oh, take me back to the start

I also went to the Geylang bazaar with my colleagues A and S! We shared all the food so we could try different things, and then had a lovely time catching up, talking about anything and everything.

^ The baked potato was good, but it got a bit of jelak after a while. Definitely a sharing portion. The loaded hotdog and the caramel pudding were good! Matcha was good but a bit on the sweeter side.

Raya was great! It was nice to spend time with my family; I took leave the 2 days before Raya to help out with food prep because my mum normally starts preparing earlier and then freezes it. T also came over the afternoon before Raya to help out (yes, even though he doesn’t fast, he should still get the half day because he celebrates Raya with me and my family! He told me that his boss and colleagues were all “Err you celebrate meh?” but I think it was because they know he isn’t fasting, and their understanding is that Raya is the celebration after a month of puasa. But I said he should take the half day regardless of whet they think, and come help me and my family. Huhu). We helped out with vacuuming and moving furniture around, and stayed quite late until my sister and BIL said they would send us home hehe. Also because they were planning to go to a car wash as well. I felt that gotong-royong spirit (basically a spirit of working together and communal cooperation sorta thing) in my household more this year. It was a good feeling 😄

Anniversaries ✨

March is also a month of anniversaries ❤ It is the anniversary of when T and I met each other for the first time, the day we got together, and also the day we got married. This year marks 3 years of marriage and 5 years of being together! Time flies.

We originally made a dinner reservation to celebrate our anniversary, but T came down with what seems to have been either food poisoning or stomach flu, so we had to postpone and celebrate it in April instead.

March is also my work anniversary haha (same day that T and I met 😆). I have officially been in SW for 9 years 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 I will try to survive so I can reach the 10-year mark. Hahahaha

It definitely helps when I get to have meaningful interactions with, say, comm partners whom I believe really want to help the clients and community. My colleagues and I in the networking team met with MP Gerald Giam to share about our agency’s services and explore potential collaboration with his team, he’s one of the MPs in our service boundary. And I came away with it with such a positive impression of him 🙂 He comes across as grounded, very much in touch with what’s happening on the ground - he could tell us about the cases they see at MP sessions, what sorts of trends they’ve noticed - and he came with just one volunteer, not an entire entourage 👀 He did not ever ask us if we wanted a picture with him. 🙃 And he also did not say, in response to us sharing the system barriers and trends we’ve observed, “TFS got no success stories one ah?” #yesimstillsalty

Social Work Day celebration + matcha with colleagues after

We had an org-wide SW Day celebration which I enjoyed more than I expected to - I normally don’t enjoy large gatherings… I am an introvert. But it was fun when we played taboo using social work terms, possibly because my competitive side came out. And partly because we were grouped according to years of experience, so the people at my table were my own colleagues (2) + other people I knew, so I felt more comfortable. It was also refreshing to hear colleagues share findings and reflections from their overseas learning journeys.

But the highlight for me was going to Tanjong Pagar food centre after the event ended, with about half the office, to drink matcha and chit chat. Ok you may be thinking, like T did when I told him, “You all see each other everyday at work not enough ah?” 🙈 YA not enough 🤪 I guess we wanted to have a long, extended lunch conversation without the pressure of going back to work after an hour hahaha. And I had such a nice time! But yes I acknowledge it’s funny that we were happy to get a half day off from work at 2pm but half the office decided we still wanted to spend time together drinking matcha and talking for another 2 hours. LOL.

I continue to feel blessed that I like my colleagues and their support makes the difficult work easier. I like my colleagues so much, I see them on the weekend too, for a proposal. HAHAHA more on this later.

Random storytime

Something happened in the middle of Ramadan that made me realise I’m a pushover extremely non-confrontational. 😶 T and I went to have dinner at a coffeeshop near our house, and I ordered tomato egg noodles from a non-halal stall. It should have just been tomato and eggs, so it was vegetarian. Except that when I went to pick it up… the guy at the stall told me they gave me a free topping.

It was luncheon meat.

I was stunned and in shock and my reflex was to say an awkward “oh ok thanks” and quickly walk back to my table with it. My reflex was definitely not to say “Excuse me I can’t eat this, can you take it away and make a new one please?”

So I went back to my table where T was, and showed it to him. He was stunned too. I think we both stared at the dish in silence for a few seconds.

I can’t remember if it was at this point that I started tearing up, or if it was later, when T asked me, “why didn’t you just tell him you’re Muslim and can’t eat this?” Anyway, so non-confrontational was I, that I asked T to pick up the offending item with his chopsticks and put it into his own bowl; I did not ask for a new one, and I still ate the noodles, because I felt bad to waste a perfectly ok bowl of food 😭 I self-soothed by telling myself God will forgive me cos it wasn’t my fault the guy wanted to give me a free topping that I didn’t ask for, and I was trying to avoid food wastage.

Why didn’t I just go back to the stall and tell them? I dunno man, I dunno. I’m still embarrassed now thinking about it. I think I cried partly out of embarrassment/shame that I’m non-confrontational to this extent, and maybe partly out of shock. There was a kpo aunty and uncle pair sitting next to us who kept glancing over and trying to kpo what was going on, probably cos they saw me crying. Mind your own business!

But you know the funniest thing about this whole incident? The Chinese guy told me he gave me a free topping in Malay.

Don’t ask me what was going on in his mind 🤷🏻‍♀️ I assume he’s Malaysian? But if he is, wouldn’t he know???

I haven’t gone back to that stall since this incident.

Fun things to round out March:

BTS live performance on Netflix

My honest thoughts: I don’t really enjoy the new album from them… 🫣 It’s not my kind of genre of music! But I acknowledge that the songs sound a lot better live. Of course, watching them perform is always wonderful. OT7 all the wayyy

Nasi ambeng for iftar with colleagues

Lunch at ex-colleague A’s place

Our ex-colleague A invited over to his place for his birthday celebration. It was good to catch up with them!

Staycation with T

T and I went for a staycation right after the birthday lunch haha. I had some leftover flexi benefits from the FY that were unused, and the list of things we can claim is still quite limited, so we decided to go for a 1-night staycation just to use up the money. I like feeling like a tourist and getting a hotel in Orchard, then walking around unencumbered by a big bag and going to Kino. The hotel room ended up being a bit of disappointment though. We checked before we booked, but we ended up getting a room with all our pet peeves. [Toilet rant incoming] For me - the shower is in a bathtub, so you need to stand in the bathtub to shower. I hate this. I want a normal shower area!!! AND the showerhead is fixed up there, so you can’t move or adjust it. I hate this!!! I need to be able to control my showerhead. And so whenever I wanna wash myself after I pee or something, I can’t just wash my lower body, no, I have to get my whole body wet. Including my hair or shirt. And the stupid shower curtain that is supposed to separate the bathtub from the sink area is pointless. When you shower, water inevitably splashes onto the curtain, and then the area outside the bathtub just ends up getting wet, with a large pool of water there. And it doesn’t flow to anywhere else. 😒 For Tommy - there was no bidet. He MUST have a bidet.

I suppose this design of toilet is common in older hotels (the hotel we stayed in was Orchard Rendezvous Hotel). Apparently the current hotel was refurbished in 2018, but the existing site was from the 1970s, when the hotel was called Ming Court Hotel. The building photos look the same, so I suppose they just refurbished the interior and didn’t make any structural changes etc. Plumbing is probably from the old days?

Going on staycation has lost a bit of its shine now haha. Unless I know I’ll be comfortable in the hotel, sometimes staying home is best.

Lunch with J and A

Took half day off to have lunch at Dutch Colony! We also brought stuff to do, like laptops and Kindles so we could write/read/etc.

G’s proposal

One of the most exciting things in March was being involved in a friend’s proposal for the first time in my life! It’s even funnier because she is not just my friend, but my supervisee at work. LOLOLL issit we really no boundaries? 🤪 Anyway, her boyfriend contacted me and a few others from the office who are close to her - people whose names he keeps hearing from her HAHA - and asked if we are available to be involved in her proposal, which was a whole day of activities kinda amazing race-style in the Joo Chiat area. Activities and places included a funky, eclectic shop selling random things (very expensive wts!! see below); looking for murals; Boms and Buns (yummy chocolate babka which they apparently only sell on Sundays); and floral arrangement + matcha (matcha flavours were really special, I'd go back just to buy matcha haha). The bride-to-be, G, went off to do her nails after all our activities (nail appointment also planned and booked by her boyfriend) while me and another colleague, W, joined for the actual proposal by the beach later on.

We were basically leeches, because the boyfriend paid for EVERYTHING. 🫡

From the funky shop: one of this is $72...

✨ Goals ✨

Writing/reading ✒📝

Did some planning for my novel while we were at Dutch Colony!

Finally finished reading The Thursday Murder Club on my third attempt. I can't believe I stopped and started this book three times, but I feel like the beginning of the book is a bit slowwww so that's probably why. I had to push through on my third try and I told myself that if this time I can't get through the first 25% it's time to give it up. But after you get over the first bit, then it gets fun. The highlight is of course the dry British sense of humour. There were quite a few twists and turns to keep you on your toes and guessing. Although... after a while it got slightly annoying because it was predictable. Guess I’m not going to be reading the other books in the series after this 😅

Fitness/health 🏋️‍♀️

Only worked out once during Ramadan 🙁

I normally want to sleep in when I stay in a hotel, but I forced myself to wake up early and go to the hotel gym 🫠 Also because T will judge me and nag at me if I say I’m going to do something, but don’t do it in the end ;( because he’s being a good accountability partner…

Art/learning languages/self-care (renamed this section because doing life-giving things is going to be a general, overarching intention of mine, but this section will be more specific and measurable haha) 🌻

Bought a book from Kino to help me with my Mandarin-learning! But T says I need to learn how to distinguish the 4 intonations first, as that is the foundation I need to speak and read hanyu pinyin. I was thinking of signing up for a course but he said I can probably just learn from Youtube or something, for free.

I’m still watching Are You Sure?! and laughing lots hehe

JK: I need to lose weight.

5 seconds later

JK: Please, more. Give me more.

I feel you, JK. Look at this delicious brownie cheesecake from Mother Dough I had in March:

I also recommend, specifically to my Kpop fan friend A: Tamon’s B Side is a really funny anime on Youtube!! Me and T watched it together and it was hilarious. V relatable for me as a BTS fan. Hahahaha

CNY in Malaysia and how I resolved my headache of CNY and Ramadan clashing

CNY and Ramadan clashing is a pain (and will be a pain for the next 2 years, if I recall correctly from searching online. After that, CNY and Hari Raya will clash, and that will be another headache to deal with.) because it is logistically very difficult to fast in M’sia during CNY. I would be the only one doing it and I would have to wake up at 5am by myself to eat, which is additionally difficult because we always sleep late there, and T’s family doesn’t even have a microwave. Lol. So I wouldn’t even be able to keep food in the fridge overnight to eat - I mean, I could, but I’d have to eat cold food at 5am, which is just… sad. Fasting there would also mean I can’t eat or drink the whole day when we’re going out visiting relatives. It would be awkward and hard to be the only one not eating when the rest of the family goes for breakfast and lunch together 😅 So. I had to come up with a plan!

And being the planner that I am, I simply… planned when I would get my period. 😏 Birth control pills are truly a wonderful invention. I started taking them to manage my cramps, but it’s been useful in other ways too. Like this. Hehe.

T said this was actually our first ‘proper’ CNY, i.e. one where we did more visiting and had more + bigger reunions: T’s older sister’s family flew in from Norway, while his cousin’s family flew in from Australia. Gatherings were quite chaotic at times, but it was nice haha. Although, admittedly, my social battery would be flat by the end of each day 😂

T and I took bus to KL a few days before CNY so as to avoid the jam, so that also meant we got to spend some time just enjoying ourselves, including celebrating my birthday very belatedly haha. I asked him to bring me to Grumpy Bagels, Stickerrific (thanks A for the rec!) and a secondhand bookstore called Books n Bobs. It was a great day hehe. We also got to eat ayam gepuk again, and I had me time for a few hours when T went to meet his friends. So, naturally, I went to another bookstore, and Stickerrific again. HAHAHAHA

I ended up buying so much stuff that we couldn’t bring all of it back with us to SG, the luggage had no more space. 💀 I contribute to the M'sian economy 🤪

Fasting month was quite tiring this year, maybe because I was also adjusting back to reality after returning to work, and I enjoyed a lot of feasting in M’sia 😅 I was so tired and lethargic, I think I only went to the gym once during Ramadan. ☹️ Also, I had to prepare for a group supervision presentation that was scheduled on the 3rd day I came back to work, and ended up OTing to be ready for it. I think I slept around 1am the night before the presentation lol. And I was presenting on the first day I started fasting 💀

Birthday celebrations 🎂 and other outings:

Dinner with WL (technically on the last day of Jan), my ex-colleague who is like a big sister to me ❤

Brunch with A and S (my sec sch friends) at an atas cafe. I asked for Gucci perfume for my birthday hehe

Monopoly scavenger hunt + lunch with A. Scavenger hunt was basically like doing an Amazing Race, which was fun! I love puzzles hehe and I like walking! It was just very hot haha. We were given actual Monopoly money to use at specific shops and we also learned about the history of places in Joo Chiat while at it. It was a fun morning :)

Breakfast with T and my family (mum, aunt, cousin) at Al-Makan ❤ I find that I really treasure the time with my family more and more as I grow older 🥹

Dinner with T on my actual birthday

Book club open house + dinner with J and A. Went to check out an event where different book clubs set up booths to promote themselves and share more about what kinds of genres they focus on. I didn’t commit to any of them but took note for future reference - have been rather busy with work lately so it’s a bit hard to know when I’ll have time, and it also depends on whether I’m interested in the book being discussed.

Dinner with T, S and J - had some good but pricey Indian food, played with S’s 2 Ragdoll cats, and stayed super late, gosh. I think we finally left his place around 3am 💀

Chaotic CNY gathering at my boss’s parents’ place 😄 Plus ones and children came too!

Writing/reading ✒📝

Books read:

The Strange Bird: A Borne Story

This was too abstract for me to get 🫠 It’s a dystopian sci fi book about a creature that is part bird, part human, and made in a laboratory, as she escapes and (I think) attempts to find herself and her place in the world. Despite the fact that the book is only 96 pages, I struggled to get through it and was falling asleep in some parts :x I suppose part of the reason why I didn’t get it is because it’s one book in a series, and I didn’t read the first one - the one I read is Book 1.5.

Or maybe I am just someone who doesn’t get abstract things. Maybe I used to be able to analyse this sort of book during Lit classes in NUS, but I’m very rusty now. 🫠

[edit for additional context: the book is my sister-in-law’s! She bought a bunch of books in KL in Oct last year and asked me if I wanted to borrow any of them. I borrowed this, but didn’t have time to read the first one before it was already almost CNY, and I wanted to return it to her then hahaha. Otherwise she won’t see the book for another year maybe.]

