I'm trying to make the habit of blogging once a week, consistently, especially since it isn't even a difficult thing to do.

To be honest, I felt like I've been overly-emotionally-invested in the game project (GAM) in school, hence I've always been trying to fix things, such as the unfun-ness of the game, the bugs (I mean, I don't really have a choice), the (possibly perceived) disorganised nature of our workflow, etc. It was tiring. So, I decided to take a few steps back and chill. This reflects in life as well, since I tend to worry too much.

So, instead of being intense and overthinking and all that, I want to talk about a few small things that make me happy these few weeks.

Arrow
So, Arrow used to be good back when in seasons 1 and 2. Then, seasons 3 and 4 happened but I persisted through them. Now, this season seems to be going really well, seeing that they're reducing the screen time they give Curtis (he's annoying af), removing the power rangers aspect of the show (a bunch of heroes punching bad guys), and actually creating believable arcs for characters.

In the previous season, Dinah's story had been forced. This season, it was a lot more grounded. One thing that they still refuse to change and probably never will is that they insist on shining the spotlight on Felicity and they insist on making her annoying and they insist on disacknowledging that.

Still, this season is pretty good so far and that makes me happy.

Maplestory 2
I just downloaded and started playing this. Unlike Maple Story itself and Maple M, this isn't all about being ridiculously overpowered and gaining 20000 levels in 5 seconds. It has nice OST, many of them remastered versions of old themes (eg. Lith habour theme, cash shop theme) and they're pretty good!

Upcoming Vietnam Trip
My family is heading to Vietnam during my holiday. Although family trips are not super fun (to be honest), it looks to be a beautiful place and I've always wanted to visit Vietnam.

Upcoming(ish) Overseas Immersion Programme
About 2/3 of a year later, we'll be heading over to Redmond Campus in Washington for an immersion programme where we take classes there. It's expensive af but I heard that the whole trip is really nice and we get to live in apartments rather than dorms and things like that. I hope it'll be fun.

Asian Youth Theatre Festival
To be honest, I included this here just to document what I did recently (aka today) since it's fresh in my mind and I'm used to listing down things I did in this blog. It's not that awesome because I only watched one play. That's not to say it wasn't good. It was. But, I only watched one.

Anyway, it was a play done by hearing-impaired performers from Laos and a puppeteer. It was pretty funny. I don't usually watch many plays, but occasional exposure to elements of it have been nice and I do want to go watch some serious ones some time when I'm less poor.

Others
There are many little pleasures, mostly involving no-life things such as manga, books, and shows. Legend of Tomorrow is great, a new manga that I've been reading has been really entertaining (High-Rise Invasion), etc etc.

Oh, and Game of Thrones finally received an air month! It's about the same period as when we were supposed to fly over to US, so I guess that's two things to look forward to.

On that note, I'm trying to shift from a look-forward mentality to a contentment kind of mentality. I get so negative that sometimes looking forward to things just become an escape. When those things do come, I often just find more stuff to look forward to.

So, I guess that's it for this week. Maybe next week I'll write about something more focused.

Speaking of next week, I forgot to mention that I participated in a pitching competition by the Singapore Writers Association and it makes me happy to learn that I've been shortlisted to pitch to a panel next week. I'm kind of scared, to be honest, but it's just one day so I should survive.

Yeah, so I'll see how things go.

Labels: future, shows, things that happened

So during today's Fiction Writing class, we were given a short exercise to write about a moment in which we had to make a "critical choice" (it was a lesson about story structure). It kind of reminded me of something that happened at the start of this semester, which isn't super exciting but let's just talk about it anyway.

Before we get there, let's talk about the three most important things to me in university (not in life, just in university):

1. Gaining recognition, forming connections, securing a job - this includes building a network (sigh), scoring well, and gaining skills and experiences.

2. Having an exciting time that goes beyond studying and having dinner. This means having the kind of experience that I will miss when I look back from the future.

3. Fulfilling things that I've always wanted to do, such as having an active lifestyle and doing a sport - having a sport that I can say is "my sport".

Let's just talk about #3. Basically: It didn't/couldn't happen. I couldn't make it.

First, I joined Canoe, but I quit because I got impatient and I felt like I wasn't connecting well with the people there. It's a recurring thing in my life. Then, I thought things would be better after I joined water polo. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I made some great friends there, I just wasn't good enough. Everyone was preparing to go for a competition and my fundamentals remained weak despite weeks of self-training. I had no business being there. So, I got really stressed and quit, possibly disappointing those friends in the process.

I felt kind of bad about it, but I'm at that point (or at least almost) where I don't hate myself and pretend to be who I'm not anymore. It's okay. Maybe I'm just not made for these things. I guess I'm writing this to remind myself that life can be so much simpler if I want less. It's not a sad thing.

Totally not a sad thing.

Labels: digipen, future, reflection, things that happened

It felt like a really long year, but 2016 is finally coming to an end. At the start of the year, there were lots of really ominous things to be said about the fortunes of people born in the year of the dog, and, to an extent, I agree. It wasn't the best year, but it was important because it was the year where I genuinely started to take charge of the direction my life is going... Except that I'm doing a really bad job at it.

I remember spending much of 2015 being miserable because of NS. I couldn't be one of those people who embrace the difficulty and make lemonades out of lemons, so I kind of stumbled and stumbled further and hit rock bottom and realise that it's not really rock bottom and hit rock bottomer. To my defence, I got into freaking infantry (one of the worst vocations, but of course there are worse ones).

It is said that no one can understand how much it sucks to be a soldier in a non-commanding position. I agree. My NS life only started to get better after I became a third sergeant and I cannot imagine not getting that rank. I guess that is why this year was considerably better than the last despite the outfields and the rubbish levels of administration and management in camp.

Buuuut, guess who won the challenge of patience?

