I don’t have to worry about the theme, or the direction, or anything else in specific because I have total say in what I think I ought to be publishing here.

    That being said, I still think about the visibility, and how it might be read or perceived, but statistically, the site monitoring says that there’s so little people reading this and it shouldn’t matter at all. So it’s cool, and I’m alright.

    I’ve been thinking about the range of consoles and devices that I have around me. I am playing a lot of them, but the rotation of games, and the lack of free time I’ve been having has really limited the amount of gameplay I get. I could definitely squeeze in a game during travel, or just playing a lot more, but I do need my breathing space. I need my down times to think, and sometimes having a game to take up that thinking space really makes it less enjoyable.

    At the same time, which game do I play? Should I finish all my games to 100%, or should I work on those that have been in the library for decade (literally for some games)? Should I play something popular, or should I replay an older game that I’ve always replayed because I just enjoy it that much more?

    I’m still deciding the priority, and honestly I’m wasting more time on the indecision. I should just sit down to play a game, and at those times, I end up replaying games a lot more.

    Does that mean that I should just stop buying new games and just playing old games until they’re settled? I am uncertain. Sometimes a game that I have wanted to play goes on cheap all of a sudden. I buy it, and then I have another game that is unplayed for another period of time. Perhaps I should really just finish older games before I get new ones!

    These thoughts have affected the way that I think about the rest of the things I have. I do collect a lot of stuff, and because of the type of things I get, they don’t necessarily break apart. More than that, I actually maintain things quite well so they do last longer than they’re supposed to.

    I enjoy retail therapy as well, and that leads me to spending a lot on things that I don’t really need, but I want to have at some point. I don’t think it’s the best thing to do, especially with limited resources, but sometimes I feel like I can’t help myself. With the help of my wife, I’m slowly unwinding from this, although I feel it’s taking a bit longer than I would have wanted to.

    Anyway, I’m writing all this, because I’ve got a few devices around me right now, and I can’t decide what I should do next. This is really the effects of the sin of overbuying and indecision. What a complication we have let ourselves go through in this process…

  • Misinformed Opinions and Choices.

    Today I went to a mall in an attempt to get some new art materials. I actually looked up the store online, and I checked Google Maps to make sure I got all the timings right. But lo and behold, the entire mall was under construction. Worst part is that I was just at this same mall a few weeks back, and for some reason, it never occurred to me that there was definitely going to be renovations because a few shops had moved away.

    I had to walk to another mall down the road, to look for the same type of art materials.

    On the train, the station displays on the train were off. They were supposed to light up when you get to each stop, but instead, the whole map was just off. Thank goodness I knew Singapore well enough to get out at the right stop with or without the station display lights.

    Sometimes, they even announce the wrong stop.

    Singapore has such a strange relationship with technology and convenience to the point that a lot of people don’t even check it. But if this happened anywhere else in the world, a Singaporean would be completely upset.

    Thus the relationship of Singaporeans and misinformed opinions and choices.

  • Understanding myself: Moving past anger

    A range of things I have been wanting to figure out is who I am as a whole, and what makes me “me”. There’s a lot of ways of figuring this out, but most of the time, I just enjoy writing a journal, or keeping track of myself somewhere, somehow.

    A few years ago, I went to see a counselor. One big reason was because of rage issues. I’ve got a deep sense of frustration that boils over suddenly. It affects everyone around me, especially loved ones, like Clarice and my parents. I realised at that time how important it was to communicate how I was feeling, and most importantly not to give in to the rage, because it would literally feed on itself. An angry person just gets more and more angry, and I say that from real experience.

    While seeing the counselor, there were also other things that I started to think about, and it also led me to think harder about what I was feeling. One of those key feelings was my sense of control. I did not know, but I needed to be in control most of the time. Manifestations of this would be the need for the house to be in a certain way before I felt comfortable enough to relax, the need for things to be placed somewhere, and if it wasn’t I would feel deeply frustrated. Understanding that helped me to figure out also where I was willing to try and grow, and to change the way that I saw myself and saw the situation.

    After a few sessions with the counselor, my job changed its pace, and eventually I also changed jobs. These changes were somewhat good for me, but one of key moments of learning was when I had my last rage incident. I got very very very upset, and in those moments, Clarice had to leave me alone for her own safety. I was not rational at all, and through that time, I had to really figure out who I wanted to become. Would I want to be this angry dude, or do I really want to be someone different?

    I cooled down a lot after that session, and went to talk to a bunch of people about what I was feeling and what happened. Clarice also talked with me about it, and we worked through a lot of the hurts that I was thinking and feeling, and the hurts that I ended up putting on her too.

    At the same time, it gave me a different perspective of Clarice, and how she was really trying so hard on so many other levels. She was working hard at work, she was trying to be as good a wife as she knew how to, and still I was being such a brat. It was quite crazy how big a change that was, because for some reason prior to that, I really don’t think I understood Clarice as well as I do now. I had to learn how to tell her what I was thinking, and ask her for actual help at the parts where I was struggling with. Through that, I think I learnt to also trust other people, starting with Clarice, because as part of the sense of control, I felt that I couldn’t trust myself to lean on her.

    What a strange process I’ve placed myself through, over and over again, to find out that I need to depend and trust other people. There’s absolutely no way I would find out who I am on my own, and learning how to trust other people is really part of this process.

    It’s been quite a while since my last blow up, and I’m quite confident I am a different person. It’s not the same person who was angry, and didn’t know how to control his anger. Now I have learnt my best superpower, which is to depend on someone else for all my frustrations and hurts. I mean I’ve definitely learned to lean on God, but also to lean on the people he provides in my life.

    So a long about way to say how I’m learning to understand myself, is to say that I’m learning how much I need to depend on other people. Truly, a conundrum of life.

  • An Old Routine: A Keyboard A Day

    Today I woke up and remembered something that I had forgotten quite some time back. There was a time where I would put a new keyboard together before I started work. At that time, I think I was going through many things mentally, and this past week, I felt some of that old anxiety creeping back in. Building a keyboard everyday for myself was a real way for me to deal with that anxiety, by having something I could control, and it would distract me for at least half an hour before I would start my work.

    Assembling a keyboard daily isn’t a task that everyone could do, or afford to do. In hindsight, I know that what I was doing was something almost completely unnecessary, and there were probably a million other ways for me to destress and get ready for the day. It was just that at that time, keyboard building was the sweet spot for me. I was also filming so much of my keyboard builds, and I think I really enjoyed the processes of making all that happen. It provided this means of escape, if just a little.

    The deeper question to ask is about the anxiety I face. A lot of it had to do with the lack of control, despite being tasked to do something. I think I’ve transferred that action sometimes to my wife, by asking her to do something, but then completely limiting her on how to do it. It has to be done how I want it to be done. While sounding completely stupid, it makes sense sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes. Like how to fry and egg. Or how to wipe a table down. It’s pretty dumb then, but I can get really picky and annoying about things like that.

    But when it’s something a bit more vague and ambiguous, like to achieve a goal, or to perform in a certain way, there’s a lot of ways to get something done. When there are many ways to get something done, the buy in from everyone else needs to be there. And sometimes, in getting the buy in, compromises have to be made. But what gave me the most anxiety is when my work of hitting a specific goal, was tasked to me almost to the dot, and that gave me a lot of pressure, because I simply wasn’t being me.

    Thankfully, my current work now embraces me as a person, and incorporates who I am into the workflow. It allows for the company to grow, and for me to also learn more comfortably about other people. But the anxiety that I felt was triggered a lot from the past, and I am glad to be reminded that I don’t have to work that way anymore.

    In all this learning, I think the key point is to really let my wife do her own thing. 🙂

  • Learning from Sadness and Pain

    Today I spent some time with my friend, and just listening to him and how he is working through a really rough patch in life. I won’t share about his problems for sure, but I will share about what I learnt when I went through my own times of grieving and sadness.

    There is always something to learn about yourself as you suffer.

    I think I’ve gone through a lot of sadness, and in different forms. I’ve experienced grief from the passing of a loved one, the heartache of breaking up, the loss of a pet, moving and the change of where home is, alienation and exclusion, and the list goes on. It’s not a bad of honour, but it’s just the amount of things I was forced to learn at each of those times. I hated every moment of it, but I learnt the softness of my heart. I learnt how I can’t handle separation very well. It hurts for me to go through disunity. And I can’t stand the feeling of losing a pet.

    One of the key things I end up asking myself is how I could have avoided the situation. How could I not feel sad? Is there a way to avoid it? What do I need to do to make sure I can avoid this feeling? In this whole portion, I also found out how avoidant I am about sadness, and the length I would go to to make sure that I don’t feel too sad. But with things like death, I don’t have much of a choice. I have learnt to accept death, though extremely painful.

    There is always something to learn about the world around you.

    The world is not a great place, and as much as a lot of people like to say that everyone in the world is just trying to make the world a better place, they’re just trying to make the world better for them, and it’s always at someone’s expense one way or another. That itself is a sad situation.

    But directly dealing with things like grief and loss, I have learnt that it is actually common in the world. We are all sad creatures that are dealing with loss in one way or another. In fact, we’re losing time as I type this and as you read it. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to cry about it, but at the same time, I’m not really happy that I’m losing time. But I will cry about losing a friend, about losing a friend to death, and about losing animals to death too.

    The way the person dies is almost irrelevant, I will feel sad the same way. It is the absence of the person. The distance of eternity of living and dead, and I can never speak with the person this exact same way ever again. Death is the worst because I just cannot do anything to link back up with the person ever again. There is no more connection. It hurts the most.

    There is something to place about God at a time of loss.

    Perhaps God isn’t your term for this. But there’s this entity, after all your shouting and screaming, beyond the other sad people. There’s this person that you ask “Why did you take this away from me?”

    This question to this entity, I call God, and I know as God. I ask Him often (I attribute male because I am male, but I assume gender as a human thing, not a divine thing), why do you allow humans to take away from each other? To murder, to steal, to take emotions away.

    My answer from Him is usually because they can choose to give as well. As much as I am grieving from loss, I am also glad when receiving something. I am glad to to give sometimes, not all the time, because when I choose to give, I’m choosing to part with something.

    This portion gets a bit more Christian, but bear with me, I’m just sharing what I learnt about God through my sadness.

    This frames as well my idea of Jesus as a saviour, as God’s gift to mankind. It’s an imagery of God parting with Jesus. It is sad, it is hard. It is painful and difficult. But he gives Jesus to us for the sake of our futures. It is good to receive Jesus because I can later have a solving of a lot other brokenness because what having Jesus means.

    It is painful, but God relates. It is separation. God relates.

    Why, God? Because there’s something to learn from it.

    It might never feel good, but I am learning from it.

    I don’t know how to cheer people up very well, as you can tell. All I can ever say is, I know your pain, and I will cry with you. I am crying with you tonight my buddy. I hope it cheers you up a bit to know that.

    Why, God? What do we have to learn today?

  • Weddings and Showing Up

    I always end up talking about social things because I think it’s a large part of who we are as people. Today’s thought from that is due to the wedding I visited yesterday, and it was my good friend’s wedding. He had the wedding with his own taste to things, and there were many things that were unique to him. I knew to expect that and I really appreciated the time at his wedding as a whole.

    Then comes my social critique on weddings in Singapore a least: I find there’s a need to show up in a certain way for weddings, and it takes some guts to either show up in a chill, less formal way, and it takes even more guts to give a range of money that might not be the “market rate” of the different dining grounds.

    In Singapore, the wedding is usually segmented with a lot of different moments of social pressure and tension. It would be safe to say that most of my peers had a hard time working out the influence either side would bring to the party, and how much of a compromise either would have. It is a start to the marriage for sure, but the Singapore wedding itself pressures in a certain way.

    One certain pressure is the expectations of the parents as the couples choose what to do. There’s a payment cost per table, per head, and the parents might demand a certain amount of invitees for themselves. These would be extended family members, friends, and maybe colleagues of the parents. It’s a show of face at times, and the parents place this pressure on the couple. The couple then has to navigate the type of restaurant that could handle the size of the invitees, and the best pricing to get with the better “name” behind it. There’s no point in having a cheap restaurant that can hold everyone, because the show of face that the parents might have is a need to be of a certain standard.

    This is the part that gets to me, as a friend invited. Yesterday’s wedding was amazing, and I think the parents on both ends were very happy to have the couple make the choice on the dining experience. Because of the type of place chose, the guests are expected to give a certain amount of money to the couple as a wedding gift, that would cover the cost of the table per head. There are sites for this online, and the guests attending usually check before attending the wedding. My friend’s wedding was not conventional, so I think the pricing was slightly different, and I appreciated it.

    The regular issue that guests like me face is the need to pay for a wedding where I might not know the people too well, and the family has asked for a place that is a little beyond my budget. Perhaps also beyond the family’s own budget. Some guests leave with the thought of needing to get the best value for it, or they might just feel upset with the amount they had to part with, just for the sake of the couple’s family and their choices.

    But that’s not what a wedding is about, isn’t it? I’ve always thought of a wedding as a joyous occasion, where people celebrate the couple coming together. There’s a purity in that, just to celebrate for the sake of celebrating. I thought of that in my wedding, and that approach led us to also have a fun time at our lunch reception, which was not big. Instead, we had very good quality food there, and it would just be a great way to rejoice together.

    I really hope somehow the culture in Singapore changes, where we compare less, calculate less, and spend more time enjoying each other and our time together.

    Today I listened to: Blink 182 again, Turnstile, and some other vinyls.

    Watched Lighthouse on Netflix (Gen Hoshino)

    Had friends come over to play board games and it was pretty darn fun.

  • The Woes of Writing Daily

    Every time I write daily, I realise a few things.

    One: I struggle to put work up everyday.

    Two: I struggle with what kind of work I put up everyday.

    When I’m writing daily like this current time again, I find myself pausing through the day to think what is worth writing about. I know that Casey Neistat shared about how he crafted the day to fit his storyline, including his meetings with people. It also meant he cut a lot of people out of his life, especially if they weren’t interesting enough.

    Me, on the other hand, have moments of thought where I think would make for the world’s next philosophy. I mentally think through plans and revisions of it, and I think it’ll change the society we live in, and might get rid of poverty. I think it would revolutionise the social structures and traditions.

    and then I come to the computer to type it out, only to find that I either can’t remember it, or if I made notes, the notes make no sense.

    And there, I learn another thing in my daily writing

    Three: I can really make a mountain out of a molehill sometimes.

    Today’s book reading and music listening was:

    • The Secret History by Donna Tart (about 10% into the book)
    • Classical Music for Reading Spotify Playlist
    • The Daily Podcast: for 29 Aug, not 30 Aug
    • Jocko Podcast with Remi Adeleke (10mins in)

    Games:

    • Nier Automata – my aim is to get to the first save point. It’s taking forever, and I died twice. I bought a new Playstation controller to get a bit more control over this situation.

    I might try to update with these things that I’ve read and consumed through the day, it might lead to a bit more interesting blog updates. Which might lead to more interesting art, who knows?

  • Dealing with my collecting self

    I collect a lot of things, I’m careful not to say hoard, cause I do throw things away. I have collections of books, shoes, pens, games, inks, all sorts of things.

    Collecting too many of the same thing has become something I watch out for, so currently, I’ve stopped collecting black t-shirts. I had written a few times about my black t-shirt collections, but I really have stopped. It’s quite a change now to have colorful clothing, but I still have a soft spot for my black tees. Thankfully, I’m wearing down some of them, and some are even becoming grey! The materials are pretty good, so there’s some wear, but not at the speed that I can really get rid of them entirely.

    Which brings me to how I’m dealing with my collecting self: I’m trying to use things up

    It sounds ridiculous, but usually I would save things and keep them. But now I’m just trying to use as much as I can.

    • I’m trying to play through my video game collections, so that I can actually enjoy them instead of just thinking about how great it would be to play them.
    • I’m trying to draw a bit more, so I’m bringing my sketchbooks and pens around, but it’s kinda heavy. But I’m still trying to get some of this done.
    • I was running quite a bit, to get my wear into my shoes, but I stopped, and I’m going to try getting back to it again.
    • And I was attempting 52 books this year, to start hacking away at my book collection. It’s a mix of digital and physical books, but I’m getting along bit by bit.

    Hopefully by the end of this year, I’ll be able to say that I’ve read X amount of books, and given away a few of them. Or that I’ve worn through my t-shirts and started on other things. Or just clearing games that have laid in my library unplayed.

    Just one day at a time, and hopefully I’ll get over most of it.

  • Busy Busy Busy

    I don’t think I’ve ever thought I would have gotten this busy this year.

    I’m in the middle of setting up three collab zine groups, and maybe even getting a fourth. I think at the start of the year, I didn’t even expect one to exist. And all this development was definitely not because I had the best ideas or because I had the best drive in the world, but I really think it was such a big series of incidents that I have to call it a divine action of God in my life.

    I don’t shy away from the idea of miracles, because I do think the everyday life we see is largely dependent on that idea. It’s a miracle I get to wake up, considering the foods and liquids I’ve put into my body. It’s an even bigger miracle, considering the hard work I put it through whenever I try to work out when I’m clearly sick.

    But when it comes to work, this work of having people coming together, I didn’t really think so well of it. I thought no one would come along, and I thought that it would have taken me a lot more time to develop one group, let alone three, and maybe four. I step back, and I do acknowledge that to be a clear moment where I personally see God’s hand in my life, orchestrating the people, and the situations in ways that I could not have had imagined. It’s pretty darn mindblowing, and it’s really not like I deserve it. It’s really not as if I was working so hard on my own, but I was really just doing what I think I was always doing, and God’s led many things to be put together.

    Sure this busyness comes at a cost of what other work I could do; I’ve written a lot less here, and maybe sketched and drew even less. But the actual talking, and the actual people I get to meet make my lack of regular creative output a lot more worth it.

    I don’t know what exactly to make of it. I know that I still make my YouTube videos every now and then. There’s a large part of me that really wants to produce things, and I have a crap ton of drafts hiding out in my room. The other day, my creative itch got so bad that I really just started painting with nothing in mind. That’s when i know something’s going to change drastically, creatively.

    I wish I could have enough time and energy to handle the mental hurdles I have to go through, and still produce artwork at the same time. There’s a certain place my mind has to be, for me to really find my place creatively. It’s that tap that’s just leaking water at a slowish rate, but the moment you put pressure at the opening, it spurts out. It’s the same water rate, but the pressure makes everything come out so much faster.

    If you have a hose, and angle it, you might even get a rainbow.

    I think that’s what I’m trying to do: to get my creative rainbow after I put some pressure on myself.

    But maybe busy is good for now, and whether I like it or not, it’s putting the pressure on, and it’ll make the creative rainbow come out somehow.

  • Biographies and Legacy

    I spent the weekend watching two documentary/biography pieces. One was Anthony Bourdain’s Roadrunner, and the other was Bohemian Rhapsody, covering Queen’s rise to fame. The Queen one definitely had Freddie Mercury as the main character. Both shows had some very interesting themes about the human condition and where one finds themselves as a creative.

    The loneliness that one faces at the height of fame was something both men had faced. The fame gave them this public image that society was so unwilling to leave aside. In essence, that really becomes the irony of fame: everyone knows you, but yet no one knows you at the same time.

    How lonely that must feel, to have sought after acclaim of excellence, only to find yourself unable to be the person you would like to be, or to be loved by the people you hoped to be loved by. The fame that was sought after at the start consumes, or it seemed to have changed the person so much.

    Which makes you really question the place of fame and that success that many seek after. Is it really worth it at the end of the day? That hope and sense of excellence, does it really exist?

