Major Shifts – The Adventures Continues
A lot has happened in my two months of blogging absence: I just changed my job, gave a public presentation (and yes, it’s still sends shivers and trembles down my spine) and travelled to Australia.
What I have achieved is the past two months still feels surreal after everything has transcended. Not all of them ended well, well… the public presentation in particular, still I’m feeling the exhilaration that passed through every fibre in my body with these new experiences I’ve acquired.
To others, these seemed to be insignificant baby steps – yet through these actions and experience I gained a strong sense of empowerment that I’m taking control over my life.
As for what I’m currently doing, I’m now pushing my limits actively – one tiny bit at a time …
Continue Reading (284 words, 2 minute read)The Joys of Cooking
Since middle of last year, I made the effort to cook myself meals during the weekends.
Usually, it’s just a simple rotation of udon noodles with miso soup in a hotpot, Chinese chow mien and spaghetti with Ragu or Heinz spaghetti sauce on them. Nothing particularly fancy or hard to make.
The original intention is that I would want to pick up a life skill and just making sure that I ate more sumptuously and healthily during the weekends.
As the routine goes on, I’m starting to develop a love for cooking. Like any new skill, it started off with a more frustrating journey with puzzle pieces scattered around the floor: it’s not just about cooking skills but also the other process that goes before and after the cooking – from planning meals …
Continue Reading (317 words, 2 minute read)The End of Self-Censoring
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 …
Continue Reading (759 words, 4 minute read)Intuition
I couldn’t put it more succinct than that.
This particularly applies to my current situation when I find myself restless and constantly seeking out for answers. Combined with my natural tendencies to hoard, I would overload myself with information on how to do something, believing that I need to know everything I possibly can before making the move.
And I forget that the main barrier is actually not taking the first step to make it happens. It’s way more important to allow myself to stop and turn within, as there are answers that I couldn’t possibly seek from the outside.
Honestly I haven’t allow my intuition to flow through me. It’s time for me to slow down and cultivate a space for myself to tune in and tap into that …
Continue Reading (141 words, 1 minute read)Desperations of a Shy Guy
Some day in the future I’ll be looking back and laugh at myself over this, but that’s OK.
Overwhelm as a Warning Sign
“Overwhelm is a sign of misaligned priorities.” was what I tweeted a while back.
Especially if you fail to say no, delegate tasks or have an inability to postpone certain tasks if need be. This reminds me a lot of Steven Covey’s First Things First (if you constantly find yourself putting out fires, something’s terribly wrong) and David Allen’s Getting Things Done (the importance of being able to immediately categorize incoming tasks and file them away somewhere if it doesn’t need to be handled immediately).
Getting myself organized and getting things done are two of the key skills that I constantly need to learn and improve upon. I really loved how David described that it’s like going to a dojo everyday, where constant ritual practice is crucial to master the …
Continue Reading (172 words, 1 minute read)My Brief Visit in Singapore
Last Saturday I finally set foot on Singapore. As a Malaysian, usually that’s the first overseas destination, especially after considering the fact that Singapore is a popular destination for primary schools to have their graduation trip.
This was really a short trip with two strong motivations for me to be there: Geekcamp Singapore and the day when I finally get my hands on the iPad. That goes without saying that I’m really excited about the trip.
Geekcamp turns out to be awesome and I really regret that I was only able to be there for half of the sessions. Partly due to our delayed flight as well having myself slipping away during the lunch break to hunt down the iPad. It’s really hard not to be envious towards the Singaporeans seeing the …
Continue Reading (587 words, 3 minute read)Hustle Hustle
Am in a hustling mode these days, spending hours till late to work on two personal projects of mine: Mutual Tracker as well as Fix My Meeting.
Honestly been hitting several motivational brick walls with Fix My Meeting. The act of creating is hard: it’s often a constant battle with my own flaws such as procrastination, fatigue, occasional disinterest, frustration, self-doubt and fear. Seth Godin term such this phase as “The Dip”: the time when the initial enthusiasm peters off and the frustrations starts to kick in.
It’s good that I had several unimplemented features for Mutual Tracker which I had in the back-burner for months. Though admittedly the reason I had features for it being left at the back-burner is the fact that I couldn’t get over the dip during that …
Continue Reading (239 words, 1 minute read)Zoning Out: Channeling the Unconscious
I got my first Moleskine notebook, thanks to the 20% notebook sale Cziplee is having. I’m a nerd when it comes to stationery :).
As I took the train home, just to kill time I start to doodle on the cover page. It started off with some random patterns on the top-right corner of the page. As I go on, it’s almost as if I’m got into a trance: engrossing and engaging in this creative activity. I would then go on adding random basic shapes that don’t resemble anything and the doodles organically spreads out until it filled up the page. By the time when I completed it, the train stops at exactly the station where I’m supposed to get off.
I recall a study mentioning that every doodle reflects a …
Continue Reading (233 words, 1 minute read)The iPad Shopping Marathon and #geekcamp
Just to make damn sure that I could get my hands on an iPad, this is what I ended up with:
The worst case scenario would mean that I’m embarking on a journey as epic as The Amazing Race: the distance itself to visit every store could add up to a full marathon, if not more.
… or maybe it’s wake-up call that I need more friends who could help me buy it from Apple Online Store instead?
If you had noticed, I’ll be attending GeekCamp Singapore, which will be held at Singapore Management University on 4 September 2010. I’m totally excited about it seeing the list of topics that were covered: from face recognition to iAds.
Looking forward to see you there! 😊
