Easy goes exploring

How many times have you felt like you really wanted to do something, but could never push yourself to take the step? 'Oh, it's too hard' or 'I'm afraid to hurt someone else's feelings' are some common excuses we come up for ourselves. I understand, I do that all the time. It's easy to confine ourselves to the bubble which we are already so familiar with. Yet, how often do we take the proactive step to pop the bubble? It's certainly scary. We've been taught to always have a plan, to be considerate of others' feelings, and to not embarrass ourselves. In the highly judgemental society we live in, almost everyone's afraid of being judged in one way or another. Not just for our external appearance, but the things we do too. The truth is, we all are probably being judged when we're out in public. But should we really care so much about what others think? A couple of months ago, I watched Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain , a fantastically w...

Toddlers and kids are always taught to get their hands dirty and create something. Whatever that 'something' is - a drawing, clay figures, or some (usually discordant) song that involves out-of-tune belting. That's because creating things give kids this sense of autonomy. They learn to create something that is uniquely theirs. Regardless of which part of the world you grew up in, this focus on creating things slowly gets replaced by monotonous 'results' - which often leave no room for exploration of the creation of things.  I can't recall when exactly I stopped caring so much about creating things, which is strange because art and music classes only stopped after secondary two (usually age 14) here in SG. There still persisted the occasional 'presentations' where we all had to make our own slides, or activities the more passionate teachers took pride in making us create something. But I guess they didn't stick particularly well, because I don't s...

Read the previous post first! Thanks for reading my last post, and the great feedback many of you gave me. It gives me a little bit of motivation to keep writing, however sporadically. I know I didn't expound on a lot of terms in the last post - what 'reminders of mortality' and 'spiritually nourishing' really mean to me. But it was an intentional choice that quite reflected my state of mind at the point of writing (something that I find myself leaning towards more and more). To keep the writing true to myself, I actually prefer writing posts in a single sitting. I often find it difficult to continue a draft after some time; in fact, I have 8 drafts currently, some of which I haven't added a new word in over 6 months (hopefully I eventually get to them!). Inspiration is a tricky thing. Anyway, I digress.  So let's fill you in with more context here: over the Chinese New Year celebrations here in SG, one of my aunts had such severe knee pain (cartilage wearin...

This was what my good friend Juan told me recently. 'What a beautiful sentence' was my immediate thought. Since then, I haven't stopped thinking about it. Is this really true? Are there any exceptions? What qualifies as reminders of mortality? How do different individuals experience it? What even is the human spirit, if there is such a thing? The 21st century urbanophile too often interprets spirtuality as religion. They are fundamentally different, although they can intersect. Religion prescribes rules and laws, and are usually dogmatic (albeit with varying degrees). Spirituality is about seeking out what it means to be human again (there are many different arguments, but this is what I see it as). And a spiritual individual is able to internalise their feelings. We can't necessarily control how our feelings arise, but we can try be in touch with them and choose how we react to these feelings.   Just earlier this morning, I went for a walk in Macritchie. It was...

How do I describe what this feel like? Bit of nostalgia, a tinge of sadness, some bittersweetness, some joy. And some physical fatigue. But I feel pretty good overall. It's been a while since I've felt something like this.   Two good friends of mine came over from the UK to visit Singapore for the past few days. Silly, funny, happy moments ensued. But amid all these laughter, the deep convos hit hard. It's made me realise how much I've missed having different persepectives on life, and learning about random things. There's no expectation of talking about anything specific, or having to necessarily be doing something.  They remind me that life can be simple sometimes. Good food, good weather, with the right company. Work seems so far away from it all. The meaning of life doesn't always have to be about achieving big things. At the end of the day, we're all just dependent on our social relationships to keep us sane and healthy in this age of division. You can...

  AI-generated image of a bee chilling in the mountains with a pint. I was chatting with Ethan about silly things and we came up with this. The bee sure looks like they're resting. I'm envious.   It's elusive.  Thanks to my surgery, I had more than enough time to 'rest'. It was honestly a strange feeling: having no obligation to do anything, not even chores. Even when we're on leave or on the weekends, there are still things to do. I didn't have to go out to meet friends, cook, work or even do anything I didn't have to. The only thing I diligently did was my physio exercises.  So what did I end up doing most of the time? Definitely read a lot. Had the opportunity to pick up a lot of books I've wanted to read for a while, but could never motivate myself to pick them up. I won't go too deep into the details, but you can read my previous post about reading fiction. But reading is one of those activities which we don't perceive as resting, but th...

Do you remember the last fiction book you read?  This post isn't about bashing non-readers nor non-fiction books. We obviously should also read more non-fiction, if we're even reading at all. But fiction books are seriously under-read, especially in our achievement-focused hypercapitalistic nation that is Singapore. Even in recent years when our high-level ministers have been promoting reading, it has always been about non-fiction books. Seems like the only place where fiction is acceptable is by kids . Why aren't adults encouraged to read more fiction?  The human psyche itself is wired to live on stories. In fact, the fundamental essence of human society is based on stories. Yuval Noah Harari talked about this 'intersubjective reality' in his books Sapiens and Homo Deus (non-fiction, yes) as the basis for why humans outcompeted every other species, even our other  Homo  genus ancestors. The government obviously recognises this; that's why every national da...

I've been wanting to write about my travels for a while. But I've never found the motivation to. In fact I've been trying to write this piece for a few months now, but have not been pleased with it (inner perfectonist oops). The times when I did actually try to set up a new travel blog using wordpress, I got pissed off at its user interface (cos I hadn't paid at that point, it refused to let me use the theme I wanted! annoying!). Anyway I finally figured out how to make the pages with multiple posts on Blogger (took me long enough lol), so I'll be recounting most of my travels during my 3 years adventure as a university student in London. I'll definitely cover London at some point, but for now I'm going to focusing on my trips (at least 1 night) outside London. I'll do it the most boring way possible - chronologically. Call me out for that, but it's convenient for me to relive my experiences through my gallery too. Anyway, here we go: first stop, the...

Some days I feel like I've not been a great person. I forget to check in with friends, raise my voice when speaking with the parents, and just can't empathise with the stories of tragedy that people document on social media. Doing nice things for others feel harder. Or that I've just begun to do it less and less. It's like I don't have any emotional bandwith to deal with all these things anymore. Is this just a natural part of being an adult? It really isn't fun. Don't worry, I'm not depressed. Just feeling more frustration at loads of things. Work, obviously. Do people really have nothing else to do in their lives but work? Sending an email at 2.30am? Why would you do that to yourself? As I type this I feel a surge of anger rising from my belly. Or is it just confusion? I don't know. What a strange place we're all living in.  The world itself is spinning out of control. Wars breaking out, news about the latest new 'law' Trump has mad...