    Another thing that Anthony Bourdain had shared about was this sense of deep sadness inside. Personally, I understand that in so many ways. I feel the frustrations of the world, and this sense that the world does not fulfill itself in any way. Maybe it’s the system, or there lack of. It’s people, it’s the sinful nature of the world, it’s the brokenness. It’s sadness, it’s dissatisfaction, it’s just a mess.

    I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling the sense of it, but I know that for me, the only way it will ever move past is with my focus on other people, and definitely on God. And it has to be the Christian God, because of the place and purpose of where God and Human beings come together. The key relationship between both that is so well explained in the bible, is really one of God and creation, and it makes the most sense for me.

    It’s not about finding rights, or justifying your emotions, but it is about the journey of reliance, and being very well aware of the overall creator. I find that my place in that story is where it should be. It makes even more sense when you tie it to the issue of fame that was just mentioned. If fame was the toxic drug that takes away so much from life, then it’s best that only one person receives this very hard and difficult gift. It should remain with and be with the only who deserves it because he can handle the position of it.

    I don’t think I seek fame, but I think I seek a legacy of some sort. I seek to have messages and stories to tell after I’m gone. I think that might be the only reason I keep on leaving this blog on, and coming back to it every now and then to write posts. Maybe these posts would be best understood in the context of my life. Maybe I should try to do an autobiography so that I could also understand myself in my own process.

    Maybe one day.

    and maybe I would also find out the place of writing in my life, in its most appropriate form. Perhaps at that point, the book, a book, would come out too.

  • Too many feelings

    There’s a lot that I think about during the day, but I found out in my teenage years that I feel a lot too. There’s good and bad things to feel about. A good thing to feel would be the sympathy for stories in the news. Something goes wrong and an accident occurs, and I feel sad. A friend shares their sorrows, and I grieve with them. Then there are bad things to feel. Not bad, but just not worth my emotions. Like when I read a book, and then I dive into this weird world of feelings, and I can’t get out of it, until I finish the book. Then the feelings resolve, because the story resolve.

    But now in my thirties, I don’t know how I really feel at times. I think I am hiding a lot more sadness and grieving. For family and friends who have passed away. For friends of friends, or family of friends, that affects me too. There are moments where these feelings peak from under the covers, and I find myself crying a bit too much at certain moments.

    Perhaps its about sharing my emotions. I’m not sure when they should be shared, and now with my wife, I feel like I can share a lot more often. I feel like they might leak out because they will eventually come out when I talk with her. I know that sharing emotions of joy and happiness is easy for everyone to deal with, but at the same time, sadness is one that is a lot more common than happiness.

    I’ve got some deep feelings about something that I can’t write about yet.

    It’s sad, like a big sad. Like a whale sized pimple of a feeling that is deep inside my heart, and it’s aching from the soreness, but at the same time it’s not popped. That sounds disgusting a bit, but I guess the feelings attached to this situation is deep and painful. It’s not gross, but just a deep sadness.

    Also, I guess because I’m sharing this sadness, hopefully this means that I’m not actually depressed. I mean I’m pretty sure I’m not depressed, but I know that I’m sad inside at this time.

    But on top of all this, I’m happy and excited that work is picking up in big ways. That one everyone can understand, so I don’t have to relate too much. No imposter syndrome, some anxiety, but mostly a sense of general happiness and excitement to get some work going.

    Maybe it’s time for a personal work of art to finally start because there’s so many things to feel for.

  • The Turn of a Day

    Some days start off real bad.

    Like today, I had left my earphones at home. I took a really crowded bus to the train station, and then a really close encounter with a couple who had no sense of personal space. It got me kinda flustered, but it just piled on that the day felt like it was going downhill.

    But after lunch, it was moment after moment of brilliant coincidences. People that I haven’t met for ages appearing, and I had introductions to people I would not have had the pleasure of meeting if I was alone. These moments took me by surprise, and I was glad to be there.

    I was so close to giving up today, and just going back home. The day started out bad, what proof did I have that it would get better? Was there any objective difference I knew of that would change things dramatically for the rest of the day? Nope, no proof, no nothing.

    But thank God, because the day changed in such an amazing way, that I was left speechless, and I’m still extremely glad that I did not go home, and I made the effort to stick around.

    It felt like God was giving me an encouraging nudge, a pat on the back.

    I don’t usually write with such a strong Christian influence, but I have no other way to explain today. Sudden alignment of the universe? Sure. I’ll take that, and I’ll also go another step to say that I know the one who aligned it for me.

  • Protect ya hands

    I injured my hands after a trip to the grocery store the other day. I had done some climbing before that so my hands were already quite strained. Then I decided to go and try carry back some groceries. Quite very unnecessary, but I’m glad I had food nonetheless.

    But unnecessary because of the pain I put myself through!

    I can’t really wave right now. Using my hands to type takes a bit of effort, and using a mouse is a Real Exercise. I have to stretch my hands out a bit after using the computer. The worst part was that I had wanted to record a typing video, but I don’t think I can do my usual 5 minutes of typing straight to get the “episode” going. It’s my HHKB tracking that I usually just type for 5 minutes straight. But with the wrist hurting, I have to either type with perfect finger positioning, if not it just gets achy really quick.

    Actually writing this is my first time writing long without moving my hands because of the ache I feel on it.

    I’ve googled what wrist strains I might have gotten, and I’m gonna go with a TFCC sprain – triangular fibrocartilage complex. It’s basically the part that holds your hand to your forearm. That part is aching for me like crazy. I wouldn’t call it a sharp pain, but just an ache for sure.

    I keep thinking that my muscle tendon snapped, and I don’t think it did, because I think I wouldn’t even be able to type. But I think not being able to wave is still pretty intense. In any case, I’m just giving myself a bit more time before I go back to trying to carry heavy stuff with my hands.

    Unfortunately, it involves climbing too. Although I’m able to hang myself from my pull up bar really well still. My hands still have strength, it’s only my wrists that can’t maintain that weight.

    Or the ability to type long… :/

  • Setting Boundaries

    Clarice mentioned the word Boundaries to me today, and I’m reminded of the space of boundaries, and margins. I learnt during a seminar of sorts a few years back, that I need to set margins in my life. The margins keep space for you to handle urgent last minute things in life. I’ve not really managed my own boundaries very well, but today I am faced with a conundrum of sorts.

    My current lack of boundaries

    I think I struggle to say no to many things, and especially people. I keep saying yes, and that I wouldn’t mind. But now, coming to my mid thirties, I feel that I need to be selective, if not specific with the limited time I have. It feels like there needs to be clearer lines drawn for the things that I don’t want to spend time on, but that I have to spend time on. Societal and voluntary obligations, or maybe work related necessities, I need to limit how much time I want to spend on them.

    Unfortunately in this week specifically, I had batched to spend a whole day on my obligations, and it’s made me feel extremely overloaded in just one long day. I’m learning how not to do that again, and also the consequences of stacking the day that way.

    It’s also made me feel overwhelmed, to a point where I felt like just taking the day off to recover. Thankfully, I thought otherwise, and decided to just not think too hard about it, and move on with today. It helped because I found myself enjoying a very reliant day- a day where I relied on the people around me to support my under performing self. I practiced asking for help, and I also practiced not being the one with all the answers. It was not easy, but I am thankful for the opportunity.

    Because of the lack of boundaries…

    I feel that I was unable to befriend a person I would normally spend some amount of time trying to befriend. A person literally popped up in my life suddenly, with no real connection to me, other than an extremely happenstance moment. We traded numbers, but I was unaware that he probably suffers for a mental disorder of sorts, as I’ve dealt with people who do suffer from similar mental disorders, as they behave in the same way. In that first meeting, I was not sure if it was severe or not, but after some time, he texted me randomly, and spammed me with a number of things.

    This was quite unsettling, as he called me at work one of the days while I was actually quite busy with a number of things. This made me feel quite uncomfortable, but I brushed it off, and decided to wait some time before I would respond to him.

    However, today, he randomly appeared again, where I go to church at. I was in the middle of a discussion and he decided to barge in and just talk to me, but I explained that I was in the middle of a discussion. Later he called me a number of times, attempting to find me, but I had left the building already.

    I feel that a part of me would have wanted to befriend him and talk with him, but because of the lack of boundaries I had been having, it felt like I was not ready to befriend him, or to talk with him in the long run. I had to turn him down, and tell him that I was sorry that I would not be able to talk with him, and that I was uncomfortable with his demand for the communication that I was unable to provide.

    I am not comfortable with someone’s incessant texting and calling, but I am also uncomfortable not being able to be someone’s friend. It was a very hard line to draw, but I decided to draw it hard because the stressors I would face there would affect my other relationships in my life in a big way too. I still wish I had some space and boundaries to talk and befriend, but it is really not a wise thing for me to do in this space and time.

    Relationships take time, and sometimes there are relationships that I really have no link to, and I can’t spare the time for them. I might really want to, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and I have to be wise in how I commit my time and effort.

    While I am sad that I am unable to befriend, my mind is also wondering: at what stage and point would i be free enough to befriend someone like that? Someone who does not have the understanding of other people’s boundaries, and they would just want to call and talk as much as they please. Would I need to be able to spare time like that always? These are some of the questions that I am considering, as I reflect on the very long day, and my boundaries that I have to learn how to draw better again.

  • Back to Basics

    I’m typing on a mechanical keyboard once again.

    It took some time, but finally, finally, back to some 3-4mm travel. No more flat laptop keyboards to survive through the day.

    I was wondering why this matters so much to me, and I think it comes down to some basic things that I tend to live by.

    The Importance of the Experience

    I think my life has been filled with so many opportunities and experiences that every one needs to count in some way. Maybe that’s an extremely privileged way of thinking, but I personally think times of suffering and pain are essential as well. So it is not that I am looking for the top of the world type of situations, but I would like my experiences in life to count for something.

    That means that I’m completely fine if my life looks different from my friends around me, but I am happy with how it is going. To me, that matters more.

    Because of that as well, I find that I get stuck in certain situations longer than I expect. I am struggling with efficiency, to live as much as possible, and the quality of how well I live.

    Which is the next point

    The Expressions

    I have not sketched for ages. Sketching, over the past few years, had given me moments of respite. My brain was allowed to rest, and I could just observe and appreciate the moment. Currently, I’ve not really had time to just draw. It’s been some time since I’ve drawn, but I think the routine of drawing is something I miss as well.

    I also realised that I miss expressing myself in certain ways. It’s a funny feeling that I get when I listen to something like The Strokes, or Blink 182. There’s that youthful charm of plain dumb lyrics and jumping around. The expression of youth has not left me, but it is stuck and is jumping inside. I want to jump along, and I want to just make as I see fit. I hope to bring that part of me back once again.

    I’ll be working on writing here every day again. I will redo my content calendar for myself, but my hope is really to get back into writing and creating once more. I hope, but I will just have to actually do it!

  • First Update for the Year 2023

    It’s been some time since I’ve posted anything, and this might be my first post for the year, across all platforms. Here’s a rough of what’s been up so far:

    Moving

    Currently, my apartment is coming to fruition! It’s been a five year wait since putting a down payment, and finally now, our renovations are coming to an end as well. This means all my spare time is spent with packing, and picking out finishing pieces.

    It also means that my daily routines are in a crazy mess most of the time. My daily writing and thinking has been thrown out of the window, but at least I still do have some journal moments every now and then. But my writing and drawing is really thrown off its momentum.

    Work plans

    I’m also in the middle of running some internship programmes at my workplace. It’s part of a range of things, but I’m really looking forward to new work happening in the year ahead. It’s exciting and honestly, I feel a bit giddy just thinking about it.

    My work is always about the Christian response to many things. Sometimes I write and I think the worst of the world, and I just feel the dread and desperation of the times. Other times, I seize the hope and the glimpse of the future, where the world is indeed rosy and full. My new work really is to aim to give the good hope for the new generations ahead, for the younger ones who might not have had time and access to different groups of people to connect.

    I hope that maybe one day I would be able to make sense more of it, and show a bit more, but until it really works out, I’ll share more of it then!

    I hope to post a bit more regularly in the weeks ahead, but I think I’ll just aim for one post a week for this month at least.

    Have a great new year everyone!

  • The Tragedy of Happiness

    There was a man who sought joy and happiness. He searched high and low. He painted himself with attractive bright colors to appear happy and joyful. Then he started to seek thrills, sought success, sought money, power, and fame. He tried everything and anything.

    As he sat down one day, exhausted in his search, he observed a family nearby. They were smiling, but wearing poor clothing. They had each other’s company and enjoyed it, but the man was alone, because he had exhausted everyone else in his search for happiness.

    These people were not the smartest around: they spilt food that was preciously bought, they offended each other with miscommunication, and yet, they were still happy. He saw it in their eyes. They had cared for each other, and they were happy. They even gave food happily to the stray cats nearby.

    He sat there and envied them. They had no hopes of being rich, successful, or powerful. But they were happy. He envied them for their lack of achievements, for their contentment with the present. He grew insanely jealous, as he observed all that they were happy with. He sat there, stewing in frustration, while the family continued to frolic in the sun. He sat there and planned something. He knew there and then, that if he could not have the happiness he wanted, he would take it from everyone else that had it. At least then everyone would be miserable together.

    He took the money he earned, and bought over their houses. He emptied out the other families that lived in the building, and replaced that with offices; for work, for profit, for chasing after his versions of happiness. He found little bits of fun that they still tried to have for themselves, and he bought those over as well. Whatever he found that was out of his power to buy, he ordered laws against them and made them criminal.

    Bit by bit, he took happiness away from everyone else. He sat again, at the same spot, again exhausted, but now from removing happiness from everyone. The family was no longer there, replaced by a franchised store, selling knick knacks at marked up prices. As he sat down, and decided that he was happy, that he had removed happiness from everyone else. And there, he found his happiness.

    (I published this story first on Medium – medium.com/@trisected)

  • Connections

    I always wonder who comes to this site, and how you found me. If you’ve read this, just comment and let me know.

    I’ve been thinking about it because I think on this site, on this page, I’ve got such a wide range of interests and thoughts, and I have no idea what draws people to which side of things. I know that my YouTube definitely draws some people in, and then on my Instagram as well. But really, I think that it’s all over the place.

    I’ve been thinking this specifically because of my thoughts on how to develop my web presence. I don’t have that one thing that I would like to stress less than others. A lot of the different parts of me are really working quite equally most of the time, and I feel a great need to make the best of it daily.

    That being said, I’m trying to commit to making YouTube videos as much as I can, and then also to keep posting my sketches and watercolor work more often. And then of course, to keep writing, and to keep talking about what I’m thinking about, because I think that’s really what I hope to communicate to everyone else. I don’t ever hope for my work to be taken out of context, but to always be viewed in the context of my everyday life.

    It’s always everything everywhere all at once. lol.

  • Old Routines

    It’s been a really long time since I’ve used a fully split keyboard to type with. They’ve been blank, without keycaps, switches and just left alone. But I decided to restart some hobbies that I haven’t done for a long time for the sake of retraining my brain again. It’s not easy typing on full splits again, I think it’s really been a good year since putting them on to try and type a full post or paragraph of things, but here we are, typing on the Lily58.

    Lily58 with Rara Switches and SA Oblivion Keycaps

    I spent the day, literally day, going through all my switches, and closing up some of them that were unbuilt for too long. There was a period of time last year, where I was on the frakenswitch trial of making as many frankenswitch recipes as possible. And that ended up with me having bags of switch parts thrown around my keyboard cupboard. Normally, that wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but I think today, I just wanted to sort things out, so that I could start finishing up some boards.

    It was like a good part of my keyboard journey stopped abruptly last year, and this year I tried in bits and pieces to revive it. I feel like restarting it appropriately right now, but honestly, perhaps my approach to this hobby should be more measured this time, not jumping into huge purchases, but testing over and over and over again on multiple boards for the true best case scenario of each board or switch or combination.

    In any case, its not like I’ll have the capital to get into anything really big. I’ve got a few things at home to start saving for now, and I’m finding my pace in my new old job now. I didn’t manage to jump onto the YouTube train the way that I had hoped, but I have now two videos in edit library that I will get sorted hopefully before the month ends. I have 9 more days, or 8 actually, but yeah, hopefully I get something out by this week. That would be a great aim actually.

    I miss having time to sit down and type slowly, or learning a new board format (in this case relearning). A part of me enjoys the repetitive action of just lubing switches, or rearranging things. It’s a mental stretching exercise: something that’s not too tiring, but at the same time, it’s not exactly letting my brain go completely relaxed.

    I hope to write more again. I hope to do more keyboard stuff again. I started skating again last Friday, and sketching has kicked back in consistently for Saturday. Who knows, I really might be living the dream with my work pace balancing out totally by this year end!

  • Updates from Down Under!

    It’s been some time since the last update, but basically I was trying to clear things so that I could prepare well for my trip to Melbourne. I also think that I had over estimated the things I wanted to do, and I planned a few too many things over each other. Had even double booked myself while on leave. Thankfully my time away has allowed me to literally free up my calendar because everything was and still is uncertain until I actually come back and start my work again.

    But onto the main things: Melbourne in 2022! I’ve got friends and family here, and it was nice getting to see people that I haven’t seen since pre-pandemic. It’s really deep conversations with people that I wished I had more time with, but unfortunately we’re literally staying on different continents.

    I really have missed the city itself, and walking around the different streets and lanes make me recall so many different times with different people. I’m coming back to a place that had influenced my adulthood by a lot, because of the periodic times I’ve arrived at, and now that I’m older I appreciate it quite differently. Nature, for example, stood out much bigger to me than before. Natural spaces, and intentional spots of nature placed in were both things that had never really caught my attention before, but I was keen on this time.

    I think that Australia in itself was already beautiful, but from some of the updates that I’ve heard from family, some of the park areas were built up a bit more during the pandemic. I’m arriving in the middle of winter, which doesn’t lead to much greenery, but I’ll say that its definitely green enough for me. I’m a huge winter guy, so the weather is honestly the bee’s knees for me. (I’ve also picked up quite a bit of Aussie slang, so that’s still a thing right now)

    Not that it would be that surprising, but I’m really not looking forward to working as a whole. It’s not that I don’t or won’t like my job. I am actually looking forward to that in a big way. But it’s the idea of working that feels a bit painful to me. I’m not sure what part of it I’m actually dreading, and maybe one day I’ll put it into words a bit better. But basically, I think it’s the nine to five of it, or just that routine as a whole. I’ll be okay with it once I’m in it, but right now, it’s just something that’s not holiday, and therefore, I’m not looking forward to it. I’m really trying to suck in as much rest time as possible, but honestly, it feels like it’s not rest anymore too. Maybe that’s a good reason for me to get back into a routine soon, and maybe at that time, I’ll be okay with going back to work then.

    I should really think out this part of how I’m feeling more and give you all an update here. But I relate it to how I don’t take commissions for keyboard builds. I just do it because I want to, and if you pay me for it, then I recommend you going to pay someone else for it. I just want to make something for the pure fun of it.

    But maybe like what Casey Neistat went through, one day I would find the money alright, and I’ll be okay with it. But maybe, and one day.

    We’ll see how things go then. 😛

    Also, because this is the end of the July thing, I’m shifting some things around. I’ll keep on writing, I didn’t manage to finish it. I also didn’t manage to finish editing my youtube things properly, or to actually start the channel proper. But I’ll do that in the time to come and to make it work for real. Starting the Aug 2022 tag for the month to come!

  • Dealing with Separation

    It’s been a very emotional past few days for me. I’m finally at a point where I think I’m ready with my feelings, and I can actually say something that makes sense. If you’ve been following my Instagram, or read a few posts back, I’ve said briefly that I’ve been fostering two kittens. It’s been a good month since, and now we’re at the start of June, and the kittens have been adopted.