This year was also the year of travelling. I've never travelled so much in one year; I went to Thailand (Krabi) with my NS friends, Brunei with my unit, New freaking Zealand (Queenstown) alone, and Hong Kong with my family. Granted, Brunei wasn't really a leisure trip, but at least it's overseas and we got to go to The Mall and eat some kueh.

Before further education, I decided to take a gap year to gain experience as well as do a huge number of things that I'd wanted to do, such as writing a novel, learning guitar, getting a license, learning parkour, travelling, gaining that muscle mass and working in a relevant job. It's halfway successful, I guess. I like to look at the bright side.

My recent struggle which gets me so mad is in trying to find a job. I wanted to change into the education industry but I couldn't make up my mind so I decided to return to the media industry. There were no jobs I could take, probably because I was under-qualified, have a weak portfolio, and can only work for about half a year by now. So, I'm still unemployed, regrettably. My friend did warn me about the economy.

This post is getting so long. Let me just quickly wrap it up in a concised manner.

Fulfilled resolutions/checklist/wishlist from last year:
1. Kept in touch with friends (most of them, not all).
2. Travelled at least three times.
3. Tried out parkour.
4. Started learning the guitar.
5. Built on my relationship with my parents.
6. Became more attentive towards the outflow of my money... for a while.
7. Developed some nutritional habits. At least I keep track of my calories now and make myself eat fruits and vegetables.

Next year's resolutions:
1. Prioritise a healthy, chill emotional state.
2. Stop needing and wanting and start preferring.
3. Reach 75kg.
4. Learn Arnis (a Filipino martial art).
5. Actually get that class 3 license (or start to).

I like that I'm being a lot less ambitious for the next year.

Labels: future, reflection, things that happened

I started this year so positively that I couldn't believe how well things were going despite every Chinese fortune teller warning the people born in my lunar year about what a piece of shit this year is going to be. And then, bit by bit, I broke, not because I experienced the shit that was forecasted, but because I realised I was the shit in the forecast.

When I was still schooling, my parents would repeatedly let known to my siblings and I that the "people out there" are bad; they would do what they had to as long as it benefitted themselves, stooping low enough to manipulate and dominate. I was never new to any of that.

But having been in environments where everyone tried to be nice to one another, I was able to convince myself that I was more or less a righteous, "correct" person. This past year in which I was surrounded by people who are less careful about how others feel made me realise that I wasn't. Instead of learning about the "people out there", I finally got to know the person in there. I guess that is why I broke. I hated myself.

And yes, I know I take things too seriously, but that is part of my genetic makeup or neurolinguistic programming or whatever else it is.

I also realised a few things, the first being that everyone is a bad person. When we quarrel or fight or debate, I tend to question myself. I always felt like I was wrong, and because of that, I tried harder to convince myself and the other party that I was right, therefore becoming more angry. The truth is, we're all wrong and we're all "bad", because nobody is all good. We're both good and bad, as old as it sounds. There never is an answer to who is right and it hardly matters how things could've went instead. I pondered and pondered but everything I pondered was irrelevant.

The second realisation is that by letting all these self-doubt break me, I'm letting it rebuild me. In alchemy, this is a process they call the Black Phase, in which we let external forces (the "fire") break us down, and then we let internal forces (the "water") break us down even further before we finally proceed to the White Phase, in which we start to separate the relevant substances and the "mess".

These past few weeks had been difficult for me because I suspected something went really wrong when I was really young because I had been having lots of symptoms of childhood trauma. Also, I couldn't remember much of my childhood. Everything seemed to point that direction. I tried to remember and bits of "clues" returned to me. At one point, I got kind of obsessed, but fortunately, I just snapped out of it and decided to leave it hanging for a while and just be happy.

One result of this intensive reflection/obsession was my third realisation, which was so obvious: I want to heal people, not entertain them. So, I guess it's goodbye media and hello psychology. Let's see where that goes.

So, yeah, let me just be laidback and composed and free of myself. Hopefully, soon, I'll be able to be happy without trying.

Labels: future, personality, rants, reflection

December 2015
I didn't write a December 2015 post because I was in camp before the year ended and when I did book out and free up, it was already the night of New Year's Eve, when it's time for me to head to Guang Yi's house to celebrate the end of the year and the start of another.

In general, the first week of December was spent in camp preparing and executing support company's open house. To be honest, at that point, I kind of hated being there, but I'm actually quite proud of the kind of things we do. We didn't have to, but we did a demonstration skit of the prowess of our company, complete with vehicles, music and all that. Even I was rather impressed.

The following weekend, my Alpha recruits and the rest of the battalion's recruits POP-ed. A number of us did marshalling duty on that day. That's where I took the picture at the top of this post.

Following POP, it was a week's break, and then we kick off the new phase two weeks before 2016. New troopers came into 4SIR and most of them entered support company. It's a really boring phase so let's not talk about it. But 4SIR did a Christmas celebration together, and each company was challenged to do up decorations and a Christmas tree. My company did a 2D, 4-storey tree using camo net. It was beautiful.

The rest of Christmas was nice as well. My poly friends and I sort of celebrated it at my house with a logcake and some card games and boardgames at my house one week prior. Then, the following week, Jt, Zi Xing, Joshua, and I celebrated it at Jt's house with Popeyes, Texas, KFC, Michael Buble's songs, and the Steam game Brawlhalla.

We did a gift exchange during New Year's Eve.

Amended resolutions
After living in 2016 for eight days, I'm so glad to say that my resolutions mostly seem natural. It's not a "I shall force myself to do this thing that I really don't want to do", but more of a "this will take some effort but it's becoming a habit and it feels good" kind of thing. But there are exceptions, so I told myself that perhaps I'll cut down on the unnatural ones, namely the unconditional positive regard and the context thing, which is so random.

Feng Shui and Ba Zi
Jt's dad helped some of us read our ba zi, but mostly Ru Wen, because she started the first day of the year on a really bad note and she felt that she'd been unlucky for so long. Also, I've been reading Feng Shui for Dummies. After reading a few chapters, so many things clicked together. Let's not elaborate on that here.