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You'll Ever Need

Very useful read for me as I attempt to embark on writing my novel! Love the use of examples in every genre. I’ve been using it as a tool to plot my book and figure out what Save the Cat genre it falls under.

All-American Muslim Girl

This was a good read! It’s been a while since I read YA fiction but I borrowed this from my friend because of the interesting premise: a half-Circassian, half-White girl named Allie Abraham has hidden her identity as a Muslim her whole life. She basically looks like a White girl, and her parents, while technically Muslim, don’t practise the faith and raised her to keep her faith to herself. But she has always been curious about Islam, and she decides to study and embrace her faith, even as Islamophobia grows around the world post-9/11.

Personally, I like how the author portrayed Allie as a girl who is discovering her identity (including how her faith fits in with that), and how she isn’t depicted as someone who is completely adhering to all the practices of Islam, but is simply still figuring it out. I also liked how the author included other characters who were all on different points of the religious spectrum. I presume it’s meant to be a contrast to the stereotype that Western (in this case, American) people hold on to, their idea of what Muslims are like. It also shows that everyone is on a different journey and we should not be judging anyone for any of it, each of them has their own journey and relationship with God. I really loved the discussions about religion in the book, and how these were done without coming across as preachy in any way 🙂 I wish more people would read this book!

Fitness/health

Didn’t work out a whole lot, and instead had a lot of outings plus CNY, so I ended up eating more than I burned off lol. That being said, I tried my best to eat healthier food and refrain from snacking too much before I went off to M’sia. I also took time off to gym before our bus to KL!

T and I followed his mum on one of her morning walks, where she walks up some hills near their house (very regularly, I might add. She didn’t seem to be tired at all, and she’s 71 this year!). Good thing I’ve been gymming, or else I might not have been able to keep up with her.

Do more life-giving things, and less unproductive things

Been watching Are You Sure?! on and off and really enjoying it, it’s a light-hearted watch that cheers me up. Jimin and Jungkook are really cute just by being themselves hehe 🤭

And since my second supervisee is completely new to the FSC setting, a lot of my work has been orientating him to FSC, how we do things, SOPs, etc. And we have very regular supervision (once every 2 weeks), on top of my existing workload 😅 I’m not complaining, I like supervising. I’m just crumbling under the weight of all the work, all at once 😵‍💫

^ me on Sun nights

This year, my goals at work are to:

Survive

Be more organised in my admin work - this includes reorganising my folders and cleaning them up, clearing my contact logs in my One Note, and moving them to SSNet

Clear my paperwork backlog to a reasonable level so I don’t keep stressing about it in the back of my mind

Fun stuff to balance out the work stuff

Lunch with J and A to celebrate A’s birthday: we had a great catchup! ❤ As evident by the fact that we forgot to take a photo together haha

Lunch with A to celebrate her birthday: also a great catchup ❤ after lunch we went to a nearby mall to continue chatting, and realised our age when we ended up at… not a hip cafe for matcha or dessert… but at Ya Kun for tea 😂

^ this aglio olio pasta we had was really flavourful. My aglio olio is always bland and requires chicken buillon powder to rescue it :/ A says the trick is to fry some anchovies in oil to make the base for the aglio olio, but not use it in the actual pasta. I will try this next time!

Workout with colleagues after work: Went to my boss’s condo gym to work out with her/sort of train her cos she said she felt unfamiliar with the machines. Enjoyed teasing her pre-workout by saying I was going to tekan her for 2 hours cos that’s how long my usual gym sessions are 😆 the rest of our colleagues went for a run and we all came back together for dinner afterwards. It was a fun workout night!

Lunch and RPG at J & R’s rental place: tabletop magical school RPG was a step out of my comfort zone that I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did! I had so much fun creating my character and going along with the storylines, and thinking to myself, ‘what would my character do?’ T and I had just finished watching Better Late Than Single a few months before this RPG session, so Jae-yoon became the inspiration for my character hahaha. I’m naturally a shy and introverted person anyway, so it wasn’t hard to put myself in his shoes and just make my character a more extreme version of myself, i.e. socially awkward, avoids eye contact, doesn’t know how to continue a conversation and just answers questions with a few words 😆 I also made him a mixed race character for funsies/semi-conscious exploration of my own struggles - my character is half-Korean, half-Malay, with a Malay mum who is religious and a Korean dad who converted to marry (can’t remember if I made him practising or not). I also wanna say it was fun to play a (good-looking half-Korean) boy named Jimin. 🌚 Jimin’s mum worries that Jimin is going to forget his faith when he goes to magic school, and reminds him to pray when he’s back home for summer break. Jimin feels exasperated with her nagging but understands she comes from a place of good intention… Huhu

Sigh, had so much fun; too bad we’re not continuing because reasons… 👀

2026 goals

Writing/reading ✒📝

Read 20 books + write a short review for every book I read

Last year’s goal was to read 12, and I ended up reading 29 😊 But 10 of them were re-reads that I breezed through, so I think setting a goal of 20 this time is achievable while still being a challenge.

Also my goal is to be more intentional in reading, not just consume mindlessly. Plus I want to remember what the book is roughly about because I feel like I forget quite a bit after I’m done reading. Granted, that probably also means the book wasn’t that memorable, but I should at least remember how I felt reading it and the general reasons why I felt that way. It might also be helpful to write some notes about what the author did well, that I could look to emulate in my own future novel.

Be serious about writing my fanfic and novel

Ok, it’s already March as I’m writing this and I haven’t started on this goal at all, but I am determined to be serious from April onwards. I will start in mid-April, after I’m done with my 15 Apr work deadline. I haven’t thought of a structure to put in place into my routine yet, but I’ve got some time left to think about this.

Fitness/health

Terminate current membership with Fitness First

Go back to exercising at home/sign up for Anytime Fitness

Continue to ballot for badminton slots

Start running again

Do a health screening

Gym: I’m mainly choosing to end my membership because $166 (and that’s already the corporate discount rate because of my insurance) is a bit too much for me, especially when I haven’t been going very regularly the last 1-2 months (at the point of writing this in March, I mean, due to fasting month. But truth be told, even before fasting month rolled around, I was already thinking of cancelling because of the price anyway). I don’t think I shower at FF enough or drink enough water to make my membership worth the money I’m paying 😂 My ideal is to actually just work out at home with the equipment I have, and perhaps in our future house, we may have the space to have a mini home gym. I’m more confident in using the gym machines and weights now, but I still don’t really like having to share with others or having to think what I should do next if the machine I want is taken 🙊 I suppose having to do that will/has grown my on the spot thinking skills, but y’know what, I think I train that skill enough in social work already. 🤪

Badminton: I still want to continue playing badminton, it’s a fun way to get my cardio in, and I want to at least maintain my current skill level.

Running: Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss running :o Maybe I’m fond of running because of how it brought me some peace when I was in a bad state in 2020, and it was also one of the few things we could do for exercise during Covid. Maybe seeing my colleague (who is quite an avid runner and was training for a 10km run before she got injured) has also been an inspiration? Not sure but yes, I intend to go back to running after I’m done with my FF membership. I will run + do YT workouts like I used to 6 years ago heh, and hopefully this is an exercise routine I will find sustainable. And much cheaper.

Health screening: Also, I’ve yet to do a proper, full health screening, so I will do that this year. My colleague sent me info on a comprehensive health screening package in JB, which covers more than what you’ll be able to get in SG for the same price. Maybe T and I can do a weekend trip to JB while I get my health screening done?

Do more life-giving things, and less unproductive things

Last year’s goal was to try new things and grow. This year, I’m sure I’ll still grow (hopefully not horizontally), but I think my focus has changed. I’d like to nua less and have less pockets of unproductive time - this is not to say that nuaing is a bad thing. I love to nua, and I love it a bit too much 🙈 But I find that I frequently end up just doomscrolling or playing stupid games on my phone, even though I know I feel better when I am productive, e.g. writing my blog like now! Planning trips is also considered productive to me, with the added bonus of being very life-giving hehe. Learning Mandarin and Korean on Duo is also productive.

I consider watching BTS also productive. And very life-giving.

[Update in March: I’m adding art to the list of life-giving and productive things I want to do more of this year 🖌 2 visits to Stickerrific will do that to you 🤪 I think their marketing game is SO GOOD, they are so smart with how they’ve put up artwork around the store and indicated what stationery they used to make it. So… sucker that I am, I caved - with the help of my enabling friends J and A - and bought some art materials 🙈 My defence is that now I have bought the materials, I have more impetus to make art. Huhu.]

Overall, this year my goal is to be more productive in life and actually produce something I’ll be proud of. Whether that’s artsy, right-brained stuff - like learning languages and making art and writing a novel - or something practical like cooking. I want to do the stuff I’ve been putting off and neglecting, the stuff I say I’ll do during my free time if I’m unemployed. I don’t know if or when I’ll be able to take a break from work, and if I can, how long that would even be, so I want to try to push myself to do the things I want to do, without waiting for the right time to come. Because everyone has the same 24 hours right? That being said, I do want to clear my severe backlog first so that I have the bandwidth and capacity to focus on the happy stuff, instead of being stressed about the work I’m responsible for finishing. If I’ve really made an effort of it and I find that it’s really impossible with my work schedule, then at least I can re-evaluate from there.

Ending off with good food/cute cats:

I also now recall how burned out I felt in March, which I forgot about in the second half of 2025 (and feel again as I am typing this in March 2026 hahaha). Whether it’s going overseas or taking a week to do nothing at home, I always dread coming back to work, and always fantasise about retiring. 😂

This may be partly because on the work front, 2025 was yet another busy year, if not busier than normal. I had several projects to juggle, plus a new supervisee in Nov (which I wasn’t expecting at all, as we all thought it was going to another colleague). I ended up introspecting and reflecting about work a lot, namely surrounding how burned out I felt, whether I want to continue in this job, what keeps me going here, how do I envision retirement looking like, is SG for me in the long term, etc. (Is it mid life crisis??)

And despite all the inner turmoil about work, I can also say that last year was the year I actually did something concrete to work on my fitness, and that many hours were spent in the gym, learning proper form and becoming stronger 💪🏼 Whether I have actually retained that strength and progress now is another matter, but even if I have regained any weight I initially lost, I refuse to think of it as regressing. 😤 I’ve learned proper form and I’ve enjoyed seeing myself do heavier and heavier weights at the gym, and those count for something 😤

2025 is the year I did these things:

Joined a gym membership for the first time + signed up for personal training sessions

Played a good amount of badminton cos we were lucky to get slots

Cut bangs for the first time (not really intentionally actually. my hairstylist cut my fringe shorter than normal, it was still supposed to be a side fringe, but when I saw the end result, it looked like they were practically bangs already haha so I went home and just cut off a bit more on my own 🙈 I was surprised to find I loved it!)

Completed the main quests in Hogwarts Legacy

Read a lot more 📖🤓

Felt burned out at work…

…Got promoted at work and took on my 2nd supervisee

Went to Bangkok with colleagues + went to Bangkok and KL with T (BKK trip included his friends too) - overall I’d say I didn’t travel much last year (M’sia doesn’t count lol) as both trips weren’t very long

Attended a record number of talks at SWF and felt comfortable going alone, plus had discipline to go after work

Continued my tradition of occasionally taking leave to go on a few weekday dates by myself 🙂

Review of 2025 goals:

Writing/reading

Reading goal: to read 12 books

Result: YASS I KILLED IT. I read 29!! Admittedly, 10 of these were re-reads - HP 1 to 7 and Hunger Games 1 to 3 - but I think it’s still a feat to be proud of (pats myself on the back) 🥰

Also, I finished all the books I started! Even the ones I didn’t love… I didn’t enjoy the tteokbokki book, but I was really sad to hear that the author passed away, and that it was likely suicide 😟

Some standouts in the new books I read this year:

The Friend Zone - a very emotional yet fun + very easy read, I breezed through it in no time

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough - a non-fiction book with interesting perspectives. tldr I think the author is speaking to a specific group of women in the Western context and basically saying they’re too picky and also looking at all the wrong values and qualities in a man lol. And tbh, it does sound like they’re too picky; many of the women who are anecdotes in the book actually express regret later on, after turning down the perfectly good and decent guy for the successful/rich and handsome bad boy, who turns out to be not husband material. I don’t really see this happening in my own social circles, so I’m not sure if it’s because we live in an Asian society, or because SG is very pragmatic, or my friends are just lucky to find great partners. Also, I don’t know if I agree with all the points in the book, but they were interesting to think about.

Sunrise on the Reaping - a very painful and triggering read (and you already know who lives and who dies, yet it still hurts) but as always, Suzanne Collins does a great job.

On Writing - I’ve never read Stephen King’s work, yet I read his book on how to write haha. He has an interesting sense of humour and the way he writes about writing, you can tell he does it because he truly loves it, not because he’s out to earn big bucks. I will probably check out his other books after this and give them a try.

Writing goal: to finish my fanfic by end 2025/early 2026 + start on my novel

Result: this was an absolute failure, bc I didn’t write my fic at all 😭 There were attempts to plot the novel and read books to help me know how to better structure it, but overall, I admit I have been putting both my novel and fic aside… I would like 2026 to be the year I really get serious about this goal. Everyone has the same 24 hours right? If I really want to do this, I’ll have to set some concrete plans and structures and stick by them…? I don’t knowww, let me think about this more in my 2026 post. 😮‍💨

Fitness

Goal: To join a gym and lose weight (fats)

Result: Joined FF and completed 43 PT sessions 😁

Long-term goal: Lose the fats/weight I’ve gained since being in a relationship - ongoing, be kind to myself #loveyourself (#preparingforBTScomeback)

I would not have remembered I lost 2.5kg if I hadn’t gone and reread my Apr-June 2025 review, glad to know I did lose some after all 🤪. I haven’t been weighing myself at home for the last few months, cos I felt like it wasn’t helpful for me to keep expecting the number to go down and just end up feeling demoralised when it goes UP instead. I do sometimes weigh myself on the weighing machine at the FF gym though, the one where they do a full body scan and measure your body fat percentage etc.

I stopped running, because I was focusing on strength training during PT, and did either incline walks or stairmaster for cardio. We also played badminton quite a bit in the first half of the year, when we could get slots and remembered to ballot. Badminton took a backseat in the last 3 months of 2025, we kept forgetting to ballot after we came back from BKK.

Proud of myself for all those times I went to the gym on my own, without my PT, especially those first few sessions when I still felt really awkward and self-conscious. All those times I went to work out hours before flying off overseas! I feel accomplished when I look through my gallery and see photos which prove I was at the gym, and sometimes did a full weekend of exercise :’) If it weren’t for those photos, I really may not remember how hard I worked. I guess it’s easy to discount one’s efforts, but those photos are evidence that I had self-discipline and motivation.