    Fostering Kittens:

    involves availing your home to be a safe space for kittens to stay in. This means cat proofing your house where appropriate. My windows had a simple mesh placed over it, where the cats would not be allowed to climb through. Later, we also found out that there should have been better ways to manage the kittens climbing through our cutlery and crockery.

    As this is going on in your house, a listing for adoption goes up, and the kittens can be legally adopted into your home. I don’t know what the full process of that is, and would probably be an adoption post on its own, but all I did this time was fostering. The foster family is given priority to decide if it wants to keep the kittens and adopt them. Unfortunately for us, we’re in the middle of too many things for us to take on a pair of kittens that would grow into full size cats.

    Then comes separation

    And so, the time comes when potential adopters come by to visit, and to check out the kittens. It’s a simple process, they just see if they like the kittens, and if they’re okay to take on the ownership of the kittens in the long run. If they’re okay, then they will have to start the process of cat proofing their house, and getting all the necessary parts in place.

    This process takes about a week or so on the quick side, and for us, it took about two weeks for the adoption family to confirm that their house was ready for the kittens to come.

    Emotions

    It wasn’t always easy taking care of the kittens, in fact, it was really quite a challenge. At the first week, they couldn’t jump too high, so we could prepare their meals easily, and they would just wait somewhere for us to get their food ready. Then after some time, they could jump higher, and get in the way of preparing food.

    I remember one morning, I was preparing the meal, and they jumped on the plate as I was weighing it, so I basically grabbed one of the kittens and the plate of food, and put them into a corner and sort of left the other kitten to struggle to eat whatever was left of the food. Probably a spoonful or less. I was really upset. The kitten with less food kept whining cause it was hungry, but it was because the other kitten had taken all the food, I wanted them to learn. The whining continued but my logical brain took over and realised cats cannot reason the same way. I took the kitten that ate more food, and put him into a locked room, then I fed the other kitten a full bowl of food. It was a very angry morning, but it forced me to think very creatively how to feed the kittens in a way that would be fair. Great lesson on how to think creatively.

    By the last week, we couldn’t eat at home, because the kittens would jump into our food, or try to stick their hands into anything. i wasn’t cooking anything, but just eating out before rushing back to take care of the kittens. It was really quite a mess of a schedule.

    There were good emotions too. The kittens were quite afraid of the rain and thunder, and during one of the nights, they were hidden away into corners of my house, trying to hide out. So I sat in the middle of my home, and they came out to sit near me. I placed them on my lap or around me, and pat them to sleep slowly. That really made me grow to love them, and want to protect them.

    And then there were deep sadness that overwhelmed, especially when they left and were leaving. The night before they left, we tried to sleep outside with them, but instead they were just running all over and having the zoomies. I still spent some time to hug them to sleep, or to just hold their paws through the day. I did this thing one with of them, where I would wrap the kitten with my tshirt, and pouch her up, like a little baby, then walk around the house. This gave her some sense of comfort, and I walked around the house like this for quite some time.

    And the moment they left, I cried, so hard. I missed them being around, hiding in the different corners. I missed having a little one to pat to sleep at night, or to carry around the day. I missed the hassles of having to feed them, or the frustration that came around our lifestyles. It felt real, and something bigger than ourselves, Clarice and me.

    The next day, I came back to the house alone, and I said “Hi Kittens, I miss you” to no kittens being around. Then I just walked around the house bawling my eyes out. Just plain and simple wailing, as if someone died. Because at that point, someone did leave me, and it was the kittens.

    I searched out how to deal with the loss of a pet, and I just kept looking for help. Recommendations were things like writing memorials (like this one), or to share with people who understood it. So I wrote a really sad post on Instagram, and cried profusely as I wrote it. I just missed them so much at that time.

    It was really a mix of the little things, having to close the door slow, or having to watch my feet. Paying attention to what time it was and what food was needed to be prepared. Closing the door quick enough at times as well, to prevent them from going in and out of places, or the weird visits while I was on the toilet. It was really a mix of all these things.

    In terms of lifestyle, it was a lot of coordination. Both Clarice and my own schedules needed to be aligned to see who needed to be feeding at which time slots. We were running around often, trying to settle our work timings, our free slots, and just trying to get by alive. It was a really crazy thing.

    And all these things were things I missed. I really cherished my time with the kittens and learning from all these things. I miss them so much, but they’re really just too much for me to handle in my life, at this time.

    But now

    Now they’re in a good place. They’re relaxed a lot more, and I think they’re really having a great space of their own to grow more, and become the kittens they could really be. I hope that all of the time we spent together was good for them, and I’m glad that they’ve survived us well. We were just trying to make sure they were staying alive at some point, but I think we really loved them deeply. I know I definitely did.

    I’ll do a few more posts coming up soon about some moments with them, but I’ll stop it here for now. I’m really tired, and I’m just putting my thoughts out before I forget them.

    I miss you kittens, hope you both are surviving well.

  • Update Mid May

    It feels like I’m preparing to fulfill a group buy (feels like this https://rama.works/updates). These updates are a bunch of Keyboard ones, and also some life ones here and there.

    Some major updates:

    1. I’ve been using my GMK Noire for the past few weeks, and it’s been a dream. I understand the hype of the GMK keycap sets. It feels really nice, and there’s something about the sound of things. It’s just that super sweet mix of everything good in one, and it’s great.
    2. I’ve learnt that I can afford two slots of climbing in a week, and this is a mix of affording time, and money. That also means that keyboard things have been taking a bit, but I’ve been buying for the past two years, so even then, the items are still just arriving. But nonetheless, it’s another money suck that draws every time I go out.
    3. I’ve been looking at coding literally just in the last week. I’ve never shied away from doing a bit of coding here and there: obviously because I’m on my own website that I’m hosting under my own server. I’ve done my fair share of HTML back in the day, and I thought it would be fun to understand VIM and GIT and things like that. Trouble is: currently, it’s not that fun just yet.
    4. I’m currently in the middle of many busy periods, thus the lack of uploads, and just not being very present online. That’s because I have to be so present in real life right now, and that’s really kinda tough. I’ve got keyboards still not built since the end of last year, as a sign of how tight life has been. Yes, I mean I have some time to climb and all that, but that’s not really the same as setting out a good 4-6 hours to do a keyboard up the way I want it to be. I can squeeze out some easy keycap switches, but I usually need to change switches, clean out the board from excess lube or dust, then prime another set of switches or keycaps for the next haul. It takes time. And then editing, if I’m doing a video on top of that. It really takes passion, from all those YouTube keyboarders. The amount of time they take is insane. Props to all of them for doing that.
    5. I might be moving soon, and also I will be leaving my current company, as my contract ends. I have another application ready, but I’ll be out for a month before settling in properly. Wish me luck.

    That’s about it, I just really need some headspace, but honestly I’ve no idea what to talk about where anymore. I think my brain just got too spread out over everything.

  • Update April May

    Hi Blog, it’s been some time. A good full month to be precise.

    Jumping straight into it, I’ve been really into rock climbing since I’ve last updated. It was really quite expected, especially after the IPPT and the injury thereafter. I got so into it, that I’ve went back at least three times or four times since, and I’ve gotten a pair of shoes also.

    The shoes will probably get more of a feature soon, as I dive yet again into even more hobbies. Climbing is fun, and I enjoy it, especially from the exercise of it. The shoes are so fancy and fun, those really suck me into the sport. It’s like running shoes too, that aspect of function and form. I really enjoy them.

    These are the La Sportiva Cobra 4:99

    I’ve been trying to produce a YouTube video about the IPPT thing, based loosely off my post here. It’s been frustrating mostly because I’ve not properly planned the thing, and I keep flopping about trying to get it done. It’s not fun when I’m running around aimlessly. I just need to sit down and really plan it through, but every time I sit down there’s something else I need to attend to, and my time is just taken from me. Not a good feeling at all.

    We’ve also started to foster two kittens at home, for a month. My sister’s friend works in a cat shelter of sorts, or has connections to, and asked if we could help. Clarice said yes almost immediately, and they arrived in two days. As I am typing to you now, they’re sitting outside my study room door, playing around or waiting for me to come out.

    It’s been a learning experience of what it means to take care of another living creature, and two kittens are really nuts to take care of. They run all over the place and get into so much dust. Really a lot of dust, which I’m allergic to.

    In any case, I hope to start daily blogging again. I don’t like the excuses that I don’t have enough time, and I really want to change things up now. I want to get things going.

    I have to!

  • Second Last Day of March

    Did you know that it’s already the end of March? The year has really moved so quickly and now we’re crossing over into the second quarter of the year. It’s really rushing and coming fast.

    There were a lot of things that I wanted to do at the start of the year. But at the truth of it is that I could have done it. I wish I had better ways to make things happen.

    I feel so much about this, that I actually bought myself a productivity, anti-procrastination type of program to get me to actually start to do things. Strangely enough, a part of me says that I should have just done those things that I wanted to do instead of getting this course. But I think the course will help me to think through better. I hope it does, because I’m really just done with how I think in the long run.

    I really hope to have grown by leap and bounds, its not enough for me to just do this once, but I need to sort my own mind out in the long run.

    Hopefully next year, I won’t feel that the year has gone by too quickly. And maybe just in the years to come, I would feel more accomplished about the days that have passed.

  • Cool Days for Cool People

    I keep thinking if I should have a better scheme, or a better content plan for my blog. My own answers to myself are: No, it is a blog, and the spontaneity is part of who I am. Secondly, I do have some specific content that I want people to read, and that’s on my pages. So I will always write as I feel like, and if it stretches over a series of posts, then good for you, the reader who is looking for specific content that is only that one single strain of things. I am, unfortunately, not a very one tracked person, and I am also unapologetic about it, as my life is increasingly varied.

    I am learning more and more about the effects of denim on myself, on cold days like today. Today it finally rained cats and dogs, and maybe guinea pigs too. There was a pure sheet of white over the cityscape as I looked out, and the day kept its cool til the night. But my denim jacket on me started to lose its point, and I started to become this mix of cold and hot at the same time. I think something similar happens to me when I wear hoodies, but I think it happens differently then. I need to figure out what that difference is.

    Also, I am realising that I really need to air my denim jacket often. I failed to do so last week, and today I smelled the jacket, and it smelt as a damp denim jacket should smell: Sweaty.

    So my jacket is now currently airing, next to my jeans, and hopefully it clears itself out of my sweaty smells.

    On a cool day like this, I remained the cool guy who decided not to wear his mask as he walked home from the clubbing districts of Singapore. I decided that I would embrace the cold air of the night, and just enjoy my walk home, after an evening of clearing up work. It was a nice walk, but I saw so many younger people just wearing their masks in packs. I was held my uncertainty within me, as I strode against their direction. They were going to club, but I was going home. And then it hit me. I am not a cool guy unmasked, but I’m the not cool guy unmasked not going out on a Tuesday night.

    This is all sarcasm, in case it is misread and taken that I think myself not cool. But okay, whether you decide to wear your mask or not outdoors, I really can’t. Personally, I get too sweaty, and it just bugs me and makes me really uncomfortable. Don’t judge me, I was just telling a joke. It’s a prank bro.

    Okay, gonna go do some laundry, good night world.

  • Just when you thought yesterday was hot…

    I literally felt the sweat bead up on my chest, underneath my T-Shirt as I put it on after showering. Literally. I questioned all sense of what hygiene was about during my entire journey to meet my wife for lunch.

    The sun bore down directly on me, all the day long. The worst part was when I saw the hope of a dark cloud, the possibility of rain. But instead it just moved over and the sun came back again. It was so, so, so hot.

    These hot days add challenges to my sleep as well. I wake up full of sweat, and just really hot. I have to change my shirt, I have to move my pillows away, because it’s just too wet, full of sweat. More things to sun dry the next day. And all I hope is that I get some sleep at some point. It’s horrendous, these hot days.

    I really just hope tomorrow I get to hide in the shelter of air conditioning in my office, and I really hope that I don’t need to do too much physical work, in this attempt to stay cool through the day.

    Really just such a hot day today.

  • Two Tired

    Does one ever feel too stretched in too many place?

    I’m watching through Formula 1 on Netflix, and whenever I watch this series, I always feel as if I’m living the driver’s life metaphorically, or in an another parallel. I feel the pressure of performance, the pressures of watching to get things done well for my own sense of excellence, and the stress from the people around me too. It just really adds up together.

    Not to mention the sense of heat that has just poured over us in Singapore. It feels like the F1 suits match exactly the feeling I have whenever I put on pants or clothing, just another hot sweaty mess.

    There are lots of things that are demanding my attention, and screaming for me to pay attention to it. But honestly, I’m just a bit too tired to manage all of it at the same time. I literally have to take a day at a time, and then in my little gaps, I slot in things like this blog writing. It helps a bit. In other spaces, I have to just keep pushing and pushing, keeping the pace up, and confirming where I will be slotting the next push ahead and all that.

    My jaw tends to be perpetually clenched at certain periods, but thankfully with army out of the way, it’s a little bit more relaxed. There’s no more persistent jaw ache that I felt from the weeks before. Now it’s just the frustration of the next few weeks, and the time leading up to the next slot of leave that I’m hoping to take, and soon after that, it’s the end of my two year contract in my current place of work.

    Just a bit more, and it will soon be done.

    Not that life after that will be Cloud 9, but at least, hopefully I won’t be able to relate to the stress of a race car driver anymore.

  • Back to Work Blues

    Usually most people would complain about Mondays in some way, but being away for the past three weeks, it was a real challenge to even just stay awake at some parts. My calendar dates were changed and there were things that I really had to tweak last minute to fit into time properly.

    I think that’s one part of my current job that I don’t enjoy: the high flux of events and dates. Everyone claims to have had settled dates early, but most of the time the adjustments really come in last minute and I just have to make do and change things. It spoils many things, or a lot of things are left hanging and I just wish that there were better ways to make sense of the things that I have to do. Or a better scheduling system. Or just to not have that many things to do as well.

    That’s definitely been a huge reason why I haven’t been able to do many keyboard things, or draw, or just have time out. It really sucks, because I keep feeling really bogged down by all the things to do, and I just have to keep doing them. I don’t want to try and stop it, but I know that the System would keep it going. It comes at the cost of the rest of the team picking up slack, and I don’t like to be the reason for things not to be done. That part really gets to me too.

    Sadly, I can’t wait to get out of my current job, and to just meet friends that I just haven’t been able to for some time. I really don’t like the standby mode that I’ve been on for way too long.

  • Birds of a Feather

    I have this idea that we will always meet the people that we enjoy meeting. Not because we’re actively looking out for them, but our lifestyles will make the world spin in a similar direction. The paths would cross, and we would find ourselves filtered through the different times and places. It would be a time where friendships are grown because of how similar the thoughts have been.

    There’s books like CS Lewis’ 4 loves, where he goes through a deep dive on what love means, and therefore what friendships are. I think it’s beyond just friendships.

    I think that if you were inclined to coffee on an individual level, you would naturally meet other coffee lovers. After that, when you speak about coffee and hear other people speak about coffee, the communication levels are what matter. How does this person speak about the same topic? Is it what I also agree and think with, and does this person agree and think the same things too?

    Later when it comes to forming thoughts, we think again: Do I like the person I’m forming thoughts with? At that point is where most friendships are formalized.

    This is beyond the norming storming forming that most other group management programs talk about. I’m thinking about it when there’s no main aim, and there are only interests around. In a time where there is no work to do, and what we end up with is only what we like or our preferences.

    I feel that there is a time coming soon where this social currency will count a lot. It will be the main way that we assess the world around us. Not social media, but the actual physical social interactions. And the person with the high quantity of deep quality social relationships will be the one on top.

    That’s just my thoughts on life and friendships today.

  • Sunshine and Rainbows

    Sunshine is really hot. Rainbows come after some seriously heavy or constant rain, and then the sun shines after that, then you get rainbows and tonnes of humidity in the air.

    Today is one of those days when everything is just so darn heavy, and just beats consistently on you. Like a rattly spacebar on an office keyboard that you can’t run away from. It just keeps rattling, and you sit there wondering why you didn’t just bring one of your many keyboards to said office. (obscure reference to my life/youtube channel) (like comment subscribe)

    It’s days like these that really make me think of other things to do in life. Where I run and hide to be distracted by something else but I honestly can’t because there’s too many things on my mind in the first place. And it goes on for quite a while, until I settle the things that I have to do.

    It’s not an adulting thing, it’s just a life thing. Or a personality and perspective thing. I can’t move out of it, and I’m just stuck in between. I have to do the things that I have to do. Perhaps this is the same obsessive behavior that drove me to get deep into keyboards.

    Perhaps you have a similar drive for something. Imagine that in every part of your life. That’s my brain. I have to do what I do well, and I am horrible at dealing with failure. I have to make sure I know what I’m doing and I want to do it as well as I can.

    But then again, I have some hobbies that I don’t have the time to commit to overall. That’s tough too, because I see that as my own failure to live up to my hobby. Like drawing and painting and stuff.

    I just have 3 more days to get through, and I’ll be done with this army thing. Can’t wait to be done, but then again, I’m not super looking forward to dealing with the backlog of 3 weeks of work too.

    Sunshine, and Rainbows. Nothing to look forward to in life.

  • Two too?

    There were way too many good memes for today’s 22 Feb 22, so I will leave that for everyone to dissect in their own time. But today I did a lot of Filthy Frank catch up, that I never knew I would like this much. It’s the Jackass of the YouTube era, and just the wilder, more unconventional, and definitely extremely rude versions of many of the pranks of old.

    At the same time, it’s really interesting to see how much Joji changed over the year. I mean, it’s honestly something that I think I would love to approach as a person, or something that maybe I hope I could look back on one day in gladness. Right now, I’m still waiting for myself to get started on many of these things, and I just want to write for the time being.

    Maybe in a short while I’ll really get something going, and get a good showcase of something going on. Maybe one day soon.

  • A Day in the Life of a Distracted Young Adult

    Or whichever label society decides to place on who I am today.

    Today was one of those days that I just didn’t really feel like doing anything. It also led to me not doing much, and yet a little bit more than I thought.

    I managed to rearrange some keyboards, and put a couple of videos up on YouTube. I started watching a TV series that I had planned on watching quite awhile back, and it led to me being even more distracted. Space Force started again too, and that added to my TV binge.

    On top of binging, I actually ate really poorly today. There were too many things I should have had done, but I just didn’t do very well. It was quite frustrating, because it felt that I didn’t get one task done well properly.

    I have socks left in the front area of my house, I have my shoes outside, along with my skateboard, because of some light rain. I have some reading that I intend to do, but I’m stuck here in the middle of another YouTube video, and also writing this post. And on top of all this, I still wanted to actually prepare some other things for the rest of the week, because time is honestly quite tight for the coming week.

    Today’s attention span and focus is completely like the weather: highly erratic, and I wish it were better.

    Thankfully, the night is ending very cool, and hopefully I will end the night in the same way too.

  • Unfinished Business

    Finish the task at hand before starting a new one.

    I think this is the line I have the most trouble with sometimes. I have a million things on hand, and I keep having to find separate times to finish different bits of it. I hate it, and I find that sometimes one of the key things I do is to sit down and finish up work that I had started.

    Worst still is the feeling of a long term task that was unfulfilled. I hate it when a project sits unfinished, and I have no means of finishing it because it links to another person’s task instead. That sits on my mind so badly, and I spend most of my time wishing I wasn’t involved in those projects in the first place.

    Like a lottery ticket that didn’t win, it’s just hopes and dreams that never became real.

    So I have to try somehow to make sense of it. To complete the work in a level that at least, I am out of the picture. It’s not perfect, but at least I’ll be done with the work that would drag for ages instead.