University
My parents have convinced me that I should give university a go after all, even if what I do next time isn't related, because we all know studying is my thing and it's a good investment to spend those years and money studying rather than taking leaps of faith leading possibly nowhere. I came up with the last part.

For One More Day
I also read Mitch Albom's 'For One More Day' and I cried and cried while reading it in bunk, because I can relate to it so much. It's also perspective-changing. This book is one of the factors convincing me to get into university.

Anyway, the book is a simple story revolving around how a man's life is ruined because he had daddy issues and couldn't handle the death of his mother, someone he took for granted because of his daddy issues. At the start of the story, he tried to commit suicide because his grief destroyed him and his family, so much that his wife left him and his daughter did not invite him to her own wedding. His suicide attempt failed. In place of death, his mother visited him and they spent time together for one more day.

An abrupt ending
That's all I have to share so far in this year. Looking forward to Chinese New Year!

Labels: future, mehmeh, NS, things that happened

Warning: This post is going to be all "me, me, me", more so than my other posts.

These are the wishes I made last year pertaining to 2015:

1. I wish NS life will be bearable, fulfilling, meaningful, and interesting.
2. I want to find avenues to express myself.
3. I want to get accepted into either NTU's Art, Design & Media or Yale-NUS's liberal arts-like education. Both are difficult to get into, but it'll be great if I do get in.

But...

1. NS life wasn't very bearable or fulfilling or meaningful. It was slightly interesting and helpful in terms of making me more confident in public speaking.
2. I did find avenues to express myself outside of NS, but they were nothing new. Except, I've created a new blog which I haven't done much about yet. It's going to be different from this blog - that one is more about stuff I want to share with everyone while this blog shall remain personal and diary-ish.
3. I decided not to go to university anymore, because I've finally realised that it isn't a very relevant path to what I want to do in life. This means that I've made some kind of decision as to what I want to do with my life, except I know that plans change and all that. One reason why I don't want to go to university has got to do with money - it's not that my family cannot afford it (in fact, my parents were really insistent that I attend university), but I feel like it's not worth it because I don't see it serving any purpose. I guess it's a calculated risk.

As for my resolutions, I did move closer to them as time went by, with certain exceptions.

1. Accepting myself: This has been a really important thing, especially this year. I've come to accept my feelings for what they are, usually pertaining to hatred, guilt, and fear. In a way, I am starting to get out of the "I must make them love me" zone.
2. Opening my mind: I'm not that much wiser than last year.
3. Opening my heart: I'm more open to sharing. There's this ironic push and pull where I hate then I love then I hate then I love then I refuse to call some people my friends then I decide that I do care about them and on and on. Ultimately, though, I think I've become a more open person.
4. Upping my faith and spirituality: I realised I was dependent on these faith and spirituality things because I felt out of control of my life, so I decided to let them go for a while, including some aspects of my religion, to make myself more proactive. Towards the end of the year, I'm starting to open up to them again.
5. Stopping to need to be too clear about everything: I realised that it's still good to be clear on things.
6. Benefitting from NS: I did... I guess... Did I...?

So for next year, I've come up with three lists: Wishlist, checklist, and a list of resolutions.

Wishlist

• For time in NS to past real quick.
• To actually enjoy NS.
• To get into a relationship.
• To keep in touch with my friends.
• To have the means to fulfill the stuff in my checklist.

Resolutions

• Have unconditional positive regard towards as many people as I can, in contexts that make sense. This includes myself, my family, my friends, my men (in the army), and my colleagues/superiors. This whole unconditional positive regard thing had been something I learned in my diploma-plus (Applied Psychology) and agreed with but never put enough effort to apply.
• Be more aware about contexts. Sometimes we all have certain beliefs that only apply in certain circumstances, to certain people, at a certain time. I want to develop that awareness and flexibility.
• Be more honest with myself. This means that when the situation is bleak, I have to stop pretending that the future is more hopeful than it is. It also means that if I am guilty, I don't pretend to be angry.
• Build on my relationship with my parents. I've been a horrible son, and they've remained good parents. I need to stop being horrible.
• Move on more often. Although this sounds like something someone would say after a breakup, it's not my case. I mean it more in the "don't get crazy and addicted" kind of way. That's very me, although I don't show it.
• Watch more shows and movies. I don't want to be that guy who doesn't watch enough stuff, especially when I do love these things. The issue is that I tend to get obsessed with stuff I'm already watching or I've already watched, such that I refuse to move on.
• Read more comics. I mostly mean all those DC and Marvel stuff, because they're clearly really cool but... Refer to above point.
• Be more attentive to the outflow of my money. My friends should know that I'm a very impulsive buyer.
• Develop good nutritional habits. I've got to admit I'm the worst when it comes to eating. I eat too much useless thrash food at an irregular basis, eat too little at meal times, and I constipate all the time.
• Do more charitable acts. I want to be nice.

Labels: future, reflection

My poly friends and me at the start of the month
I'm looking forward to December because it's filled with holidays and a block leave. Christmas seems like it's going to be pretty merry. Hopefully it is.

But this month:

1 Nov - MJ's birthday
We celebrated MJ's birthday in Whisk & Paddle, which is somewhere beside Punggol Promenade. It was a peaceful day, with a nice atmosphere filled with dogs and children and people eating - a simple time spent catching up and filling ourselves up with overly sweetened desserts. We had a walk in Punggol Promenade itself after eating, taking pretentious photos on the way because that's how we roll.

6-7 Nov - Field Camp
By right, field camp for the recruits was from the 5 - 9 November, but I only went for two days because I had duties and miscellaneous appointments here and there. The only night I stayed over, it poured, but I've already talked about that so let's move on.

10-15 Nov - Out of camp
This period, there was Deepavali, followed by offs-in-lieu. I spent this time watching shows, working on my novel, and kickstarting Muchilludes (my new blog, hosted in my own domain, which I have further plans for). It's about time I actually start doing stuff instead of planning or intending to do them. There's a technical aspect of it that I haven't got around yet, so it's not quite done. Went to help Ru Wen with photoshop one of the days, and then just walked around and made some plans for Christmas.

