When Silence Is No Longer Golden

 Happiness is such an elusive thing. When I was young (actually even now), many people would equate having a lot of money as the key to happiness. There are also posts in social media saying about how money doesn't buy happiness, and about how many rich people are living very stressful lives, dying young, falling into sickness with weird complications. Oddly enough, I have first hand experience on this. I recalled the initial idea of why I started looking for house in the first place. Awalnya karena gw lumayan ga suka sama rumah gw yg baru ini di TB. Low floor, poor layout dan smaller master room (at least compared to the Commonwealth one). Always very noisy in the morning (and in random time of the day sometimes). I hated the fact that I have to deal with housemates to decide what to do with common area stuff, prefering to either just follow along or decide unilaterally without considering the consequence to others. I hate that I keep seeing dirty sinks every day. I hate to see be...

 Many things happened recently, I don't have time to write and process them all :') but let's try doing it slowly one by one. Not in order, but whichever one I feel like processing in the moment. This time round, I wish to process about unconditional kindness. This is somewhat related to unconditional giving or generosity as well. This and about its impact on my own gracefulness in receiving kindness/generosity from others. The reason this came across my mind is due to a recent conversation I had with a girl I met late last year. I don't really want to say "I dated her" because I stopped having feelings for her on the second date, despite still meeting up with her almost every week for a month before finally telling her how I felt. Reason of  me still meeting her may or may not be apparent in this post. During our last meet up last Sunday, one thing led to another, and I said something like "I have no idea why you are being so nice to me" and she kin...

 Whew, last night was quite an emotional roller coaster! I'm happy that my life direction so far has brought me enough mindful awareness not to wallow in that self pity too much and attempted to move the mind towards something more peaceful/wholesome (though the level of success still leaves something to be desired). I need to maintain the perspective that getting to know a girl is not about making the girl likes you - it's about knowing each other well and assess the compatibility, though I must say currently it's not quite that simple. It's currently about a choice - whether I want to take the risk and put myself in an uncomfortable but exciting situation or.. take a slower and gradual approach. The risk-taking approach is obviously by getting to know this new girl better even more, while trying not to lose myself into trying to fit in too much. The slower and gradual approach would be... to find someone else who fits my current personality and tendencies more. I got ...

 Hi readers! Didn't expect to have been writing for 8 years now (or is it only that I've been writing this new year post 8 times?). I long for the day when I will never update this blog again because my life finally goes the way I want it to be (if you all notice, I usually write about the times when life goes against me). That being said, I have not updated the blog for more than half a year, but that didn't mean my life went swimmingly in those 7 months. In fact, I think it was quite a turbulent one (though obviously not as turbulent as, you know, 2-3 years ago...) Last I posted here was "Of Squandering My Blessings...", which I'm sure is about how I messed up my relationship with the girl where I hit it off right off the bat (in the chat, not even in the first meet up!) And now I'm in the juncture where I might be doing the same, though the situation is much different. Well, similar in some ways but different in others. It's similar as last time in ...

 Hi readers, it's been a while, as usual. And of course, I didn't (or haven't) finish my supposed multi-part story of my Thailand trip! I want to say I apologize, but then I'm not even sure if anyone is still reading this nowadays (even I don't read things in here after I posted it) so maybe there's no point to apologize since I'd be apologizing to no one lol. But anyway, another post, another melancholic(-ish) story! But don't worry, I try not to pity myself too much (I'm not in that mental state anyway, or so I think). Not sure if I shared this in my Thailand story post, but I kinda made a "wish", an "intention", to have a fruitful retreat, which happened and more, but unfortunately I'm too lazy to write it down to share here. But anyway (and also unfortunately), this post is not about that. Even though I did wish to have a fruitful retreat, not gonna lie that it took me a while to make up my mind on that wish - and one thin...

 Hi readers! Finally another post! I promise this time is not going to be melancholic! This post will be about a trip that I recently undertook, a trip of a lifetime (so far). I travelled solo in Thailand for a week! I learned so much from this trip, I hope I woud at least be able to write half of it, because I know I will lose some of them on the course of writing it, simply because the writing won't flow if I try to stuff all the learnings in, not to mention me forgetting it since it's been a week... This trip was initiated by a friend, a colleague who used to work in the same office, but she moved to Germany recently. I don't really recall how it went exactly, but she just kinda spontaneously asked a few of us (a small group of friends she hung out with when she's still in Singapore) if we're free in December to travel around Thailand. I was like, doh! I'll make the time! When else would you be able to get to travel to a country in which you don't speak t...

 Hello readers, it's me again (who else can it be). Here with another edition of obligatory new year post! I'm writing this right on the new year's day for the very first time! Actually it's just because I just finished showering and waiting for my hair to dry (my parents always say not to sleep with wet hair as it can cause rheumatism or something). So this is going to be a quick one, without references to any of the previous editions of obligatory new year post, since I don't really want to sleep too late and I believe the last edition is the very sad edition, and I don't really want to make myself sad right now. I think in all the previous editions of obligatory new year post, I've always made some sort of grading of resolution from the previous year and writing new ones for the upcoming year. Since I don't really want to read the previous year's obligatory new year post, I'm not going to do that and just going to do a quick reflection of how ...

 Hi readers! Another non-sensical post coming up (I'll trymy best to make it sensible). I'm not very sure where to start. I guess we can start from the information that I've been seeing a therapist/counsellor/psychologist/whatever other names these people have. I started going around April or May I think, and have been going about once a month for 3 times before a hiatus due to a business trip to the US (that's another story all together that I don't think I'll write about here anytime soon, tough luck :p), and have just started going again this month. The story happened on the second time I went this month, which was yesterday. The counsellor's office/meet-up place is in the Clarke Quay area. After my session ended at around 5.30pm, I was deciding where and what to eat for dinner. As I was deliberating, I walked towards the MRT, and decided to check out the river area, because what could be a better place for someone who just finished a therapy session for ...

 Hi readers! It has again been a looong while! Almost a year! Something shook my brain. Just a quick catch-up, between my last post and now, there's nothing much happened really. I've been basically living on survival mode, and I kinda made an attempt to fix that by going to counsellor starting in.... around April I think. It's the OTOT kind of counselling (not sure if that's the common kind, I had the impression that it's meant to be a regular thing). I've only gone about 3 times, and nothing much has changed so far. Maybe I should pick up the pace and schedule more sessions over shorter period... But anyway the reason I wrote this is something I talked about earlier this afternoon/evening with a friend. I decided not to put a backlink to them just in case there are people who know who's who reading this... Anyway we've just returned from a trip to the US (different trips). For some reason, this trip left some impression on me, about how.... free living...