  • 4 Minute Post

    Time has been really tight today, and I would say it is by choice.

    I was slow in the morning, and it felt like the day really snowballed in many ways.

    One of the most surprising things today was that a cat came into our house, and was stuck under our chest of drawers. Then we fed it an egg, and a bunch of cat snacks.

    Then we had to bring it down, because we couldn’t hold at cat at home basically, and we rushed cooking dinner. It was a crazy day of getting things ready and being present.

    I love the inconsistency of today, and how it really just went against every grain of my sense of routine. But at the same time, I really wish there was a better plan of how today could have gone.

    Ohwell, here’s to another tomorrow.

  • Relative Time

    It feels like today passed really quickly, and even more than that, we’re already into the second month of the year. Every day passes as if I’m on a skateboard rolling downhill. It doesn’t help that the days are filled with different types of meetings, and I’m just in the capsule of my room or my office orbiting around the worlds of meetings.

    But today’s the Lunar New Year, and we’ve gotten a chance to catch up with family.

    It was really good to see my uncle that I’ve not seen in much at all in the past year. It feels like forever since I’ve seen him, and I’m really glad that he is okay, and that he’s had time with my cousins in America. Catching up with him always comes back to the times when I’ve traveled with him, and it’s been more than 10 years since.

    That’s really life, rolling on a skateboard downhill, and it just goes faster and faster, until you realised its crashing into its end.

    And there’s no jumping off it either.

  • Getting over blocks

    I think today is one of those days, where I’m trying to vault over all the issues that I’ve been mentally dealing with. Over the weekend, I gathered a really long list of things that I needed to clear today. I cleared through about 80-90% of them, and tomorrow I will clear through the rest of it.

    One of the key things that this list includes is actually working out, and at 10PM, I’ve actually done a set of workouts that I haven’t done in a really long time. It was a kettlebell set, and it’s to train me to do overhead presses in a better and more efficient way. The only thing is that I’m really hot now, and the way that this set of exercises go is a long slow burn. So I’m not exactly aching, but my internal body heat feels really really high.

    In the back of my mind, I do have some keyboard builds to complete. I’m also going for a staycation on Wednesday, so I’m getting ready for that too. I feel like I really need a good break from doing all the work that I’ve been doing.

    Everyone needs a good break once in awhile, and I hope that if you’re reading this, you’re taking a good break too.

  • A HOT day out

    Today was so hot.

    I felt my skin burning under the sun, and the moment I hit the shade, it really felt so cool. The only time I’ve felt sun this hot and scorching was when I was in Australia. It was a dry heat too, so maybe that’s why I thought of Australia too.

    It was definitely a day of a lot of conversation, and not a quiet day. I think from the start of the day, I’ve not really stopped talking, unless for time short times of travel.

    So maybe right now, I’m a little talked out. A little out of steam, from all the talking.

    Oh but I did have a hot bath too, which was really relaxing, and I enjoyed that time.

    Little thoughts, because I had expressed a lot of what I was already thinking about. Guess it was a good day!

  • OPTIONS

    I was in a life funk of sorts over the past few weeks, and I struggled to try and get a sense of what I would like to do, or what I want to be, who I want to be. As part of this, I still did my daily journalling, writing here, and all that.

    Today I’ve been feeling better a bit, so I flipped back through my journal, and I found that I really enjoyed writing this week because of the range of pens and ink colors I’ve gotten to use:

    Muji, Muji, Energel, TWSBI, Pilot Metro, Pilot Metro, Platinum Preppy

    This looks somewhat crazy, but I swap between quite a few pens during the day too, along with my keyboards.

    I found that each color and the writing feel just changes how I feel about the things that I’m going through. I end up feeling happier a little bit, especially upon reflection.

    This leads me to also see that as much as I like and idealise the minimalist lifestyle, it’s not me. I realised that the past few weeks, I’ve dreaded looking through the writing that I was doing, and it was really because I kept having to deal with my same old boring colors. I basically put two grey colors on two of my pens, it made me feel really low and dull.

    The same for typing and keyboards: having a range of keyboards to type with really change the way that I feel.

    Strangely enough, for work, I’m happy to have a range of black T-shirts (maybe that’s the variation), and with my raw denim jeans, and I’m good to go. But I do feel the need to have other colors of white and other printed tees on my days off, on days when I’m just chilling.

    Maybe tomorrow I’ll find out more things about myself from my daily activities that I don’t really think so hard about.

  • Anti Me

    There are days that are good, and I feel at ease,

    But right now, my days are off by quite a tangent, and I am not me.

    There seems to be a different version,

    Something maybe broken,

    but probably, its just me being anti me.

    As much as I’ve been able to write some of my thoughts here, and post some of what I think and my processes, I’m still living my life everyday. Right now, that part of my life, the everyday part that goes to work, and tries to manage things there, it feels like that part is severely out of sync. I try my best to manage it, but I think that there are too many things on, and it’s not doing well for my health and for my mind.

    I write here, in some hope that it would help me to manage, and it works in some way. I do look forward to writing here because I can type away, and be myself in some form.

    But at the heart of it, my inner being is challenged with who I am and who I have to be. My role in work requires some level of leadership, and I have to be in the front a lot. It means there are times when I have to be someone that I don’t agree with. I try my best to step out of that person, but when I allow myself to be a bit more disagreeable, I find that sorrow breeds more sorrow. To be less abstract, I feel that when I allow myself to rant and address my frustrations to any one of my co-leaders, it creates more dissatisfaction and I don’t know how to get out of it. I prefer my original self, that just either hides the frustration until it goes away. Its not that I don’t face the frustrations, its just that I face the issue first, and then I decompress my feelings after that. But right now, I actually don’t know if I have the mental space to do that.

    No harm trying though, to think myself back to how my mind prefers to hear and understand myself. And I’ll keep writing to give myself something to look forward to everyday.

  • Directions

    Where is this going?

    Is there a need for it to go a certain way?

    What are the benefits?

    Am I enjoying the present?

    These are some of the questions that I was asking myself at the start of the day, and surprisingly enough, I think I was forced to answer these questions for myself as the day went along.

    In terms of a process, I really started today with some dread. There were some things that I was really not ready to do, and I was just not looking forward to it. But time passed, and I just swallowed my frogs as the day went along.

    Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

    Mark Twain

    There were actually other frogs along the way today, but honestly, I really cleared out some bad ones in the morning. Not necessarily horrible, but there were calls I just dreaded to make, and scenarios that I was not looking forward to dealing with.

    Sometimes, I do wonder, what’s the point of my managing my life well if other people are going to miss it up. Like is there really any benefit to trying to make life work out well? There’s always chaos around, so is there truly any benefit of making it better at the current state. I don’t seem to have a good answer to that, so there are some days where I just exist in chaos and allow the world around me to deal with it. Some days I add on to the chaos, in hope of alleviating my own frustrations in some cathartic fashion.

    All in all, I guess I still try to make things turn out in a positive light. I don’t like to deal with a negative storyline. Which direction, and how are things heading? Hopefully in an uptrend for myself as I make sense of the world around me.

  • Unique

    What makes me special?

    What makes anything different?

    Are we even different?

    Or is everything the same?

    From my youth, I understood that people always viewed being special as something important. At the same time, people also viewed people who didn’t fit in as weird. Special and weird were sometimes correlated, but self perceptions were always something to think through. Was I ever really someone totally different and unique? Or was I just weird?

    As an adult now, I understand my weirdness was just more acceptable than others. I also understand that I was not really as unique as I had thought, but there were just parts of me that were a lot more expressive, and that gave off the impression that I was unique. But I objectively felt the same as everyone else, or so I thought.

    I think some of the thoughts I have about life really relate to what I perceive as me being unique or not. There are many times that I see myself being very flawed. There are also times where I see myself as being extremely bold to take certain choices. Today was a day of bold choices, because honestly, I feel too constrained for too long.

    I am waiting to express, to feel, and to just be different. Whether others accept me or not, is not as important as myself becoming completely unalike from the people around me. An extreme ideal, but I think it would be a fun challenge.

    Perhaps I would elaborate on this more tomorrow, and that would be a better way to rest my tired mind.

  • Weekly Roundup 31 Oct – 6 Nov 2021

    How fast time flies especially when I’m not blogging! I was thinking about how I should jump back onto updates here, especially because there’s actually a lot that goes on. I mean, I did manage to daily blog for at least 50 days in a row. I really have a lot of random things going on in my life at one time.

    I had two orders come in that I was really excited about: Keyboards and Used Jeans. Orders from Amazon Japan, and from Yahoo Auctions Japan. I had won a full size RealForce Keyboard at a really good auctioned price, and then I won a nice pair of used Momotaro jeans. There are some parts that are so nice, and honestly, I see myself enjoying the things that I’ve gotten.

    This week also proved to be a bit more restful than expected. I got to join in a mural painting on Wednesday. It was great getting to do some painting outdoors, and just to talk to other people who weren’t my colleagues. Sometimes there’s really a lot of baggage that we keep on carrying, and I just gotta let go of it. It’s not good to hold on to it, and I need to help my friends brush their baggage away too.

    Books I’ve finished reading: The Great War by Ralph Kern. Sci-fi war book, interesting premise, and I’ve just finished Book 1 of 5. I will probably do the rest in the months to come.

    Books I’m still reading: Sanshiro. I lay in bed one of the mornings and decided to start the book afresh. Man there were so many good lines that I had missed. Natsume Soeseki is really such a great author, and has such good command of expression. I keep thinking about what the Japanese original piece would say, instead of the English translation that I’m currently on. I will get to the Japanese book soon, I’ve already bought the book, and it’s sitting on my bookshelf.

    Listening to: Yaeji and Oh Hyuk’s EP: 29 and Year after Year. It’s really such a jam. Really enjoying Yaeji’s rapping and vocals though, it’s very chill, and her phrasing is very interesting. Silk Sonic just released a new track too, and that’s really quite dope too. Anderson Paak and Bruno Mars is a really nice collab group. Such is the theme for this week’s music update I guess.

    Things I’ve been doing: Sashiko (Repairing embroidery) and Running. The sashiko thing has been on my mind since Kenjima (on YouTube) showed the embroidered Levi Jackets, and also the sashiko jeans. Such a nice vibe.

    Been running again because Clarice had started running, and asked me to train her. She got a really nice pair of running shoes, and I’m really stoked to train her in running. It means that I’m running 5 days out of the week too, but that’s good for me. I get some exercise, and I’ve been feeling a lot more positive in life.

    I do want to get back to daily blogging, because I think there was a space for that in my life. But I’m not sure which part of the day I want to try that on again, and I’m not sure if I can keep to it. But I’ll work on these weekly ones first and we’ll see how things go from there.

  • Personal Pressure

    Talk about worse things in the world to happen. Just as I was starting to write this post, I spilled all my freshly made ice coffee all over me. If there’s any clearer a sign for being under personal pressure, I think it would have a director yelling “Action!”, as the coffee was about to spill.

    Why does this exist though? Why does personal pressure exist, even though we could be absolutely lazy if we chose to be? I think that in itself becomes a conundrum of sorts. Why would we be pressuring ourselves if we don’t actually want to do things at all?

    And I think that’s really where we have a disjoint between what we like to do, versus what we actually do. That makes everything very troublesome, and honestly, there are a lot of improvements we could make on our own selves. If we make this a smooth flow, what we want to do, and we do what we want to do, then we actually would enjoy ourselves a lot more. I feel that the pressure we feel is when we want to do something, but we don’t actually do it. That makes us uncomfortable, and we end up feeling really pressured by ourselves.

    I think that if I do the things that I want to do, and actually get it done, the pressure really lifts off. And as my coffee as told me today, there’s a lot more that I wish I could be doing that I’m not doing. That’s some real pressure build up.

    Learning point: I really need to get things done today.

  • Off Day Post Day

    Still writing without my pinky. Honestly it’s really not that easy, because I do use my left pinky to hit a lot of the letters. I’m trying to make up for it by using my right pinky to type more instead.

    Today is a pretty good day to try different things. Clarice and I have travelled to a particular Starbucks that we’ve always gone past but never really entered. We’ve seen in from the bus passing by, or just after a day out, we would chance upon it and say, hey we should really try this Starbucks out.

    There’s something fun about going out to try something new, and at the same time, there’s something very comforting about staying at home to rest and laze in bed. Sometimes I feel like I wish both could happen at the same time, and that’s when a staycation happens. This is unique to this time of the world of course.

    Maybe sometime soon I’ll post something from the corner of Paris. Maybe Italy. But most probably not, because I’d much rather go to a few other countries before I go towards Europe again.

    Off days are for things like this, to muse randomly on plans that would most probably not happen that quickly.

  • Time adjustments

    I’ve been writing these in the afternoon or evenings, and it feels a bit weird. I do prefer writing these blog posts in the mornings, it really feels good to have some thoughts like these out nicely in the morning. It also feels better to know that I’ve cleared some daily to-do’s that I personally want to cover. It’s really not fun when the whole day is just things for other people.

    Today’s been a pretty good day so far, I had skate time in the morning, and a great catch up brunch. Then I came back and basically cooked until two, finished up some work, and then finished watching Hell’s Kitchen Season 20. I love days like this, where I can get things done, and still have time to chill a bit.

    Adjusting time for myself, and time to do things for other people is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to balance. I think that one of the key things that I struggle with the most is how much time I should allow for myself. I’m not good with gauging that, or at least thinking that I should give myself the excuse to not be on 100% all the time. It’s not the best way to think, but I don’t know why we would say we are 100% committed to something, if we were not going to spend our 100% of time on something. It’s taking the phrase literally, but what other way could I place it? If I agree with something, I really mean that I do.

    But now, growing up more and more, I find out that I need to really set some time to breath. I had no idea how important that is, and I realized that I used to have really bad crash periods. I thought I had understood myself well enough, and catered enough time, but in the past year, I really see that I need more breaks than these. It’s not right, and it’s not beneficial in the long run for my mental health and my long term well being. It’s just not being nice to the future me.

    In any case, I’ve had 4 coffees already today, but I honestly feel like I could use another 2, more because I really like the taste of coffee right now. But we’ll see how this evening goes, I still have a dinner to host!

  • Success

    I think if I define my blog into different areas, and start to build specifically on some topics, it’ll become one of those really typical self help blogs that I honestly don’t always agree with. But I can’t help myself, I really do think about these topics, and they do mean a lot to me. Especially today.

    One of my buddies growing up just won the world’s best restaurant. I’m honestly happy for him inside, but at the same time, parts of me are just wondering why I’m not there with him in some way. Why I’m not there with him at the top of the world. That’s something I really struggle with internally. Why is it that some of my friends, or peers of my age group are able to hit the top? And instead, I’m a few far steps behind.

    It spirals into a blame game of sorts as well; why didn’t this teacher or that give us an opportunity to do better? Why didn’t my parents let me go overseas? The list really grows. The worst part of this is the lack of effort on my part to actually take ownership of the current state of events, and to blame everyone else for what is happening now. The pure nurture argument can really say that everyone else is the reason why you’re not standing there at the top.

    But in the same way, if it flips and you are at the top, the success you hold isn’t your own, and its everyone’s effort that led you there. And that’s something that people don’t want to accept as well. I don’t know if I accept it for sure, because I think I had to go against the odds. Or at least that would be the story I tell myself.

    So it’s not about how everyone else helped, or didn’t help you get there. It’s about the game that we’re all playing. Unfortunately, “the world’s best” is something that we all get fooled into. Even the word “best” or “top” is something of a lie. How long does that stay on top for? Is there a need for it to be that way? I struggle with these terms.

    I definitely think that the people we are with will make us think this way. The teams that I am working with now are struggling with these terms in their own way, and they are finding their path on what success is determined by. But then again, this adds that people are to blame. So there’s definitely a thought process to why this happens the way it does. I think people contribute to how much I can grow, but I can’t blame people for my lack of efforts to try harder and to get past the groups that don’t help.

    At the same time, I am quite willing to not play in the same game that everyone is playing with. Changing the game from the top or the best, to something that either I can win at, or that has no winning in the first place. I just want to enjoy the moment, without a sense of win or lose. That’s really the key to what I’m trying to think.

    But for my friend, who’s now at the top, I wish you all the best. I really knew you could do it, all the way when we were fourteen. I wish I was around your life more, and I am happy for you. I hope you keep being the top, and that you keep changing the world with the food you make.

  • A Short Story about Mosquitos

    A small mosquito flew around the room. It sensed the heat of a human being, and flew around, and landed on the person. Phew, the person didn’t feel the needle piercing through his skin. The mosquito got a bit of a blood snack, and with a slightly bloated belly, flew towards a ledge within the room. As it was landing, it felt the close shave of the human’s hand swiping by it. Literally, the swipe took out one of it legs. Good thing the mosquito had another five more legs to land with. The flight was a little wobbly, readjusting from the loss of a leg and… CLAP. There was no more mosquito, but just a splat of blood.

    I’m getting bitten by mosquitos way too often at home now.

  • Intentionally Old

    A lot of the hobbies I have are hobbies that get better with age. The items might be new, but a lot of them would work better when worn in, when weathered out and tested over time and time.

    One of these things is the somewhat silly addiction to Raw Denim. I really enjoy raw denim, and recently, I received a very nice raw denim jacket on my birthday. While this was really fun to get, the fresh denim is really something else to deal with again. At the start, it’s super stiff, due to a range of reasons. It takes a good month or two of consistent daily wear to really break in jeans. Speaking from experience, I have two pairs of raw jeans from Momotaro, the same brand of my jacket — and one of them is worn in by 5 years, and the other by 2. These two jeans are on top of the other jeans that I already have, and the other pants that I have as well. So these all take ages to wear in, and I feel like it’s taking forever to get the cool fades that raw denim provides.

    I actually track how much time I put into my jacket wearing. My neediness on data and all has grown over the years, and I’ve learnt different skills on how to track things like this. I used to track my coffee cups per day as well, but I think it’s just a bit too much…

    There was another guy who had gotten a denim jacket the same day that I had, but he was aiming to wear 32 hours of denim wear per week. This might sound easy, like just wearing it for a whole day and a half, but actually getting it on and keeping it on is difficult. Especially with the heat in Singapore, it really makes it tough.

    Anyway, I think I got in about 2 hours with it today, and looking forward to hitting 3 haha. Wish me luck.

  • Blast from the Past

    If you didn’t realise by now, there’s actually tweaked paragraph spacing between the paragraphs in this site’s reading. It’s because I was going through it the other day, and I saw how close everything was and I really didn’t like it. It was too tight, and I know too much about typography to leave it be.

    Which brings me to my key point for today: It still surprises me how much I remember things from my youth. I had learnt how to do HTML coding when I was in primary school, and it kinda stuck with me through the years. It’s a skill that I never knew was going to be so important, but it helped me in my understanding of design programs, and learning logic flows.

    There are other things that I still do often now, that I had learnt from my younger days. Things like learning how to take things apart and put them together. I’m a lot stronger now, and I’ve also understood more things, so I’m definitely better than how I used to be, but there’s still a lot that I know I’m recalling from my youth.

    Because of these things, I’ll definitely encourage my children in the future to learn as much as they can growing up. They might not be great at it straightaway, but some of the basics can be improved on as they get older. Kids just need a chance to try something, and that can give them a shot in picking up things that will stick with them for life.

  • Old T Shirt: Ctrl + Z

    Ctrl + Z from Threadless

    This one is one of the oldest T-Shirts I have that is still in good state. It was one of the first few that I had gotten in that whole Threadless era of T-shirts. There was a shop I used to visit at Far East Plaza that sold other Threadless Tees, but by the time I had gotten this one, there were shipping deals coming from the US at a cheaper rate. The quality on this is still pretty legit, it hasn’t torn through, or busted out any of holes. It’s just faded. There’s even pictures of me wearing this when I was 15 or 16 years old.

