I woke up today feeling like I’d rather not wake up.
Was there a particular reason? I’m not sure. Obviously, the Monday blues is an easy – and not entirely untrue – answer. Work is always going to be a thing, and loving my job means that I’m almost always balancing on some sort of tightrope.
On one hand, I’ve yet to find a better, purer feeling than the one I get from putting together a good piece of writing. On the other, client demands and the sheer workload (along with all the in-betweens of juggling timelines and such) is an annoyance at the best of times, and a real drain at the worst.
Had it been a bad weekend? No, it was a calm and happy one. Had it been too good of a weekend, making the start of the work week feel worse? Also no.
Was it the underlying, back-of-the-mind stress over whether our HDB resale flat application will proceed smoothly? Things are moving, but until it’s all fully set in stone and we’re literally just waiting for the keys to come our way, I can’t bring myself to not worry about it.
So, once again: A factor, but not it.
Dead ends
Anyway, if there was an it, then I failed to identify it. Some days are just like that.
I got up and showered. Sometimes, that’s enough to make me feel better and ready for the day and week ahead. But not today.
I got on a call with a client – it was a decent conversation. Sometimes, a little social interaction gets the endorphins flowing. But not today.
I got to writing the next day’s newsletter. Usually, it’s a fun outlet and a chance for me to be a little stupid, a little crazy. I couldn’t bring myself to be much of either today.
The list goes on. Whatever that usually has a chance to make me feel better, did not. Not today.
I made the decision to take a me-day. As long as what was due today was done today, I would’ve done enough.
Surprises
Somehow, just by taking things step by step, I accomplished more than I thought I was capable of by the end of the day. I did one more task than I’d planned, and managed to bring myself out for a 5km run.
I made choices to be kinder to myself, and I guess they paid off.
Do I feel better now? Not in any real discernible way, actually. But I am proud of myself for how I faced a day like today and came out at the end of it… fine. Not amazing, not great, just fine.
A timely reminder.
Not every turn at-bat needs to be a homerun. Recognizing and understanding that, and making the choice to put my wellbeing first, is a constant, ongoing process, one I’ll keep trying my best at.
And no matter what anyone else says or thinks… that’s good enough.
On the eve of a new year and decade, I sit alone in my room. It’s a location I’ve barely left in four days, due to a sudden, seemingly random fever+flu combo I caught last Friday.
It’s an extremely disappointing way to end the year. Because of this illness, my girlfriend and I had to scrap dinner plans (a nice one, to cap off the year), I had to pull out of a Dungeons & Dragons game, and my exercise routine – which I’d just properly restarted – stalled.
All that on top of dealing with all the symptoms, of course.
But 2019’s end doesn’t represent the whole year, as much as it’s colouring my perception now. Recap time:
Family
I’m thankful that my parents remain healthy. Neither of them exercise much – they put a lot of their time into work – but that’s changed, especially with my dad.
Ever since the cancer scare a few years ago, he’s incorporated long evening walks into his daily routine. His diet has improved, thanks largely to my mum cooking most dinners nowadays. They used to eat out almost every day.
They even went swimming together a few days ago.
I may never be able to properly communicate on a deep level with them – there’s an insurmountable generation/mindset gap. But I am grateful that they support me regardless. That in itself is priceless.
Brother and his family are doing fine. The small man (my nephew) Brayton amuses me almost every time I see him. He’s mischievous as they come, and has his little tantrums as any three-year-old would, but his wide-eyed enthusiasm for the world around him is refreshing.
I am also deeply thankful for the support Olivia, my sister-in-law, provided when I was job-hunting in late 2018-early 2019. She helped me to find a balance between 1) taking up a job because I need the cash, and 2) taking up a job that’s actually right for me.
In the throes of the arduous job-searching process, it’s easy to just take the first thing that comes along. But she helped me to keep my eye on the prize, and ultimately I rejected two good offers for a great one.
What an amazing segue into the next section.