Writing this in March, I can update that I plan to cancel my gym membership once the 1 year is up. More about this in my Jan 2026 post!

Trying new things/growth

New things I tried/grew in:

Ordered caifan in Mandarin and continued to do so! I am more confident now 😁 Granted, I also always get the same few things from the same caifan stall, because I roughly know which dishes are chicken and vegetable-only, so that I avoid the pork.

Went for a book club session and a fanmeet

Gym and PT were new for me too :) Also tried bouldering for the first time!

Allowed a stranger to touch my body all over HAHA, by this I mean a body scrub. This was followed by a soak in a milk bath. I realise I may not be a bath kind of girly lol. I think I’m more of a nua in bed kind of girly, perhaps water is not my element…

Other goals I originally set for 2025 but which I cancelled along the way as my priorities shifted:

Cook more

Oops, this dropped down my list of priorities when life got busy. I found myself cooking on random weekends and some weeknights, when I suddenly had the mood for it. I still hope to cook more, so we can eat healthier meals (plus I wanna level up in the things I know how to cook), but realistically speaking, it may really take a backseat when I have a lot of other things to do.

Play games

I finished playing all the main quests for HL!! I think most of the side quests are done too, except the secret ones. Not sure if I’m motivated enough to complete everything else, like finding all the collection chests… but ok maybe I will, this coming year.

Started playing Stray, but haven’t finished it. I like playing as a cat, but I’m finding the current quest a bit frustrating (been stuck for a while) and may resort to searching for clues to progress 🙊

Tidy up the house

Did a wardrobe refresh and recycled old items 🙂

Ending off with some good food and good moments that brought joy, much needed to balance the challenging parts of the year:

And that’s a wrap for 2025! A year of focusing on survival at work while growing in small ways outside of my job.

Started the week-long break with a rather impromptu outing to have dinner and play with cats! Hehe. I had a great time with my colleagues and colleague’s gf (whom we have hung out with a number of times, she is integrated into the office family already 😆) and didn’t expect to be staying out so late, I think we finally wrapped up the conversation around 1am?? And I was so blessed that my colleague + her gf sent me home 🥹 Especially because I tried to book a grab but no one wanted to take me.

^ cuties

Xmas party

I’m not kidding when I say one of the highlights of December every year is getting to eat delicious food during the Xmas party at S&A’s place. S’s husband A cooks really well, and every year the menu is insane. It has been a thing since S and A got married and moved into their own place (I think it was 2021?), and with every year, the group has grown, to include more partners as more of us have gotten attached.

^ shepherd's pie, chicken sausage, pumpkin pie (just 3 of the courses hahaha)

Lunch with A and baby N

Happy coincidence of my best friend A being on leave the same week as me = lunch with her and baby N 🥰 As we get older and move on to different stages of life, achieving various milestones (for her, having a kid and being a mum), I’m grateful for these moments when we can spend time together. It’s not as easy meeting up when your friends become parents, and when you do, meet-ups look different too, from the way they used to be.

And as I get older, I also find myself treasuring the time I have with my parents more and more. They’re already in their 70s, and I don’t know how much more time I have with them. It honestly scares me a lot when I think about a future without my mum in it. Everytime I picture her leaving us, I get really emotional and sad 😭 It physically hurts when I think about having to go on living without her around. Moving to my mum’s empty Tampines flat almost 2 years ago was great. I don’t recall how often I was visiting my parents when I lived in ulu Punggol but I think it was once every 2 weeks? Now I do it minimally once a week, and occasionally more. I also got to have breakfast with my mum during my leave week ❤ I had to share the time with her friends though 😂 Lol she’s so sociable, 2 different friends called her in the middle of our meal, and one of them wanted to discuss the plot of a Malay drama. LOLOL I kenot. Is this a prelude to me in my 70s? Only difference is, I’ll be calling friends to discuss K-dramas 😂

^ busy woman on the phone during breakfast

I also had dinner with my cousin, aunt and mum on another day during my leave week, and we had Arnolds :)

Resuming my BTS fangirling life

One of my goals while on leave was to watch Are You Sure?!, which turned out to be such a fun and light-hearted watch while having my meals :) I also caught up on a lot of BTS content I’d missed in the last 2-3 years - while the boys took a break from group activities and did their military service, I also went on hiatus 😂 - so it was a lot of watching music videos/live performances from their solo albums etc. There is so much content, I think being a fangirl can be a full-time job sia. No joke, if you want to keep up with everything!!

^ remember the days when they used to censor the footage if the members looked unglam? now look at Jimin here. HAHAHA

After I came back to work it was the worst. Absolutely no mood to do work. Plus manpower is always low in December, which is very depressing for those of us who are in office filling up the minimum pax D: Partly to combat the blues, we had a mini party in office on New Year’s Eve with some yummy bakes from Puffs and Peaks, a family-run bakery in Tampines. Highly recommend but I also low-key wanna gatekeep this place because it’s crowded enough as it is 🙊 We filmed a short video (a TT trend) at the behest of one of our Gen Zs, but it was quite cute - there were about 5 of us in office, and all of us had to step to the camera and mention our 2 biggest accomplishments or wins for the year, which we wrote on a post-it and stuck on a stick, before poking the stick into a cake ala candle. My accomplishments were: surviving 43 PT sessions and getting promoted :)

^ my spirit at work

Annual Xmas/EOY party at D’s place

Another yearly highlight of Dec! I am blessed with friends who cook well hehe. This annual gathering of us who used to be from my previous workplace in Telok Blangah is a time to catch up, exchange Xmas gifts, and gossip exchange information about what’s happening in the social service sector 🙊 Since we’re all in different organisations now, it’s interesting to hear what’s happening across the different agencies, especially as my ex-colleagues are generally in senior positions and know things 👀

^ look at DIS FEAST. on the right is bread & butter pudding, with 2 different sauces (one alcoholic and one non-alcoholic). not pictured: tiramisu which she packed for us to bring home as door gifts 🥹

Booked our next trip!

T and I have booked our next trip: to Taiwan! We booked flexible tix tho, in case we need to change the dates (typing this in Feb: it turns out we may really need to change our dates, as my close colleague may be getting married during our trip 🥹 and I really don’t wanna miss it!)

Anyway, I am excited for the trip hehe. Apart from trips to M’sia, I think we haven’t really travelled together much; we had a pretty big gap in between our 2 last trips (Norway - end 2023, Bangkok - end 2025).

I am also hoping to travel to other places this year, fingers crossed that my colleagues and I manage to find common dates cos I wanna go Korea with them!! hehe.

Miscellaneous food photos

Review of goals:

Writing/reading

On Writing by Stephen King - a good read! I see now why people on Reddit etc recommend this book if you want to read books about writing. Admittedly, I couldn’t understand quite a few references he makes, I assume many or all of them were references you can only understand if you live in the US, but overall I enjoyed this read. He has a rather quirky, self-deprecating sense of humour which is very much evident in the tone throughout the book. And there were also helpful tips I highlighted, like:

‘eliminate every possible distraction when you write, lock yourself up in a room at the same time everyday to write; like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream’

‘write what you like to read; it would be wrong to turn away from what you know and like in favour of things you believe will impress your friends, relatives etc, or to turn towards some genre in order to make money’

‘write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your oen personal knowledge of life, friendships, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work.’

“Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word WRITER on it before you can believe you are one? God, I hope not.”

“You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot.” I am doing a lot more reading these days, yay 😊 but writing, not so much. hahahah

“I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it… I have written because it fulfilled me… I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

A related sidetrack: I bought another keyboard LOL, for home use. It’s the same keyboard I bought before, just a different colour. My pink one is in office and my lilac one is for home. I tell myself it’s because I’ll be typing a lot since I am embarking on my novel 🤪

Fitness

After 3 sessions during my week-long break, and my FINAL session on Xmas Eve, I have finally finished my 2 rounds of PT sessions!! In total, I survived 43 sessions, and I can’t believe it myself 😂 I don’t really feel that I’ve lost much weight, but I do feel stronger and more confident in using the machines at the gym, so I think I’ve met my goal in signing up for PT.

Trying new things/growth

I can’t really think of anything I did that was in line with this goal. But typing this in Feb, I also feel like I don’t need to be doing something new or growing every single month 🙂 Learning to be not hard on myself is a kind of growth too 🤭

Brief review of each talk so I remember my thoughts and feelings in time to come, and also so I can practise some critical thinking/reviewing skills:

Between Myth and Memory: An Intergenerational Take on Writing about Singapore

I didn’t take any notes from this talk, which sadly means I didn’t find much worth noting down 🙊 or at least it wasn’t relevant to me. I zoned out at some points, maybe the panel was different from what I expected based on its description. I also felt like the authors didn’t engage with each other and it was more like just answering the moderator’s questions.

But it was also because halfway through, all 3 authors read out excerpts from their work and then I just… tuned out. This first talk made me realise that I am very much a visual learner and I absolutely cannot with audiobooks :o It’s not that I can’t pick up things at all if it’s auditory, because this cannot be - I am a social worker LOL so listening to people talk is like 85% of the work. I think it’s more that I can’t really process and digest passages when read out, it’s as though my brain has a sieve so 60-70% of the content leaks out when you read me a passage of your work. Anyway, yes, I didn’t write any notes from this panel but I did learn something new about myself. 😂

Between Real and Imagined: The World-Builder’s Dilemma 🌟

Ohhh this is one of the best panels I attended throughout SWF, it left such a great impression on me, because 1. the panellists really know their stuff (not necessarily about their tools or whatever, but more like they know their writing process and have some level of self-awareness about what works for them and what doesn’t); 2. the advice they gave was so helpful and digestible, maybe because there were many examples given to illustrate their points; and 3. they also riffed off each other which made the discussion even better and richer. My favourite panellist was Dean Francis Alfar, he was so funny and his advice so good!

Some highlights:

Dean: You need to have small details that anchor people in the story, even if it’s fantasy… “People are eating food” - but who gets to eat? When? What do they eat?… You open up space, and the world feels lived in… You don’t need to know all the answers at once, and you don’t need to put all the details in, but if you put some small details in, the world you create will feel more real.

Ben: I get too excited and I jump right in, I don’t do my research, don’t be like me. I write and then 6000 words in, I realise that, oh, this is where my story starts, and then I have to delete the 6000 words.

Qn: How do you deal with using the language of this world to describe details in the fantasy/sci-fi world? e.g. you don’t want to write “a troll is eating ramen”.

Dean: What is ramen? Strip it down. For example, you introduce the food. “Ramen is a type of noodle, grown under moonlight, blah blah blah.” Please change the blah blah. 😂

Identity in Flux: Navigating Self and Community in a Global World

This one was okay. All 3 authors had some interesting stories about navigating their identity (and I’d argue that all 3 have experienced some kind of oppression or marginalisation, or come into contact with it/are writing about it). Dhamayanthi’s stories of escaping oppression in Tamil Nadu, where she originated from, were particularly heart-wrenching; she spoke about how where she came from, women were not allowed to participate in politics, community or religion, and that writing was seen as a sin - her fingers were even broken as punishment for writing.

Dhamayanthi: My characters are mainly marginalised characters, so I give them justice in my own writing.

Nuraliah: When I put in Malay words in my writing, I do that because I refuse to translate it or because it’s a word that cannot be translated.

Aaron: I like to push back against the dominant common narratives when I write.

This panel made me think about the aspects of my identity that are key to who I am, and whether there are stories I feel deserve to be told based on those identities. Such as my identity as a social worker. It got me brainstorming a book (maybe auto fiction?) where I could hash out the life of a social worker, but I have zero idea of how to navigate this without getting into legal trouble lol.

The Stories We Inherit: Memory and the Art of Retelling

Hmm this was okay too. Iirc, 2 of the authors were writing other people’s stories (their fathers) while the 3rd author was writing about her and her mother’s separate experiences of amnesia. The first 2 authors were thus writing based on others’ memories and with that, there is a lot more research and needing to hear the stories from the source before they could write their works. It made me think about the stories that my parents have and how those could be lost forever if they never share them with us.

There was some discussion of “How do we recall what we recall?” and “Why do we recall what we recall?” which were interesting for me to think about personally. Memories can be reimagined when we recall them after the event is over.

In my job, I’ve inherited a lot of stories from my clients, stories which I think very much need to be heard. But again, no idea how to navigate the legal aspect or issues with confidentiality in doing this, if I do.

Writing as Resistance: Decolonising Historical Fantasy 🌟

RF Kuang!!! Ok I haven’t actually finished reading any of her books yet (at the point of writing this in Jan 2026, I am 47% through Babel, and at the point of this talk in Nov, I was about 35% through) but she blew me away with this talk alone. She is so articulate and brilliant, I honestly wish I had her brain. She’s also so funny and witty 🥺 How is she only 29 years old and already an author of 6 books PLUS she has 2 Master’s degrees and a PhD?!?! Save some brain for the rest of us please. I feel so unaccomplished and inferior…

I wish I’d audio recorded this panel, there were too many gems of wisdom, I didn’t manage to scribble everything down.

Rebecca: Fantasy is useful for deconstructing colonial histories… meet that myth on the level of myth.

Amber: You can’t write for everyone, there’s no winning everyone over.

Amber: What feels authentic to me may be very different from what is perceived to be authentic by someone from the West.

Rebecca: Being apolitical is being lazy. You’re just agreeing with the status quo and dominant discourses/narratives. Why do we think that? Who benefits from people thinking that?… People get really upset when you challenge how they understand the world. It’s a destabilising moment… I believe in trying to destabilise those assumptions, or there isn’t anything worth saying.

Rebecca: Violence is horrible, but there are also cases where it’s ethically necessary… Violence creates cycles and cycles of violence. Historically, it just lays the groundwork for the next conflict… How do you initiate peace after initiating violence, what future do you build after that? The master, the coloniser, won’t stop oppression out of the kindness of their hearts. So violence has to shock the system, force the coloniser to see that the bottom line isn’t worth it.

→ can’t help but think of what’s happening in Gaza, what has happened for centuries by the British Empire, and by what the US is doing now, etc.

During the Q&A, Rebecca also talked about how she believes the Western literary market is going to remain economically conservative, it’s going to remain biased because that’s all they know. Anglophone market in the US thinks that readers only want more of the same thing. But the good news is that they don’t control reading culture anymore.

Amber: If we want our narratives to be heard, then our own publishing industry needs to grow. (about how the Western market/readers might see a book about a character outside their scope of experience, e.g. main protagonist is an Asian character) “Isn’t it difficult to relate?” We grew up watching Western shows, nobody asked us that!

(Answering a question on whether she’d ever use AI to help her when she feels stuck writing a particular novel or part in the novel)

Rebecca: I’d rather put a fork into my eyeball. LOLOLOL 🤣

Rebecca: You do your best writing when it’s hard. (on using AI) At no point does it make the process easier or more enjoyable.

