When Silence Is No Longer Golden

This happened last night. Was depressed because I can't seem to make a conversation with her . Then suddenly a message from her came out of nowhere. She just said she couldn't sleep. Then I told her why I couldn't sleep too. And just like last time, her words were painfully accurate. I'm not sure why I'd use that word (painful). Probably because there isn't that many things in my life that is so accurate as that, that the unfamiliarity of the feeling being so precisely pointed out what is on my mind. She basically somehow managed to put into words what I have been doing: I'm struggling to match her personality. It was so spot on I was actually scared how she knows. She just said that it was apparent, and it kinda made me worry now if she (okay this is getting confusing) knows too. But anyway, for some reason I was in the mood of sharing more of my shittiness with her so I told her. Not sure if I have ever written it down in this blog before, but I am s

Hi readers. Just had a talk with a friend. He is one with a really logical way of thinking. A little too logical for his own good sometimes... But that's beside the point of tonight's post. We talked about what I wrote in this post and he again told me how I take things too seriously. Like I need to take a chill pill and be less guarded about things. Well, I already know that I often take things too seriously (if I dare say it might actually be always, or almost all the time to be nice to myself), but I have no idea why I do, and how I can try not to be that way too much. I feel that I need to find out the reason why I am this way and work from there, but this piece (or pieces) of memory might be somewhere deep inside my psyche and might not be trivial to find out. So alternatively I could just consciously try to be more chill about things. It is definitely not going to be that easy, since it has become something like a character to me, and it is probably going to be easier

Another 2 weeks another post! Just had an office holiday party last night and I (didn't) have a blast! Long story short. I invited her . Tried to enjoy myself by chugging on them booze. Didn't do a thing to my brain. If anything, it's my belly that felt that it gonna explode (upwards). She kinda enjoyed herself, I think. Like she was excited to meet some of my colleagues, but on the dance floor, I can tell she's not having nearly enough booze to let her hair down, but she tried anyway (I tried too. Too hard, too). After party, went to a bar. Left early / Bailed on her. (On the left is what she claimed was the way she saw it, on the right is the way I saw it). Anyway, talked to her and she said everything's good, even after I kinda pressed her to be honest with me. So I had no choice but to take her words for it. So, assuming she is being upfront, these are a few things I learn about myself: 1. I'm super closed. Well, I already knew this all along. But

Hi readers! Quite a (relatively short) hiatus! I'm just back from a (kinda) long trip! Went to Jakarta to help out in a company event for university students, and then followed by my first ever visit to India, Chennai! Nothing much worth writing happened during those trip so I'm just gonna mention it here just so that I don't forget that these trips happened lol. The main reason I write this is to again, investigate what caused me to be in the state I am now. Currently I'm trying to better understand what is "wrong" with me. Here are the things that I think is "wrong" with me: 1. I have difficulty remembering details about some experiences and only remember what I "feel". The girl from  this post  also has the same issue which alarmed me. For example, say now I'm going to tell you about both my Jakarta and Chennai trip. I would say that in Jakarta I had fun hosting the event, but I can't remember/tell why it was the case. T

Hi readers! Another day another post! Better be grateful while it lasts! Went to temple today. No one there. No one as in no one that I'd be happy to see. No, I'm not talking about her in particular. Well, she is one of the people that I'd be happy to see there, but I was actually just talking about any friends I can talk to in general. In the afternoon I met up with another girl who is actually a match from another dating app. Not for a date, but more for dating advice so to speak lol. The story is that she has just started to try to commit more to another guy, and I respected her decision since she has already been seeing him for 6 months. It was quite an interesting chat with her (rather an awkward one too). Learned that I'm not actually the worst of dates. Some random dude out there actually asked someone out for a date at MacDonald's! So if you're a guy and you think you're bad at dating, don't worry, there's always the MacDonald's guy

Hi again reader(s?). So many posts the last few days, yeah? In the past I would say that this is a good thing but now... not so much. I met up with a friend, who, for some reason, I became close to out of a sudden. Probably due to situation. But anyway met up with her and chat up a bit. Okay, for the benefit of readers who don't know what I'm talking about, and for my future reference, I should write a little more about this girl. Met her in university. Nice girl, seemed to be able to connect with a lot of people easily. After a while, I realized she might be onto something. As in, something's not really right whenever I asked her about how "popular" she is. Today I found out that I was right; that she's been going through something similar to what I've been going through, but worse. Anyway, initially I wished to talk about dating stuff, since I felt that she has established implicitly (but strongly) that she sees me as just friend, or "bro"