16-25 Nov - In camp
I didn't book out during this period, which isn't much, but still. This is because I strategically placed all my duties for month in one week, so it was just one duty after another, followed by live firing, and then a normal day, and then 16km route march. Because I'm from support company, I got assigned to be a marshaller for the march. Me being me, I took the opportunity to laugh at encourage the recruits.

26-30 Nov - Recent
I like to cluster these days together and think of it as one long weekend with a random work day inside, but it's actually a poorly placed off day (Thursday), followed by a Friday, followed by a weekend and a well-placed off (Monday).

On Friday, I did not eat dinner in camp because I assumed (never assume) we were booking out on time. But we didn't, and by the time we did, most food stalls were closed, so my dad accompanied me to my neighbourhood prata shop for supper instead.

Saturday
Saturday was a long day in a good way. Woke up early in the morning to meet with Guang Yi for breakfast before heading over to Suntec to meet Jessica and attend the Anime Fest Asia (AFA). To be honest, I never expect too much from AFA, so this year was pretty okay for me. Unlike previous years, there's no dominating anime. They had Tokyo Ghoul last year, Shingeki no Kyojin two years ago, etc. I expected this year's theme to be One-Punch Man. I guess it just didn't happen.

But, I'm very satisfied with the stuff I got: An overpriced One-Punch Man fan, a set of Koro-sensei (from Assassination Classroom) stickers which I pasted on my laptop, and a highly-adorable Charmander-crossover-Vivi (from Pokemon & FF9) shirt (at least I like to think of it that way). There was this nice Going Merry (from One Piece) drawing which I really like, but it costed $40. Every year, I drift a little further from animes, but it's still fun to geek out once in a while.

Following AFA, we returned to Bishan and meet with Jt and Joshua because I wanted to support Mr Unbelievable, which is having a promo event at Junction 8. Got to meet Jocelyn and Ding Dang, but didn't really talk to Guo Shen the director because he was backstage. It does look like the movie is going to be good. Coincidentally met one of the recruits, Brandon, as well. It did seem like the day wanted me to bump into/intentionally meet as many people as possible.

Jess went off, then the rest of us spent the next few hours lying on Guang Yi's house's sofa. They cooked an Indo Maggi Mee, which Jess got for Guang Yi when she went to Indonesia.

After that, I went to meet Mj, Cx, Stefanie, and Afiq at Tampines CC to support DTVM's documentary screening of Pasar People. It's about wet market and the kind of relationships that are forged because of these markets. There were three groups of profiles: Friendship, love, and work relationship. The first one was the most impressive to me because it's kind of hopeful to just see how Singaporean neighbours became close friends and would go to the wet market together. I'd thought everyone would just go get their stuff and interact as little as possible, which is kind of depressing. The film proved me wrong.

Caught up with Mr Chee Teng after that. It was getting quite late, so we all had to go off. What a long day.

Sunday
Cx, Stefanie, Mj, Joey, Avelin, and I met up to celebrate Cx's birthday with lunch at a restaurant called 'Saveur'. I find that we tend to gravitate towards expensive choices. The food was really good; the serving looked small but it was filling. Listened to Joey about what kind of stuff she had been learning in school, chatted, and cued Zi Wei's late entrance.

Intentionally stood in a circle indecisively because we wouldn't be DTVM otherwise.

Sat in a circle in Coffee Bean indecisively before choosing to go play some board games.

Which was really fun. We played a total of four games. The first one was my favourite: Betrayal at House on the Hill. We were supposed to explore a haunted house room by room, but somehow, I managed to trap myself in a Pentagram Room. By the gameplay, Mj freed me out of goodwill, and I ended up becoming the "betrayal", who has to kill everyone. They were mocking us on how Mj should've just kept me locked up. I accidentally committed suicide after that, but still won the game because I was a mastermind who somehow managed to trap one of the keyholders to victory while trapping myself.

I went home for dinner before meeting Zi Xing to chat and have coffee. That wraps up the day.

And the month. I'll say it was a great month. I honestly believe I've developed some newfound attitude that benefits my life and my psyche, but I shall not elaborate on that till my end-of-year reflection. I'm so prepared for next year, such that I even came up with some New Year resolutions already, which I shall, for now, dub as 'December resolutions'.

These are my December resolutions: To be honest with myself, stop rejecting circumstances, and stop lingering on things. I'll elaborate on them next time.

Labels: future, mehmeh, NS, things that happened

In chronological order:

Started the Unit Induction Programme
Nothing worth elaborating about. Just briefings, lessons, and stuff.

Visited the ArtScience Museum
Met up with the usual people and went for two exhibitions: The Deep and Dreamworks Exhibition. The former is about the underwater life while the latter is pretty self-explanatory. On that day, I had to book in again later that night for guard duty the following day, unfortunately. After the exhibition, we went to Telok Ayer to have Korean dinner. I'm not at all into Korean food but I guess I liked the kimchi chicken enough.

Went for a course in Clementi Camp
It was a relatively relaxing week, but naturally, it got ruined with the bad news which came in the form of our guard duty schedule.

"Trespassed" an abandoned mansion
It technically still belonged to some royal family in Johor, but many Singaporeans just went in to take pictures and marvel at how cool the place is. Istana Woodneuk is located in a patch of forested land beside the Botanic Gardens. It was rusty, vegetated, polluted, broken apart, and vandalised. That is one of the values of this place now. I kind of got attacked by a hornet. It poked my forehead but somehow it didn't sting me. Lucky for me.

Me being me, I took a few pretentious photos and we climbed to the roof and Elijah walked on top of walls, which I tried but went into panic mode and gave up. It was a mini adventure.

Revamped our company in camp
Did some painting, a lot of shifting, arranging, carrying, and stuff. Of course, also did guard duty again.