Amber (chimes in): AI = tech bros trying to convince you that the product is more important than the process. (Relationship between AI and capitalism) It’s a never-ending cycle where you’re unsatisfied until you have more product. Appreciate the process! Find something you enjoy doing for the sake of doing. It’s not about the product or the outcome.

Gems of wisdom. Such a great panel.

Reframing Intimacy on Page and Screen for a Post-MeToo World 🌟

Ooh this was also one of my favourite panels. There were 3 different panels I wanted to go for, all happening at the same time, but after much deliberation I decided to go for this one, and it was a great choice!! The description sounded fascinating and I hoped to hear more about a world I would otherwise never get to learn about, and I was not disappointed. Very cool to hear what an intimacy coordinator’s job consists of, they even sort of played it out for us by ‘adapting’ a particular scene from one of the panellist’s books on the spot to demonstrate what the process looks like, what questions an intimacy coordinator would ask the director and actors before the filming of the scene can even start. These would be questions like asking the actors what they think, how the scene fits with their boundaries. A kiss scene isn’t just a kiss scene - What’s happening for the characters? How does this drive the plot forward? Why do they kiss? Also, intimacy doesn’t just mean s** scenes or nudity, but rather, could include scenes that involve very close proximity, etc.

Rayann, who is an intimacy coordinator: (on what she wants to see more of in cinema) I’d like to see more biologically accurate responses, especially for females.

Rayann: How do we envision portraying this? What kind of shots are you using? What kind of exposure? What level of nudity?

Rajagopal, a director: Actors are the ones performing, they have to be comfortable with it. If I want full nudity but the actors aren’t okay with it, I have to adapt.

They may also have a minimal crew policy and closed set on days when they’re filming intimate scenes, for the actors’ safety.

Also, Rayann shared something interesting: even if an actor agrees to do the scene now and is even excited about it, the whole process of filming the scene (if not done well or in a psychologically safe manner) could actually scar them without them realising it until much later down the road.

Rayann: You don’t know what their background is, their emotional vulnerability. Consent is changeable. It’s different thinking about (filming) it conceptually vs actually portraying it. Some actors may start out wanting to do it, but later decide, “Actually, I can’t do the thing that I intellectually thought I could do”, which means there would then need to be a process of re-negotiation of boundaries and how the scene is filmed, with the director and scriptwriter etc.

All 3 panellists felt that the Me Too movement helped to create more awareness/put in place more processes to navigate boundaries and increase psychological safety/talk about inherent power dynamics that can’t be ignored (e.g. director has a lot of power > actor generally has less).

Rayann: We need to be more conscientious about the impact of the stories we tell, the harm we might unwittingly inflict.

And it’s not just about actors but one should also consider the impact on editors, having to review the footage and stare it for hours (especially if it’s footage of a non-consensual act). How do we care for an editor who has to look at hours of this footage? How do we ensure data safety in post-production?

Data safety, or lack thereof, is a much bigger problem now, in this age of technology, compared to, say, 30 years ago. Because it’s so easy and so quick for images and videos to be sent to someone else and stay in the Internet forever. It’s scary, really. I actually have a friend whose private cloud was hacked into some years ago, and her nude photos leaked. And it seems that people who do this, i.e. leak people’s intimate photos online, often don’t give a shit about the impact it inflicts on the victims, they don’t care, they’re not remorseful at all.

This panel was great. I felt it was very well thought out, including the live demonstration for us on the spot, and the moderator (Tan Kheng Hua) did a wonderful job. I love how she started off the panel by actually reading the description, so that we would all be on the same page and wouldn’t go off-tangent. Less than half of the panels I attended did this.

One of the ‘Others’: Growing up Mixed in Singapore

I didn’t know Ebi Shankara was half-Indian, half-Nigerian! I’ve never encountered Simone Heng before but she’s half-Eurasian, half-Chinese. Melissa de Silva is Eurasian. Interesting that for her, she doesn’t see herself as ‘mixed’ because Eurasian is an established race now, even if, in itself, it is a race made up of 2 different races (iirc from the panel). So this panel might not have been the most relevant for her.

Ebi: I used to disassociate myself from my Nigerian heritage because I didn’t want to seem different from others… But I eventually allowed people to call me Ebi as a form of acceptance of my African side.

Simone: I have a lot of privilege in being a light-skinned Eurasian… When you have gone through experiences as a minority elsewhere, you never forget that privilege. But being mixed can also be a privilege depending on context.

Ebi spoke about how a viewer thanked him for being on TV and being a visual representation of his ethnic make-up, because the viewer’s daughter could see her ethnicity being represented.

Qn: Are there instances when you felt excluded rather than included?

Simone: You’re half Chinese, but you’re not Chinese.

Ebi: In the Tamil space, I was always not Indian enough… but when I’m in the English space, I’m the token Indian. I’m the ‘I’ representation in CMIO. When I do international work, I’m always the African boy. Who am I to myself? I’ve made a home for myself, so I’ve stopped being upset with the system for putting me in those pigeonholes. The young me struggled a lot for acceptance. I think the young me would be proud of the me now.

Sing Lit on the Global Stage - Publishers’ Edition 🌟

I respect Edmund’s ambition in wanting to publish a local book that makes it onto the Booker prize list, and how he set up an Epigram Books office in London in the hopes of helping Singaporean authors get into the London market. But the sad reality is that most publishers in the West are not interested in Singapore books 🥲 They’re apparently only interested in Western works, and even then, the scope is very limited, i.e. they wanna read works by their own people. Edmund said it’s hard to sell to US and UK markets, only 3% of their books are translated works.

Edmund: I got fed up with the West. Why am I trying to reach out to US and UK when they’re not interested in my stories?

This resulted in him pivoting to the Southeast Asia market instead, and closing up the London office during the Covid pandemic.

Something I learned: SG’s strong currency poses a ‘problem’.

Maria: An SGD $10 book = RM32 in Malaysia. Why would a parent buy a RM32 book when they can buy a RM10 book?

I’d say it’s a common mindset that we think being successful means to be published in the US and UK. But Edmund’s advice is:

Edmund: Write for your own country and people. When you become a bestseller in your own country, then the West may come looking for you. A lot of writers come to Epigram wanting their book to be sold internationally - US and UK etc - but it’s not realistic.

🥲🥲🥲 At first it felt quite sad to hear this, to know that apparently the Western markets are so self-absorbed and uninterested in stories outside their sphere. How sad for them. And maybe sad for us because making it big as an author is then harder. It’s harder to be the next JKR if such huge markets of readers don’t want to read your stuff.

But maybe Edmund is right. We should be writing for ourselves, stories that matter to us, rather than pandering to them. I wonder if their disinterest is rooted in some kind of idea of supremacy or ethnocentrism. But if that’s the case, I wonder how markets in Japan and Korea are like, given that we know these places are very ethnocentric as well. Would readers there be interested in books by non-local authors (assuming it is translated to their language)?

It’s sad because isn’t one of the great benefits of reading to explore worlds and perspectives otherwise unknown to us? And like Amber said during the panel with RF Kuang - no one asked us Singaporeans/Asians whether it was hard to relate to all the White people we saw on TV and in films. 😤

The Violence of Identity

This was a panel consisting of 3 authors (Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai) whom you might not traditionally think would be writing novels in English. Especially the Korean author because English is her second language; she was born and raised in Korea and spoke Korean all her life, only learning English at age 20/21. (Maybe there is hope for me to be good in Korean then??) If you know Koreans, you’ll know this is amazing. Many Koreans are scared of speaking in English 🙊 And this woman is writing a whole ass novel in English. In fact, she shared that writing in English actually lowered the chances of her doing self-censorship because she is less emotional in English. Almost like it was a form of emotional regulation for her. She said she started writing in English by accident LOL idk how you can do that, I’m definitely not writing in Korean by accident 🤣

Language is always tired to culture. The words may exist but there are cultural taboos we sometimes have to navigate.

I confess that I left this panel early because I was worried I wouldn’t get into the next panel I wanted to attend, oops. It turned out to be a good decision because they had to turn people away from the next talk, it was so popular.

No Beta We Die Like the Past: Fanfics, Booktok and the Future of Fiction 🌟

I enjoyed this panel! It was full of laughs and had a good discussion on the future of fiction. Credit to the moderator for reading out the description of the panel before it started. Her moderation was good. My only issue was with her accent… Sis you born and bred Malay right? Kenape accent orang putih eh?

(Translation: Why do you have a White person’s accent?)

P.S. it was a strong American accent, but occasionally the Singaporean accent came out here and there.

There is nothing wrong with speaking like a Singaporean hor, can we not have American accents out of nowhere that are actually harder to understand?

Maybe I’m triggered because I’m reminded of the arts students in VJC (not in my class) who would speak with an angmoh accent, it just felt very pretentious and fake. Like girl(s) I know you educated in Singapore, not overseas. I was once in a mall (perhaps Parkway Parade HAHA the haunt of all VJC students) and I heard them speaking. Maybe I should applaud the commitment to the accent. Ok end of snarkiness and digression.

ANYWAY. In this context of SWF, it was actually a bit hard to understand the moderator because of the accent, so I was mildly annoyed. But if it turns out that she’s half-Malay and half-angmoh with an American parent, then I’ll take back my criticism.

Knowing that all 3 authors in this panel started off writing fanfiction makes me feel good about myself 🤣 There is still hope for me after all HAHA

Fanfics are passion projects, you love the world created by that author so much that you want to continue living in it, so you write it. (My motivation for writing a Revenge ff was a bit different, it was wish fulfilment because I was upset they killed off a character and my ship, so I wanted to give them a different ending. Hmm. My ideas for Downton Abbey fics (which I didn’t write in the end) were also similarly motivated…)

If you can have that same love for your own world, that’s how you know it’ll stick. Transfer that energy to your own original work.

There are books that were originally on AO3 which later got published as original fiction (e.g. the famous Alchemised, which was originally Manacled, a fanfic), but one of the panellists had an interesting point about how she felt the relationship in Alchemised felt a bit hollow because it didn’t have the prior 7 HP books’ worth of character development or attachment to the original characters, once you rework it into something original. Something to think about.

Booktok has its usefulness in how it’s a way of circumventing traditional gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Apparently there was a book that was getting a lot of rejections from publishers but later blew up on TT, and publishers came knocking after.

Wen-yi: I like to think there will always be room for everything and anything to find its readers… There will always be people arguing about which art is valid. Stand your own ground, read what you wanna read, support it and buy it. There will always be a spectrum of respect, and it shifts with time. As long as it makes money, publishers will print it.

“If you’re a writer, please continue to write. Find a way to put your story forward.” :’)

Neal: If fans like the fanfiction more than your work, then you better write better.

Neal: I’d love to see a good adaptation of my books, but I’d settle for a bad one. If the adaptation is bad, people will say the book was better.

The Long Game: How Agents and Publishers Shape Literary Ecosystems

Literary agents are a relatively new thing in Singapore, most people write directly to the publisher to get their books out there.

It can take about 2 years from the time you sent your book to an agent to seeing it published :o I guess this may be different in Singapore, since you may go straight to the publisher rather than an agent. But at least for the publishing companies that the agents in the panel deal with, the relationship with literary agents is crucial because publishers can’t read all 2000 manuscripts sent to them. So they rely on agents to pick up the good stuff and send it to them. One of the agents shared that she gets 500 queries a month, so she doesn’t read all of them, and only asks for the full manuscript for about 2% of those.

Apparently it’s hard for German publishers to break into the US/UK market as well, because US and UK already produce so many of their own works. American publishers rarely buy anything outside their own market. (This is maybe the 3rd or 4th time I’m hearing this in this year’s SWF!)

Kate: Don’t worry about New York. They don’t want you. Come to the UK. LOL

Books being published now were written 3 years ago. So don’t try to write a book based on what you see is selling in bookstores now. If you look at what’s selling now, publishers may not want that when you’re done writing it. (See: endless books involving bookstores, cats, etc) However, Kate begs to differ:

Kate: Book readers love cats, and they will always love cats, and they will always love bookstores! 🤣

Qn from audience: What are we publishing for boys, and what should we be publishing for boys?

Ans: Many men feel like they need to learn something when they read, so they pick up non-fiction and biographies. (I’m looking at you, T!!! 🤨 I asked him why he doesn’t read fiction apart from crime novels, and yes he said something about needing to find it useful or learning something from it. I still can’t get it 🫠 That being said, he will read my novel, but that’s because it’s my novel.)

Some advice:

Natalja: Write what you really want to write, the story only you can tell. Publishers can tell when the book has no soul. Write the story that’s in your heart, the one only you can tell.

Kate: You will be rejected. Don’t take it personally. Don’t give up.

Beyond the Time Machine

Maybe it was the timing of this panel (3pm), or I was tired, or the initially poor audio (I could barely hear one of the authors speaking, he held his mic a bit too far from him ah), but erm, I kept nodding off during this panel. :x I only wrote 5 lines of notes 😅

I vaguely recall there was some discussion about how time is viewed differently in different cultures, and how the language itself may reflect that, e.g. Pim said Thai language has no past tense.

Between Borders and Bookshelves: Publicity and Representation Across Cultures

After this panel ended, I went to check out Ethos Books’s website, and I ended up buying 6 books. HAHAHA #supportlocal #excusetobuynewbooks

Azree, director of a literary agency in Malaysia: I hope to represent the voices of the Malay world, including Singaporean writers.

Me: 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

New things I learned:

Agent culture is not really a thing in Malaysia either. Similar to Singapore, aspiring authors send their works to publishers directly.

Germans are very direct. They’re not used to reading between the lines, so Julia shared that while there was a Chinese novel she really liked, she couldn’t publish it, because German readers wouldn’t get it/it wouldn’t appeal to them.

Azree shared about Dina Zaman (I later bought her book, Malayland), who apparently has royal blood - this position of privilege allows her to write about race in a way that others cannot, race and religion being a very sensitive subject in Malaysia.

Me: Oops. I don’t have royal blood. Would I have issues writing and publishing my book? Will I be banned from entering Malaysia?

Translating isn’t just about translating the language but also about possibly translating cultural nuances that may otherwise be big question marks for readers who are not of that culture. But then it’s also a question of ‘Do I bring the text closer to the reader, or do I bring the reader closer to the text?’

Azree shared that there has been a surge of conservatism in Malaysia, people want to learn more about their own culture and history.

KG, from Ethos Books, also says to write the story that is in your heart that you really want to write. Even if there is no other reader, you make it the best story you can.

There was, again, talk of how US and UK markets are mainly only interested in their own domestic works. But the panellists shared that we cannot prescribe to anyone what they ought to read.

Kelly, founder of a literary agency: I can’t teach the West about the East, I can only hope they become as fascinated with the East as I am.

