Strength

03/11/2020 8:54 p.m.

Meeting Mr Vincent Ng, a curator at A Good Space, was an insane, mind-warping experience. There was trust and patience built between us through the entire 3 hours we talked to each other. His journey hasn't been all that easy, he went through a lot going through JC and university but he was able to conquer it all, which was honestly, amazing.

He shared with me a lot of things, facilitated the conversation we had and the conversation within myself. He taught me things I did not know such as the different leadership styles one can adopt, and he normalized networking for 19-year-old individuals like myself. I gained confidence to reach out to people whom I really want to talk to after they have shared their stories online, as weird as it sounds, there are people who are willing to share with you their story and you just have to be Bold! Don't fear getting judged! Fear the opportunity lost if you did not choose to initiate to talk to those people who inspire you.

That night, I reached out to Faheema. I watched #SMUchangemaker, a Youtube video in which she was featured in. She is the founder of hash.peace, an organization which advocates racial and religious harmony, builds friendships transcending differences, counters extremism and most importantly curating cultural intelligence, as well as critical thinking. I really wanted to somehow and someway reach out to her but I obviously did not have the courage to do so. But after talking to Vincent, he really gave me the confidence to JUST DO IT. So, I did. I messaged her on Instagram and told her how inspired I was after watching her video. She replied to my message and even suggested to have breakfast together with a few others to share more about what hash.peace is all about! Honestly, I was just extremely shocked, at the outcome, the breakfast is not fixed yet, but I believe it is coming soon. I just can't wait what I will learn from the conversation and what I can bring to the table as well. Everything happened so fast. Exhilaration. Amazement. Overwhelmed. Hopeful.

After talking to Faheema, I clearly became more confident in reaching out to people who literally are role models to me or whose lives they are living are just so close to what I would want myself to be living in the future. I came across a podcast Youtube video featuring an NUS business graduate student: Leonard Yap. I connected to him on Instagram and I was really interested in the beliefs he held on to strongly during university and fortunately he was such a pleasant soul and he was so open to sharing with me his top three beliefs:

1) Be bold, be fearless and not let any person’s words affect what you are pursuing if you know that what you are doing is right. 

2) Be humble and try to learn as many things when you are younger. Talk to people, ask for advice and they would share more with you.

3) Tough times do not last but tough people do. Always remember that even though the problem seems big at first, it’s just temporary. The challenges may be insurmountable at that very moment. But now, in retrospect, they don't seem such a big deal after they are over and done with. It’s because tough times seems huge only when you are experiencing it at the moment.

He reminded me to stop comparing with other people around me because everyone is different! Everyone is unique! Most importantly, this one thing he told me really struck a chord with me: be ambitious but be contented too! I mean this has been something I was always struggling with since the start of I-don't-even-know-when. I always am so ambitious with what I feel I can achieve in the present and in the future, after all: dream big because if I were to shoot for the moon and I miss it, I will still be able to land among the stars. But for now, I won't settle for less, I know exactly what I am working towards and I know how to get there, the only thing missing right now is me actually doing it. I won't go all talk and no action, I am going to try my best and absorb so much from SMU that I am going to make my 15-year-old self quake. My 15-year-old self would never have imagined me even entering SMU business school or even graduating from VJC to even start off with! But I did the latter, I can definitely achieve the former too! So, for that, I am thankful for Leonard for really waking me up. Hui, quit wallowing in your own mindless thoughts, start being thankful and appreciative for everything from small to big. Things happen for a reason and you need to start becoming more contented with everything you have. You literally have everything you need in the world, you have all shelter and you have all the necessities you need to survive. Now, when you realise that you are good, start becoming more mindful about all the things around you, the loopholes in the society that you can do your part to fill up, the people around you that need help, help them. We can only rise by lifting others up.

Also, just three days ago, as International Women's Day.
This picture is literally everything. So powerful.
Happy International Women's Day.
Girls deserve equal pay. And,
Boys are allowed to cry.


xoxo, Hui

Trigger Warning

03/06/2020 4:59 p.m.

I was reading a thriller, crime, mystery book earlier today.
Dust to Dust, written by Tami Hoag.
The first chapter caught me completely off guard and I cannot even express how appalled I was by this.

"It is stunning how quickly it happens. How little time it takes to go from trouble to tragedy. Seconds. Mere seconds without air and the brain begins to shut down. No time to struggle. No time to panic even.
Like a boa constrictor choking the life from its prey, the noose tightens and tightens. It makes no difference what thoughts explode in the brain... The commands don't make it down the neural pathways to the muscles of the arms. Coordination is gone.
The sturdy rope makes a tearing sound as the weight of his body stretches it. The beam creaks.
His body turns slightly this way and that. The arms pull upward in hideous, slow-motion spasms. A macabre marionette's dance - arms moving up and down; hands twitching, twisting, bending; fingers curling. The knees try to draw upward, then straighten again. Posturing: a sign of brain damage.
The eerie contortions go on and on. The seconds stretch as the death dance continues. A minute. Two. Four. The rope and beam creak in the otherwise silent room. The eyes are open but vacant. Mouth moves in a final, futile gasp for air. The most acute, exquisite split second of life: the final heartbeat before death.
And then it is over.
At last.
The flash explodes in a brilliant burst of white light and the scene is frozen in time."

To read about how terrifyingly simple it is for life and its essence to slip through our hands as such makes me appreciate life even more. I think that every earthling brought into this world is a warrior and a fighter, just that most of us have not yet figure out how to channel the inner power we all possess to impact the world, to leave our mark.