Went for an overseas university exhibition
On this day, I realised that I absolutely have no proper reason to attend university anymore, since I'm sure of what I want in life, and university plays no part in it.

Stayed over at Wei Jian's house
This would most likely be the last time we hang out before he fly to Brunei for a year. On that day itself, I got dismissed from camp late, so by the time I headed over, it was close to midnight. We watched Dark Water, which is actually a pretty good horror film. Usually, I don't enjoy horror shows for their story, but this was pretty okay, because it was more than a 'this house is haunted but my husband doesn't believe it' plot. I fell asleep as they played Fifa after that, and then woke up again when they started to play Fatal Frame, which is a horror PS2 game. It was simple but good time spent.

Hanged out in general
There's not really a need to elaborate.

Attended an exercise involving several countries
Went to PLC to attend this exercise, since we were done revamping what we could revamp in camp. Of course, also did guard duty again.

Met up with Man Kit
Went to buy something with him at Chinatown. Talking to him reminded me of how ignorant I was about the army and I would rather continue being ignorant and not be in here but let's persevere for another 13 months.

Celebrated Zi Wei's birthday in his party
Birthdays are always a reason to get together, and our dear gay boy has turned 21. It was nice, meeting up with the DTVM people again, witnessing Joey and Hira being ridiculously protective of Nam Nam, talking about holes, and trying (once again) to walk really slowly so that everyone else could catch up but failing anyway. In the party itself, it was a lot of alcohol, though we didn't drink much at all, and Cards Against Humanity. 'Yeast' is officially the funniest answer to me, and everyone now thinks I'm some sick dude who enjoys putting 'children on leashes'. Didn't get to hang much with Zi Wei himself, though, because there was so many people.

That's it for the month (+1 day). I guess this month was pretty good, but I still wish this month (and every other month) could've been a lot more joyful. There's so much to be grateful for this month. I should be.

Labels: dtvm, future, mehmeh, places, things that happened

November - December: My BMT section mates
On the last day of 2014, I woke up at 5.30am, along with my fellow recruits, for training. It was an especially tiring day with a lot of marching and physical activities. We also got tekaned a bit. I guess that was a happy new year's eve slap. But hopefully, going through this suffering (which they like to say is "nothing compared to what we'll go through after BMT"), my platoon mates and I will gain a sort of strong bond. I guess we kind of did. Maybe.


There are much to be grateful for last year, such as those experiences I went through which I mentioned in the previous post, things that I often take for granted (my family, my friends, school, free time, new TV and games, etc), and an expansion of my mind and heart. Last year, my resolution, to sum it up, was to open up my heart in terms of passion and love and to appreciate money. That is a very difficult resolution to measure, but it's okay, because this year, I seek a slight lack in clarity and boundaries. I'll explain why later on.

Anyway, I guess I did open up my heart in terms of passion. I started trying to work towards my passion, although not to much avail. Still, I guess I've been trying hard enough, working on a web series but failing, working on two novel attempts, one of which I gave up and the other needing a complete rewrite soon, working on a script which I'm planning to see what I can do about, and basically just trying to get as much out of everything as I can.

Last year, I also thought I fell in love with someone, but I guess I didn't. But then afterwards, I think I really fell in love with someone I can't be with. Now I'm over it, and that is absolutely okay.

Unfortunately, I haven't been very attentive to money. I did work and tried to earn some money and stuff though.



August - October: Koji Cooks production team
Just to share a photo of the team behind an upcoming Channel 5 series which you should watch. I spent about two months plus with these people last year, so it marks another time period. If you can, do watch it from 7 January onwards, every Wednesday at 10pm.

• Although I've repeated again and again that I'm trying to accept myself for who I am (or maybe I didn't even mention it, I'm not sure), I'd been trying to change and become a better person and sometimes I try way too hard. This year, I'm going to slow down and just be chill about it.
• I wrote a post about opening my mind and being aware of suffering and unfairness and balance and all those a few weeks back, so I shall not elaborate on that. Shall not elaborate on opening my heart either.
• So this year, I want to up my faith and spirituality. I'll see what I can do about it.
• In case it's not obvious enough, I tend to have some OCD tendencies, including feeling the need to be very clear about everything. For example, when someone explains something to me, it will irritate me if he/she does not start from the beginning, even if I understand what he/she is talking about, and I'll be unable to focus because of that. Sometimes a bit of blur is what I need in my life. Although some might think that I'm a very blur person, I actually think it's because I try to hard to focus. It makes sense.
• The next two years are going to be about NS, so, obviously, I'll need to squeeze out whatever I can squeeze out of the two years in order to benefit from it. I hate wasting time being stagnant.

Labels: future, personality, reflection, things that happened

At this point, everyone around me is probably sick of me talking about the future, but I'm still going to do that here, so skip it if you want~

To be honest, I myself am sick of thinking of the future, especially when the universe is clearly trying to remind me of how naive my vision of the future is. The truth is, I'm really worried. Whenever I stop to live in the present, it kind of feels meaningless. I always felt like I need something to look forward to. If not, why are we spending hours after hours doing stuff?

But I know that's technically wrong. I should not dwell in the past or plan the future too much. Everyone says "live in the present", but the present is a difficult place to live. My life doesn't suck. Reality just does.

So some of my closer friends will know that I was intending to go to the United States to pursue scriptwriting. I wanted to go there and study for 4 years, soak in the culture, come back to serve a scholarship bond, and then return to live there. Scrap that - I still want to go overseas, but I realise the absurdity of this plan.

1. Scholarship is hard to get.
2. Things will happen.
3. What do I even know about the states?
4. One cannot learn writing.
5. Traveling to and fro destroys relationships.
6. I'll get old.
7. Scholarship bond can be troublesome.

I'm going to come up with something else next time, just not now.