KG: We don’t want to promote polarity, this whole notion of ‘the West needs to meet the East’.

I feel like I can sense KG’s genuine passion and sincerity, and that he really truly believes there is a lot of talent in Southeast Asia. I got good vibes from him/Ethos Books. 🙂

Try Not to Cringe Challenge: First Drafts 🌟

This was one of the most fun and hilarious panels I attended, yet also very informative in how the panellists took us through their creative process. Some gems from the panel:

“Nothing you do is a waste of time when you create.”

“It’s normal that we have better ideas at night because we have lower expectations. When we write in daylight, sometimes we can be more judgemental towards ourselves.”

“Art-making is fundamentally cringe because you’re expressing your feelings and you want others to see it.”

“It’s not cringe at all to believe you have something to say and keep trying till you get it out the way you want.”

I love how inspiring and encouraging this panel was! And so normalising. I love knowing that they cringe at their own work a lot. I’m sure I will cringe lots and lots as I start writing, but I’ll look back on my notes from this talk and realise cringing is absolutely normal. And that nothing I do is a waste.

And what a great way to end SWF 2025!

New supervisee, new supervisor

My supervisor, E, is leaving to a different centre within the same org 🙁 She wants to focus more on therapeutic couple work, so she’s leaving our FSC 😭 We had our farewell party for her this month. I’ll be transferred to another supervisor, Y, who is also my centre director. E and Y have vastly different styles, so I’ll have to adapt. It’s a bit fast to change to a new sup since I was only with E for about 10-11 months, but I can’t complain, this is a lot more stable than my previous place haha. Here, I’m 4 years 8 months old and going on to my 3rd sup, whereas over at my previous job, I was 3 years 11 months old and had gone through 6 different sups 🙊 Fun times! Ok this may be a cliché, but it’s true that such difficult experiences build your resilience and ability to adapt.

^ farewell lunch for my sup

Meanwhile, I’ve been assigned a new supervisee, and it’s a guy. He started work in the first week of this month. It’ll be quite a different ballgame from my current supee, because he’s new to FSC, though he has some prior experience from elsewhere in the social service sector. And he’s also a guy, whereas my first child is a girl (running joke in our office because we have enmeshed relationships 😛). I’m a bit nervous about having to supervise someone new, but also nervous about whether I can cope with the additional work that comes with this.

Also, T went for a job interview, huhu. So we shall see how that pans out in a couple of months, whether he’ll get an offer and whether he’ll take it up if there is.

Tis the season of change 🍃🍂🍁 Wish me luck in adapting to everything as it comes~

East region networking sharing

My colleagues and I are part of this project at work where we had to share our findings with some centre heads and other staff from various organisations in the east region; tldr, it was a bit nerve-wracking having to present our work in front of about 20 people, most of whom we don’t know and aren’t even from our organisation. But yay we did it! Even though the topic is something I’m interested in and this work is a biiit more research-y (which I enjoy), I’m glad that’s done now, it was additional work to prep on top of our regular main work.

Narrative training

I’m only mentioning this course I went for this month because the food catered was so good, look at this!

SWF

Main highlight of Nov was SWF! 😌 I bought the Super Early Bird festival pass, which is the highest discount available. And it was a great decision, because I attended… drum rolls 14 talks! Dayum, I didn’t know I worked so hard. No wonder I fell sick after SWF ended haha. I may have pushed my body a bit too hard during this period, juggling work while going for panels that sometimes took place on weekday evenings, and spending 2 weekends in a row going for talks and writing notes. But it felt like I was a student again, which was nice 🥰 I have a separate post where I review the talks and panels I attended, as it’s too long to be lumped together with my Nov review.

J, R and A also attended SWF! We met up to go for talks together whenever our interests overlapped, and had dinner together on the first weekend too, which was nice :) My ex-colleague S’s wife N also came so I went for some talks with her, and I had another friend/ex-colleague, Y, whom I also attended some talks with. Wow I realise I had quite a few friends to attend SWF with in 2025, more than previous years.

^ shabshuka from the food truck I shared with N; solo nights eating sourdough pizza before attending panels; my trusty notebook and pen

As always, attending SWF inspires me and motivates me to write, but whether this motivation will actually pan out into a book, is another thing entirely 😂 My friend Y is also an aspiring writer and has actually started writing!!! This has been a big impetus to write, for me. He told me that he writes even when he only has like 20 mins of time, he really squeezes it in whenever he can. I find that very inspiring. I have no excuse for not working on my goals and dreams. So I have returned to working on my book - mainly plotting now, and reading books about how to write so I have some guidance and tips.

A highlight of SWF: meeting RF Kuang and getting my book signed!! Hehehe.

It looks like this year had a huge turnout, can’t believe the festival pass sold out :o

I fell sick right after SWF ended 😂😅 Took 2 days of MC on the Monday after it ended, then went back to work for 1 day bc I had important appointments already scheduled though I was still feeling poorly, before taking MC for another 2 days again because my body clearly needed to rest and recuperate. Here’s a paparazzi photo of my mum having breakfast alone at Al-Makan, where I went to buy chicken porridge for myself and spotted her:

My appetite was quite poor the whole week I was sick, so I mainly ate chicken porridge. And I even had to split it into 2 meals, I couldn’t finish it in one sitting 🥴 I felt slimmer LOL but I gained it all back after I recovered.

I also want to document this absolutely disgusting medication (Acetylcysteine) I was prescribed, which smelled like sewage water, I kid you not.

I had to drop it into a cup of water and let it dissolve, then drink the whole thing. Needless to say, I pinched my nose and swallowed it in 2 big gulps. Absolutely disgusting.

There was another pill that I hated taking (Prednisolone) because it was so bitter; no matter how fast I tried to swallow it, I’d still taste some of the bitterness on my tongue.

Oh. My mother was wishing me being sick meant I was pregnant. I was not. I am not. Sorry mum (not sorry).

Celebrated T’s birthday

^ Happy boy with his drink and nice food and sugar mummy for the night

Watched The Fourth Trimester

Was recommended by my colleague to watch this play before it ends. We caught it in the nick of time, I think it was the second last showing before this run ends. It was really good! I may not be planning to have children anytime soon… or at all… but it was still a good watch - maybe because I’m a social worker and I have clients like the characters in the play haha. I also have many friends who are parents and I’m sure they’d find it relatable and hitting all the right spots. It’s called The Fourth Trimester, but there are other characters who don’t have kids as well. I also didn’t expect the play to be so funny! It was a good mix of laughs and sombre emotion, highly recommend to watch this if it comes back for another run.

^ Enmeshed colleagues (just kidding, we just have good relationships and like each other, which we are so blessed to have :’)) watching the play together with our respective partners:

2025 goals

Writing/reading

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa - finished

This was a pretty breezy read. At the heart of it, it’s a sad story because of the painful and tragic circumstances of one of the characters, but I’d say it’s told in a way that doesn’t feel too heavy.

The Trunk by Kim Ryeo-ryeong - finished

Errr… I don’t know what to make of this book. I haven’t watched the k-drama it later got adapted into, but I did see the trailer, which made me think this book would be full of suspense. The book’s blurb also mentions the main character’s “dark past” unravelling and the “sinister underbelly” of the company she works in, but… I don’t see it. Overall I just find the book strange lol. I felt it wasn’t very cohesive; there was one major plot point which I think the author meant to be quite sinister, and yes I do think it is when you think about it, but I shouldn’t have to think about it… Maybe it took the “show, not tell” thing too extreme or maybe the writing just wasn’t working for me. I finished the book thinking, I don’t think I’m getting what you’re trying to do here…

Good thing about being sick was that I had more time to read! I wanted to sleep, and I tried to, but for some reason I wasn’t able to sleep deeply or for long when I took afternoon naps on MC. So I got quite a bit of reading done, but only 2 books are reflected bc I’m still reading the others which are quite thick. I’m a multi-timer who cheats on her books by reading several of them at the same time. 🤪

SWF also meant I bought some new books this month! In my defence (I am defending myself to T, who says to stop buying books for now because we are running out of space in our flat), I bought only the books by local authors which may be harder to find/could run out of print one day, who knows. Some were purchased at the SWF festival bookstore, and some ordered online from Ethos Books. No more buying books for a while 🙅🏻‍♀️❎

Fitness

Ahh, working out was put on pause for about 1.5-2 weeks again because I was sick 😓 It’s quite frustrating tbh, to be forced to take another break because I was unwell, and then have to suffer again when I return to PT.

Trying new things/growth

I think going for SWF events by myself counts under this goal :) I even went for talks on weekday evenings by myself. Thanks to SWF I had quite a bit of me time, like grabbing a quick pizza dinner to eat outside the Arts House on my own before going in for a talk. I think it’s growth for me to focus on attending the talks regardless of whether I know anyone going for it 🙂

Taking on a new supervisee is growth!

BKK

BKK trip was with T + his ex-housemates (2 M’sians) and housemate’s husband (S’porean), so we made a group of 5. Funny fact: T’s female ex-housemate is also his ex-girlfriend. HAHAHA ok some people might say it’s weird, going on a trip with your husband and his ex-gf and her husband, and maybe some small part of me was a little apprehensive at first too, but it was alright! In fact I spent some time with her alone, shopping and enabling each other to buy more clothes 😂 Anyway, their relationship ended around end 2017, T had another r/ship in between that and ours (which only started in 2021), so I guess that helps too. I do salute both of them for being able to be friends after the end of the relationship.

I’ve known his friends since we got together, and have spent quite a bit of time with them over the last 4 years, so it was nice to travel together 😄 We spent about 2.5 days with the group in total; T’s friends arrived early in the morning on Fri and it was almost evening when we arrived, because our flight was delayed (boooo). We also didn’t spend all of that time together, since there were some differing interests, and we stayed in different hotels.

Our trip mainly consisted of eating and shopping our way through BKK, so photos will do this trip more justice:

^ 1. us at Changi Airport, excited for the trip; 2. I really like this Thai tea brand!

^ 1. an unexpectedly delicious meal at Chatuchak: rice with stir-fried seafood, garlic, chilli, soft omelette; 2. matcha latte at Chatuchak bc it's cheap and nice; 3. a famous milk bun with various flavours but it was a bit jelak after a while; 4. one must eat mango sticky rice when in BKK

^ 1. kanom krok bai toey: pandan pancakes which were soft and slightly chewy; 2. mango sticky rice after my first time trying a full body scrub and milk bath; 3. salt bread!!! Out of all the salt bread I've had since Seoul, this is the closest that comes to Jayeondo, imo. Still not as good as Jayeondo lah but it comes quite close; 4. mama noodles at Jeh O Chula; 5. A brave man wearing white and eating a very orange, soupy dish; 6. another unexpectedly delicious meal, this time at a random food place near our accomms: stir fried noodles with eggs and shrimp

The 5th wheel single person in the group, K (aka Steve - you know the song Me, You and Steve?) totally embraced his role. He was the one who suggested taking the second photo that way LOL

KL

T and I stayed in BKK for one extra day by ourselves before flying to KL to spend time with his family for his mum’s 70th birthday. His siblings and him planned a surprise for his mum - his older sister flew in from Norway without telling them. Surprise was a success! T’s mum completely didn’t expect it and she even teared up, nawwww. And my SIL couldn’t be in M’sia for long because she didn’t have much leave left, but it was still important to her to come back because 70 is a big milestone. It was also nice to spend some time with her alone since she couldn’t bring the kids with her when it was such a short trip. We have some similar interests in reading/books and hipster things haha. I borrowed a book from her actually, and will aim to finish it by CNY 2026 so I can return it to her then.

^ 1. my favourite ckt in Selangor (no pork no lard, uses duck egg which I think is more flavourful than chicken egg); 2. my favourite shredded chicken hor fun

^ 1. accompanied T to play pool and attempted to learn, but mainly I read my Kindle while he played by himself haha; 2. maggi goreng for supper; 3. cute ket who chose to sit next to me at said mamak place

^ First time trying chicken feet in curry, and I was a little - okay, very apprehensive at first. But it was so good. And I normally hate mutton because of the gamey smell and taste... But I ate the mutton curry here. Who am I? This mamak place is magical.

^ 1. ayam gepuk so gooood I'm waiting to go back and eat this again, but maybe I will be weak and get the Level 1 spice instead of regular Level 2 next time; 2. gao gao iced milo to drink for the car ride from KL to Malacca

Malacca

We drove from KL to Malacca to spend a few days there, and it was clear that T’s family quite enjoyed it. They like how locals there are friendly, down-to-earth and approachable, and that the food was good and cheap, and I suppose the slower pace of life too since it was quieter and slower than KL.

^ 1. A quaint secondhand bookshop-cafe where you can buy any of the items you see there

^ 1. A cool "bar" where the bartender is an aunty, with alcohol you don't really see in other places. I didn't drink, but the rest of the family did, and they enjoyed their time here, chatting with the owner. I respect that she put up a "no photos" sign because she doesn't want the place to become viral and be swamped with tourists haha (but I think it may be a bit too late for this, my Singaporean colleague knows about this place lol). Anyway, this photo was taken with her consent as it's just for personal usage; 2. birthday cake and celebration for my MIL!

I’m 100% certain that I will get fat if I live in M’sia because the food is so good… Even the drinks are better than in SG. Name me one place you can get cheap and not diluted Milo in SG 😩. Whereas you can get that anywhere in KL/Malacca. I also find the pace of life slower in M’sia compared to SG, even in KL, plus there’s so much more space that you never feel claustrophobic, and we have a car, which really improves your QOL because it means freedom to go anywhere you want, anytime you want. We can eat supper at 12am if we want because the mamak restaurant will be open. There’s a chance T and I will migrate to M’sia to retire there in future 😬

Only complaint I have is that while I love trips to M’sia, it really impacts my sleep and I feel quite tired because we sleep late everyday 😅 So I came back to SG more tired than I was before the trip haha. But mentally feeling great!

2025 goals

Writing/reading

Oops I didn’t finish reading anything in Sep, I must have been busy or still getting through the current books, but I finished them in Oct.

The Plea by Steve Cavanagh - finished

Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves - finished

Fitness

Because of the BKK and M’sia trips, I ended up not going to the gym for 2 whole weeks. D: Plus I ate a lot of food and didn’t control my diet at all. I mean, not that I’ve really been controlling it in SG lol

Anyway, I made sure to go to the gym once I came back and before I went overseas, but I have to say, it was rather painful to go for PT after 2 weeks break.