Work
I’mma get dramatic for a bit:
After three years of running away from my destiny, taking up roles in PR and communications, I finally found a full-time writing position.
A combination of a lack of (suitable) opportunities, a desire to get my career started as quickly as possible, and a self-fulfilling prophecy of a mindset that writing is very tough to make a career of in Singapore meant that I took a really long time to find an answer that I actually knew all along.
The job isn’t all roses; each project presents its own challenges. The thing is, none of them are problematic enough to take away from the general enthusiasm I have for my work.
In other words, I actually enjoy the dirty, gritty details.
My colleagues are great too. A fun bunch of people who I both like being around and can learn from.
The goal now is to keep getting better, expanding the breadth of my work, and, should opportunities present themselves, help younger writers.
I want to pay forward the kindness and guidance that others have shown me, and I feel like the only way I can do so to any discernible degree is with writing.
Friends
I am happy for Max and Win Low finding their respective partners, and Zhen Ling for the healthy birth and development of her daughter.
I am happy for the continued health and well-being of everyone else, even as life hit them hard in various ways throughout the year.
The Bali trip in the middle of the year was one the most fun ones I’ve ever experienced.
I am thankful to have had such people in my life. I don’t know if I even deserve them.
Girlfriend
Jieyi continues to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, bar none.
There were a couple of highlight occasions, like our anniversary, birthdays, the Pokemon Go Safari in April, and the trip we took with my parents to Thailand, but it’s all the little weekday and weekend dates where we didn’t do anything extraordinary that add up and mean more, ultimately.
That’s what a long-term partnership is supposed to be about anyway.
Best of the rest
Picked up a new hobby recently: Dungeons & Dragons!
Passed Japanese Language Proficiency Test, N3 level (technically, took the exam late last year, but results+cert came this year)
Started playing basketball semi-regularly again, with colleagues
Finally got this site up and running
Goals for 2020
Lose weight: get to ~72kg
Write more, and better
Both at work and on this site and anywhere in general
Get better at Japanese
Aim to take JLPT N2 in 2021
Hold better conversation
There are bigger picture goals such as saving more money and getting a BTO and so on, but those kind of go without saying.
Here’s hoping that the next decade will be a happy and fulfilling one.
You’re on the way to work, scrolling through Reddit as you go through the motions of the daily commute. Giggling (internally) at the latest nonsense on r/disneyvacation, you suddenly see a hand waving in your face. It’s accompanied by an inexplicably-confident “Hey bro!”.
You look up to see someone who is categorically not a “bro” – he’s not your brother, he’s not your friend – heck, you don’t even know him.
He’s an insurance agent, but that’s not the point. More horrifyingly, he’s one of them.
He’s one of those who calls everyone “bro”.
I’m really not sure how this phenomenon came to be. Personally, the use of the word – both outgoing and incoming – started in secondary school, before seeing a sharp uptick during National Service.
I suppose that makes sense. In both scenarios, we’re trying to fit in and/or make life easier for ourselves. And there aren’t many better ways to do that than to be friends with everyone.
Sadly, it seems to have become a crutch and a bad habit that many fail to drop even after (purportedly) growing up to become young adults and professionals. I may even go so far to say that it’s invasive, placing an expectation of kinship and reciprocation on an unsuspecting victim.
Bro.
But maybe that’s just me. I place a lot of value on who I call friends and who I don’t. Emotional, sensitive – label me as you please, but I just really give a shit about such things.
(Note that there’s a difference between being friends and just being friendly; you should be the latter as much as you can, but more fussy with the former, in my opinion.)
The closeness that’s suggested by the word adds a layer of expectation on top of your minimum expectations that come from being ripped out of your own little world.
And then it all comes crashing down when you realize it’s just someone trying to make a buck off of you.
Why do you build me up, just to let me down?
Bro, why build me up just to let me down, bro?
Keep it real
Honesty is the best policy in just about everything, I say. That includes sales activities – be upfront about what you can do for me and what you want in return, and I’d respond much better than if you tried to act like my friend.