    These were one of the t-shirts I had gotten with my own money. That time of your age when you could save up and start choosing your own fashion entirely. It made me feel like I was really growing up, and I really wore my t-shirts with such pride. It stood for more than just the graphic, although this graphic was really quite a cool one.

    There were gigs watched in this, movies, dates, classes, everything. It fits me just snug now, I mean I did grow a bit bigger. But it’s really reminiscent of a time that I don’t think exists in the same way anymore. A time when people were meeting other people, and making new friends at different places. That was really a coming of age.

    Maybe I’ll write a book about that.

  • Keep trying

    I’ve been following this app called Stoic, because my daily disciplines have been out of sync. This probably sounds really weird, considering I write a post up every day. But this post is the only thing that I’ve really been doing consistently. Prior to this, I was on a Notion template, to try and get life sorted out properly, but it just got really confusing. I enjoyed it for some time, but then I just got busy, or I just didn’t have time to maintain the way that I had initially envisioned that I would.

    Anyway, the app has been going great, other than some writing prompts at times that I can’t really get a good handle on. Other than that, I’ll just keep trying to get a daily routine back again. It is Really quite tiring to keep on doing all this change, and hopefully the daily routine would get things back on track.

    Just gotta keep trying.

  • Another Hot Day

    There are days like today, where I just sit there and feel the heat pour over me. I just showered to get myself going, and to just feel a bit more fresh. But I just feel damp after. It just feels like the sun is covering me with a thick hot wet blanket, sucking away my energy.

    It doesn’t help that I thought today would turn out a bit more chill, so I had made a hot cup of coffee instead of going for one of the cold teas that I had prepped from before.

    Days like these are also days when I feel just fat, for some reason. I just feel as if I’m wearing a fat suit, and its just making me get even hotter. I feel frustrated with everyone and everything, and it just keeps on going. The heat, the irritation.

    It feels like today would be a good day for burger and fries, and a nice cold milkshake. A nice vanilla milkshake, with chocolate chips or something. I think I know what I’m having for lunch, and at least I can look forward to that.

    I’ve been watching a lot of Emma Chamberlain recently, just seeing what had made her so famous, and just understanding who she is as a person. She reminds me of Casey Neistat, and that era of vlogging. It’s actually one of the motivations for me to start writing here a lot more often, and a lot more personally. I don’t really want to appear on camera, and to have to do all the video editing after that, so I feel like this works out for me in a good way.

    I don’t need my site to “take off” or to “go big”; to be honest, I don’t need my YouTube to do that either. I just want to be me, and I can be that right now. I don’t have to try, I don’t have to push things aside, I’m just enjoying my own little existence on the interwebs, and I exist as myself, without sponsors, without an audience, just being me.

    I like this, and I hope whoever reads this will also appreciate who they are and be happy with their current state of life.

  • Day to Day

    I had really bad sleep again last night. I was rudely awakened by the clock in the hall falling down and basically breaking into a few parts. It crashed, and I jolted awake, and basically looked at the mess that laid outside. Then I decided to just leave it and go back to sleep.

    But going back to bed, my head just went through constant thoughts of past regrets, or just things that I haven’t thought about for the longest time. I thought through the times when I was 15 until 18, the amount of unnecessary stresses that I had placed myself through. Life could have been easier, but honestly, I just wanted to experience things in some of the worst ways possible.

    I remember one of the worst nights I had, I was sitting at one of my ex girlfriend’s houses, we had broken up already but I just sat outside her house and cried and cried and cried. It was one of those, 2AM situations, finding myself there, because I had cabbed there, hoping for things to work out again. But they messed up in the first place because of how I wasn’t really a good boyfriend, and I just wasn’t really a nice person at that time. I remembered calling one of my close friends at that time and just crying on the phone, trying to get myself out of there and back home. Those nights really sucked, because I really think I had pushed so many people away by then.

    Anyway, TLDR: last night, I revisited the other times when I was awake at 3AM, hoping to be asleep. I don’t like revisiting, because I don’t like who I was at that age.

    That’s also why I make extra effort to be nice now, or at least I hope to. I think every day matters, and while it was a bad past, I can make some amends for the future. It’s a hurdle to hop over, but that’s part of what’s needed to move on for tomorrow.

    I hate that sometimes though, I hate that hurdle. I wish there were other things in life to deal with, but I just have to deal with myself, and who I was.

    This is what I’m looking forward to now: (or at least things like this)

    Because, my home should be coming some time soon, and we really have to start planning how its gonna look like. My list of how the house looks is growing. At least something for me to really look forward to, along with my wife’s presence in the home with me. Clarice is a really lovely wife that I don’t deserve, super grateful for her. Super duper grateful.

  • Hot Day

    Sun shines bright on me

    No words, just light; no control

    Eternal summer.

    Nice to form a haiku every now and then, I wonder if these would be appreciated.

    In other news, my neighbours next door have gotten COVID. A little shocked and surprised to say the least. I keep checking to see if I’ve gotten any close contact alerts, but it seems to be alright for now. Personally I’ve been praying for the aunty who contracted it, and I hope she is ok.

    This is my jam for today, it’s got all the vibes that I’m feeling. Just oozy and goozy all over the place. There’s really some spell cast over us today, Clarice and I. I think it’s a mix of the sun, and it’s just a lazy day in the middle of the week. There’s work to do for sure yeah, but honestly, work from home allows lazy days like these to be appreciated.

    Either that or both of us have COVID and are experiences the side effects of tiredness. I hope its just a lazy day.

  • A Regular Disclaimer

    Just in case! I thought it would be good to put some general guidelines and disclaimers to what I write about here.

    All of these posts are my own. They’re my thoughts, they’re a blog I mean. I feel like sometimes we forget what a blog or what a vlog is. It’s not meant to be taken as fact, its just a rough idea, or a thought, or something about the passing day or time that we consider and decide to pen down. As much as it could be taken for reference later, it should be taken as creative reference. Meaning like referencing a Mona Lisa smile, or a Kafka-esque thought. More as an adjective rather than objective fact.

    That’s how I perceive these posts, and I hope that you might do the same too.

    Also, it’s super bright out right now, but there’s also a light drizzle. Crazy Singaporean weather. The drizzle and the sunlight makes the whole place light up, as if there’s smoke covering everything and its a bright smoke. Oh, no, wait. There IS smoke. A neighbour is burning a barrel drum of hell notes for their dead ancestors.

    Yup. That’s life today.

  • 1989

    It’s my birthday, and it’s been 32 years since.

    There’s many ways to think about it, but one of the things I’m really most thankful for today and this time is really how much I’ve been seeing myself grow in the past few years. It’s been extremely reflective this past two years, and I’ve been learning many things about myself, and the things and events that have made me who I am today.

    I’ve always thought of my current age as a comparison against all the other people who became famous at my current age. Like when I was in my twenties, I thought about how Taylor Swift was so famous and doing so many things. I thought about the Christian writer Joshua Harris and how he started out writing by then already. Of course, we wouldn’t necessarily say that life was so so much better for them, but I was still kinda envious.

    I still think that now, and it’s one of the things that motivate me to keep on at what I do. I still think that I wish I had that world wide level of fame. I don’t say it much, but it’s something I do consider.

    But in the past few years, I’ve understood a different kind of life set out for me. Maybe I might not be that famous person who has changed the world. I’ve seen that I’ve changed the lives of the people around me, in little bits, or in large parts. I’ve seen that I’m a friend, and that I’m not necessarily the star, but these aren’t bad parts at all. Maybe they’re actually the even bigger parts.

    I don’t have to wish for fame anymore, because just being me, I’m kinda famous already. My friends all know me, and that’s fame enough. Might sound like a compromise, but I am truly happy for all the friends that I’ve gotten to know over my 32 years. Some longer than others, but I am thankful for all of them. They are the best people in the world, that fame will never understand. My friends are so directly important and precious to me, that I will really miss their presence if it were taken away.

    So even though I still think about what world impact I could do and change, I still know that at the end of the day, I’ve already achieved that. I know that I have close friends that love and cherish me for all that I am. I am super thankful for that, and I’m glad I don’t have to think if they’re here for my money or my fame in itself, but they’re just here for me. That’s awesome.

    I’ll be here for them too. Or there for them. I’ll be with them. Because I know that all of it matters, and it’s been really an amazing journey with all of them.

    The most of all being Clarice, who has really changed me in the biggest ways. At 32, other than my parents, I don’t know anyone else more loving to me than she is.

    Maybe one day this will be a speech, but a speech for my friends, who have stood by me all this time. They’re the best, and I really wish I had more time to write these things, but I’m off to spend more time with my family, and friends too.

    What a life I’ve gotten to live. I am so thankful to God for carrying me through all this, and to all the friends He has given me. So so so so so thankful.

  • The Life I Choose to Live

    I’m in constant dilemma in my life. I’m really enjoy watching videos about single bag trips, or a guy living out of a bag for years, or about minimalism and being able to live with nothing or very little things.

    But at the same time, I really love having the things that I have, and I love the choices I have, for even things like keyboards and shoes and all that.

    I can never decide, and I guess I’ll enjoy the thought of the minimalism, but I’ll just live happy with the much that I have.

  • The Apple Generation

    Steve Jobs who designed Apple for the current generation 

    Reviewing the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

    Another draft post from 2017. I honestly had loaded up quite a few draft posts then, thinking that I was going to be blogging often and all that. If I’m right, it was because I had come back from a holiday trip and I was really in this motivated mood to keep creating. I really have these ups and downs in my creativity. It’s a little frustrating when it’s down, but it’s so tiring to keep when it’s actually on going.

    Did Apple shape the world, or was Apple shaped by the world? Meaning was it a range of factors that led to Steve Jobs developing the company the way that we currently know it? Or was it this new way of thinking that Apple introduced into the mainstream?

    The biography on Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson covers a lot of interesting ground. I personally enjoyed the thought processes and how Isaacson had portrayed Jobs in the best and worst light. The influences from his childhood and teenage wandering years really showed that there was a huge possibility of how things could grow in the years to come. Perhaps it was the way that Isaacson had put it, an event causing something to change in Jobs, which led to more events, and more changes. The cause and effect of the world on Steve Jobs: disappointments, achievements and successes. The pure madness surrounding the man as well. It really spoke volumes, and I still remember large portions of the book, four years on.

    Apple’s effect on how we see the world right now gives us a clear understanding that people do appreciate the appropriate amount of simplicity. There is such a thing as oversimplifying, within the engineering and design realms. And at the same time, there is a chance of it being over designed, where something is unnecessarily complicated. Both are areas to easily fall into, but the bare minimum that Apple gives is usually enough.

    “Enough“ is a term that evaded a lot of computer hardware developers at that time, and even now. There’s always this statement I hear whenever comparing a Mac build to a PC build, “For the price of the Mac, I could build a PC with much greater specs.“ That statement is definitely true. But it holds some other assumptions: you need to build the PC yourself. That’s something a lot of people are not willing to get into, especially in a very simple consumer market. It’s the same reason people look at me funny when I build custom keyboards. Why do you want to put yourself through the hassle? So it’s not that I don’t understand the need for customizing, I am happy to pay the price for a Mac because at its build level, its enough for me. In fact, if Apple chases the top tier graphics and processing speeds, they end up chasing the wrong crowd. They’re here to make sure their computers provide you with just enough to get your YouTube career going, for you to play enough games within their Apple Ecosystem. The aim is not for overclocking your PC or to run a server, although both are possible with a bit of research.

    To echo the sentiments stated in the biography, the home brew crowd that were building their own PCs then were so frustrated and upset with Apple for developing a system that could not have added integrations, and was a one piece self contained unit. That was the mantra from the beginning. Right to repair or not, Apple did not want you to touch their carefully engineered equipment that would fit snug right into the chassis of their choice. The freedom of choice you got from the beginning was to choose to buy Apple or not.

    I found that the simplicity of design that Apple brings, gives reason for a lot of other companies to either simplify, or just go to the tech extremes. Recent phones and tech coming out have become a lot simpler, but without their own issues. The simplicity forgets that Apple designed with the consumer in mind, the person who might not have any idea how to do what they would want to do. That latent need that would be fulfilled through Apple alone. That’s how the simplicity works towards.

    Some companies are getting it, because now it’s been a long time since Apple started. Working on the latent needs of a consumer could be put through AI, which is what Google is doing to us now. We have our data mined, and the computer gods give us our algorithm based decisions. That’s a good try, a nice attempt at trying to understand the human mind.

    But at the end of it, Steve Jobs made his things because he wanted something like that himself. He himself was the consumer that he was trying to reach out to. From the onset, he was never the computer developer. He was the kid who was hyped about the computer things, and he enjoyed his life, somewhat. At the heart of it, if the companies do not want the items for themselves, and want it as the best product they could think of, it would not be easy to develop that latent need. It’s something that one really has to want. That’s something that either a lot of self reflection can get, or a lot of self dissonance will reveal.

    Do we know what we want though? As the current generations who have had their latent needs fulfilled, are we sure we know what is going on? I, for one, have no idea what I would love to see, and I try my best to dig deep often to figure out. I have tried and I constantly dive into multiple new hobbies, only to come out broke and still unsure if that’s the right thing for the future.

    But I still live as a consumer, thinking about what is nice and fancy. There are products that are just enough, like the Mac I’m typing this into, with the keyboards that I currently have. There are products that remain good enough, like my iPhone SE1 and 2. I might want the next few Apple products, but I still struggle to see the need to get a PC, other than for the games that I might want to play. Those aren’t needs, but they’re still at the back of my mind somewhere. Maybe one day, I would go towards a fully custom everything in life. Right now, I’ll enjoy my Apple Ecosystem.

  • Presence

    Presence as existence. As one is a being, existing. I am here, I am being. The current form of which as human. The formation of matter and will to be present. Having breath, having life, having a mind and intelligence. There is a space I take up within this current time space universe, and I require it.

    Not present as the lack of existence. Ceasing to remain, being a void, and not having a will anymore. There is nothing, and there will be nothing, because of the lack of presence. Like the air in a vacuum, the emptiness filling, the gaseous matter sucked out. There is nothing and there can be nothing.

    I am present today, and I choose to be. But is it really my choice to exist? What is the existence that we think we deserve?

    I am present today, because God has chosen. Or the form of God that I attribute the ultimate creative power to, forming out of nothing.

    I am present, as God’s presence exists. It is presence that I am filled by, through breath, through my emotions, through my existence itself.

    Why do people live as if there is no presence in their lives? They live as if they are a void, sucking the air out. They are a vacuuming, taking in and never giving out. They stand in the way, blocking literally the flow of traffic. They ask questions that suck away the space, and make you question your own existence. They are without will, they are without direction and form. They are not present

    Do I live in the present, the here and now? Or am I without presence?

    I will always choose to be present, no matter the circumstance. I am grateful for my existence and I will claim my moment of existence gratefully. Appreciating it by living it out as largely as I can.

    Maybe one day even to the Moon.

    Watching Ad Astra right now, or at least some quarter way through it. Brad Pitt can really play such a good range of roles. I really like his acting.

  • Childish thoughts

    It was good sleep for both Clarice and myself last night. We sang ourselves to sleep on a whole range of songs, and now we’re up and awake on a bright hot Sunday afternoon, listening to the songs that we were singing to last night.

    It’s fun to just not have to care about anyone else, and just do what we feel like. A few of our friends who have babies can’t do this anymore. They’re in that job of being parents. Maybe they could go for dates, and spend time together when the kids are asleep. But they can’t just take a break whenever they want to. Or just sleep in just because. There’s always gonna be someone there to take care of, until the day they die.

    I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet, to be really honest. More than that, I don’t know if I want to stop being carefree, and silly. I enjoy my time with Clarice tremendously. I also enjoy being able to spend money on keyboards, and other random ventures when I feel like it. It’s childish, self centered, but it’s quite fun.

    Would I lose myself, when gaining another person into my life? So far, it’s not been the case, and I find myself growing more and more as a person. But for a child, I think a part of me dies, and another part is born and growing, as the child does too. I can’t tell yet, because I’m not there, but I’m thinking about it.

    When that happens, I’ll find out. Both Clarice and I will find out, and we will need to grow together from there too.

    But otherwise, I’ll just enjoy this Sunny Sunday with my love.

    p.s. We had a ton of Tea and Biscuits for breakfast today for fun, so I might be awake most of tonight lol.

  • The Relaxed Position

    Today was a day that I really wanted to try something new: I wanted to try to be as relaxed as I possibly could. I wanted to just be a teenager again, and watch TV shows as I ate leftovers from the fridge. I wanted to just chill and take naps where I felt like it.

    But this is really one of the hardest things for me to do. Most of the time, I really feel like I need to be doing something. So I actually catered a space today. I made space to make my YouTube videos, and now there’s a huge backlog. I have so many descriptions to write, and so many thumbnails to make. But at least I have a really fun space that I carved out to relax in.

    I watched TV shows, and just made myself feel really comfortable. I enjoyed it. I might try it again tomorrow, and get other work done in a similar way. Tomorrow’s a work day again after all.

    When I’m in that chill state, even if I’m doing a ton of work, it feels easier. It’s that gear on my mind that it’s just in the zone, but not really in the zone. It’s a glide, it’s cruising. I’m not really pushing, I’m just enjoying the flow of things.

    Daily blogging is helping me with that; the range of reflection tools I placed in for my wind down routines also help. It’s a way for myself to enjoy my keep active, without the added stress that I put on myself. I really need to develop a formula, because there are many days when I wish this would happen more often. I end up missing the forest for the trees, and everything just ends up in a mess of sorts. I don’t enjoy the day, and there’s no work done. I’m unhappy, unfulfilled, and honestly, I’ll end up behind on the work I have to do.

    So my hope is that tomorrow, I’ll work from that cruising state. I’ll try my best to, but I’ll also try not to put pressure on myself for that to happen.

    And two songs to motivate myself, and to keep myself in that mood:

    Negative Thinking by The Death Set, and Let’s Daba Daba by Polysics

  • Mango’s on an Apple Tree

    There’s always this saying that you can’t expect an apple tree to grow mangos, and in that same way, we shouldn’t not expect something unnatural out of someone.

    As much as we think that, we also keep asking people to get out of their comfort zones. Isn’t that similar, or at least asking an apple tree to try to become like a mango-like apple? Like an attempt at becoming something that they might not necessarily be.

    I find that in my own experiences, I’d rather be the best tasting apple tree ever, than to be a mango + apple + whatever other fruit type of tree. That’s what I would rather, but I know that I’m often asked to become a different type of tree to fit the different needs of people who ask for my help.

    We say such silly things, in order to convince ourselves either to not do work, or to do even more work. We’re really just weird trees walking around, thinking that we ought to tell other trees what to do. Maybe we should just settle down, and grow big, and be whatever tree we can be, the best that we can grow. That would be good, great maybe.

  • What happens after?

    I think one of the most frightful things that we’ve put ourselves through is making something end. I think that’s the main reason why TV shows last forever, we enjoy that stability, that continuation of everything, and maintaining things. Sometimes that’s the reason why we like to just get stuck in many things, and take a really long time to let go of things.

    I think I struggle with that a lot. I think it’s really hard to let go of the things that I have, and I find myself very happy to stay stuck in a situation. But at the same time, I resent it like crazy. I think it’s the biggest waste of my time, and I sleep annoyed with why I didn’t try harder, or do more to get out of the situation.

    One of the biggest things I wish I had done earlier was to get out of Singapore. Not because I hate Singapore, but because I think that the space for growth here is limited, or at least it’s curated in it’s own way. I really enjoy the space of Singapore that I have, and the way I can leave my things around just knowing that it won’t get stolen: that safety is really great.