The point is, I had seek advice from many friends and a lecturer, and those above are the things that eventually bother me. My scriptwriting lecturer, Stella, doesn't believe I like to write because I do not exhibit all the traits of a writer with burning passion, though she still gave me good advice.

So, after some reflection, I realise that...

• Unlike supposingly many aspiring writers, I don't really have a story I am burning to tell. However, I have a bunch of ideas I've developed and destroyed inside my mind, and each of them marked a short period of my life.
• I can't write stuff for people to read. My language just isn't there. That's why I want to be a scriptwriter, not a novelist.
• I'm overly-ambitious, but that's okay as long as I'm super patient.
• I struggle to write stuff that doesn't involve something supernatural or something ridiculous, because, as I've mentioned, reality is dangerous and fantasy is a better place.

Labels: future, rants, reflection

I saw my friend Zhao-Yi's post about her ideal room quite a while back, and then it suddenly occurred to me that I could probably talk about mine here too.

The thing about living with five family members in a five-room flat is that there isn't enough room for everyone to have their own room (we have one for each of my sibling, one for my parents and me, and one for our religion). And that sucks, especially since I'm past the age of sleeping in the same room as my parents. You can simply say, "why not sleep in the same room as your brother?", but it's not mutual.

Anyway, I don't exactly have an arrangement thought out, like what goes where, but I have a very clear idea on what I want in my room when I get one.

1. A beanbag chair. I'm not going to sit on it all the time because it'll probably at a very inconvenient height. But, a beanbag chair makes a room look more cozy than it otherwise will. That's really important. Besides, the more places to sit, the better.
2. A rocking chair. Ever since I was in secondary school, I've dreamed of having my own rocking chair. The idea of sitting on it and just moving back and forth without purpose delights me.
3. A window. Or else I will suffocate.
4. Aircon. It's unenvironmentally-friendly, but it's cooling and comfortable. This isn't that important though.
5. An eating corner by the window. This corner is made up of a table meant specifically for me to eat, drink, and relax. Maybe the rocking chair can be part of this corner. It's the kind of space for me to just read something and drink coffee at the same time. The reason why I want such thing is because if I'm only going to eat at a specific spot, then I just have to focus on cleaning this spot, and nowhere else. Of course, it will be ideal to eat in the living room, if there's a window that's not facing the corridor and stuff.
6. The normal stuff. A bed, a wardrobe (I don't have one now :S), and a table lamp sort of thing, although it can be something else, as long as it gives the "I'm suppose to sleep but let's read" feel.
7. A full-length mirror. This is to feed my slight vanity and self-consciousness.
8. A chair with wheels, so I only need one chair besides the beanbag and the rocking one. That's actually three chairs in a room.
9. ABC mat. Everyone needs to feel like a child. Just let me, okay? If I do have them, I'll consider pasting them to the wall by my bed.
10. Pile-of-paper box: It's simply a box for me to dump all my papers in - assignments, portfolio stuff, self-done stuff, documents for memories... It's kind of pointless, but I still want it there.
11. A productive corner. I foresee myself working from home from time to time, and after transcribing and looking for sponsors from home, I realise that I'm the sort who needs to be in an office to make myself work. When I can't, a productive corner should be helpful. This corner consists of a table that doubles as a whiteboard, which I already have. It's an awesome table. I can put my box underneath. And there's space for me to put my collection of childhood toys and other random stuffs on top, like a display.
12. Drawers. Unfortunately, I have no drawers on this awesome table. I'll need some. Either that, or I can reuse shoe boxes to put my stuff. That sounds pretty nice actually.
13. Colour-coordination. Of course, I'll want my furnitures and wall/ceiling to be of united or complementary colours.
14. Speaker. It may not seem like it, but I love playing music as I sleep, and the phone just isn't working well enough without earpiece. Notice the singularity. One is enough.
15. An empty wall for me to hang random stuffs. These include posters, that one painting I've done with my classmates, etc.
16. "Wooden" floors. That's a typical cosy room setting for me.
17. A place to dump my "I'll pack it later" stuff. That's self-explanatory :D
18. Lots of hooks. I want to hang my keychains, caps, and other stuff.
19. A TV. That's impossible actually.
20. An exercise mat and maybe some dumb-bells of different weights. I actually do exercise, but I seldom do sit-ups because I'm a whiny kid who doesn't like it when my backbone rubs against the floor, so, exercise mats.

Labels: future

Labels: future, personality, reflection

Okay, an update of my life. The academic year is coming to an end! So, we had our last new media lesson, last journalism lesson, last web-publishing lesson, and last freaking GenEd lesson! Still have documentary lessons though.

Time kind of zoomed pass and next semester is already the final semester for my course. After that will be the ever-dreaded internship. Next semester is going to be crazy. There'll be on-location production (go overseas to film documentary), media law (study for exam), elective module (I chose film-making), media entrepreneurship (which I heard demands accounting and financing skills), and the final year project.

Ms Gamar said it's not the semester to be emo-ing over self and relationship issues because the academic workload is enough to tire us out :( But I'm pretty excited for it because it's a year to finally get to know one another better and there will probably be some real-life drama to watch :P (pray hard it doesn't happen to me). But then again, dramas are only fun to watch when it doesn't happen to your friends.

Anyway, we're going Melbourne this year end :D School trip~

So during this relatively crazy end of this semester, there was Chinese New Year, in which we were suppose to be coding our website during, but I just couldn't bear to :/ And pushed much of the work till the last minute, and last minute + me = inner explosion.

Anyway, on the topic of Chinese New Year, my family and my sister's boyfriend went to watch A Haunted House together. It's pretty funny. Kind of like a mockumentary on Paranormal Activity. Also went to Ru Wen's house to play cards and mahjong overnight.

On Friday, went to Ru Wen's mum's stall to eat and then Jt, Guang Yi, Wei Jian, and I went to chat at coffee bean for awhile. Wanted to chat longer, since Jt is hardly there, but meh.