It’s funny how trying to be friendly can make you look really insincere, but authenticity is what we’re all really craving now, right?
It’s why the term “influencer” immediately garners snickers of derision. We see the vast majority of them as insincere, fake people who are merely pretending to be our friends.
WordPress doesn’t even recognize it as a real word:
Bro, why red underline ah bro?
The world can be a beautiful place, and a lot of that stems from the friendships and relationships we form with other people. But if you’re not truly sincere about it, even a thousand uses of “bro” will never cut it.
With this blog, I had planned to put out one post per week (not counting the dad jokes).
I say ‘had’, because I failed to put something up last week. I’d had a tough week, and although I still could’ve put something together, I decided not to.
… which was actually pretty tough. And here’s why:
1. Money
I can be a bit of a tightwad sometimes, especially with myself. I’m the kind of person who opens all the ASOS sales emails, puts a bunch of stuff on my wishlist, then closes the tab.
“Maybe later,” I’ll tell myself. But then the items inevitably go out of stock.
(That’s some money-saving life hacks there, btw)
The point I’m trying to make is, if I spend on myself, I try to get my money’s worth. This site cost money to put up, and even if it frankly isn’t all that expensive, I paid for it, goddammit.
2. Principle
Specifically, the principle of this whole affair. I made the decision to start up this site, and I finish what I start, for better or worse. My plate or rice bowl is always clear at the end of meals.
As a child, I remember being constantly chided for not finishing things I began. It has had some… leftover effects. I suppose it isn’t the worst habit to have had ingrained into me, but sometimes it does feel like baggage.
But anyway, there is that sense of responsibility to see something through.
3. Making up for lost time
I’ve moved real slow.
I spent my poly days doing the square root of nothing. School holidays were an unhealthy cycle of World of Warcraft, late nights, and bad diets.
I spent the first couple years of my work life trying to convince myself that writing wasn’t a viable full-time role.
I feel like I’ve been rushing the past couple years, to make up for all the time I’ve pissed away over the course of my life.
That kind of desire extends to this blog – I’d actually wanted to do this since around mid-2018, but didn’t even start till May this year. Now that it’s up, I want to at least make it something that breeds personal satisfaction. Neglecting it, even for just one week – feelsbadman.
‘Done is better than perfect’ is such a cliche, but I need to keep reminding myself of it. It can be tough sometimes, especially when I have my own personal standards and quality levels to live up to in my full-time job – it’s a delicate mental balancing act.
Maybe it’s an Asian thing, maybe it’s just the realities of wanting to build a comfortable future with my girlfriend, but I can never quite make myself completely relax anymore. I need that edge to keep pushing myself forward.
Deciding to not write last week hurt, and sometimes I wish it didn’t – but yet, I’m grateful it did.
“I might have a business trip to Singapore next week, wondering if you are up for a short meet up.”
July 2019 is a month of reconnecting.
I went overseas with my parents for the first time in… about a decade. I met an old ‘war buddy’ (long story) because I happened to be in the vicinity of her office after some work obligations. There are also upcoming meetups with friends I don’t see often, and I’m trying to set up a couple more.
The universe itself decided to put a cherry on top of the reunion sundae with the above message coming through on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night. This led to a catch-up with an old uni friend whom I hadn’t seen in four years (and hadn’t even been in contact with in any form for about eight months).
Our conversation flowed effortlessly, and it felt like any random dinner we used to have in Melbourne. ‘Feels like just yesterday only’, as she put it.
Different place, different time, but the exact same dynamics.
Personal mission
I think everyone agrees that friends like these are priceless gems, especially as we grow up and get busier with work and other #adulting responsibilities. Like it or not, we’re just not going to be able to keep up with everything that goes on with every friend we’ve ever made.
Sometimes that means friendships wither away, through no real fault of either party. But other times, it leads to pleasant reunions like the one I had – figurative time capsules that bring back what once was, like nothing ever changed.