    But at the same time the appetite for failure is so low, because risk taking is not advised in many ways. I mean for a thief to think he’ll probably not be able to steal, that’s a pretty adverse risk ratio. The thief would rather start up a business and try to earn money the right way in Singapore. If not, he would just do small jobs to get enough pay to get by.

    Back to the main point, where do we find ourselves when something is finished? I think that when I finished my army, and I had a chance to grow and try a school far away, or to expand my design abilities, I decided not to, because I was happy with how things were. Now that I’m older, I wish I had thought against that. I wish I had pushed myself a bit more, and maybe challenged the way I thought.

    I’m also realizing that I needed those times to help me think of where I am now, and what choices I want to make today. It’s not something easy, where like all association to things of the past are now gone. It’s still there, and that general sense of lethargy to have difficult conversations about change are there too. I think hard about where I am going towards, and where I hope to be after that time.

    Maybe my risk adversity is slowly lowering, and I’m more willing to take bigger risks. What’s the worst that could really happen? And if I’m willing to deal with that, maybe I should just take the plunge. But if I’m not willing to deal with that, am I willing to deal with the compromise?

    Heavy topics aside, I’ve really been into the budget audiophile niche of MX500 earphones, after the VE Monk Plus. Basically they look like cheap earbuds, but they’re tuned to sound super great. It feels like I have a nice good audiophile level of earbuds, but at a much cheaper cost point. Maybe not audiophile per se, but very nice audio quality. I’ve ordered the FAAEAL, KBear, and other weird sounding names, and I am very excited to try something weird and new all over again. Also trying to figure out what music I enjoy the most on the earbuds, and what level of needing out I wanna get into. It’s really quite fun!

  • The daily grind

    Apparently it was something to note that I had written a blog post every day for three days in a row. WordPress gave me a little achievement award that I had done that.

    And I think that the three day streak is gone now, but at least I have something in mind that I can write forward for. Some gamification for myself, just to make things interesting here.

    Maybe it’s not about the actual content that I produce here, but the consistency that I post with. That’s really the truth of life most of the time right. How consistent are wise with the things that we do? Diets, exercise, money saving, practicing the skills that we’ve learnt. If only we were good at keeping consistent, life would appear so much easier to deal with.

    I guess I could try just being consistent to post something here everyday. That wouldn’t be a chore, because of the nice keyboards I get to type with. It’s really quite fun, and it’s something I like to do. But it’s just on the days when things are so packed, and I just don’t have the time.

    But I’ll learn how to make time. A bit, a line or two, every day. Just grinding it out.

  • How do you combine interests?

    I’ve been thinking for a long time, how do I make sense of the many interests that I have? There’s so many things to do, and so little time in a day. How do I decide what to do each day, and how do I decide which one takes more priority over the other?

    One of strangest things that might amuse any one who has known me for some time, is actually my avid awareness of Minimalism in my life. Inside me somewhere, is this person who actually wants to have nothing inside my house, and to have only the same set of clothes over and over and over again. It’s a dream. Realistically, this will never happen. Not because I don’t want to, but in that Spark Joy theory from Kon Mari, I find that there too many collections of mine that spark joy. I can be brought back to exact moments where I had gotten something and then it finds a renewed place in my heart.

    But this minimalism framework is one of those preceding the rest. Do I get something that I like for the sake of it? Why do I like what I am getting? Am I getting something purely for the uniqueness, or because I truly like and enjoy it.

    This does mean that I have 3-5 of the same black t-shirt, and maybe about 5-7 kinds of black t-shirts. They range in thickness, in length, in quality, in shade of black, the sleeve length, the neck width. You get the picture.

    But I have also specific unique items that only have one of each. For example, I only have one green khaki pants. I have one light tan khaki, and then I have regular black slacks. These are for occasions that I have to be absolutely formal in, and I’d rather have one pair that I have worn for the past 10 years, than to buy a new pair of pants every time I need it for a formal event. Then to resell, or loan those out after that.

    I think the COVID period has been especially hard, because I have a limited amount of places to wear these items to, and therefore the place of “I will use them when I am in the appropriate place” is missing. Technically, the minimalist during this COVID period would throw away most of not all clothes, because there is no need for travel, and therefore, there is only need for a few things. Shorts might be the most common, because of the amount of time spent at home. Which is also what I have gotten more of in the past year. Two pairs of the same type of shorts, in different colors. But they are very nice and stretchy, and I am enjoying them.

    Time based hobbies start next: What will take the most or the least of my time? And because of time, it is also: Which hobbies can I stack together at the same time? So sometimes I watch a number of shows that I really like, as I fix up keyboards. Sometimes, it’s listening to a podcast as I run, because I love to learn now things.

    Because time is so limited, gaming is something that has really dropped so much in the past few years. I really like gaming, and I wish there were more ways to game. It’s so hard, because it takes time, and it’s a single activity. I can’t stack it, as much as I would like to. But recently, because of Clarice’s involvement in streaming and gaming, I’ve began to start gaming a bit more, and using that single time as a specific time to start relaxing it. Although the game itself might not be relaxing, I am forcing myself to just allocate specific time to one thing, instead of stacking. It is a hard effort, but I think it’s needed as I learn how to rest better.

    All this aside, I try to track my days, and my time. It doesn’t always work out how I think it would, but I do make some attempts to. A lot of the time, things get pushed around. But then I write posts like this, and remind myself not to be so hypocritical. Then I restart some hobbies, or I give more focused time. And that works out for me really great in the end.

    I gotta get started reading again!! Personal reminder for myself as I sign off for now.

  • Free

    There was a time when I was considering writing as a side gig, like maybe a possible thing that I could get into. Not so much income, but just another skillet to develop for possible business? Like for fun, the same way I do drawings and things like that. That thought was put through the reins when I was writing a lot on Medium, because I thought that would be a good place where I could get random people to read my posts, and I could get some side money from it. Either that or I could maybe just curate myself better on the go.

    Also at that time, this site was in a huge question mark. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this, and it just felt like I was holding the website for the sake of it. WordPress’ layouts were also kinda boring then. I mean now that I’m here, it’s clear that I can deal with this, but it’s not perfect either, but at least it’s somewhere.

    But over time, I realized I didn’t like writing with other writers on Medium. It felt like I couldn’t really express myself as me, and I had to form myself into a shape that others could understand, something like YouTube. The content needs to be what the rest would be willing to watch.

    That’s not me. I’m not really good with dealing with everyone else. I can do work, and I can be friends with people, but having to write creatively for someone else is not something I enjoyed. I found that I also don’t know how to feel about taking drawing commissions to be honest. It felt like there were things that I didn’t want to do, but I had to make do.

    But because of that, I realized I like writing here, for myself. I honestly don’t care too much if people read it or not, the same way when I had written for others when I was younger, I wrote specifically expressing myself to them. It was good, and I really enjoyed it. It was who I was, and what I wanted to be.

    So now back to this particular site, and for me to write as freely as I would want to, it makes me happy. I am very happy with it indeed. I wish there were more ways for me to express it, but time will tell. I will continue to write here often, and I will continue to share what I learn about myself in this whole time.

    If you’re here and this is the first thing you’re getting to read, please just have fun and see where my mind has been on this site. It’s just a peak, but I promise I’ll explain more about how I think in the time to come.

    All that being said, I’m really keen on having my keyboard that I’m typing with to sound and feel a certain way. But apparently it’ll just be time that will get me there. That’s tough, because I’m honestly not the most patient person in the world. Also because of that, I feel like I might want to get another keyboard just to wear in now, before I want to use it later on as well.

    I really get into way too many hobbies interests that take too much of my time, and I really don’t have that much time. Time to get started again.

    https://youtu.be/XOnCffYzGXo this is the sound of said keyboard. My own video of this will be coming up here real soon. 🙂

  • Produced Productivity

    I find myself always thinking about what I should be doing, and how much more of it. It stems from the idea of being as productive as possible, and how I wish I could maximize my time in the best ways possible. We should be doing as much as we can, as often as we can… right?

    But I find myself so annoyed with myself. There is only one main stressor: Me.

    That’s when I stop my productivity tools, and put them aside, just to find some sense of peace for my own head. I actually put down tools and tasks, and then I just don’t do anything for quite a long period of time. And just when I’m about done feeling sorry for my annoyed self, I get started again, and start doing work.

    It really doesn’t help when YouTube sends me productivity videos to watch real often. It doesn’t help that I’ve subscribed to these things on my feed, and that I’ve got newsletter after newsletter on how I can really be living the best life if I’ve whittled out my philosophies. How I can be more disciplined, how I can be more in tuned with the goals I have for my life.

    So I’m here now, because I was really excited to get started on a few projects, I started to do some of them, but then I got really disillusioned by my own over productivity lifestyle. I was literally just like not sure which thought should go into which bullet journal, or which notion template, or which Trello board. I was just so confused with myself.

    I stopped doing everything for the past few days, stacked with the side effects from the second dose of Pfizer Vaccine. And the break has been good, I think. I couldn’t do anything, and I really didn’t want to. I had no need to feel bad about it, because all I could do was lie in bed.

    Today I got back on track a little bit, started some work. But man, some days are really so much harder than others.

    Current thought: I should just do whatever I wanna do, and write whatever notes I feel like writing in that day. I can sort later, but the work needs to be done, the ideas need to come out of my body.

  • General Updates #1

    I think it would be good to do a certain sense of consistency back again in these thoughts that I place here on this side of things. And this might mean coming up with somewhat of a template to go along. So I’ll begin by introducing some of the things that I’ve been watching, or reading, or listening to. After that I’ll try to introduce you to an idea that I’ve been thinking about. And lastly I’ll make sense of what the world is like to me now, as a creative expression not meant to be taken too seriously.

    Disclaimer

    This is also a time for me to state a disclaimer that these views that I present are my own, not representing the country I’m from (Singapore), neither the organizations that I work with, nor the friends that I socialize with. They are just my views of the world, and my observations with my own biases. My biases are based on my experiences so far, so if it is flawed, it is flawed indeed, because I think that is part of what human life is about.

    With all that aside, let’s get going!

    What I have been struggling to finish:

    I’ve been listening to the recorded lectures on philosophy: Great Ideas in Philosophy, by Dr Daniel Robinson.

    The lectures are 30min monologues, where Dr Daniel presents different philosophies. They’re really quite eye opening, and I try my best to write a short summary after every lecture. This does mean that I’m taking a lot longer than I would for an audio book, but I’m trying to capture as many things as I can. I am aiming to learn for free, in a sense. I did pay for this through audible credits a few years ago, and I am finding the benefits of my previous purchase choices.

    My current thoughts is that it’s a lot less fluff than a podcast, and something more historical. I don’t think I’ll pick up a philosophy textbook, but I am keen to read the original documents, in the range of translations. This would probably take another few years for me to put to actual action, but hey, everyone’s got a side hobby somewhere right.

    It’s really helpful for me to use to engage in a lot of the conversations that we have in modern day. I think that we lack the intellectual depth in our conversations currently. We tend to use very poor logic and weak arguments in how we converse with each other. It becomes quite a mess when we discuss things, and no one understands each other any better. This gives me a chance to understand someone better, and also a chance for a new way of thinking for me to consider; a new philosophy. Maybe one day, our current thoughts would lead us to a new philosophy entirely. Which brings me to…

    A New Philosophy

    What does philosophy look like in modern day? Right now with traditional news mediums in a constant change, and our reliance of social media over news sources, the idea of truth is in constant competition. What is truth in the first place? I think we have been digressing for so long, and we have given into relative truth for an extremely long time. Relative truth being what is real to me, and what exists for me, that becomes my truth.

    But there are many universal truths that we reject because of this. What can be defined as truth needs to have it’s reality set in the world that we experience, that’s for sure. But some of these things apply across all cultures, even more so because of the digital age that we live in.

    The digital age gives way to an international culture, that exists beyond where we have come from. It is like when we traded spices across countries and cultures. We would need to come at a marketplace, at a place of sharing and value is almost uncertain. But common terms need to be defined.

    Right now, with relative moral rights, we are going to and fro countries bringing moral rights as our items of value. Our cultures are adjusting for things like mental health, human rights, and strangely enough, the abstract meme in it’s contextual misappropriation. These values and cultural challenges are seen different by those who are not actively on that forefront trading culture on the Internet. But the world is moving fast, and even the front line cultural traders are barely able to catch up.

    The Reset?

    I think that there should be a reset somewhere. Not total anarchy, although it might approach that bump for sure. I don’t think that we could reach an agreement simply in these days, but with COVID 19, I think that we’ve found a common place to start with. Hopefully we could get to common terms somewhere. But just to put an idea out that there should be a reset somewhere.

    Mechanical Keyboards have been that reset for me. Something that I don’t need to consider my background or culture in. I’ve made friends across the world, people who engage in a non political topic, and just enjoying or discussing our experiences typing. There are preferences for sure, and everyone has certain hot topics within keyboards, but overall, we tend to enjoy the hobby in the nerdiest ways possible.

    Much like how we have seen the motorcar change over the decades, and we found this idea of horsepower and individual movement over a physical plane, I think that Mechanical Keyboards will eventually be that flex of a person’s understanding and status, as one engages with the digital age. The mechanical keyboard is supposed to for a very long time for sure, and with this idea of nostalgia, and humanizing tech, I think this is a very physical engagement of the virtual space. We enjoy the typing experiences, the sounds and feel, and this adds to our “movement”. We have a premium experience of the digital interfaces because of this.

    I’ll probably change my thoughts some time soon, so that would be another disclaimer too. But in case I don’t, this stands as a moment for me to reflect on retrospectively.

    If I do change them, it is a sign of a human, and that would be good. I hope these thoughts mature over time.

  • Hello?

    Does anyone even read these posts anymore? I think one of the worst things that I have installed into my site is the back end stats management. It just sits there telling me that no one is coming in.

    But I’m not really looking for people to come in right? I’m trying to make my space for myself, and to just express freely what I think about the things I’m thinking about.

    For instance, what is the place of my pinky in typing? Does anyone really need to know that? I guess they don’t but it’s a thought that’s open my head and that I might really want to talk about it for some reason. I don’t know how often I’m supposed to use it, but it feels like I really ought to more for some reason.

    I guess if no one reads silly thoughts like these it’s really alright? Or the fact that I tried to place a question in the start of every paragraph. Also, as you might guess, I’m still running off the new keyboard energy, getting myself all hyped up and typing as much as I can.

    What on earth am I really doing this for? Who knows 😉

  • Typing in Bed

    This sounds absolutely ludicrous, but after years, I am finally typing in bed again.

    It’s a thing because when I was much younger, say about 17, 18 years old, I used to love typing in bed, and just spilling my thoughts out. I would write an email newsletter to a range of friends and acquaintances. I would write on LiveJournal, this old blogsite that a lot of us had used back in the day. All these written on my white MacBook, and just rattling away on the built in keyboard.

    It was that where I really enjoyed the idea of typing, and soon after I purchased my Apple Magic Keyboard, so that I could type more and more. I would type from a distance, because I could. And this kept up through my army days as well. I would write on the weekends, and every now and then, just type away on my bed as I thought through things before I slept. It was a really relaxing way to end the day.

    There’s an imagery and scene in my head: view of the street below, with the orange yellow street lights that glowed through the rain trees. The flashes of the zebra crossing, and the cars driving past in sporadic intervals. And then of course, the white glow of the Apple Logo, mirrored against the window glass. Because I would be sitting there typing away, and hoping to make sense of my brain as I put it on an email. Or a post.

    I’m back writing in bed again, after over 10 years.

    Ok, that’s a dramatic statement.

    I’m back writing in bed again, after some time, because I’ve got a keyboard that fits nicely on my lap, and I’m writing on my iPad, as part of WordPress apps that allow it. I couldn’t do this for the past few years, because my white MacBook from my teens, became way too slow. My MacBook Pro from 2014 has also slowed down dramatically, but more because of a faulty battery that I cant deal with so much. And the iMacs that I have cant be carried to bed to type.

    But now, those technical difficulties are put away. More than that, I have a keyboard that is really of such an enjoyable quality, that I am encouraged to type more and more. Thus, this very long post about how I have a new keyboard. The night owl Joel, who loves to write and talk, has been reawakened!

    Stay tuned for a lot more consistent posts… I hope.

  • After Some Time…

    After some time, we get used to things. We become familiar, and we understand how or why something goes a certain way. After some time, emotions and excitement fades. We take things for granted, and we take that as the norm, how things should be.

    After some time, it’s good to take a moment to reflect. Is my life today something special? What’s special about today, and how have I gotten to this point? It’s a moment to be grateful, and to take stock of how we are so far.

    But in through all this, time is key.

    Instead of waiting for today to remember to be grateful, or for us to realise that certain ideas or thoughts have faded, what if we could control the when? What I mean is, if we do check ins periodically, would we ever lose that excitement, or would we ever forget to be grateful? Perhaps gratefulness would just be part of who we are, and every moment is cherished.

    Or maybe it would become another system that we take for granted again, and this idea of when is just one that the human mind cannot fathom in the best way. Maybe having this up and down of remembering and forgetting is something that we just can’t really deal with, if its constant all the time. Something would just need to give way around this circle of life’s priorities.

    When? After some time, that’s when.

  • Decompressing Time

    I’ve been picking up running again, and it’s really been some time since I’ve done any long runs. I’ve been doing runs every now and then, but nothing consistently, and the past two weeks have been me trying my best to get these runs in.

    Because of that, my heels are just dead. I’ve got blisters on blisters and they’re just so sore at times, that its hard to move my feet.

    But I still run, and it gets me into a very interesting place mentally. I’m running and keeping a good stride, and it feels like every step I take pushes the ground beneath my feet. My breath is full in my chest, and I push on, and see either the sun set, or the sun rising.

    And then, some cyclist with no lights rides by really close, with no ringing, and I get this shock of sorts, bringing me down immediately to the earth.

    I hope I either find the best time to run without newbie cyclists, or I get a new route, that I can avoid these people with.

    I need the run to decompress. There are many things that are stored in my head, and especially through a long day, I find myself not letting them out. I need my head for other things, like how to be nice to people, and how to manage things as a whole. But if I don’t decompress, it just stays there.

    There’s probably a deeper scientific reason behind why this is so, and I would like to direct you there one day, but maybe for just today, run longer than you would imagine was possible for you. Maybe you’ve only run 2.4km because it was needed of you to run in school. Go longer than that. Not because you need to hit the distance, but run because you need to decompress too. It’s not about how well you run either, because sometimes when you put so much pressure on that, you run with more stress. Instead, think of moving one foot in front of each other in the simplest way possible.

    Soon, you might be 10km in, and you’ll be enjoying your run a lot more than you had imagined. That’s where I found myself at, at least.

  • Constantly Communicating

    I feel it, deep inside. This constant communication that we are linked to in the modern day.

    Can you imagine years ago, when the Telephone was first being invented? At that time, the ability to call into your friend’s home must have seemed like a huge invention. And over time, it became a hassle when someone would call you, and you would need to answer, if not the ringing wouldn’t stop.

    And then the emails came along, where we could send a letter, without the need to actually post mail. There would be no post man, and everything would be immediate. What an age! You could share your thoughts, and someone could reply you after that, without you having to wait. But then came along the need to reply, and work emails that we try to hide from as much as we can. Or view receipts, that you turn to to see if your friend or colleague had viewed your mail.

    Two words: Instant Message. That was the end of it. No longer just an email, where there would be some what of a title, and a template to fill. Instead, just straight up what a phone call would be. Your friends live in your pocket. Good or bad? No one really knows, and the self help side of the bookstores lean more on the No than Yes.