Trying new things/growth

Tiffycooks fanmeet

Went for a fanmeet even though I had no idea what to expect - I follow a food content creator called Tiffycooks, and really like her recipes and vlogs. She posted on her IG stories that she was coming to SG in Oct, and opened it up to her SG followers to indicate if we’d be coming. I don’t normally look at her stories actually, so I think it was really some kind of fate that I did when this happened. She was really nice, you get to chat with her for a few mins before taking photos and she also lets you bring back some goodies from her line of products :) I picked her chilli oil and also got some stickers, yay! My back is also famous because it makes an appearance in her SG vlog 😂 I don’t normally like to go for such things, because I don’t know what to expect, I don’t know how many people will come, or if I will have to, idk, fight it out or something to get my hands on the sauces - they’re not yet available for shipping to SG, and Tiffycooks is of Taiwanese origin but living in Canada - or if I’d just be uncomfortable dealing with the crowd there. Basically, I don’t like uncertainty, it gives me anxiety. But I still decided to go in the end, and I think it really must be fate, because I got the last jar of chilli oil. #blessed

Went for my first book club session with A

This was an interesting experience! Again, this was something new for me and out of my comfort zone, having to talk to strangers and give your opinion (although I checked with A beforehand and she assured me it’s ok if I just wanna be quiet and listen to others speak). There were icebreaker activities at the beginning (introvert me groaned internally) before the actual discussion began.

Hmm, I think I was a little surprised by how strong people’s opinions were about the book, and I ended up questioning myself and my critical thinking skills as a result, because I didn’t have so many issues with the book or author like many other people did 😂 e.g. people spoke about how his argument was flawed, or how he cited a particular segment of a paper but took it out of context or something like that. At some points it felt like it was just all about critiquing the author instead of discussing the points in the book and whether they're relevant in SG's context, given that the book is situated in the US (which I think is more important). This is all on hindsight of course. I wish I'd been able to formulate my thoughts quick so I could share this viewpoint during the actual book club, because I was silent throughout 😅

Erm. I also didn’t really like one of the participants there because I felt like he was kind of pushy in putting forward his point. He was basically saying that religion should be the answer/solution to the problems brought up in the book and in general, the problems we see in society. I don’t have any issue with you having that perspective, and I think it’s okay if you wanna share this point of view, but I do have an issue when you bring it up again and are low-key pushy about it. We may be of the same religion, but it came across rather prescriptive and I don’t think it’s fair to other members of the group who aren’t Muslim, this isn’t a religious class. I kinda got the sensing that the facilitators didn’t really know how to respond to him after he did that?

A told me that there was previously another participant who caused some problems for the book club organisers too, and they had to deal with it by not allowing him to return for sessions - fair enough tbh. I guess it isn’t easy running a book club. 😬

All the above being said, I might give the book club another try in future if there’s a book being discussed that I’m interested in. It’s still good to hear alternative views to expand my perspective. We’ll see how it goes~

Practising Chinese in real life, not just with T

I ordered cai fan in Mandarin by myself :’) Idk about you but ordering caifan has always seemed overwhelming and scary to me, because I don’t know what’s what and I don’t speak Mandarin, and the line moves fast so there’s not much time to think. So I’ve been relying on my Chinese colleagues to order on my behalf all this while 😅 I don’t know what possessed me to be brave that one day - maybe it was because the scary aunty was nowhere in sight - but I was really proud of myself when I did 😁 And the fact that the staff understood me and I ordered what I wanted = successful first try! I got myself a chicken dish, an egg dish, and a veggie. I’m really trying to learn Mandarin when I can, though mainly it’s learning random words here and there when they pop up, and not proper lessons. Going back to M’sia to spend time with T’s family is my form of language immersion programme hahaha. My aim is to one day be able to understand 90% of what they’re saying without needing translation. I’m still revising Korean everyday too through Duo, just to still have some kind of interaction with the language so I don’t completely forget whatever I’ve learned.

Tried a full body scrub for the first time in BKK

I normally don't like strangers touching my body lol so it was def out of my comfort zone to do this. The scrubbing low-key hurt too, I felt raw afterwards. And there was a bit of massaging after that. But... I am shocked to say this, but I'm open to doing this again in future. It felt really good to have such smooth skin and feel so clean afterwards haha. I may even try a massage in future, we'll see. I heard Thai massages are really intense, but if it was the intensity I had during the scrub, I think that would be manageable.

Work

Found out in Sep that I’m to be promoted on 1st Oct 🙂

It’s something that I’ve been hoping for, for a long time, especially as I’ve watched my peers (even some younger than me in the sector) get promoted before me, in other places, and I’d be lying if I said this didn’t make me cast doubts on myself and my abilities - am I not good enough to be promoted? Do my seniors/boss not think I am good enough? T can tell you that we had many conversations about my work insecurities and what it means for my future if I’m not promoted this year. I told myself that if it doesn’t happen this year, it’s time… to leave. For the sake of my own future, because when you apply for companies and they see that you’re still a social worker after more than 8 years in the sector, they will inevitably ask, “why?” I know because it recently happened to someone I know, who was from my organisation and left to go elsewhere. D: Of course it doesn’t mean that life is over if the next company has doubts, since they would likely just need to check with your referee, and your referee can explain why for you.

It would have been a really difficult thing to do though, to leave. I love my current workplace, I love my colleagues, my boss is fair and supportive. Yes the work often sucks (there are good parts too, but a lot of it is exhausting) but it will suck in most places anyway. I know I can have a much easier life if I were to join, say, MSF as a Family Coach - I heard they get paid a lot too - but ultimately I’m choosing to stay here to continue learning and doing the work I’m doing now. And because psychological safety is really important to me.

I am thus very thankful to have been promoted; it has saved me from my dilemma 🙂

That being said, now that I’ve got new responsibilities, it is adding on to my impostor syndrome. But as T says, “you were already doing the work anyway! You may as well get paid for it!” True.

Fun stuff

WFH with colleagues

Had a nice WFH day with colleagues in a shophouse unit in Joo Chiat, hung out with the resident cat Sogs who doesn't like to be touched, went out to a cafe for lunch and dabao-ed bakes back afterwards for tea time

^ A gorgeous, delicious pistachio tart from Bingo

Dinner with S, his wife S, and T

Played with their 2 cats and spent hours just chatting and catching up as it’s been a while and my friend S is really full of nonsense. S with T is a dangerous combination.

Lunch at A’s house

I got to play with baby N who is the cutesttttt. Proud of myself that he was so smiley with me and I made him laugh hehehe. Can’t believe he’s already 1 now 🥹 Time flies! On that note, my niece is already 9 (turning 10 in 2026) and my nephews are 16 and 13 this year. Gosh. I feel old…

^ celebrating my sister's birthday. That's my mum, sis, cousin, 2nd nephew who's 13, and my niece

Annual STAR

STAR stands for Strategic Thinking and Annual Review (I think), and it’s something we do for work every year. There’s the work component which takes half a day, but after lunch it’s all fun and games. This year our fun component was making homemade ice cream! Pretty cool how you can try making it at home using some salt, ice, and natural ingredients for the actual ice cream (cream, milk, whatever flavours you want). You mix and blend the ice-cream ingredients, then put it in a ziplock bag, in another large ziplock bag full of ice and salt. We made strawberry yuzu ice cream which turned out to be a great combination, except I think some salt got into the small ziplock bag with the ice-cream, and it turned out a bit too salty. But it was still nice LOL.

^ my cute colleagues

Date with Tommy

Went to Hadramawt Kitchen to eat Yemeni food, based on my ex-sup's recommendation. It was good!! And so so filling. But dessert stomach is a separate stomach so I still insisted on getting kunefe hehe.

^ mandi rice with chicken, chicken with pita and hummus (v yummy), kunefe with coconut ice cream on top

Date with myself

Went to a Jap restaurant in Wisma Atria and then walked around Takashimaya for a while. Sigh, so many books to buy and read. Can’t wait to get our house in Kallang so I can buy more books HAHA. I also went to watch Downton Abbey by myself that day. It was actually my first time watching a movie alone! I really really wanted to watch Downton but was supposed to go with my friends S&A, but our schedules wouldn’t align till mid-Oct because they were travelling, and I was worried it would no longer be showing by then. So I went to see it alone and watched it again for the second time with my friends later on. I felt it was a fitting end to the series, and it feels right to end it now, though I’ll miss the characters. I’m still a Mary x Matthew shipper. Always will be 🥹

Bought my first keyboard!

Largely influenced by T, who loves to go into Challenger to try keyboards, and the fact that my colleagues and I were given brand new work laptops, and I wanna keep mine as clean as possible for as long as I can haha. I am picky with my keyboards, I actually love the laptop’s keyboard best, but for the sake of keeping my keys clean and oil-free, I got a pink Logitech one for office :) Pretty pleased with how it looks and feels! I am a lazy person who likes my keys to take little effort. They should also spring back and not be slow, so I can type fast hehe.

2025 goals

Originally these were 1. Writing, 2. Fitness, 3. Cooking and 4. Gaming, but my goals and priorities have shifted, so moving forward, this will be:

Writing/reading combined because being a good reader will make me a better writer

Fitness

Trying new things/growth

I’ll still cook from time to time, and play games, just that those aren’t my major priorities right now, and probably won’t be for the rest of the year.

Also, I know it’s November December already yet here I am writing my combined July&Aug review (whistles).

Work

Work was tough in these 2 months. We had IQA (internal quality assurance), which is basically audit, except that it was done internally, within our own organisation. We have 3 family service centres (FSCs), so we did a round robin of auditing each other so that we don’t audit our own FSC’s cases. So we were all busy clearing our paperwork for this.

Work was also additionally tough and busy because of a difficult case - one of my clients attempted suicide but, thankfully, didn’t manage to go through with it at the last minute. By the time I was informed about it, she was already safe and hospitalised, but knowing her condition, this will be an ongoing concern to manage, probably for the long term. I guess this case is partly difficult (emotionally) because I see a lot of myself in her: the ‘not good enough’ mindset, the high expectations placed on herself, always being hard on herself and finding it difficult to acknowledge her strengths or the things she does well, tending to see the negative in everything rather than the positive. This case is additionally tough because I know that she is very attached to me, more than I think is healthy for a therapeutic relationship, and wants to see me for sessions more frequently than I can give, because I have a lot of other stuff on my work plate already.

Health/fitness

Dunno how I found the time to do it, but I completed my PT package #1 in July! Woohoo, I survived 23 sessions - and signed up for another 20 hahaha. If you ask me if I see any changes in myself, err… I am definitely still far away from my body goals, but I am getting stronger 🙂 Am trying not to place pressure on myself to see immediate results, but focus instead on growing my strength and making fitness a habit 💪🏼

Also, because PT is too expensive, I am now spacing sessions out so that I only do it once a week. This is also my way of tapering off before I completely stop PT after this batch of 20 sessions ends. After that, it will really be up to me to keep going to the gym~

It's easier to go to the gym when it's empty (or at least, the section I was in was empty, for maybe 10 minutes)

Fun stuff

BKK trip with colleagues

This was my first time to BKK, and I had a lot of fun, ate lots of good food, and had lots of laughs 🥰 We also had a bit of HTHT on the last night haha which was fun, and allowed us to get to know each other a bit better.

Karaoke with J and A

Did you know that the lyrics to All Of Me by John Legend goes well with P&P? 😂

I still find it hard to sing in front of people in general, due to my ridiculous and unhelpful belief that I should always do everything well, so there are only a few people I am actually 100% comfortable singing with, and J&A are two of those people 🙂 I guess it’s also that singing is one of my pride points lol so it makes me cringe when I don’t sing a song well. I am trying to learn to be more okay with not doing everything well (seriously, where do these expectations come from?!), and that it doesn’t matter if I’m not good at something. Keyword is trying 🙂

USS + dates with T at Sarnies

Went to USS for TFS Family Day! Thank you TFS for free tickets and meal vouchers hehe. We could bring up to 3 people but I only brought T lol cos I don’t think my mum would enjoy walking very much. We didn’t stay very long though, and only took… 1 ride? I still remember when T and I went to USS for one of our dates back in 2021, and I even cooked and packed food for us for lunch. Fast forward 4 years: we are old, don’t like being under the sun for too long, and find the food at USS expensive, so we just ate whatever the meal vouchers covered, before leaving to eat a proper meal at Sarnies haha. And we also only go to Sarnies when our friend/s are working there, so we can get staff discount 🫣 The food is pretty good, but too painful for our wallets.

It was during our date that we had a conversation about whether we can be happy in jobs that just pay enough, and what retirement looks like for us. T just started his new (old) job in June, so lately we’ve both been feeling stressed and wondering if life will always be this fast-paced. Leave days always feel like a tug-of-war between “I should go try that new food I’ve been eyeing, I should go out and do something nice or fun” and “I want to rest and catch up on sleep, just stay home.”

Date with myself

Took a half day off work in Aug just to go on a date with myself for funsies 🙂 I am a creature of habit so I had lunch at the same Jap place in Orchard I tend to go to when I am by myself haha. After that I walked around Takashimaya and bought banana pie at a pop-up fair in the atrium, hehe.

National Day hangout at S&N’s place

Didn’t expect to laugh so hard as we watched NDP on tv together, especially when (we think) Pres Tharman did an Obama 😂 I also got to chat with S’s wife N a bit more, got to know her better and realised that we have a love of books in common haha. She also has some level of proficiency in Korean! I don't know how proficient but I suspect her level is higher than mine.

I borrowed a whopping 6 books from her. They have such an impressive library and collection of figurines, and it is all in a room with a vacuum seal door so that dust doesn’t get in. I love itttt. Bookshelves full of books organised by genre. I don’t read manga but I am impressed by their complete collections of several manga series. I am getting inspiration for our future house.

Miscellaneous:

My mum and aunt randomly came over to deliver lunch to me when I worked from home on one of the days, without me asking them to. Their timing was impeccable because I wasn’t feeling too well that day and was experiencing a bad stomachache for dunno what reason, so I was lucky not to have go out to buy food thanks to them :’) I suspect the main reason they wanted to come over was to deliver some Corelle plates which my sister’s neighbour gave them for Raya LOL and I said I was okay to take the plates.

Love is home-cooked food being delivered to you hehe

I ordered food in Mandarin (by myself) for the first time!! Ok it was mainly just saying “number 7, dabao” (from the menu) and saying yes I want chilli (la jiao), but I am still proud of myself. One, because the staff are legit from China so I wanted to order in Chinese, and two, because if I order wrongly, I will end up getting pork. 😨 I did successfully get my cold shredded chicken noodles, so yay!

Progress on 2025 goals

Reading

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - finished in July

I Decided to Live as Me - finished in Aug

Every Moment Was You - finished in Aug

Sunrise on the Reaping - finished in Aug

Writing

No writing done 😟 I’ve only been writing Assessment and Case Plans for work…

Fitness

See above!

Cooking and gaming

I don’t have updates for these 2 goals either 😂😅 Moving forward, I think I’ll make some edits to this section for the next post.

Good food:

Who knew burrata and foccacia bread could taste so good?!

