In Motion

“We can start working with time if you wish,” Chiang said, “till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.” - Jonathan Livingston Seagull In the new world that Jonathan found himself in, he learned and mastered flying at top speed and teleportation. Among all these amazing skills, it is surprising that the Elder Chiang deems kindness and love the "most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all". At first, I thought this book would be about striving for perfection in our passion, and personally, I don't know if there's anything I would be as obsessed about perfecting as much as Jonathan wanted to perfect his flying skills. This surprising turn of events reminds me of a Bible v erse that goes:  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a...

Sometimes I wonder if what I wear really reflects my taste. I personally think it doesn't, because I'm limited to stuff in the bargain bins or discount racks. A typical shopping trip goes like this : May : Oohhh I like that! It looks classy. JW : Yeah it does. May : But when am I ever going to wear it? It's more suitable for formal occasions. But it's so pretty. *checks pricetag* Okay forget it.  *May moves on to the discount rack.*  May : Everything here is 10 bucks! *starts rifling through the clothes, doesn't see anything she REALLY likes, but a few which are decent* This is an interesting design, but I don't really like the colour. Do I reaaaaally need this? 10 bucks is still 10 bucks. I don't have any *insert type of clothing here* yet, this may come in handy. Is this going to match with any of my clothes, though? Ah whatever, let's try it on. Clothes-trying is free anyway.  *May tries it on*  JW : How was it? May: I still don'...

I just spent my whole morning creating a video collage of the photos from our wedding. It was fun. =P My rationale for the video went like this : I uploaded about 60 of the best photos to a Facebook album, but I really had around 400. Which meant there were quite a lot that the public didn't get to see. Flowers and more abstract photos are nice, but when you're trying to make a summary of your wedding (no one wants to go through 400 photos on Facebook), you just pick the ones with the most people or that best represent the event. And because I've already posted some to Facebook, this video can be for the rest of the photos that weren't shown (like the flowers and deco). =D Otherwise they would be wasted okay...I paid like RM2k for my photographer and I have to make the most out of it. =P It was also a trip down memory lane for me as I went through some of those photos. Thanks to a free trial by Animoto, making this video collage was a breeze. Enjoy! Song: "Wh...

I recently joined the Duke International Book Club, and we'll be reading through and discussing "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach over the next few weeks. There are also writing assignments for this book, so I felt that I might as well share what I write here, too. This is the writing cue for the first chapter :  For chapter 1, perhaps you have had some passion, in art, music, some dream, etc. that you strove for and were told to instead 'fit in'. What was that like for you? Write a paragraph or two about your experience. In Malaysia, there are three well-regarded career paths that 'highly educated' or 'intelligent' people follow : Medicine, Law and Engineering. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but that's the general sentiment that most parents echo, especially those with children who do well academically. I did well in school, but was never interested in those aforementioned career paths. All I ever wanted to do wa...

I really think Facebook isn't the best place to get advice on life and relationships from. By "advice", I mean shared pictures that go "Fake friends do this, real friends do that", or "A real guy will do this, not that", or some pithy quotes/links that go viral ('viral' meaning more than 2 people sharing it on your Facebook newsfeed, of course). Or could it be that my newsfeed has a higher proportion of these things than other people's newsfeeds? *shrugs* Angsty teens sharing such quotes or 'wisdom' can be overlooked because we all know how tumultuous and dramatic teenage life can be. For all us older folks, though, we should know better that life can't be neatly categorized into black and white, right and wrong, true and false, and so on. Case in point : Friends can't be categorized into just "real" and "fake" - there may be acquaintances who may genuinely like you but wouldn't dream of stealing ...

I was pondering the boring state of my existence just the other day, when I realized that having a job only improves things slightly. The reason I was ruminating over it is because being a stay-at-home wife, your social life takes a big hit. I once asked a housewife what the biggest challenge/downside was to being one, and she said it was the loneliness and loss of social skills. When you're facing a toddler 24/7 and don't have peers to talk to because everyone's busy with their own life, your social skills will definitely degenerate from lack of use. Even though I don't have a toddler take care of, I can identify with the isolation. For example, it would be SO MUCH EASIER to go up to a stranger, make introductions and swap info about what I do or compare notes on what the other person does if I had a career worth talking about. But I don't, so I'm stuck feeling awkward. And why am I talking about putting myself out there to meet random people? Because as ...

I know you're dying to see pictures of our new place. Or maybe I'm just projecting. =P But here they are anyways! The living room. The study/extra table for miscellaneous junk in the corner of the living room. The 'end table' there which also doubles as a bookshelf is a converted laptop table. Close up of the coffee table. Some flowers to make you happy! Now, I'm a self-confessed really bad photographer, and I don't have the patience (nor the aptitude) to edit photos to perfection. So what you're seeing is truly "no filter", "not that tidy" and I even left out the dining table because it was cluttered haha. As you can tell, the place is so spacious that I can't really get everything into one shot. That was just the prettiest part of the apartment, and I haven't even shown you the dining area, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom yet. Granted, I'm pretty sure no one's really interested in the bathroom (or maybe th...