Given the right circumstances, lightning in a bottle remains exactly that. We’ve just got to bring it out of storage every now and then to remember those special connections – which is what I’m aiming to do more of.
I’m a very private person. I’ve mentioned before about being an introvert, and I just generally don’t offer my time or effort to anyone I don’t think deserves it.
(That might make me sound real haughty, but it’s more about preserving my own energies than anything malicious.)
I do err too much on the side of caution, however. There are a fair number of people whom I wish I knew better or kept up to date with, and I’m making an effort to do so, now.
Gratia cantantes
I’ve been through some things in life that taught me to trust in no one by myself. There were some harsh times where the only instinct was survival, and I think it’s fair to say that some of that damage has never quite gone away, nor will it ever.
I got a migraine after taking in too much in a day.
I read a lot in a day. I kind of have to, it’s an (healthy) addiction of mine.
Now, this isn’t some kind of boast. I don’t necessarily read the most intellectual stuff – 90% of all that I read is basketball-related – but this does mean that I’m wired to receive only useful and/or interesting content.
Bang for buck matters. And even if the point or format of your article is long-form in nature, the journey had better be an absorbing one.
And yet, there are some avenues, which are supposed to be enlightening, that increasingly end in utter disappointment. I recently attended a few panel discussions at a large conference that left me with several instances of rolled eyes and lots of muttering under my breath.
I don’t think I’ve spent 1.5 hours so wastefully since my NS days. Luckily, my ticket was free.
The panels were an abhorrent mix of Captain Obvious’ greatest hits and a multitude of PR messaging*. I go to these things to learn, but I did. not. get. a. single. piece. of. useful. information.
(*PR messaging is basically what communications departments tell their spokespeople to push when they’re on stage: stuff like key stats and figures, and one or two key pointers such as “champion data sharing” or “emphasize our community development efforts”)
You don’t have to be Steve Ballmer-levels of entertaining, but I wouldn’t mind it.
It was like being in a one-way conversation in which I was just a receptacle for gibberish. And maybe it’s just me, but I actually have a physical reaction to an overload of this kind of crap – I got a headache that night, and I at least partially attribute it to the frustration I felt.
I feel that the best learning opportunities are those in which you are an active participant. Conversation-making ability is incredibly valuable – it gets the other party involved.
And although you might say that that doesn’t apply to panel discussions or keynotes, I’d argue that it does, because in either case, there’s an audience. And a quick Google search for public speaking tips will always bring up the pointer that it’s all about the audience. You may be doing all the talking, but the content is for them.
There’s a greater onus on the speaker(s) to not talk out of their ass or just vomit out stats and figures. I can look those up on a computer on my own.
People need to think about what they want to say before they go out and do it. It has to be useful or at least entertaining, because even going neutral is a failure by default – the audience’s time would have been wasted.
Speaking isn’t easy – I wish I could do it better, myself. But I hope people come to realize that just having an agreeable accent or subject matter knowledge isn’t enough; if they aren’t sharing anything useful, it’s a bad talk.
And I really don’t need more headaches in my life.
Talking offseason, beers, and the genesis of my fandom.
In late April, I got the opportunity to be a guest on the Hoops And Hefeweizens podcast.
Hosted by the good dudes Alex and Ruben, and joined by Jeevan, a fellow Singaporean MFFL (Mavs Fan For Life), we talked about how we became Dallas Mavericks fans, our thoughts on the offseason, and our favourite beers.
Keanu Reeves has been experiencing a resurgence in the public consciousness lately. From John Wick to Always Be My Maybe and even Toy Story 4, it seems his agent has been hard at work.
He even appeared on the E3 stage, presenting the latest trailer and the release date for the Cyberpunk 2077 (which I’m definitely getting), creating a new meme in the process.
Can you believe this guy is 54 years old? I can’t.
But before ‘breathtaking’, Keanu’s most memorable quote was another singular, exclamatory word:
Whoa.