Hotcake from one my favourite neighbourhood bakeries :)

Sadly, my life mainly revolved around work these last 3 months. This resulted in many nights of OT-ing, which looked like: me on the floor typing on my work laptop feeling sian, T at his desk playing Palworld. And whenever I got bored of doing my work I’d get up to see him play, it’s like watching a live playthrough hahaha. Of course, there were many minutes wasted scrolling IG because I just didn’t want to do my work, which resulted in me spending more time on social media than I would like, and then later panicking because I still had so much work to do and so little time. There were also moments when I’d go to google flights to find out how much it costs to fly to Japan or Korea, even though there were no concrete plans. If I can’t escape, I will fantasise about escaping.

Context: all of the paperwork we were busy chionging is for audit, which is happening in July/Aug. Booooo. I’m only able to start writing this review now because I’ve cleared the work that was due in end May + vetted my supervisee’s work (vetting due in mid/end June). We also had a case review panel on 18th June, basically a session where my seniors look at the case background and what work has been done, give directions where needed, to un-stuck the case, plus make sure we have covered our bases in terms of managing the safety and risk concerns. For example, if the client is suicidal, have we made sure we have done what we can to reduce the risk of client ending his/her life? Have we provided them with resources they can contact (in addition to us) if they’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed? If there is a history or ongoing family violence, such as between spouses, have we done safety planning with them? etc etc.

I still have more paperwork to clear by July/Aug, and these are the session notes, basically my log of whatever happened during the session, what client said, my observations etc.

Oh, and all of this paperwork is being done while we still have other portfolios or obligations to handle, like actually seeing clients for sessions, and presenting cases for group supervision, and organising events for clients, like Hari Raya, and setting up an outreach booth at a PA event. Yay I love work.

Putting my sarcasm aside for a moment, I did enjoy some aspects of work these last few months. I discovered that I enjoy teaching/training others! I think it’s in line with the part of me that likes mentoring other people when I feel that my life/work experiences can be helpful as a learning point and I can help guide them to make sense of their situation and eventually grow into themselves. Maybe it’s the lastborn in me enjoying a new role of being like a big sister to others?

My last review in March, I wrote about feeling mentally and emotionally drained by the cases I had. At the time of writing this, in June, my mental and emotional wellbeing feels like it was put on hold for 2 months while I focused on my deadlines, and I was only allowed to feel normal again this week (19th June). I took leave and had a great day 🥹😭 I slept in till 10+am, did some chores, went out to meet T and my ex-colleague for lunch, went to get myself a salted pistachio matcha latte + muffins, went home and rested, then went out for PT. There are many days (especially Mondays) where I wake up thinking, ‘I wish I didn’t have to work. Why do I have to work?’ Here is a comic that sums up my feelings:

Sometimes I think, ‘maybe I’ll stay and get my 5 years long service award next year, and 3 days of additional AL’. I try not to think about ‘maybe I’ll get promoted within the next 2-3 years, I should stay for that’.

I don’t know when promotion will happen, or if it will even happen at all, and I no longer want to hope for it because I don’t want to feel disappointed in September when other people are promoted before me. I was really disappointed in Sep last year, but right now I feel like I’ve made peace with it. I don’t want to be presumptuous or obnoxious thinking that I deserve to be promoted (but I love that my husband is always supportive and thinks that I am competent and deserve it, and I love him for it), when there are times when I feel so unsure of myself and my skills (more on that later). I also understand that this is only an issue because the organisation and my office in particular is stable, and that is why I chose to work here in the first place. I know that if I were to return to my old organisation, there would be a much greater chance of being promoted there, but that is because that place was, and still is, unstable, with a high turnover rate.

But sometimes I fantasise about quitting next year and resting for 6 months. It now seems possible because T just started a new job in June. He has gone back to hell (our previous organisation).

However, because hell is messy and we don’t know what things will look like in 6 months, or even 3 months, there’s no guarantee T will still be working there next year 😂 So maybe I will still need to continue working. I foresee it’ll be hard to stop working once we get the keys to our house in 2028. I still want to travel and go for 1 or 2 long trips before we have to start paying for renovation and housing loan 😭

It’s just hard to survive on one income in Singapore, when our incomes aren’t high. When I was in my twenties, I never would have given migrating a second thought. I’m more open to the possibility now though, especially after my time in Norway and various trips to Malaysia to visit my in-laws. Norway feels much more relaxed, and I’m sure a big contributing factor is that working hours are shorter, which allows my sister-in-law and her husband to have more time to spend with their 2 kids. If I recall correctly, they go to work around 10am and end work around 4pm. Eating out is more expensive, so they usually cook - but if you’re getting home at 5pm, why wouldn’t you have time to cook? Not to mention the salmon is so fresh and so good 🥹 I’m still reminiscing about the sushi night we had at home during the trip.

I also really miss how Norway is much less crowded than Singapore, so there is no need to feel like you need to compete or jostle with people when, say, walking around in a museum, or at a Christmas market. Here, if I want to buy a pastry at a bakery I like, I have to go within the first 1-2 hours of it opening (I’m looking at you, Mother Dough), or the pastry I want will be gone. I can’t help but feel like (more financially stable) Singaporeans love cafes and bakeries and new things (bakeries change their menus every month too) partly because we’re disillusioned with life and the rat race, we need constantly new things to distract us from the mundane grind and the constant competition with others (even though it is also a competition to get our hands on bakes). Why do we love queues so much, people? Why are we willing to spend 30 mins queuing for muffins or pastries at a hawker centre bakery ON A WEEKDAY?

Malaysia feels much more relaxed too. I think a part of it is because there is so much more SPACE there. The malls are so spacious, it really makes a difference. They’re so big that walking in malls can be a workout to clock your daily step count. I do have to say, though, that I don’t know how Malaysians are surviving on their pay with current prices. We only find it affordable because of the exchange rate…

I guess travel really does broaden one’s mind. I, a homebody + with a sheltered and protected existence + who has always been comfortable living in safety and security, am actually considering migrating in order to retire somewhere else. But who knows how life will turn out? The world is becoming more and more unsafe, sadly.

Back to the topic of work - I mentioned feeling like a noob earlier on in this post. I recently took on my first proper couple counselling case, and it’s made me feel like a young, fresh grad again. Not in a good way, sobs. Helping a couple to mend their relationship after one partner has an affair is no joke; I feel very inadequate. I struggle(d) with empathising or understanding why people have affairs, so I’ve been reading this book - After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful

The book did help me to empathise better - not saying I condone affairs, but I get it better now. I’m also reading this book in the hopes that I can learn how to help each person to understand the other’s needs and perspective, and to teach them how to communicate better. Not to brag (okay, maybe a little hehe) but I’m not sure how to teach communication with your partner because T and I are so good at it 😆 I’m joking, but honestly I’m thankful to be married to a social worker and that we both know how to resolve our conflicts in a healthy manner. I hope my personal experiences can help me to guide others? I guess couple work is a new chapter in my work life, one that has so far been uncomfortable and painful.

But I’m still surviving at work, in large part due to the best team of colleagues I could ask for 🥰

Oh appraisal season is beginning and we should be meeting our supervisors in July to find out how we did for the last year. Here’s to (trying my best) not expecting anything and just going with the ebbs and flows of life. And surviving work one day at a time. So that I can continue paying for household bills, groceries, and pastries and the occasional honey oat matcha latte from Refuel.

On to fun/non-work things, as life is more than just about being employed!

Cut bangs for the first time in my life hehe

I signed up for a gym membership and PT package in April, after Raya haha. It was so tough at the beginning; there were many days I felt I was dragging myself to the gym on a Tue after work or on Saturdays at 9am (helps 🥱), but I would like to give myself a pat on the back for making it through, because I now have only 2 PT sessions left 🎉🥳 I’ve survived almost 3 months!

This means that the true test of my resolve and motivation begins soon - can I drag myself to the gym to work out on my own without the pressure of PT sessions? I went today (24th June) after taking an hour off work so I could avoid the weekday evening crowd. Great decision, but issit I can only go to the gym when it’s not so crowded? Mind you, even at 5pm on a weekday it was still not as empty as I expected it to be. By the time I left just now at 7.20, it was definitely peak period 🥴 As nice as it is to have a PT who will chope your machines for you and who has eagle eyes to spot which ones are free, I don’t think I will continue PT after this because it’s too painful for my wallet. But maybe I’ll take a break and see how I fare on my own first, and consider signing up for more sessions if I really can’t do it on my own.

I’ve lost about 2.5kg since I started working out, yay! It’s slower progress than all those progress videos we see on IG, but I don’t care because I want to lose weight sustainably, with small and consistent changes in my life as a whole. I know myself, I will just gain everything back if I lose it quick, and this is part of my work to counter my mindset of ‘I must have instant results’.

My PT James can lose 2kg per week and lose a total of 14kg in 7 weeks for his competition, but that is because he is insane, a competitive bodybuilder, he eats chicken breast or fish with vegetables for lunch everyday, and he loves his routines. The dude does my weight in bicep curls. He was 5% body fat for his recent competition in June. Insane… I can’t do this because I love bread too much 😔

My eventual aim is to lose 6-7kg in total, but more importantly, it is to lose body fat. I also aim not to give free money to the gym through my monthly membership.

Though I haven’t lost a significant amount of weight and I don’t have slim arms or a flat stomach, it does feel good when I look back at the photos of the weights I’ve been doing, and realise that I started out doing incline walk on a treadmill for 30 mins on my first day → 40 mins walk -> do stairmaster for 10 mins on speed 5 (which my PT says is doubly hard, so he will never ask anyone to start with this machine but to start with treadmill) → now I do stairmaster for 20 mins on speed 6 without stopping!!

Also, hip thrusts have gone up from 15kg a side (I think… I can’t remember exactly and didn’t take a photo at the very beginning) to 30kg a side now 😁 Not pictured because my PT alr took the weights off and also, I was almost half-dead on the machine.

Election season came and went, it was a fever of passion and hope, but alas, things stayed the same. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, and went to a cafe by myself to eat some good food and read a book, the morning the results were announced, just cos I was sad. T went across the causeway to visit his family and I couldn’t join because I chose to stay behind in SG to do my duty to vote, which now feels like it was for nothing 😒 The universe is funny hahaha I went to a rally with my colleague and ended up twinning with the guy right in front of me in the queue to enter the stadium.

Had some nice meetups with family and friends this q:

Took a longer weekday lunch with the sandwiches and had a good meal and catchup

Hari Raya gathering with my Muslim colleagues and their families

Huge gathering of current and ex BR staff and their families at our boss's condo function room

Went to A's house to spend time with her and baby N, who is the CUTEST.

Met A's boyfriend for the first time over a group lunch

Cafe date with T at Puffs and Peaks

Birthday lunch with A at Vivo

Went to PN's house to catchup and spend time with her cats

Went to the Wizarding World exhibition at Sentosa with T

Lunch with these 2 cute elderly after GE voting

Celebrated J's birthday with J and A :)

Really nice halal zichar in Bedok (see the moonlight hor fun pictured at the end of the post). I went with T and his friends. The Malaysians approve of this zichar place. 😌 And then we had durians after that, what a sinful day that was

Threw in a random cute cat photo for funsies

Progress on 2025 goals:

Reading

I didn’t have much time to read in May and June, so most of the books I read this q were in Apr.

Edit: I devoured The Hunger Games series (books 1-3) in about a week in June, so that I can read the 2 prequels which I haven’t touched before!

The Friend Zone - finished in Apr

The Cross - finished in Apr

Marry Him - finished in Apr

The Happy Ever After Playlist - finished in Apr

Life’s Too Short - finished in May

The Hunger Games - finished in June

Catching Fire - finished in June

Mockingjay - just finished yesterday (technically July but nvm lah)

Writing

Not sure if it’s an age thing or adulting or the muscle is just… weak, but it feels much harder to be creative now than before (by before, I mean 10 years ago). I was also not yet a participant of the rat race an employee, so maybe work sucked all the creative juices out of me. Also I have had no time to write anything creative or fictional; I have only been writing assessments and intervention plans for my cases. So much for writing __ words before SWF 2025… 🥲

Fitness - see above hehe

Cooking - oh dear, I hardly cooked this quarter. Most of my free time, especially on weekdays, was focused on work, so the go-to dinner became bread and eggs 😂 I’m grateful for a husband who is not picky with food and who also doesn’t eat much for dinner, since we are both watching our diets haha. I think my mum and sister feel shocked/worried about us just eating this though 🙊

Gaming - haven’t been gaming since I completed all the main quests in Hogwarts Legacy… it clearly was not a priority this q. But seeing T playing Palworld is making me want to start gaming again, once my work is cleared~

Ending off with photos of good food/drinks I had this q:

Work woes

March is the month of my work anniversaries: 4 years in my current workplace and 8 years in the social service sector. This work is tough, and I don’t know how long more I can do it.

[art by tuerannja on IG]

18 March - cried before bedtime because I felt too stressed about work. If I'm still crying like this in Dec, it's time to review whether the social work life is for me. I only hope I can hold on for another 9 months, because the last few weeks have been exhausting. I think the fact that I'm fasting and thus physically tired and not getting enough sleep each day has contributed to this fatigue, but it's also that certain cases have been rather emotionally draining and just too much for my nervous system to deal with when it's already on the brink of burnout. I honestly feel burned out. It's not a new sensation, I've felt this way maybe once or twice before in my 8 years of being a social worker, but it's something that comes and goes, up and down. I do think this might be the worst I've felt so far though.

I can't recall a time when I felt so emotionally drained by cases that I normally find okay to deal with. Previously I felt angry and hurt and “why is this happening to me? I don't deserve this treatment” maybe 3 years back when I had an abusive client plus another client who was very emotionally needy and whom I now suspect has symptoms of HPD (histrionic personality disorder), but I feel like that was a natural response to those tough cases. But then again, the current cases I'm fatigued by are also tough and complex. Does it help me feel better if I see my exhaustion now as a normal response to a challenging case?

Not really. I just want everything to be over and done with. I'd like to bury myself in bed with books and not have to go to work.

The current season of cases is a lot of emotionality, a lot of pain and hurt experienced by clients which I have to process with them, and a lot of negative thought patterns and beliefs as well, which I have to try to work through with them. Writing this review now in April, after a conversation with T, I’ve come to a realisation - I see the world with an idealistic lens (people are generally good and I want to believe the world is alright), but I see myself with a negative lens (I am usually critical towards myself, often unreasonably so). There has been too much pain and negativity from my clients in this current season, to the extent that it’s begun to break through my usually healthy and sufficient boundaries (I don’t normally think about work after the work day is over). Add to that my critical stance towards myself and I then get frustrated when it feels like I’m not competent enough to help the client work through their issue, or not fast enough. I know, on a logical level, that everything takes time and there are no miracle cures, but it’s hard to apply that to myself. All the above factors combined have probably contributed quite a bit to my current burnout.