I've been pretty obsessed with FF13's cutscenes recently (not the game itself). Can't stand the fact that they are so beautifully drawn, beautiful soundtrack, beautiful voice acting, and wonderful environment design. And Vanille is so adorable and relateable o.o Don't get why many players hate her.

And then back to school life today. I've got no idea what's the point of what I had been doing all morning. I was pointlessly walking about in Bishan. Wanted to cut my hair, so left house early. Realise I forgot to bring money, so headed back home. Finally went to the central area, and realise that the hair salon hasn't opened yet. Rot in the library. Go to school early. Slept on the table.

On a brighter note, Esman screened Sinister in class today. This feels like those Secondary School days when your exams are over and the teacher doesn't know what else to do besides screening movies. Some girls in my class were like screaming and crying over it :P Some other classmates were simply laughing at how ridiculous the movie is. All in all, it's pretty funny.

We were also suppose to be planning for our grad night. I hope it's fun, but I don't think it will be since I'm probably the only one who feels any slight enthusiasm over it.

Let's skip the part of the day when I stupidly went to Paya Lebar because of some misunderstanding :(

Labels: dtvm, future, games, things that happened

So, as with every other beginnings, the beginning of this year is spent setting up goals for myself and charting out paths to take to fulfill my new year resolutions. I'm full of minor goals, so much that I lose track of them 50% of the time, which is why I shall reflect on the more important ones every month.

After blogging about my 'challenge 2013', I found it pretty confusing, so I combined that challenge to my new year resolutions. Then I've added one more resolution to the list. So now, I have 5 resolutions.

1. Open up more
This is easily the most important goal for me at the moment. So this month, I think I did open up a little more to people I don't spend much time with, in particular my dip-plus and gened classmates. Other than that, all I've done was to plan and plan and plan. In case it's not obvious, I'm a pretty obsessed planner cum finisher. So part of my plan was to admit one thing in my blog per month, and I guess I'll do it together with my monthly reflection.

2. Be difficult to annoy
I failed in this aspect. I feel like I'm the easiest person to piss off, especially this month. Although I did not get into any arguments, I keep feeling frustrated over people, my stomach, and assignments. How the heck can assignments manage to piss people off? Okay, apparently they do because I find myself crushing pages from my POA textbook years ago and crushing question papers in exams and tests. Control. So basically I haven't done anything here this month. Maybe I can start by taking things less seriously, and adopting a "chill" mentality.

3. Focus on others
It's also pretty obvious that I'm a very self-centered person, in the sense that it's all about "me", "I", what I did, how I felt, me me me. So I've decided to focus on other people instead. All I've done this month for this resolution is to decide on that.

4. Draw something every week
I've only decided on this last week. So far, I managed to follow it despite a busy schedule, but then again it's only one time. Can't really reflect on this.

5. Use law of attraction every week
Unfortunately, I haven't done anything about this either.

So, to summarised, out of 5 resolutions, I've worked on 1 of them. Yay :D #sarcasm #hashtag

Something to admit:
I've already admitted this: It's not a big deal and not a problem, but I shall give details about this little weird thing I have. I have this liking for paper, and sometimes it can get a little weird because I actually enjoy receiving papers from the lecturers and stuff, not because of the notes/assignments, but just because they are paper. And, like many others that I know, I like to read books that are printed, rather than e-books.

I know, you're totally judging me now! D:

Labels: future, reflection

Sometimes I wonder why I push myself so hard in certain areas. Nevertheless, I've decided to come up with 3 challenges for myself, and I'll do them in my blog. I guess they are relatively simple, but my greatest obstacle is giving up.

1. Reflect on my new year resolution progress and think about how to continue improving at the end of every month.
2. Admit one thing I have kept hidden per month, in my blog.
3. Do at least one drawing per week. (I can't really do this in my blog, so meh) 

Just to quickly update myself, and whoever non-existent who actually bothers about this challenge, I made 3 new year resolutions: Open up more, fix my temper, and use the law of attraction once per week.

One
Every year, I will be pretty hyped up over my new year resolution for January, and then I just slowly forget about it. When I'm reflecting about the year in December, I will come across my post talking about my new year resolution, but it's too late to work on it. So, to remind myself, I've decided to constantly blog about it, which means once per month. Hopefully it works. This year's resolutions are pretty important to me.

Two
I used to lie about not keeping secrets, but actually, I think I'm a pretty secretive person. Most of the time, I just hide embarrassing things about me. So, I guess it's healthy to be open and honest and stuff, so I shall try my best to admit one embarrassing or not-so-embarrassing or not-embarrassing-yet-I-don't-know-why-the-heck-I'm-keeping-this-secret kind of secrets out. Somehow I have a pretty bad feeling about this.

Let's start off with something stupidly minor: I like to look at and touch paper o.o

Three
As I've mentioned, I may want to be an animator or game designer next time, plus I like visuals, so I shall practice drawing once per week. Baby steps.

I just hope I don't forget about this challenge altogether.

Labels: future

I just wrote a post about my current frustrations yesterday and for many hours, I've been fighting the urge to delete it. But then I made a new year resolution to open up and the first step is to stop filtering myself. What I'm trying to get at is this: Perhaps what I wrote have offended someone with it. I didn't mean to, so I hope no one felt like I was targeting him/her after reading it. I just really needed to vent my pent up feelings.

Okay, I'm fully aware that this is my 3rd entry in 3 consecutive days, and it's going to be a rather random entry in the sense that I'm going to talk about 3 things that do not link to one another.

3 food/drinks I miss
I know I shouldn't keep thinking of this whole food and stomach thing, but since I'm having this condition, I figured it'll be a good chance to talk about the food and drinks I absolutely must consume.