Whoa.
… which is what this piece is really about. Not the incomparable Mr. Reeves. (Sorry.)
As you can see, I spell the word like so: ‘whoa’. The first time I read the word, it was spelled like this, and that’s now etched into my mind as the one true and right way to do so.
But today I came across an article that spelled it as ‘woah’. And at the risk of being meta (in a stupid way), my first reaction was: “Whoa. Why do people spell it that way?”
(To be clear: it’s not the first time I’ve seen it spelled ‘woah’. But it WAS the first time I stopped to think about it.)
It just looks… wrong to me. It is, without hyperbole, a crime against nature to spell it that way.
I stopped to consider its pronunciation, broken down into phonetic form – wouldn’t that sound like ‘wo-ah’? Which is so obviously wrong that I don’t even need to point it out, do I?
But then, ‘whoa’ broken down in the same way would be ‘wh-o-aye’, and suddenly: incoming existential crisis.
How SHOULD it be spelled then, to fit its pronunciation? The best I could come up with was ‘whoh’, but thinking and typing that out was so painfully unnatural. Look how they (I) massacred my boy.
My bullshit aside, I think this exercise reminded me that first impressions tend to leave the deepest… impression.
(I write for a living, y’all.)
Another example, and another chance to laugh at me: I must’ve skimmed by really fast when I first read the word ‘abysmal’, because for many years, I thought it was spelled ‘absymal’. I even tried to correct a friend once.
So! While what you see at first might irrevocably colour the way you understand something or someone, sometimes it pays to go back and re-think those opinions.
You never really know something or someone until you give it a few months of active consideration, at least.
… except for words. Just double-check those more than none at all, and you should do better than me.
Think more, talk less. Or talk a lot, but think even more. You get what I mean.
The Ringer is great. It’s one of my daily go-to websites for basketball and pop culture news and discussions. My favourite writer works for them, and I also listen to many of their podcasts.
They annoyed me recently though. And it’s because of this:
Specifically, this episode of their Group Chat NBA podcast. Even more specifically, it was Chris Ryan, one of the two people on this episode, who annoyed me.
But this isn’t a rant about The Ringer or the Group Chat podcast or Chris Ryan. It’s a rant against the normalization of ‘hot take’ culture.
A hot take is, as Wikipedia defines it, “a piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing, usually written on tight deadlines with little research or reporting, and even less thought.”
(We all kinda know what a hot take is, but in the interest of being exact, I looked up the above definition. It’s a little harsh in describing my annoyance with Ryan’s statements, but I guess it’ll do.)
So what did Ryan say that triggered me? There were two things, actually:
1. “I think most people would agree, [Kawhi’s] the best basketball player on the planet” (50:48)
I gotta break out good ol’ Vault Boy here:
Justin Verrier, the other podcast host, goes on to say that maybe only Anthony Davis compares in terms of ability to affect the many areas of a basketball game. This helps to frame the discussion: they’re ‘only’ talking about modern-day players.
So we’re just forgetting players like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, LeBron James?
What the hell does ‘modern-day’ even mean anyway? For example, what version of LeBron counts? Are we talking about the current, slightly hobbled version of LeBron, or is his career over the last decade being taken into consideration?
And sure, playoff games count more, etc. But it’s ridiculous to throw out a whole season (and a couple rounds of the playoffs!) of Giannis and Durant dominance in favour of ONE brilliant playoff run by Kawhi.
I’m loving Kawhi’s play, but statements like the one Ryan offered up, without enough thought and/or context provided, are just inflammatory by nature. In Singaporean parlance, it just serves to stir shit. There’s too much recency bias at play.
2. “The one thing that’s kinda cool about the way they do the FA Cup in England… is that, for the opening rounds, basically the kids play” (56:19)
This is from Ryan’s discussion about introducing a knockout cup competition, much like those in European football, to the NBA. This is to give teams who aren’t realistic challengers for the Larry O’Brien trophy something to play for.