The weekend has just passed and I don't feel refreshed at all.. I think this is the first weekend in a while when I don't really have any major happening. Last week there was Cakka , the previous week was my third date with her , I believe... And the previous week was the weekend when one of my housemate initiated a house outing for my sake. So I guess it has been at least a month since I first started trying to change . I tried to write down what I think so far, as well as how I feel about finally having the weekend free from it, and I can't seem to formulate it at all... Like when I tried to do it, they just don't flow. It feels that there is a contradiction somewhere that either I don't know, or I simply refuse to acknowledge. Is it because I don't like the change? My mind resisting the change? The weeks when the weekend was filled with activities and plans leave me tired at the end of the week. I'm not sure if I felt contented, but I *think* at the

Hi readers! What a long week it has been... And finally I have the weekend all for myself!!! (for the most part...) Few updates. Believe it or not, the girl from this post is still willing to go out with me!! I have no idea why she'd want that... I feel that I have been a terrible date (or even by just-friend standard) so far... I was late for our first proper date (not a meetup just because she happens to be in the area) and again today... And I'm not sure how I did, but I think I still suck at keeping up with her as in the previous dates... :cry: :cry: A little trivia update, I was just interviewed by Transferwise people because they wanted to do a promotional video for their Asian market. Friendly bunch, but I was too preoccupied for the date in the evening, I didn't even get to ask the questions I wanted to ask, or even properly thank them for their awesome product :'((((( OR TO EVEN ACTUALLY DOCUMENT IT BY TAKING SELFIE OR WHATEVER. FUCK I'M GETTING

Hi readers, today turned out to be a very heavy day for my heart. Today was supposedly the day I plugged off from daily life and tried to learn as much as possible about Dhamma from this forum called Cakka (not sure how long the link is going to be up). Turned out to be the day I got bombarded with hard, cold truths of reality, and seems like some stupid conflict on top of it too... So started the day and the event started at 9. Came late and needed to embarrass myself to find where the people I'm signing up with were sitting (I don't have to but decided to do it since it might be awkward for them, I signed up with 2 other friends who don't know one another). FYI, one of them was her . Cutting the story short, I found out she is taken. Actually, she told me that she is. I didn't let myself skip a single beat, maintained my poise and managed to say an as-normal-as-possible "congrats". Followed by some questions that *I* think a normal frie

Hi readers! Lots of updates in the past few days, huh? I guess I just happened to be having a rather happening week. A few interesting stuff for my future self to look back (and maybe for readers who know me personally and want to know the stuff that has been happening in my life), in brief: I just met one of my matches the second time earlier this week. So I met up with that girl from the previous post again on Monday, since she happened to be in the area in the evening. This time round she's more free so I had the chance to bring her around the office and talked more about ourselves. I learned and gained a lot of insights about many things. For one, that I might be more of an asshole than I thought I am. I kept putting labels on her like "foreigner", "American", all kinds of things (not necessarily super offensive, but still kinda weird and unbecoming of me. She kindly reminded me how that's something that people shouldn't be saying time and

Just wanted to record this down so that when I look back through the blog archives, I knew that this happened. The person on that anti-mainstream dating app I mentioned in the previous post turned out to be visiting Google for a talk last night! I decided to be YOLO and met up with her despite the lack of preparation (not that I have anything much to prepare). It's too bad that my English sucks so bad now; I couldn't keep up with how fast she spoke, though luckily I always managed to get the gist of it. I think she might have noticed that I am the kind of guy who can't keep a conversation going and somehow she managed to order an Uber right under my nose without me realizing it (or maybe she ordered it when she went to the washroom, hmmm) and ran away from the scene lol. Anyway she told me that her friends are waiting for her in a bar to celebrate her birthday (I forgot to wish her directly too... I only wished her in the chat). Just to let my future self refresh his m

Hi readers. I'm doing better now so please don't worry about me (if there is any readers left at this point, that is). For those who are out of the loop, simple check out my previous post , where I threw a textual tantrum about how I was lonely and desperate and stuff. I am not *that* depressed anymore, though I'm still sad by the fact that I didn't get to make full use of my teenage years to avoid the state of mind I'm in right now. But that's beside the point of what I wanted to write about in this post. Or actually it is, since technically it is inside my mind, and thus it overflows. Or maybe not really. I'm rambling. Moving on. So basically yeah, I'm doing much better now. I just decided to accept that fact and try to improve myself. Just a little update on what happened last weekend; I actually made a "dana" to a "bhante"!! (that's "donation" and "Buddhist monk/venerable" to you plebs. Jk, I meant non