When I have everything

02/26/2020 7:40 p.m.

I think this is how humans work:

I want something. I get something.

This continues, back and forth, not mutually exclusive and not uni-directional but bi-directional.

It can be:

I want something. I get something.
I get something. I want something.

If you take 'I want something' as stage x and 'I get something' as stage z, the process of one transitioning from stage x to stage z differs from person to person and differs from what exactly that thing is. I have come to terms with the fact that we, humans, cannot satisfy ourselves. After fulfilling a need, there comes another need. After satisfying a want, comes another want. So, if we were to use our needs and wants to define happiness, happiness becomes an extremely abstract concept, because then, technically we will never ever be able to experience happiness, even till the day, we lie in our coffins, with white flowers scattered around our deathbed.

Insatiable greed. Insatiable needs. Insatiable wants.

Before my national examinations ended, I was dearly hoping for the day it will all end and I envision myself experiencing the unfamiliar sense of freedom like my first time seeing a shooting star or my first time swimming in an open ocean. I wanted it to end so badly. I needed it to end to save my own sanity.

Then, came the day when it really ended. Um, la libertad ?

Nope, I took no break and went to work, immediately. I worked at a restaurant in the first 2.25 months of my holidays but I started thinking about how I need to find and get another job, hopefully, an internship to enrich my soul. Life at the restaurant becomes extremely repetitive and stagnant after a while, the only constant was probably the people that I meet and serve, but even then, some of them are the same. So I applied for roughly 25 open jobs that I am able to qualify for (to this date) and luckily for me, there were about 10 that got back to me. The margins are insane but c'mon, who would want to employ someone like me, with literally no actual qualifications, no diploma, no degree. Amidst of the coronavirus, I quitted working as a part-time service crew and took up my second job as an intern to learn more about the logistics, e-commerce industry and to avoid interactions with tourists. Afterall, it is better to be safe than to be sorry. Well, I mean I can get infected with the virus for all I care, but I do not want to drag my family down into this abyss with me and burden them with a virus that can realistically cost their lives. Everyone of us has a responsibility not only to account for ourselves but also to our family, whether we like it or not.

Then I realise, perhaps it is not that humans can never be satisfied. But because we need to move on, we need to advance, we need to evolve, which is why our needs and wants seem never-ending and insatiable. Happiness is a state of mind, it is not a case whether it is reachable or not. I can experience happiness even if I do not get what I want.

“Happiness is not determined by what’s happening around you, but rather what’s happening inside you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within.” - Anonymous

For if we think that happiness and our unquenchable desire are two separate entity, that are independent of each other, then there will not be a situation where we will have to compromise either of them. So, if I keep telling myself that if I get this or that, I will experience happiness, then I can never truly experience happiness because that something becomes the variable. I will then have to continuously move from stage x to stage z to make myself happy. Happiness is overrated.

I think many people have mistaken this relationship, which is why they are unhappy.
And to them, they are telling themselves that the only way to become happier is to get this, get that, do this, do that. Hopefully, they will be at peace with themselves, sooner or later.

Meanwhile, I will continue to find peace within myself. The balance that I believe I wholeheartedly need in the long run for my sanity.


xzxzxz disclaimer: clearly i can be wrong and i think this theory that i talked about above will definitely be subjected to changes, just because i change, you, the one who is reading changes xzxzxz

Mantra'20

02/06/20 7.28 a.m.

Work Hard, Stay Humble. 

I am going to be a rookie for life, no matter how old I am. There is no such instance where you know enough because you will never be enough and never ever be ever-ready to take on the world. So, for now, baby steps are enough for me to move towards my bigger goal: To learn and to enrich. 

xoxo, Hui

Thoughts

1/2/20 2.33 a.m.
Will a new year still be a new year if my mind has not totally wrap around the idea that a new year has descended? Or maybe it will never will...

I have spent the past month (December 2018) just collecting the bits and pieces of myself that were broken from A-levels. I went back to my hometown with my family and I travelled to Phuket, Thailand with my class. These two trips have been fun and memorable, but in actuality, anything can beat the exams season.

Thailand trip was though, a life-changing experience. I felt spiritually enlightened by the views. I felt awakened when I got to swim in vast oceans, murky and clear, especially with a school of fishes. I felt free when I did not stress about my future at all in the entire five-days journey. This trip changed my life mantra. Every day from then onwards, I reminded myself to not stress about things that I cannot control at all. I am still very much a work in progress but I am helping myself to let go of things that I am so persistent or I should say stubborn in, and live more in the present moment.

I have been reading a lot of books lately, and am starting to embrace my lazy self, but I am still striving to learn something new every day. Just today, I found a new interest in construction things, from tiling to plumbing, I can see myself living in a tiny house in Sweden/New Zealand/England or one of those Nordic countries.

xoxo, Hui

Lost

28/11/19 6:00p.m.

Tomorrow at 2:30p.m., I will be taking my last Alevels paper.
I think what scares me is not only the paper that I am going to take but everything that is about, and bound to come after that. What will happen to me? Will, what I envision come to play smoothly? I think that is the real deal. And it feels just as though I am stepping into the unknown once again. However, as much as this seems scary to me, it excites my soul, it forces me to focus, it pushes me to become the person I imagine/envision myself to be.
I am not going to settle down, but I need to end up somehow doing something concrete, so I need to wrap my head around the amount of free time I will end up having after my examinations end. But at this point, I do not have a solid plan just yet, maybe the next time I post, I will have something.