I like to think everyone has their own world, their ecosystem. Their ideas, thoughts, and inner dialogue portrayed as vibrant flora and the livelihood which grazes upon it. These conceptual spheres of mental life can vary so much from person to person and hinge on the climate, altitude, and culture they nurture theirs’ in. That means someone’s world can be the most animated rainforest while another’s can resemble the driest of desert storms.
I also like to think that most people like to keep their planet pretty, well-maintained and overall happy to reside in. To do that, it’s nothing more straightforward than three things: sunlight, water, and nutritious soil. Life is also simple in a sort of way: as long as you keep your fundamentals intact (physical, mental health, and financial well-being), you’re well-rounded and maybe even attractive to others because of how good you are at being so great at the simplest things. …
This year was very eventful for music lovers. I also think it is a great time for casual listeners to be a little more adventurous with their music taste. There has never been a greater time for a laidback pop genre fan to get hooked to the futuristic genre of hyperpop and just banging your head to 100 gecs or asking for your favorite vocalist to scream in your ear or breathe down your neck… What?
There’s a part of me that feels that this year was a little staler than past years. That is obviously not true when I look back at how much great music was released in these 12 months. …
Reflecting on the ‘dumpster fire’ year and what it means to me.
This year was a lot.
This year was the most eventful for me (and I’m sure it was for a lot of people as well). What is more peculiar about the year is that more than half of the time, nothing eventful happened ever since lockdown was in place.
To review the year 2020 is to review a human phase, to review the unwanted exponential growth, to look back at the cruel moments you force yourself to be grateful for and the power to look forward with some ambitious optimism for the better. In this case, I’ve never used the adjective ‘ambitious’ to be so laden with sarcastic negativity. If this was a year ago, being ‘ambitious’ meant being hopeful or at least that was what I believed in. …
The recent news reporting has not allowed us to voice our dissatisfaction fully towards our elected representatives and their actions.
Every government has the positive duty to ensure that peaceful protests are the country’s prominent form of the citizens’ dissenting voice. Yet, ironically no government wishes to deal with demonstrations against its policies and rule. This begs the question, which is the government’s actual priority: to give the public strong enough avenues to voice their upsets or to hold their ground in administration?
The answer to the above question varies, from country to country. To allow protests to happen is to give permission to citizens to rebuke existing policies and schemes of which a supermajority of Parliament approved that these initiatives sanctioned towards the very citizens dissenting would have been plenty beneficial. …
In my room, on the wall next to my bed, there’s a decorative corkboard. On the board, there are labels identified in different colors of mini sticky notes with different emotions written onto it. Each piece has a cluster of pins underneath it. Before the day comes to an end, I have to shrink everything that has happened on that day into a pin to a single emotion.
I started doing this after the _ th session with my therapist. She said coming to terms with your feelings would help me better understand myself than she or anyone could hope to tell. When it first started out, I made 5 labels with their respective emotions on a relatively smaller board. …
I overthink.
When I admit this personal habit to others, they always say the same thing: “Careful, overthinking kills.”
I overthink everything, especially on the people who have no connection to me. Strangers. Sometimes, I witness an interaction between two people and I find one of the two really attracted me in the way they act, behave, and speak. Maybe it is their friendliness; maybe it is the way they choose their words. …
A bit of a clickbait in the title, but I’m unapologetic as to changing it, just like how many politicians are not remorseful of the qualities they fall short in or the things they could have done better.
Over the past few months, the political climate worldwide took a big shift in power dynamics. That’s not to say that the federal power of many countries have changed as most hierarchies remain untouched. Nonetheless, a lot more individuals are expressing themselves in their attempt to put their representatives accountable to the decisions they made. For us people who believe in democracy (one vote, one value), it is truly inspiring and empowering to see people as young as me being so vocal and brave when putting their beliefs and opinions out in the open. Personally, what’s uplifting about this youth empowerment movement was that most of these people were not politicians. They are everyday people. …
This is a blogpost on faith, Christianity, and friendship.
For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7; ESV)
A few weeks ago, while I was ‘trapped’ in a quarantine center for 2 weeks as I arrived home from my overseas studies, I and a good friend of mine were chatting online. Both of us casually raised the idea of writing out our thoughts as living Christians. Below are those opinions materialized in proper wording: the first one from him and the second one from me.
It’s interesting to see the different styles in writing from both of us. It’s a sort of glimpse into how we live our lives in Christ. We are both Christians but we have different perspectives and attitudes towards life as a whole. …
I despise small talk, it’s a ‘me-thing’. Actually, it’s an introvert thing. Coming from a legal education background, nothing makes me more anxious than being surrounded and engulfed by law students. Whenever I attended workshops and law seminars for the sake of learning more about the legal industry or just to put something extra in my CV, the worst part of these events for me were when the guest speeches ended and the real talking began: the networking sessions.
Should I explain why I care little for small talk? Throughout my life, I always had the impression that small talk was merely conventional, born out of habit and that people do not actually like to partake in it. That personal impression changed when I started legal education. I noticed the vast majority of the people around me were extroverted and outgoing. A lot of them do enjoy engaging in such conversations, where any response to the subject matter is unlikely to create frowns or be controversial in nature. The conversation is very polite in scope even if the manner that they talk in can be a bit raw, unfiltered or insensitive. …
Banana (slang): A (typically) Chinese born into a Western environment and are more inclined towards Western culture compared to their familiars’ traditional values. They usually consider English to be their primary language of communication and are not as fluent in Mandarin or any Chinese dialect or capable of holding up a conversation in the latter two at all.
Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
Double Consciousness
I was reading a book by the critical thinking Dissect podcast host, Cole Cuchna called The Blacker The Berry . The book analyses the lyrical context together with the historical and contemporary African American politics behind Compton-bred rapper, Kendrick Lamar’s upbringing. It commits to exploring the song in accord with how the music flowed, unpacking the poetic genius of Kendrick’s penmanship piece-by-piece. …