    That’s where we are today, with our instant messaging, with our constant communication. I feel it, deep inside me.

    It’s not the pings from my friends that I feel. It’s a mix bag of emotions. I feel as if time runs out whenever I take too long to reply someone. I feel as if I did not think hard enough if I pressed enter too quickly. I feel as if the world needs to know and doesn’t really want to know all at once. But I need to share, to make sure they know, right? I need to use my Mechanical Keyboard, to type a message quickly enough, so that they are aware, and that they Do know.

    Also because typing messages with a mechanical keyboard is Oh So Satisfying. What could go wrong?

    But this constant communication that I feel inside me, makes me feel exposed, dried out. I feel too much, because I keep on going and going.

    And I’m typing this post, so that I’m not offloading this to just one person, or a group of friends, but at least to somewhere constructive, where my verbal rants would matter somehow. Somehow placed into a series of paragraphs that would egg on my constant communication.

    And I guess now, I’m about ready to stop communicating. I hope you would communicate with me, whoever you are, reading this. Just say hi, just because you can. 😀

  • My 2nd Anniversary

    In case you did not know, I am married. Married for two years at that. It’s something that I am extremely proud about, because I think making a marriage work for two years is a lot of effort. There were many times when I feel like just throwing everything away and just calling it quits. There were fierce fights, and real debates about how things ought to be done. And it feels silly, especially when you look back at it. Worse still, it feels silly if you hear someone telling you, “Oh when you’re getting ready for marriage, remember to be chill about dish washing.” I will honestly say that dish washing has caused a lot more pain than I expected. It’s so strange, because I think the love that we see from our parents, or some old couple walking along the street, it’s just not that easy. It’s a lot of friction, and it can really hurt.

    But I’m proud because I think Clarice and I have really had that friction and grown past that in huge ways. We’re really not the same people that we had fell in love with. Some parts have remained, but others have grown. I have grown. I am really a different person. I don’t dislike it in any way, I just know that I am really in a good place now, and it took a lot of effort to get here. I am proud, really proud, of our partnership.

    I hope one day I’ll read this post again, and be reminded of how happy and proud I am of my marriage. It is truly a beautiful thing.

  • The Haunting Past

    Every now and then, I sit down and look through the things that I have done before. I don’t usually plan these sessions. I don’t think anyone intentionally goes through a heart wrenching time to reflect on the things that are totally shameful internally. I might be cleaning my room, and I stumble on a box of letters, or a random picture reminding me of a time before, or worse still, chancing on an old picture of a person or myself even.

    If your memory is bad, you might just look at it and even wonder how that photo was taken. But if your memory is pretty solid, you get this huge roller-coaster of anxiety, emotion, nostalgia. Regret becomes one of the biggest things you end up with in your hands. Looking back at the person you were, and really regretting being that guy.

    I don’t think I was ever proud of who I was. I might be really quite happy with who I am today, but it was shaped from a lot of frustration, and a lot of failed attempts at trying to be someone I’m not. On Reddit, the relevant thread is “r/blunderyears“. I was indeed a huge blunder, and it’s really hard to come to terms with what I did as a teenager navigating social spaces. I used to text girls randomly, trying to just go out on dates, and failing horribly. I had emails and letters from ex-girlfriends, who I cheated on, because I had no idea how to deal with relationships and time apart. There were notes where I had tried to be cool in front of other guys, only to find out that I had not been cool at all.

    There were really so many things that I was struggling with in my own head, that I took out on the people around me. They watched me make a mess of so many things, and some of them still stuck around. Some of them became my best men at my wedding. My family also watched me struggle through these things, and they were there, loving me still, and encouraging me to do the right things.

    All this really changes the way that I care for people now. It’s silly, if I were shown so much love and grace, for me not to pay it forward. Then I really wouldn’t have learnt much. It would be just a sad older person, doing the same silly things, and not changing. I learnt how to care, how to stick around, even if someone was not doing the best or ideal thing in their lives. I learnt how to listen, the same way friends had listened to me. That’s definitely shaped who I am today, and who I hope to grow to become more and more. I can be better, because I’ve been shown how to be a better person. It’s the regret in my hands, that restrains me from behaving badly again.

    So when you stumble across items from the past, remember who you were, and embrace it. Remember that that was you, and not who you are today. But at the same time, remember the people that were around you then, and thank them. They stuck around when they really didn’t need to, when you didn’t deserve it. They helped you out when you really didn’t help yourself. That’s grace, and that’s love. Remember to be better today.

  • Missing the Thrill

    When I started looking at keyboard videos, I was really keen on watching this guy:

    I mean Japanese, with really aesthetic videos, and that sweet keyboard sound? What’s not to like? And every time I watched his videos, I imagined that would be me some day, getting to type on a really nice keyboard, and having a really nice video to prove for it.

    And I’ve gotten there! Thankfully. I’m happy with all the different switches that I have, and the kinds of keyboards I’ve gotten to play with. And of course, I’ve got almost the same kinds of keyboards Wabi Sabi has. Or at least that one that I was really excited about .

    But now that I’m here, and looking back, I miss that feeling. I was waiting for keyboards, I was eager and learning. Now I feel stuffed. I feel over satiated. Full of information, full of knowledge and experience. I miss being hungry and waiting for the keyboards. It was an eagerness, and every day I felt I was one day closer to getting something really special; I was really looking forward to it.

    I guess that’s something that I will always remember about that time. The days going to sleep, hearing typing noises, wondering if I ordered the best switches or not. That’s a huge part of the appeal for keyboards, a self perpetuating hype train that will never come back to the train station. Now my keyboard dreams are in another realm of excitement, or maybe it is just level to my other interests. Whatever it is, I’m really glad I had that time to be excited about, to grow through. I wouldn’t have been half the keyboard nerd I am without those videos.

    Thank you to Wabi Sabi, for your Vids.

  • Internalized Thoughts

    There’s different layers that I think we often hide behind as humans. There’s a certain front that I hope people would perceive from interacting with me, there’s a facade of sorts. It’s not bad, but the facade’s usually there because there’s other things that we’re thinking about.

    Maybe it’s the food we ate that we are trying to figure out was healthy or not. Maybe it’s the choice of what we are planning to say next to appear intelligent, or to just allow the person we’re conversing with to talk some more. Maybe it’s the fear of death that looms over our heads, worried of a sudden freak accident.

    The thoughts I have, as I sit behind my keyboards, are not easy to deal with. They’re raw, they’re frustration. They’re sad, they’re just inconsolable. They are happy and just excited to be alive. But the outside doesn’t want to have the emotions outside. Externally, it’s the thoughts can’t exist and have their space to grow, or to finesse themselves. They stay internal for some time.

    Maybe some of the thoughts, and emotions around the thoughts, become well finessed and are expressed in words. The words might appear as a text to a loved one, or a firm command of “Let’s just eat the burger, it’ll be fine.” Some of the thoughts with less shape, but still larger form, pop themselves out as anger, rage, physically manifesting. These would die quickly outside, because they’re not well put together. And the person learns from all this.

    I keep some thoughts to myself, because I don’t think they’re fit for the outside. I keep the facade up, as I choose which to express, and try to finesse the thoughts properly. But because of the experiences from the past, not all the thoughts come out, and some stay internal a lot longer than others.

    And this in itself, is one of my internalized thoughts, now coming to the daylight (or cyberspace).

  • Feedback

    The last post had a bunch of typos, and sounds so weird, but I only knew that with feedback from my wife. Thanks to her, I now know that it sounds like I wrote it drunk.

    And I think that’s something I wish more people told me more often. Do I sound drunk all the time? Is there a way to make sense of myself? Can I improve? Can I become better? I yearn for correction, because I feel like I’m not good enough to discern.

    My balance for what I think ought to be can be easily laid out when thinking for someone else. But for myself, I really struggle to think about what I could do better, and how I could have done it better. I think that I don’t give myself excuses, and that leads me to this weird path of super high self expectations. I don’t think it’s healthy, but I don’t have a better option. So I keep pushing and pushing, until some parts of my ego and thoughts break.

    But that’s where I look for feedback. I am listening to what people are saying to me, and about me, and I try to fix those things. I know that it’s not perfect, but I think I ought to try from there. If not, myself as my master, will lead to utter destruction of my own ego.

    So feedback helps me, and I learn from it.

    It’s not like feedback is easy to listen to. I already struggle to hear my own feedback, I end up going into this mode to fix myself as much as possible. Hearing it from others can be really hurtful, if I take it the wrong way. It’s not to give people an excuse to hurl insults at me, and then adjust to hear the good of what they’re saying. But it’s just simple things like “Could be better”, or “Maybe not like this”. In an overly sensitive state, I could really take that line badly.

    But again, if its for improvement, I really need to think hard about why it was said, and what I could really learn from it. I don’t want to listen only to myself, or only to the good, or only to the worst things ever. I want to hear balanced feedback, so that I could be a better person. Maybe not today, but hopefully soon. That’s really the heart of what I’m considering.

    So if you’re reading this, and I have not heard your feedback properly, please let me know. Tell me. I will be willing to listen, because I hope to improve. Likewise, I hope that you are telling me, so that I can improve. If you give me the space, I will also tell you how to improve as well, through constructive feedback.

  • A Piece of My Mind

    What should be the medium of things on YouTube? The other day I had watched a video on the way cinematography is done on YouTube, and there’s this idea of having things done in presentation style.

    I thought it was really interesting, because I’ve always liked Casey Neistat videos, and I never really knew or understood properly why so. Casey’s videos tend to go through an array of YouTuber Presentation Style, and then some really cinematographic movie style on other shots and angles. Peter McKinnon really makes blows this up, especially with his hardcore B-Roll footage.

    I mean these are two really big YouTubers, and they both present and film footage in similar but not ways. Which makes me really rethink: what exactly is YouTube footage? What makes a YouTube Video a YouTube Video? Must I follow these rules to make a YouTube Channel? What about algorithms and things like that? How do those thoughts play into the video and the channel?

    As you might know, I’ve been watching a ton of keyboard videos. Like really a lot of keyboard stuff. I expect keyboard videos to look a certain way, have certain information that I’m really trying to look out for, and a few other things like that. But when the keyboard video doesn’t have that, I’m quite frustrated, or I might not actually watch the whole video.

    So I guess a question is: What do I hope to achieve in my production of typing videos? What do I want people to go away thinking? Must it look a certain way? I know it currently does, but I’m thinking of title slides, I’m thinking of intro sounds, music, end credits, all sorts of things.

    And at the same time, I’m thinking of really artistic and relaxing videos. Things that appear on minimalism videos, or even just lifestyle videos. Is that possible? Keyboards as a lifestyle? Sketching as a lifestyle?

    I want to try that: I want to announce myself as a lifestyle. I want to share how I think and why I think how I think. But I want it to be appreciated, not studied. I want it to be enjoyed, not mimicked. I don’t know if things like this would turn out that way, and I guess many people have these aims in their heads. But I hope one day, that it would work out that way in the videos I hope to make. (I haven’t even started story boarding them yet lol)

    Also, there are many questions that I’m asking in this post. It’s not directed to anyone, but I just wanted to put all these thoughts out there, because I hope one day to track back and to read how I thought through all these things. And hopefully, my future self will be answering my present self one day.

    What a time to be alive, really.

  • A Bit of a Break

    When someone does something like Pomodoro Timers, or one of the productivity hacks, there’s always this encouragement to take a break as you need it. I like that idea, but I find it so hard to do that. It’s not easy to stop when you’re in the Zone. It’s also not easy to stop when you haven’t got anything started, and procrastination has been your work mate for the past hour, or two. But when you actually stop, get out of your seat and take a break, there’s a relief. Or so they say.

    I find myself struggling with taking breaks because I don’t know what makes up a break time. Is it a walk? But isn’t walking doing something too? Is it getting out of your seat to make coffee? Isn’t that also something work-like as well? What about stretching? Perhaps that would be a break but I know my stretch times feel like a real workout, especially when I need to take out a yoga mat, and a foam roller, to get a proper stretch in the way.

    My personal question for taking breaks is: what constitutes a break? How can this break be the most effective?

    I find my best breaks happen when I choose not to do anything related to that topic for a day. None of that particular action or activity or task. Nothing related in any way to it. It’s the most relaxing, and my mind learns something new in that break day. I can watch any video I want, I can learn a new language, I can go for walks, for marathons. Just nothing of that particular work.

    But it means my work time, with its distractions, are allowed to take the whole day. I will force myself to sit there and accomplish the task when I have set myself the day to do it. No breaks other than going to pee and eat. But pure forced on will power. Am I happy? No. But do I get work done? Yes, 100% yes!

    So just give yourself a break every now and then. Not just the tiny ones that no one knows how to quantify. But just an unrelated day. Don’t do anything related to whatever you were supposed to do. And you might really find yourself in better efficiency. I find myself there at least!

  • The Daily Grind

    Everyday, just waking up, being alive, and being a human being that breathes.

    Unlike human beings that don’t of course.

    Everyday, the work load to clear, or to think through, or just to be responsible about so that the people around me can live life too.

    I live life too of course, just that I think I can balance it pretty well.

    Everyday, needing some coffee, some caffeine, some sugars, some carbs.

    Balanced meals are for balanced people, that we are of course.

    Everyday, steps ahead, one at a time, until finally we are home.

    To restart everything once more for the next. And one day, it’ll all be done. No more new days, just a perpetual one. No more time, because time exists only for the human being who does. No more frustrations, no more responsibilities, no more hunger, no more pain, no more grinding, no more droning on and on about egos and people and everything else that humanity carries in its baggage of existence.

    Just being, and in my case, with God.

    The daily grind, to a halt, with God.

  • Thirty-Two Year Old Soldier

    In Singapore, we have to serve National Service. That’s for about two years, my own time of service was about a year and ten months. It’s part of Singapore’s conscription, because of our really small population. All boys at the age of eighteen are required to serve our National Service to our country, and after that, continue to be operationally ready for the next ten years. That time means that as we start our graduate studies, or enter the workforce, we’re practicing the things that we have learnt in those two years.

    We practice shooting, also known as marksmanship. We also practice attacking and defending, as an army. These things are widely known, so I don’t think I’m saying anything I’m not supposed to be saying. Our operationally ready force would assist our regular army force in times of war, and that makes up Singapore Armed Forces (SAF).

    Every year, my army mates and me are literally drained. We are worn out from the military work that we need to do. We need to be fit, in both our mental and physical capabilities. This period of time is also known as a Reservist period. We are re-servicing ourselves as military men, and ensuring that we’re on tip top form.

    It sounds possible, but honestly, hitting thirty-two this year, I’m feeling it more. Not so much during the actual time that I’m in camp, but the time getting back out to normal everyday life. Every day life is slower, there are less immediate stressors, and you know that technically you could quit at any time. But in the army, there’s no quitting. There’s only doing, and completing the tasks at the time that they’re needed to be done by. It’s a non negotiable. The worst part is that it feels completely irrelevant. It’s in its own bubble and completely not a part of the normalcy that we think of in “living life everyday”. “Seize the day” as a phrase isn’t commonly associated with grabbing your helmet and gear, jumping into a truck, and fighting an imaginary enemy in the jungle. But that’s what we need to do.

    If you suck at being in the military, all you have to do is to imagine a war taking place, and not being able to stop any aggressive enemy. All Singaporean men, whether they like it or not, can do this. There is a certainty of this. But whether they can do this well is a completely different issue. And whether this will even be something tested is even harder to assume. What are the chances that it will be? And by the time we are actually at war, who will be alive to gauge the metrics of success for this conscription army plan? There are too many things at stake for us to not take it seriously enough.

    But like all things that are for our own good, but too far into an unknown future, most Singaporean men can’t imagine this happening. We don’t always appreciate the rigor of this annual military exercise. We enjoy our friends, and we enjoy getting out of work, but there’s always a much deeper reality behind it.

    Maybe it’s about learning what we want to care for and the lengths that we would go to protect it. If we have learnt how to manage finances and investments for our children, perhaps the physical land protection of Singapore is something that we truly ought to consider a lot more. That’s something of value, that money can’t buy. If we lose the country, we’ve lost it all. And I feel that pressure every time I go back to camp, that’s why my time every year is always going to be more stressful than going to work every day.

    I know I’m more of the minority of this view, but I still think it’s something to be said. It’s not a matter of being gregarious, or garang as we would call it, but to me, its a responsibility of protecting the future. A very necessary burden to carry as a male in Singapore.

    In all my examples, I mention Singaporean males, but females do enlist as well. However their enlistment is voluntary, whereas the men are required to by law.

  • What is control?

    This is something I personally need to discuss. Control is something that I find really hard to define, and really hard to express.

    Is it the idea that I can do something? Wouldn’t that be competence? What about the idea of making someone do something that I want them to do? That would sound more like ordering or dictating. What if I nudged them to do it slowly? I guess that would be influence instead.

    But control sounds like all that. Control, as a verb, is defined as “to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command”, “to hold in check; curb”, “to test or verify (a scientific experiment) by a parallel experiment or other standard of comparison.”, and “to eliminate or prevent the flourishing or spread of”. The first definition is the closest to what I’m thinking of.

    To Dominate. Command.

    That’s not something we can do easily. I don’t even think we can do that at all sometimes. We can force it for sure, but we can’t control many things. Often we say that we can’t control the weather, because it’s nature. If the wind blows, we can try to control it, but how do you control wind? We divert wind, making it turn turbines. We use wind to cool us down, because we realise when the wind blows, our heat moves away from us. But then if the wind blows too strong, whatever we have might blow away. The same goes for water, the same goes for the sun, for the natural world around us. We can’t control nature.

    Then why do we think we can control other human beings? Are we not also natural? Why do we think that our thoughts and emotions should be forced onto someone else? To Dominate; Command. How could we command another human being? Are we not smarter than the wind? How does the wind carry intelligence that we do not have? And yet, we can’t control it. Is it the lack of intelligence that gives control? Perhaps control and intelligence are contradictory.

    What are the control points for humans that we try to so hard to keep to? Societal norms: you need to be like this and that in order for us to accept you in as part of society. And we conform, falling to the influence of our forebears, of whom have held up traditions from generations before. Unaware, we are controlled, we are dominated, commanded. We listen, we follow. But we are natural, and we flow. Perhaps in itself, intelligence is control. Because we understand, and we are diverted, like the wind.

    To Dominate; Command.

    But there are many times, when I want to control myself. I am the raging wind, I am the wild dog, untamed. I want to be in control because I do see the societal norms and traditions, and I want to be a part of the normalcy. My mind is quite clear on some of its expectations, but somehow my natural body does not seem to follow suit.

    My body goes against me, my emotions are not in control. I get flustered, I get upset, but these are things that I do not wish for. I am not dominated by myself, I am not in command. Instead, my emotions win over. I am dominated by my natural state, and I am overgrown internally.

    There are scenes of huge winds, crashing waves, and the turmoils of natural disasters. These happen inside me, with my emotions. I feel like a volcano, bubbling deep inside, seething. I feel angry. There are times that I feel like there has been a grey day of rain within my heart. The sadness of loss pouring a downpour, washing away all sense of hope. All constructs of control that were set up, just slipping down the hill like a landslide.

    Nature takes over my control, and I lose control to nature. I am dominated, and I am commanded by my emotions. But somehow, somewhere, there needs to be an assistance from somewhere else. I find that is the point where I find my place in religion, specifically in God.

    I let Him control me; I let God dominate, command.

    But that’s really easier as in idea than in the practical. Next week for part two I guess.

  • For the sake of it

    I used to write on my old blog years ago because I love the sound of the typing I made on the laptop. It sounds stupid then, but wow, what an opposite end of that I have now reached. I’m literally typing now just for the sound of what I’m feeling.