1. Coffee: You can't seperate coffee and me. I am coffee and coffee is me. That's a lame joke, but I really love coffee. I drink it whenever I deem it to be a peaceful afternoon, or whenever I feel down. On days which I have to wake up early, I depend strongly on the caffeine to keep myself awake. So, no one shall steal my coffee from me.
2. Chocolate: At the beginning of this whole stomach problem, the very food I was unable to resist was chocolate. It is the perfect snack. It's comfort food that actually does provide comfort and its bitter taste which linger in the mouth is unforgivably tempting. I'm going to spam myself with chocolate once I recover.
3. Cheese: I cannot resist cheese. Cheese fries, cheesy pasta, cheese sticks, baked rice, cheesecake. I feel like a freaking mouse.

 There are more food items I miss, but I shall keep it short and simple.

3rd NY resolution
I've decided to add a third new year resolution: To meditate and manifest the law of attraction at least once per week. This law may very well be the thing that change my life the greatest, and I choose to believe and depend heavily on it. For now, I shall apply it to some areas of my life, as per my previous post.

1. Recovery: This Wednesday when I go for my medical appointment, I shall attract the fact that the doctor will find out that my stomach is actually in perfect condition. I don't know how it's going to happen, but with the law of attraction, it will. I don't even mind if the doctor decide that it's all psychological and a change of mindset will miraculously cure me. But for one, I'm pretty sure I'll recover before Chinese New Year. It's baseless faith.
2. Personality: I shall attract comfortable, natural, and fun personality which will help me make friends and get close to people more easily. At the same time, I'm visualising a successful social life in all sorts of places already, such as the army o.o
3. Success: Let's not elaborate on this and keep this point vague for now.

3 ambitions
A big part of my life is spent obsessively charting my paths. I like doing that, so I think that's why I keep changing my ambitions. I'll eventually have to decide on what I want, so I've shortlisted three things I'm most passionate about.

1. TV writer: This is a given, if not I won't be in my course. I used to want to be a scriptwriter because I love dialogues and stories. Now, as much as scriptwriting is fun, I'm more interested in becoming a concept creator. I've heard horror stories about how boring it gets, but for now I think it sounds pretty fun to come up with TV shows after TV shows even after being squeezed dry of creativity. But I guess it'll be best if I get to be involved in writing for my own show too.
2. Game writer: Games were a big part of my childhood. Now, I'm mostly out of sync with the latest games and all, but things shall be fine if I just keep trying to get in sync. In fact, the situation is more or less the same for TV and me. For now, I'm particularly interested in games because of their addictive nature and because they are animated. I did some research and decided that it'll do me lots of good to learn some programming too. I'll see.
3. Animator: When I was in secondary school, I had this naive dream of creating animes, but animes belong to the Japanese, so it's beyond me. Forget that. I want to make animations without following any particular style. For that, I need to not only write stories but also draw them. That's why I'm practicing drawing now. Animations are cool because they are not limited to the reality, and I'm more of a fantasy kind of person.

To achieve any of these ambitions, it's very likely that I need to go overseas, unless Singapore's media industry miraculously recovers. I'm not going to spout words about reviving the industry anymore, because I feel that I won't be able to do that. So, I'm likely to aim for either overseas internship, or overseas education first. Let's hope it's possible.

Labels: future, health

Being in poly kind of messed my year sense up because our poly level does not start at the beginning of the year. So at the beginning of 2012, I was a year 1 student. A few months through, I became a year 2 student, and now I'm 3/4 through year 2. Being quite confused over what happened this year but being insistent on blogging about it, I went to scan through my January and February posts and realise that this year had been sooo long. I can't believe I saw the terms "VPPP" (a module in year 1) and "Brighter Sides" (a concept my classmates came up with in year 1) in my posts.

So this year was a transition from year 1 to year 2, and in the process we became seniors. Even up till now, I haven't really interacted with my juniors. Actually, I guess I never will. I'm going to graduate from DTVM with them not ever knowing that I existed.

And I guess this year I opened up a little but closed up a lot, regrettably. It is because I started hiding traits that are considered 'bad' just so I can have a smoother social life. Perhaps this is the downside of maturing. Every year, I look back and think that I was so immature the previous year. Maybe this is how some adults become more and more serious.

But anyway, this year had been a big mess, firstly because of the fact that poly years and actual years do not sync, and secondly because I was a mess. But out of this mess, I guess it's typical that I say I probably gained something out of it.

This year, my grandfather passed away. I think it was at the beginning of the second year. And then there was the CASS carnival, which was really fun preparing for. We made a haunted house. Oh, and there's the LEAP camp in ipoh, which was tons of fun and life lessons.

My obsession with One Piece kind of tided down, and I gained an extremely temporary obsession with the Final Fantasy series.

I got closer to some people and then distanced away and then got closer to other people and then distanced away again. This is the story of my life.

But all in all, it was a pretty good year, because I got to know more of my classmates better, I learned much more about TV, writing, and new media. Then I started following TV series, and started playing games again, but I stopped gymming. I must start this habit again once I recover from the ever-so-annoying stomach problem which I talk about in almost all my posts nowadays.

Didn't meet the mehmehs as much as before, sadly, because two of the people I often used to meet who lived near me moved away. So it's only Guang Yi, Zi Xing, and I left in the vicinity. Towards the end of the year, I think my relationship with my family improved. But we didn't have any outings besides dinner and one time of movie. I think I forgot to blog about it. We went to Crystal Jade for dinner. Invited my grandma and my sister's boyfriend along. Then, we watched "life of Pi". It was quite recent.

So, I don't know what else to say. Let's move on to new year resolutions.

1. Open up more.
2. Be difficult to annoy.

There are certainly much more that I need to fix in my life, but I guess I shall do it slowly. Even though I only have two resolutions for the year, and rather specific ones at that, I think achieving those two are going to be a big challenge. I have no idea what is holding me back, but I shall just consciously try harder. Sometimes that is the answer.

I used to think the goals I set for myself are pointless because as much as I try to be a certain type of person, I can't change much. But the thing I learn about changes is that they happen so slightly day by day and we won't realise it until we really look back at something concrete, like a blog entry. So, I'm hopeful that I can achieve my new year resolutions.

Labels: future, reflection, reliving those days