Usually when I am having lunch in a shopping mall, I’d set myself down into a state which I tuned out all the hustles and bustles that goes around me. Clattering trolleys, howling children, the drowning noise of idle chatter among shoppers don’t bother me as I enjoyed my meal in this internal oasis of peace.

One day, I sense something curious passing by – and for the first time I lift my head and it was an unusual sight. I saw a young woman, probably in her twenties, fashioning a look that was pretty odd for this age: her overly large glasses, freckled face and sporting pony tails, which looked liked a cross between Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

As she strides past me, I notice that she’s holding handle bars but …

This is one of the earliest quotes that I’d conceived and has since become one of my key supports I lean upon.

This especially rings true when life’s a mess and the future seemed bleak and shrouded in darkness. While it’s easier to wallow in self-pity, this is exactly when one should police the thoughts that goes through our minds. No light can come in if you allow yourself to drown deeper into a negative spiral of despair.

It takes courage to accept our sorrows and the undesirable state we are in. It takes effort to pick ourselves up and take a correction course to improve or change our situation. It takes confidence to trust ourselves that we have the skills, resources and ability to pull it off and overcoming obstacles ahead …

As soon as I read the term “brain fart” in Neil Strauss‘ The Rules of the Game, I’m amused by the term.

In the third chapter of the book, Neil talks about how our voice is our identity and the importance of vocal training and speaking with confidence. The chapter highlights a list of common problems and one of the greatest enemies of speaking with confidence is brain farts, otherwise known as pausers.

He elaborated that we learned to use meaningless utterances of words and phrases like um, uh, like, you know as placeholders to make sure we don’t lose anyone’s attention while thinking what to say next, or as a sonar system to make sure other people understands and agrees with what we are saying.

These pausers, although being convenient, actually …

I like mangoes ever since as I was a kid. And when I got huge, sweet and freshly picked mangoes from my dad, I’m pretty excited!

A few days later, I’m peeling and slicing through one of the mango excitedly – my mouth waters as I imagine the juicy cubes of the fruit melts into my mouth. The smoothness of texture, its sweetness flowing down…

Then I noticed something black with fine brown grains… a rotten patch.

The horror! Shivers goes down my spine, the hand holding the mango trembling. My eyes are projecting hallucinations of seeing worms crawling out of them despite there were none (blame the teachers who insist of drawing a worm crawling out of a rotten apple).

It’s only later then I overcome the feeling that I carefully separated …

Mine came in the form of a Facebook game, Bejeweled Biltz. Knowing Popcap had a long string of addictive casual games, I should have known better. It does not necessarily come in the form of a game (for most I suppose it’s managing a farm); it could easily be any activity that contribute extremely little or no value but to show some form of “busy-ness”.

Usually it’s a bad sign when such distractions happened too often.

That’s my way of describing my uncertainties and my fear of the unknown.

Please suggest a more empowering image that I could draw upon when such a feeling arises: you know, so to make my leap of faith easier. I’d be extremely grateful for that :-).

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 …

This art is inspired by a gushing sense of loneliness as I was waiting for a bus on an empty bench. Emotions is like a weird, oblivious friend at times that invite themselves into the house whether you wanted them or not.

Looking blankly at the empty seat beside me, I’m starting to imagine: what if there’s an imaginary friend sitting next to me? How would he look like? What conversations would we strike up before we have to part ways as we go into different ways? As loneliness induced state-of-mind abhors a void, my mind conjures an imaginary scene to augment an undesirable reality.

As I was contemplating the scenario imaginary exercise, a zen-like feeling struck me and I ended up with this illustration with a grammatically weird quote.

… not that I’m able to say it out loud without being stared at.

P/S: to suspecting or surprised friends who are reading this: there’s nothing wrong with your eyes.