    I’m doing this for the sound of it, I’m doing it for the feels. I’m hammering away, and thinking of what I could possibly type about, just for me to type away on a keyboard. I’m typing with Marshmallow switches by the way, which have this really interesting typing feeling. There are a few videos going through it, but I had to wait some time before getting these switches.

    Just the sound of typing, and that process of thinking, and translating them immediately into words on screen. That’s really relaxing. At the same time, I also have my own preferences in how I do this for writing by hand. And I do have my different pens, inks, and papers. I do this for everything I have. I have specific jeans that I wear for certain days, I have coffees that I drink for a certain bolt of inspiration, I have a specific black T-Shirt that I wear just for days when I feel like I’m literally grinding at work (Uniqlo U Black Round Neck short sleeve T-Shirt).

    The way life is lived matters a lot to me, I guess. There’s no such thing as just doing something “for the sake of it”, or if there is, then the obligation behind that is something that I treasure a lot. I don’t think we should live lives that are done “for the sake of it”, because in a large way, our parents didn’t have us for the sake of just having another human being born into the world. Even if they would say it that way, I would imagine there’s a much larger reason than that. I also think that our ideas of society enforce specific reasoning why we think and act in a certain way, so nothing is really done just because.

    All these thoughts spawning out of me typing because I enjoy the feeling of typing; what a win. I’ve been thinking about typing for awhile. Not because I have anything specific that I want to say. But because I miss enjoying the feeling of just doing that something. It’s an enjoyment in that process of doing it. It’s never done for the sake of it, it’s done purposefully. It’s chosen. It’s needed. It’s what I want to do. It’s what makes me happy.

    I hope you’ve done something that makes you happy today, even if it’s just wearing your socks on the right leg first, then the left. That’s not just putting on socks for the sake of it, it’s your subconscious decision to choose your right leg over your left, and that makes you happy. Try it the other way round. You really might not be that happy, but you might appreciate the way you do it regularly after that.

  • Keyboard Thoughts: Why Type?

    I think that there’s a lot to say about this. But maybe I’ll put it forward in a way that I think makes sense to me.

    I’ve been on this whole keyboard tirade for the past few months. It’s slowing down now purely because I’m really maxing out my budget. I also only have one pair of hands, and that limits how much typing I can do in a day. This doesn’t mean that I’m not interested, but I’m just really slowing down to appreciate it a lot more.

    So why type? What’s the deal with typing and this whole approach to it that I would pour in so much cash, and time, and effort, just to make letters appear on screen? Is there a point to it, other than just plain aesthetics?

    For starters, being trained in design, I do not necessarily agree with the design choices that are presented by the majority of keyboard creators. Many use really standardized typefaces, and they sit blandly on the keycaps. Some do experiment, and they make you smile when you see the type face. One of these is Biip, and his keycap designs are always striking. They hold character.

    Also that RGB, yes yes no? Or maybe no no yes? That bright bar of rainbow colored light just shooting into my eyes. I must admit it has definitely grown on me, rather than me abstaining from it. I used to turn it off immediately when the underglow would start. The stark brightness that just doesn’t make sense. What’s the design problem that they were trying to solve? That dark tables needed lighting? The Apple keyboards had shine through and that works for us great, I think? But there it is, just sitting there, glowing now on the very keyboard I am typing on.

    So what’s the point? Hitting the keys on this chunky bulk, instead of the wireless light taps that we make on the modern keyboard attached to our laptops, or the bluetooth keyboards that are stuck magnetically to our tablet screens. What is the draw?

    I would say preference is the draw. Preference is this word referring to the hot mess of “I’ll do me, you’ll do you”. Preference dictates that gaudy colors shooting out as you type is okay, because that’s what you like. That’s you doing you. Preference means that I don’t have to stick with the shine-through of the Apple Keyboards. Preference is what makes it work.

    Preference pops up quite often in our lives. We have preferences in the way phones that we use. We have preferences in the colors and looks of the clothing that we put on. Preferences also lie between the choices of what kind of utensils, even though fine dining has its set rules. Preferences mean that for some of my meals, I would just like to have a cheese burger please. It means that for others, they would have a salad instead. This means to say that, in the way I am choosing to type, I am choosing to type based on the preference I have at the moment.

    This choice is arbitrary. I would like to say it is not logical. There is no logic to why someone would choose one keyboard preference over another, the same way why we have no “logic” to what clothes we choose to wear. We might have programmed a routine, but to assign a general color to the public sounds completely ridiculous. I am choosing to type with a NovelKey Cream switch, because I can, and I choose to. I like the sound it makes today. I might not feel this way tomorrow, but we can work it out then. I like the options that I can have with mechanical keyboards, and the world just feels better a little bit.

    Just like the expensive running shoes that I had bought to get me started on running, I feel the need to type a lot more when I have a nice keyboard beneath my fingertips. I feel the need to also be accurate, and to type really fast so that the noise of the clacks just ring into my ears. It just snaps so well.

    I have other sounds to liken it to, like the sound of skateboarding on tiled floors. The sound of rain when it hits a piece of cloth. The sound of coffee beans grinding in a hand grinder. The sound of a hi hat in a drum beat. The sound of rhythm, the sound of a beat. But this beat just taps its way around and on your fingers. There’s no need for fidgeting; you’re already letting your fingers dance on an exciting dance floor.

    Because of all that, my happy fingers would like to tell you, that this is why I type, and why I type on a mechanical keyboard.

  • Starting out 2021 with a Clack

    So! Here we are, at the start of another year. I think I wrote a lot more this year than in previous years, and it’s pretty nice. They even have some fancy updates for the WordPress stock templates, which is So Much Easier for me. I don’t like to think through these things about websites and all that much anymore. That being said, I think coding is still a pretty fun thing to get started with. Maybe it could be something that I get more into in the months to come.

    Or maybe I just get used to the things that I already have coming. I have built a few too many keyboards for someone who just got into the Mechanical Keyboard hobby in three months. If you are reading this, and you’re interested, hit me up on Instagram and we can make something happen.

    I’ve been writing little reviews of keyboard things on my discord channel, which is meant for other things but the only thing actually active is keyboard discussions. At this point, I would call it an unhealthy obsession, but that would be admitting that I have an issue with keyboards. The horrors of the truth are reasons why ignorance will always be bliss.

    Maybe I do read a bit too much about keyboards. I have honestly watched so many reviews and listened to so many typing tests that I can honestly tell you the sound profiles that I like. I can also tell you how I feel having been typing or trying to touch type for the past few months. I still hit my backspace with my ring finger instead of my pinky. And my letter B with my right hand instead of my left. The things you find out when you get into split keyboards.

    But I think one of the biggest learning points for me is really the way that life works. The “Needs” vs the “wants”. Things that are good to have, or things that are nice to have, and how all that plays for us in everyday life. Sometimes, we keep waiting, or hoping for the best things to appear, but the biggest lesson I’ve learnt is how The Best is something totally preferential.

    So this year starts with a clack, not a bang. It starts small, consistently, and builds itself around. Last year was such a year to find out about myself, and this year won’t be much different, I imagine. Life will remain somewhat mysterious for myself, and we will eventually get through it.

    Maybe I’ll post some pictures of my keyboard builds here. I currently have not posted them on social media for long, only for stories. The therapy of building a keyboard can really suck me away for hours on end.

    Another maybe, I might start writing stories to place here. I used to write on Medium, or on my own spaces. But maybe now, I’ll house them here, and maybe even do some graphics to go with. We’ll see how that goes.

    also subscribe to my youtube if you haven’t already.

    youtube.com/trisected

  • Miscommunication

    How do you talk to someone who doesn’t understand where you’re coming from? Is the point that you need to push across that important? Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t but I think many times, miscommunication is really a matter of pride and ego. Thank the stoics for their high objectivity, and their reminders of where to place the self in an argument or discussion. If one is misunderstood, where or what should one think or feel after? Should one reach compromise or settle at misunderstanding?

    My thoughts is that the one being misunderstood needs to accept his misunderstood statements, and realize that the world might not ever understand him at his face value. Does this change the way that the world responds to him? It does not. But it does mean that he has no burden to carry towards the misunderstanding. He knows and expects it. He is understanding that the world will most probably misunderstand, unless he clearly explains himself. More than that, there is a necessity to explain himself clearly all the time, because of the expected misunderstanding.

    But it doesn’t end there. He is more likely to get misunderstood all over again. Even though he is explaining more, and trying to make sense even more. That feeling and that processing is difficult, because the explanations themselves are misunderstood.

    And that is where the misunderstood person needs to accept that no one will understand him completely, and its okay. For those that do understand, that’s a great plus point, and friendships can be forged over understanding. For those who don’t understand, that’s also great, because friendships can also be forged over misunderstanding. More time can be spent to help understand people, instead of understanding points.

    This would be immensely more valuable, and honestly, it might help understanding.

  • A Weekly Dose of Whachamacallit

    Some days start off real good. Some days get really funky, and you have no idea why. I think its because everyone has days when they just need a bit of that. You know? That… fizz? That… sense of excitement? It’s just unknown and yet every one knows that days can get really long and arduous without them.

    I find mine snacks, sweet or savory. That perk me up, no matter what my diet might be at that time. Sometimes its not food, because no matter how much I’ve eaten, I’m still listless. That’s when I tend to get into a new hobby. I dive deep, and find myself broke (financially) on the other side.

    Whatever you might call it, you know you need it. It’s kinda human, it’s kinda like gluttony. But its best we know what it is, so that we can give ourselves weekly doses of whatever we might call it. So that we can get ourselves going on our lives just fine.

  • Isaiah 6 and Kanye West

    I have recently been learning about hermeneutics. I learnt about understanding the original message and how it translates to us today, in our modern understanding. During my classes, I was given a chance to explore a passage of my own choice, and I chose Isaiah 6 to look at.

    There is a parallel drawn between Isaiah and King Uzziah. One being a normal person, and another being a King. One claiming to be unworthy, and another claiming to be holy. One was touched by a burning coal, and became cleansed, and another touched by God and became a leper. The parallel lines draw show God’s hand in those who claim their own pride, and those who acknowledge their unworthiness before God.

    Kanye West has been a rapper on my mind for the years past. In the early years of Medium, many music writers wrote about Ye’s greatest album, greatest tracks, and what makes his music so great. By the release of The Life of Pablo, I was a fan. I knew the lyrics, and the beats, and I knew the self proclaiming message he stood behind. My question was, would he ever meet God, and what would he say then.

    Now, in 2019, Kanye West, along with Justin Bieber, and Shia Lebouf, proclaims about his faith in a loud and passionate way. The difference is that Bieber and Lebouf don’t carry the same cultural creative clout that Kanye does. In his political uncorrectness, he proudly voted for Trump in 2016. He was unfollowed by many friends, all this happening months after Kim’s kidnapping in Paris, and Kanye’s own mental breakdown after that. In this time, Kanye’s search for meaning seemed to have started.

    In his Letterman interview, on Netflix, Kanye positions himself as a Christian, or someone aware of who God was. By the release of Jesus is King, Kanye, in multiple interviews states how God is using him. He can’t plan far anymore, because “it’s up to God”. He claims he is like Nebuchadnezzar, being taken down from the height of his own greatness.

    For my link between Isaiah, and Kanye, you need to assume yourself as a creative. In my personal view of my own work, everything I have done, I feel is bad, and I feel that I would never touch it again. I might like some of it, but most of it, I dislike, and I wonder how I even came to that. Kanye, on the other hand, could perform his entire album (808’s and Heartbreak) live, and according to album sequencing, years after the album was made. His trust in his own work was sky high, and he knew it was good.

    But the “Ye” (I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome)” sits there, as an acknowledgement of his own mental instability. He’s not sure anymore, I feel. He starts Sunday Service some time after that, as a place of healing, through the lights, and through the music. A pastor is placed in, and God speaks to Kanye in this time.

    My view is this: for a self righteous artist like Kanye to admit his uncertainty in his music, is his own proclamation of his unworthiness. He does not think he deserves it. I would agree that Nebuchadnezzar would be more fitting an illustration, and Kanye himself stands behind that illustration.

    Parallel aside, what is it about Kanye that makes him familiar, likeable, or just someone to pay attention to? To me, it is his honesty in his expression. The artist who speaks to himself, and tells himself what he thinks. The voice in his own head is the one that he speaks aloud, and as people who hide what we feel, we see his actions as bold, daring, and very interesting. We are intrigued because he lives an extensive celebrity life, doing whatever he wishes, and we are wishing to do the same. Could we one day? Perhaps sooner than later, and perhaps we already are living life the way we want to. Safely, away from the public eye. God forbid we become like Kanye, having to deal with the media, and the focus.

    But that really drives the question, if the world’s cameras are on us, and tracking our Christian stories, would we be faring better or worse than Kanye? In this very specific story, God has indeed called him to fame, and called him to repentance and salvation. If he shies away from the cameras and media, would he be like the Christian who leaves his job in a bank, or as a doctor, and immediately goes to serve in the missionary service? What kind of expectations have we misinformed ourselves about the celebrities who have become Christians, in their celebrity state?

    When a Christian celebrity falls, we talk about it. We wonder why God leads people this way and that. But when a celebrity becomes a Christian, we question it. We wonder if this person even know who God is, and we doubt.

    Perhaps the Christian community could reflect on the refrain from Kanye’s song, Hands On:

    “What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
    They’ll be the first one to judge me
    Make it feel like nobody love me”

    I’m praying for Kanye, and praying for Christians to be loving in their responses, and for the Church to be ready for God to speak to a lot more people. Let us not be the older brother in the prodigal son parable. Let’s rejoice when our brother returns.

  • The Rush to Wait

    The Rush to Wait

    Christmas rushing is always a thing for the year end. It’s so exciting running around shops, hunting for the best discounts that match your friend or family the best. I lose myself at the shelf of red tags stating a large cut from the original price, picking and repicking the items that I was looking for.

    And every year it ends, with me looking at the gift bills, and now with clarice, at least I’ve got her to consider the amounts of money with. Last night we sat down at my table just going throught the costs, and watching the rain on the end of the day and night.

     

    Does life always work on that adrenaline high, where we really rush and get something done, and then we wait for the next thing to look forward to? I know I love the rush because of events and work and stuff. I feel this need for consistency, like the daily something that I had just wrote about before this. I don’t like the drop, so I’d rather have the rush all the time. The only thing about that is that my energy would deplete really quickly.

    Let’s see how things go in the coming year, and I’ll be looking forward to just writing once a day, or just doing something every day.

  • Creative Dilemmas

    Creative Dilemmas

    24 hours in a day is too little. Yes, wildly known fact.

    But the hardest part I find is that my passion level in each interest grows or wanes everyday. For example, last week I really wanted to run. And I still kinda do.

    But today, I awoke and hey, there’s time for a run but I just didn’t feel like running. Instead I drew, and I was quite happy drawing. I watched videos, arranged and organized things, no running or exercise at all. And it was fine. Then I watched some skate videos and felt the same lack of interest.

    The funny thing is that maybe a month or more ago, it was the complete opposite. I was eating up anything skate related at all, and all my efforts were trying to get skateboarding as a priority. Sketching and watercoloring were just things to do so that I could skate around.

    So I really wonder, when and at what time will it stabilize itself? Will there always be a passion conflict for all interests? Or will it all work itself out together?

  • A daily –

    Something.

    Anything.

    After the daily challenges, of lettering and of sketching/inking, I’m feeling the laziness hit me. It’s like when I stopped running, I could feel myself still able to do a 12k run easy, but the physical toll after would be some effort recovering.

    I can draw okay, I just really need to focus. I need to see the shapes and colors and pull them out the same way I did when I did it everyday.

    I can letter okay, but to make it really pop and look professionally acceptable, I need to do it slowly or practice 100 more times than if I were doing it everyday.

    I can think okay, I can process about right. But it takes effort too. I used to write a lot better especially when presentations are due and I’ve got to be eloquent enough for people to understand.

    So something, just anything, everyday.

    Hope you’re ready, cause I’m not.

  • The NEXT generation

    One question I don’t always ask myself is, who will continue what I’m going to do. How will it continue to the people after me, and be the next thing that people do, or pick up? It’s been a question in my mind after spending time listening to the range of entreprenuer audio books, like Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, or currently listening to Steve Jobs by Isaac Walterson.

    I found that both of them use very interesting approaches at their early years. Phil Knight, being an athlete himself, held some part of team dynamics and a dependency on the people around him from his intial years. He constantly saw the people around him as the community and the culture of what eventually became Nike. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, seemed to be quite a unique individual, who prided himself on himself. The people that was placed around him seemed to be out of obligation or need. It didn’t seem that he would have thought of having someone else around, until he saw that they could do something better than he did. Both ways, the companies now don’t have their original leader and it left me wondering, does their founders’ legacy remain? I can safely say that Nike still produces in the same vein or heart of Phil Knight’s original team of people, aiming to change the game always. But I don’t know about Jobs, as Apple seems to be declining in its innovation (Lack of an iPod or iPhone in this current generation).

    As I considered my own work and my own personality, I related more to Jobs, in my individualistic search for my own meaning in life. I feel that many times, the things I do are things that no one else would do. Remembering the times in Army where I picked up two appointments, I took that responsibility out of need. But at the same time, I knew then and I still know that I had a great team that could balance out the ambition of the bosses. I just needed to keep them in check. In that aspect I related to Phil Knight more. Maybe it was this willingness to try that makes a lot of what I do seem hard to replicate.

    I guess the all important question that would affect this post writing the most is, what is my view of God’s leadership/continuity of work? In the writings of Paul to Timothy, there’s a sense of continuing and teaching the next generation. The vision of what happens doesn’t die with Paul or Tim, neither does it die with the people after them. I would like to think that God is the one that continues that work, not the ability or skill of Paul or Timothy, though God did work through them in a mind blowing way. Referencing the older kings of Israel in the Old Testament, someone like King David did an even worse job, as his kids started a revolt against him, and yet God promised him an everlasting kingdom after that.

    Does the world we live in now have a space for a King that lasts forever? How do I deal with this concept of doing a good work that someone else can take over, and yet understand that if I choose not to, God will still raise someone to take over me?

    At the end of the day, I always feel that if God has placed something in my heart to start doing, I need to do it to the best of my abilities, and teach those near me to do the same. With that, I would have done my part, and I would continue to leave the rest to God to finish. After all, I am just human.

  • why?

    Having had a few blogs before and the usual attempts of trying to record my life in different ways, I find myself asking, why another blog and now on trisected.com of all places?

    And so these answers are for myself, more so, than for you, the reader.

    What does trisected mean to me?

    At random, the single word that seemed to describe the sense I get about my life. It was the equal division of three or more parts of my life. Whether they would come together wasn’t the question, but more of a decision to take them apart. And I guess at this stage, it’s a willful attempt to say that it has passed, and now my view of it is from the future.

    The splits

    Or the divisions, my head was toying with either word. But splits sounds funnier.

    The Creative

    The part of me that most people know, or recognize with. Joel the person who can design or draw or do letter things.

    The Christian

    The part of me that holds daily. Joel the guy who went to do Christian work, and is continually learning and growing. I am changed by what God has shown me about what he has done, and that makes me really consider and think through many things.

    This blog stands as that. I understand a little bit about God, and I don’t know, or I try to be as creative as I can be at the same time. These things might or might not come together, and most of the time, I feel only a small group of people do think through these different categories, trying to synthesize them. This blog becomes as a place for me to think aloud and document for myself how my thoughts change over the years.

    I don’t expect everyone to agree, but hopefully you would share your thoughts with me too, as I continue posting my different ideas and thoughts.

    Thanks for reading so far, and otherwise, do look forward to hearing more from me.