Hey there. The week has not been nice to me (or rather, my mind has not been receiving the turns of events that happen this week well). I just verified that I am a friggin desperate dude, not matter how hard I try to deny it. I am a friggin loser, a  Jerry Smith  in my own story, but worse. Even Jerry could get married. I can't even get a friggin girlfriend, can't even maintain a decent conversation with anyone for more than 1 minute. I am just an insecure, super-self-conscious loser that can't even get the motivation to fix all the things that are wrong with me, even when I already know what need fixing. I'm sure you'd have already figured out the general tone of the post by now. Not too late for you readers to close this page before I ruin your otherwise great day. You have been warned. Still here? Then let's step back a little before I go back to my self-derogatory fit so that you know how I came to the conclusion. I'm sure any regular reader wou

So here goes the long overdue mid-year reflection (follow-up to the new year resolution post ). 1. To go for most opportunities available Not sure how I can answer this. There are not that many things that came up in the first half of the year since I am on my final semester in NUS. However, I would say I kinda failed in this aspect because I didn't go to a meditation retreat (which is something I wanted to do during the break before work started) when I had the chance. There was no other opportunities of much significance afterwards; just some incidental opportunities such as networking with certain people (like my friend's mentor on Indo2SV programme, other people in my team from a different office) and some others. 2. To improve my communication skills (especially in Chinese and with girls) This is kinda hard to tell too. I went to Hong Kong so technically I practiced a little bit of Chinese... And I have been trying to speak a little Chinese here and there

Hi readers! Did not expect me to write so soon after only 1 month? Actually it felt much longer than 1 month since the last time I wrote. So much has happened in the last 1 month compared to like the whole semester last semester that it felt like I shouldn't have done so much in such a short amount of time. About a week after I wrote the last post, I attended my graduation ceremony, spending time with family in Singapore and stuff. The following week I went back to Indonesia just so that I could celebrate my birthday with my family (after 3 years celebrating it somewhere else). Then I went to Singapore to start working. The first week of work was orientation, meeting a lot of people doing a lot of stuff I don't usually do previously (such as socializing and networking lol) and the following week I flew to the US for my second part of orientation! I was (still am) here for 2 weeks, and because of various reasons, I didn't attend some of the orientation classes and inste

Hi readers! Firstly I apologize for abandoning this blog for 3 months! The first month was due to me being busy with schoolwork (it being my last semester as an undergrad and stuff). The next month was due to me being busy having fun traveling a bit (grad trip hype woots). And the last month was due to me being lazy... Sigh. It is now nearing the end of my very last long break before I start working for real. It seems that I didn't see the importance of making it *really* counts, despite it being my very last holiday as a student. I did fill it with some interesting things in the first few weeks as you can tell from the summary of my last 3 months in the first paragraph, however after I was back from those trips, I am back to the same old me, lazing about in my house doing nothing much but eat, sleep, and play. Did I do whatever I can to make it counts? Is it money that held me back from doing more? Or simply my laziness? Looking at my bank account right now, it seems

Another post on another month! Seems like either this is a very happening semester or I just have too much free time to post (it is the latter). I can't believe my journey in the university is coming to an end soon. And I am still the same inexperienced guy when it comes to girls, just like when I entered. What happened? Yesterday I watched a musical by the Indonesian community in NUS to support a friend. I did not even think to buy her a flower. After the performance, I had nothing much to say, not even requesting to take a picture with her and her gorgeous costume. In contrast, two years ago she performed in the same musical series and I took a picture with her, even gave her a friendly hug. What happened? At the same musical, I met her (the her from this post ). Actually, I met her a few hours before the event. We just spoke briefly, both parties awkwardly trying to end the conversation not awkwardly (even this whole sentence is awkward). After the event, we met aga

Hi readers! It's just been a month since my last post! I am not actually neglecting my blog this year! Well, actually it is because I am having a chill semester this time, so I have quite a lot of time for myself. I must say I don't actually like it (!!!) because it makes me lazy and actually messes up my sleeping pattern even worse than when I was busy. This is because I ended up wasting my time playing games to fill in the spare time, and when you play games, you usually end up sleeping late because you are so into the game. Now, even when I tried to sleep earlier (1 or 2 am is considered "early" to me now), I would be unable to sleep because my mind is still very much awake, thinking about games and things that have been going on in my life, which is what I wanted to share now. As some of you readers might have known, I have been taking Chinese classes in my university, and it has become a habit of mine to put YouTube on autoplay playing Chinese songs whenever

Hi readers! Didn't expect me to write the next post in the series of "Obligatory New Year Post"? I know it is a little late, since this year I spent it in my home country and I'm sharing my room with my brother. In the last few years, he had been studying in China and thus I usually had the room all by myself around the new year, and I got into reflective mood pretty quickly. Also, I am kinda (ok, REALLY) addicted to Civilization V . Moreover, I am worrying about my FYP all December too. Shortly, it is kinda hard to get into reflective mood these days. Finally here I am and here we go.