My Pastel Coloured Rainbow

'Rainbow' by m-a-s-h-i-m-a-r-o, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

For context and getting the pink elephant out of the room: I am gay, albeit a closeted one in real life — hence the rainbow reference in the title. And this is about a new pledge for myself to take the necessary steps to come out from the closet and manning up should anything bad comes my way.

My Not-So-Little Lie — “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Up till now, I have been adopting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about the fact — probably to a point that I actively avoid being spotted on gaydars and completely evading the customary girlfriend question. With all the candour I could muster: I still manifest a very strong fear deep down of the potential negative consequences: biggest of which being me being alienated or disowned by my …

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A Reflection on Loves Unrequited

'Love' by Noël Zia Lee, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

Reflecting back of all the unrequited relationships that I had in the past, this dawned upon me:

In some relationships, I made the mistake of offering you the past: my charming persona, my credentials, why I am worthy for you. The problem is that the past also have its baggage: the wounds, the scars, the burdens. Not everyone likes to carry the weight of someone else’s issues while they have their plates full. Hence I can only appeal to their logical side, and the risk/reward ratio is not high enough for them to qualify me.

In some relationships, I made the mistake of offering you the future: the vows, the promises, the bright road ahead together. I can write great poems and sing great songs from such a space. It’s certainly way …

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The Loop of Life

'Looking up?' by Brett Lider, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

I’m a believer of the law of attraction: not the “ask and you shall receive” kind but more like the whatever you are now experiencing in life is of your own creation kind.

I stumbled upon the thought when I contemplated the present situation of mine and noticed my perceptions towards my co-workers: to me, it seems that I conveniently match their personality profiles with those of my ex-colleagues whom I’ve worked with. And in a way, I probably have interacted with them in a similar fashion based on the stereotypes or personality buckets that I’ve assigned them to.

The way I’ve described it over a Twitter conversation goes like I’m wearing a rose-tinted glass that I had fixated and interpreted my present with a past environment that I’m …

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The End of Self-Censoring

'(Self) Censored' by Carolyn Tiry, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

Back in the days…

I used to blog a lot, seriously. Checking my archives back when I started, I wrote almost on a daily basis.

Then sometime in 2009, the pace of my writing is starting to slow and I still remembered when I rationalized that I wouldn’t want to harp on common themes that I had written for years: on long introspective thoughts that touches on my emotional states, my fears and weaknesses as I embark on my journey towards adulthood, my dreams for the future, as well as the turmoil and heartbreak I have gone through as a closeted homosexual and a string of unrequited crushes towards straight men who are in a long-term committed relationship with their girlfriends.

And so I thought it would be more constructive for myself to write …

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Why Setting Deadlines for Yourself is a Bad Idea

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

'Feeling Gray' by Seh Hui

Before starting the project:

Got a great project idea, feel really pumped up about it and getting ready to make that first dash.

Read Seth Godin’s Linchpin and liked the ideas that linchpins ship. Decided to follow Seth Godin’s advice of setting a deadline and ship no matter what.

“Let’s make something out next week then! Just this small tiny feature will do.”

Feel good about being so decisive and get to work.

One week later…

Staring at bits and pieces of stuff that has been hacked together. Everything seems to only barely being able to support itself while it wobbles around like jello. Worse, it does practically nothing while all it does is just taking space.

There I was: dejected and frustrated, staring blankly at the piece of junk that’s …

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Questioning Goals

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

'Someday my dream will come true…' by Seh Hui

Fresh out of college, I had always dreamed of becoming a millionaire. “With such amount of money, I’d then be financial free and I could a care-free life!” With that rosy goal brewing in my mind, I would constantly imagine of the things I could do with such an amount of money: the fancy studio apartment unit, the beaches I could go to, how proud my friends and family would be…

So I took the obvious path as all the kind adults has pointed out to me: study hard and land a job at a well-known, large-cap company. And the next thing I know, I got lucky – I got a prize in a programming competition and I landed my first job at one of the most prestigious IT companies in Malaysia. Just the mention …

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Public Diary: Is It a Good Idea?

'Secret Book #1' by Randy Cox, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

This morning I finally took out my old LiveJournal backups and have them restored over to this site: that’s after a few months since I took the site down. That has always been the plan as I decided to consolidate my personal blog and website into one. But what really happened is that as soon as I took down the site on LiveJournal: I suddenly doubt whether I should keep them in online circulation.

At that time it suddenly dawned upon me on why I felt that way: The older post are more close to a nature to a personal diary; and despite the fact that I had no qualms making it public at the time of writing it, once I have taken those posts down, they are effectively private until I posted them …

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Handling Online Persona

'South Wall' by Jaxonista, Flickr

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

Recently I found out a personal blog that I’d been following has been deleted after the blogger found himself in a thorny situation with gossips revolving around blog posts that he’d posted online a long time ago. Obviously I could really relate to such an incident and being sucked into any kind of drama is never my kind of fun.

But let’s face it: in an online world, your privacy is never guaranteed (even if you used a pseudonym/nickname) and you’ve to expect that your online conduct will always go onto public record, with or without your consent. While it’s still possible to create pseudo online identities without having your cover blown, carrying out detective work to trace identities are also not as hard as one seems.

Making matters …

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Cultivating Strengths

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

'Cultivation' by Seh Hui

Personally I’m really a big fan of Marcus Buckingham’s “Now, Discover Your Strengths”, which advocates the importance of focusing on our strengths and harness that in-born powerhouse to achieve greatness. One great thing about the book is that it gave exclusive access to their Strengths Finder online test which leaves you with an accurate profile of five strength themes that you possessed, based on their intesive academic research and a large dataset of individuals who have taken the same test and later studied.

Two week ago, Sam Radford and his readers discussed about my strengths profile, engaging in a discussion as I attempt to explore new territories in explaining how I feel about these strengths and how have I (or have not) utilize them in my own life. In the discussion, I mainly …

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Today’s Drifting Thoughts: Commitment

'Car Catalogue' by Seh Hui

Seh Hui Leong

Reflections

Eight months ago, I agonized myself with the thought of car ownership. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience as there’s two “blocker” thoughts that runs uncomfortably through my veins: the negative connotation of carrying debt (I was effectively debt-free at that point of time) and the fear of driving. Both of these things literally shrink my balls (ahem, being a guy, guess that’s the best illustration of how I felt :p), but in the end, I managed to get away with it.

Fast forward eight months later, as in now, I find myself revisiting the topic of credit, and of a bigger scale, no less.

You see, with my recent decision to move back to Kuala Lumpur, I was presented with an overwhelming amount of options: each with its own set of …

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