I highlighted this one sentence, but really I have a bone to pick with several things he says.
To be fair, he makes some good suggestions, such as the winners getting extra cap space or draft considerations. It injects excitement and stirs interest in fans of teams like the Charlotte Hornets or my Dallas Mavericks.
But there are so many nuances he misses out in his proposal that I can’t take it seriously.
To address the highlighted sentence: only the biggest teams such as the Manchester clubs, Liverpool, and Chelsea play their youngsters and reserves, because they’re stretched thin with fixtures across up to four different competitions at any one time. European tournaments and the league take precedence because of the prestige and money.
Teams lower down the table or in the lower divisions are actually likely to throw their best lineups out there in what is usually their best hope of winning some major silverware or at least getting in the headlines with a giant-killing or two.
And besides, football team rosters are much, much larger than NBA teams’. NBA teams would have to expand their rosters considerably to make competing in such a cup competition any sort of worthwhile endeavour. Otherwise, you get key role players like Shaun Livingston and Fred VanVleet putting in heavy minutes during the regular season. What would that do to rotations and these players’ ability to contribute in the playoffs?
Expanding roster sizes brings its own set of trickle down effects and side effects that have to be addressed, such as salary cap structure, quality of play, and G-League assignments, among many, many others.
All this to ‘singe people’s eyebrows off’ and to have LeBron in a knockout tournament because it’s ‘fucking sick’ (Ryan’s words). Maybe think for a second before asking for things now now now because we gotta go to Mount Splashmore right now.
The lack of attention paid to the nuances of both topics was disappointing, placing simplicity ahead of accuracy for the sake of making bold statements. But the biggest issue I have is actually how matter-of-fact Ryan made them out to be.
He speaks with the confidence of an expert, but either doesn’t know about or leaves out important details. Regarding the second point, for example, any casual fan who doesn’t know much about European football (understandable, considering it’s a basketball podcast) may be misinformed.
The thing is, I don’t necessarily think he’s doing it on purpose, and that’s the scary part. We should all be more mindful about the words that we choose to speak and the ideas they represent.
Hot take culture is fun, but can be damaging. Thankfully, we’re just talking about sports here, but get too used to it and it could spill over into more serious domains.
They’re really cool, but also not. But they kinda are.
Today I attended a networking event I signed up for a week ago. It wasn’t something I was prepared for.
I’m quite the introvert, so I can’t do these things at the drop of a hat. Sure, I had a week to mentally prep, but I didn’t really – it’s been a very busy couple weeks and I didn’t have time to think about such things. Because of that, the event had the ‘crept up on me’ vibe to it.
So I went more in hope than anything. It helped that a colleague of mine, Imran, went as well. He’s been in sales for a few years, so this sort of thing is way more up his street. I just followed his lead, really.
I’ve been to such events before, I’ve managed events before, and the energy this time around was the same as always. And really, it’s that energy that makes these things so cool to me. It’s the feeling of opportunity – but what that means exactly depends on you.
And here’s where I tend to get done in.
As someone who likes reading and writing stories for the sake of it (not every piece of writing needs to be selling something), I’m more interested to get to know people – why they’re here, what they’re trying to achieve, what their journey has been. What they’re like as people, even. But of course, chances are most people are there for business, some more straightforward about it than others.
I just want to talk about the things that make them laugh, or infuriate them. Memes, anyone?
In that sense, I do feel a little out of place at times. I prefer slow-paced, in depth conversation, not the professional equivalent of speed dating.
(It doesn’t help that I’m terrible at thinking on my feet.)
That said, I feel like it’s just a matter of getting in more reps. I’m new in my place in life, and there’s something definitely to be said about how being more comfortable in where exactly you stand plays a part in how you project yourself. You are what you feel.
With time, reps, and some fine-tuning, I believe I’ll get there one day soon. I want some of that energy; it really is quite addictive.
Oh, and free pork katsu sandwiches don’t hurt either.