Also, the fact that I don't foresee promotion being within reach for the next few years because my org is so stable that no one leaves, adds to the frustration too. But it feels hypocritical of me to say this given that what drew me to join was the low turnover rate in the first place. I can’t say I didn’t come into this with my eyes open - I knew promotion would be slow, but I wanted a change from the not so great environment I was coming from. I wanted stability.

So it feels hypocritical of me to now be complaining about what drew me to this org in the first place 🫣

Sigh. Part of me feels like it’s so wasted to leave next year. If I don’t then I’ll hit 5 years of service in March and I’ll get 3 extra days of AL. And what if they really do want to promote me… soon? Next year? The year after? I don’t know man. I’m so exhausted now as it is. But I also really like my colleagues and the environment here, and don’t want to lose that. The only thing I know for sure is that if I do leave, I won’t leave to go to another FSC. Not with all the changes in the sector landscape happening and there being so much uncertainty, and honestly everywhere you go (in FSC landscape), the shit workload, and shitty expectations by the powers that be, are all the same. If I do leave but still want to stay in the sector, I think it might be to do more upstream work, something like running pre-marital counselling programmes. The hopeless romantic and idealist in me believes strongly in pre-marital prep work. And, being happily married in a stable marriage where we communicate with each other well, I feel like I could tap on my own experiences in the work. Alternatively, I’d love to do more research work, if the opportunity presents itself in future. But I have no proper training or background in it, so I can’t really apply for a research position.

But if I don’t want to stay in the sector, then there are many other options. Maybe become a recruiter? Explore the publishing/books industry? (I get the sense that it may not pay well though, especially since I have no background other than that my second major in Lit lol.) Friends reading this, please feel free to let me know if you have ideas for future jobs that might suit me, based on what you know of me 😬

Celebrating 2 years of marriage (and a trip to JB!)

How has the time flown by?? It’s been 2 years since T and I got married 🥰 We took a short trip to JB to celebrate our anniversary, and picked the weekend when I’d get my period HAHA so we could eat (since it was fasting month). My request was to go to a Ramadan bazaar, have always wanted to see one in M’sia. It was crowded, but because the bazaar was so big and spacious, it never felt too claustrophobic, plus we went early at around 3pm.

Only issue we faced during the trip was the accomms - pretty sure no one had stayed in the apartment in a while, because it smelled rather musty and the air was stale. Worst of all was the terrible smell coming from the sink in the kitchen/living room after we used it to wash our hands upon arrival. I suspect the drainage/flow isn’t very good or something; it smelled like the sewer was in our living room. We hid in the bedroom and closed the door to escape the smell wherever possible, in addition to staying out of the house for as long as possible 😅 We also ended up booking another accommodation for the second night. Thankfully the owner of the apartment was nice and understanding, and refunded us the cost of the second night. He even refunded us for the air freshener we bought.

The second accomms, a hotel, was really nice for its price point! We chose to book one of their newly renovated rooms.

We played badminton 2/3 days of the trip hehe. To offset some of the calories consumed. The great thing about the condo apartment was that they had 2 badminton courts you could book, so that was very convenient. And we were lucky to be alone for both sessions, so it was like we had the whole 2 courts to ourselves for private badminton training haha.

The ceiling in City Square Mall in JB fell through and we were there to witness it :o

Random cute ket outside a bakery in JB

Ramadan and Raya 2025

Ramadan was extra hard for me this year 🫠 I was so tired, more tired than usual, so tired that I managed to sleep in office in an awkward position for every half hour break during my WIO days. I think I also got my period too early on; I only fasted for 5 days before I had to stop, which broke the momentum and prevented my body from adapting. I basically did nothing except read and sleep during the weekends when I fasted lol.

I thought I wouldn’t go back to sleep at 6am after my pre-dawn meal at 5ish, if I have to leave home at 7.45am on a WIO day, but nope. I was so tired I’d sleep from 6.15 to 7.15am, even though I’m never able to sleep for a full hour because it takes a while to fall asleep after you’ve already woken and had a full meal.

So I have to honestly say that Raya could not come any earlier, it was a relief for sleep-deprived me.

I had a nice time seeing my family and catching up with everyone, especially those I haven’t seen in a while - my cousin and aunts, my sister-in-law etc. I went over to see my parents + sister’s family quite often during Ramadan, eating free food + providing free labour haha. For some reason, I felt rather… homesick during the first day of Raya. We were at my sister’s place for 5 hours but I felt like I could have stayed even longer if not for T and I needing to prepare for work the next day.

Miscellaneous

Said goodbye to my first Kindle cover (pictured below, on the left) because it has been disintegrating and shedding black bits all over my bedsheets 🥲 And purchased two more covers (much needed since I’ve been reading on my Kindle a lot more!). Here's one of them, pictured on the right, below:

Meetups with friends: Met up with S and L and had a nice catchup before S flies off to Latin America for a year 🥹 And went to the Ramadan bazaar in Bugis with A and S!

Went for a date with T the day before Ramadan started and saw these really great murals in Bugis:

Finally watched LOTR from start to end woohoo and really enjoyed it! We watched the 3 movies over 2 nights. Bilbo is me.

Progress on goals:

Reading

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney - finished

I feel like I didn’t really understand what was happening in this book 😅 But I tried it because I really liked Sally Rooney’s other novel, Normal People. Ummm, but, what does it say about me that I was kind of rooting for the female lead to end up with the guy she was involved with, even though he was married? (shakes head) I guess that’s what Rooney does well, based on the two books I’ve read so far; it plays around with morals and ethics I suppose.

2. The Defense by Steve Cavanagh - finished

A thrilling crime book recommended by T. So full of tension that reading before bedtime was not a good idea LOL and I had to end my night by reading a non-fiction book (Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough) to calm my nerves ah.

3. There's no such thing as an easy job by Kikuko Tsumura - finished

AH HA. When they finally revealed the job that caused her to burn out, let’s just say I was not surprised. 🤣😌 This was generally a pleasant read, although pace was a bit slow. I liked reading about the weird ass short contract jobs she took on, jobs that you would never think existed. I know this is fiction, but it’s set in Japan so it wouldn’t be crazy to think these jobs actually exist, e.g. a job where she has to watch (read: spy on) someone through a hidden camera in his house in order to get information on a contraband item he had unwittingly and unknowingly received, and a job where she has to write trivia on the back of a cracker packet. Anyway, each job had its ups and downs, pros and cons. I guess the moral of the story is… there’s no such thing as an easy job. Ba dum tsss.

Writing

Didn’t really do much, but did a bit of plotting. I told 2 other friends about my dream of publishing a book and becoming a writer 🫣 The more people I tell about this, the less I can escape from committing to it.

Fitness

Meh, didn’t really exercise cos I was so tired from fasting. Only played badminton during the JB trip plus once in SG for an hour, while fasting. It was so hard. I also can’t remember the last time I went for a run 😢

Cooking

Cooked for our anniversary, though I basically cheated - the ravioli was store-bought but I made the pasta sauce and added salmon.

The price of dinner at my mum’s place is free slave labour by me. I cooked ALL of this. I also helped to cook salmon cream pasta on another night (not pictured here); it makes me very happy when the entire pan of pasta is finished in the same sitting, after everyone took second helpings hehe.

Gaming

Finished Hogwarts Legacy!!!

I am stealing J’s format and ending off with photos of good food:

Took a night bus from SG to KL and spent a few days there. Got to play badminton twice, 2 nights in a row, and work off some of the many calories consumed huhu. Managed to squeeze time to sing karaoke with T’s younger sis and her bf. Went to a night market with T’s parents which could not be any more local; there were 0 tourists, there were locals selling local produce for CNY (I wanted to take photos but I didn’t want to look like the only tourist there, which I was HAHA), and they had a lion dance procession to bless all the stalls. There were also secondhand qipaos being sold and some looked quite pretty, but it was a humid night and we were all sweating, plus I wasn’t sure I’d ever wear one outside of CNY, so I didn’t get one in the end.

Afterwards we drove up to Penang, about a 5-hour drive with a quick pitstop in between. We were lucky not to get stuck in a jam, but it also boiled down to good planning by T (who hates jams and hates crowds hahaha), who decided that we should drive up a few days before CNY. We met up with T’s elder sister and her family (husband, 2 kids, husband’s parents whom I was meeting for the first time) and had dinner together, and got to see baby E!! She is super super cute. Her first kid, L, seems more comfortable with us now since he was able to hug us immediately upon meeting us even though we haven’t seen him in a year. Ah and as usual, firework displays everywhere in Penang (#sorich)

We stayed in Penang for almost a week before parting ways with T’s elder sister’s family, who stayed on, while the rest of us drove to either Ipoh (just one night) or KL (T’s younger sis’s bf had to go back to work). We woke up early to see a flea market in Ipoh, located just outside our hotel:

[Look at that creepy ass doll head...]

In the end we didn't do any CNY visiting at all hahaha. Because we were only in Ipoh for one day and one night, and it wouldn't be fair to visit just a few relatives while neglecting the others. So I didn't get to wear the pretty oriental-style skirt I bought and brought along 🥲 Just as well, since I ate so much in Penang...

Oh yes and T got to reunite with his friends in Penang after not seeing them for really long. Some of them didn’t even know he was married until maybe a few months ago LOL. I’ve been told this is just a typical guy thing: girls soft launch their boyfriends on IG but guys will just go BAM “oh ya I’m married” or “I have a kid now” after years of not seeing their friends. T also no longer has social media, so there is no way for his friends to know his life updates, unless they text each other.

Our trip mostly consisted of eating, so here are photos of standout meals in M’sia:

Pictured: Hokkien mee and dry chilli pan mee - both from Gurney Food Hall, which is no pork no lard, yay! Otherwise it might be impossible for me to find a non pork version of both dishes.

Soy sauce chicken was da bomb, so tender. From the same stall that sold kway teow th'ng. And this stall is Michelin guide approved. Also it was one of the few non-pork kway teow th'ng I could eat 🥹 Oh and chendol for dessert hehe. And my first time eating nasi kandar! So flavourful. And sinful.

LOVE THIS CHAR KWAY TEOW. Also love this chendol. Both were from the same street and yes the CKT is halal omg so good I'm still thinking about it now pls. Pls order with duck egg (NOT chicken egg) it will change your life. I have no comparison to the lard-y CKT so this is the best I've ever had in my life.

I'm a simple girl who loves her kaya toast and eggs and teh. Not pictured was this delightfully sinful croissant with kaya butter that you dip in the eggs. Croissant in my stomach already. Also, next to it, gelato: pistachio, dragonfruit, dark chocolate, hazelnut, osmanthus something, and lime sorbet.

Really good teh peng and Ipoh hor fun when we were in Ipoh for one day

KL: Maggi goreng + banana & egg prata (idk why price of this in SG is ridiculous, banana so expensive in SG issit?!?! WHY BANANA EGG PRATA IN M'SIA CAN BE REASONABLY PRICED LEH?) + red bean soup made by T's dad + shredded chicken hor fun + no pork no lard CKT again, KL version but still so good, and it's from some random stall in a pasar malam near T's house but it's already better than what I can find in SG. Malaysia food is superior. There, I said it. I used to gripe whenever T said this but I've been converted (hur hur).

Ended off the trip with my first bouldering session, with T and his younger sis - she’s a pro while T is naturally like a monkey, so it’s just me who’s unathletic. 💀 I learned that I am not good at falling. I felt very silly when I watched the videos of me struggling to get down after I reached the top because I wanted to make my way down slowly - but in my defence, when I was up there, it really felt very high okay!! I can't seem to upload a video here, oh well.

Overall: this CNY was much better than last year’s CNY. I think staying just with our small family unit was helpful, it allowed us to be more flexible with our schedule and food choices haha because… we’re all Asians 😅 I feel bad for the Norwegians (excluding T’s BIL who has likely gotten accustomed to Asian food after living in China for a few years) because the food might have been a bit of a rude shock to their system.

Last meal in M'sia was Mac's LOL. For convenience because the pick up point was at a gas station. We don't have this burger in SG!

I shall end off my post with cute photos of a cute ket who adopted T's family without being asked. It was the cat distribution system at work. We couldn't let her in the house though because there are already two cats (T's sister's) and I'm sure they'd be frightened.

WHY SO CUTE AND MANJA?!

Thanks for reading 🥰 Stay tuned for next year's CNY post because... next year… I’m going to have a big problem:

Ramadan - 17 Feb to 18 Mar 2026

CNY - 17 to 18 Feb 2026

Celebrated at midnight with T's family since T's father and I have the same birthday haha. Context behind why I have a '3' candle - buying 3 candles was more value for money than 2 candles 😂 So T picked a number '3' for me. I jokingly said to his family that I am now 3 years old.

Went to an Italian place - highlights for me were the bread with truffle (pictured with one slice missing) and the pistachio tiramisu.

Yummmm that truffle mushroom pizza was delicious. The pizzas at Kucina are fine, portion-wise, but the pastas are not :c Oh and A's husband baked shokupan!! 🍞

I love salmon and I love sashimi so much 🥹 And the donut is a pistachio kunefe donut from Kobashi. T and I were supposed to go there for my birthday (my choice), but it was too crowded and we were too hungry to wait; we were 3rd or 4th in the queue and the space was so small sigh. So we relocated to sushi in Orchard because we went there for T's birthday and we know it's good. Thanks to J for the recommendation previously!

Writing date at Baristart with Jac and Aina after udon for lunch - this was one of my highlights of Feb 🥰 I actually got some work done! By work, I mean plotting my novel (still very scary to say this out loud because what if I fail? What if I just don’t have what it takes to write and publish a novel and be a good writer?). I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of figuring out the plot, but it’s a start 😬

Baristart is a nice place to do my writing because I’m surrounded by books. And sometimes… this is going to sound perhaps rude and obnoxious, but when I look at all the books on display, and I see some that, um, don’t look that great, I think to myself, well if this person can publish a book and have it displayed on this shelf, so can I! Don’t judge me for thinking this 😬

T came by and joined us at the cafe shortly after we arrived 🥰 Also he brought us salt bread hehehe so double points.

Became a little obsessed with Hogwarts Legacy and played it whenever I had some free time, even on weekdays - I reached the final main quest!! Tried once but died halfway, so will try again when I have time, because I’m sure it will take more than a few attempts. Here’s my lovely character hehehe.

Progress on goals

Reading

Finally finished I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Based on the title, I thought it would be a relatable read and that I might learn to find joy in the little things in the midst of darkness, but I was sorely mistaken. I definitely did not expect to struggle through it, especially considering how thin the book was lol.

I finished re-reading the 7 HP books! That was a much more enjoyable read and filled me with lots of joy. 🥰

Well on my way to 12 books this year, yay! I set my goal low so I can definitely reach it and pat myself on the back and feel good about it. Hehe.

Writing

Hmm there was some progress during the writing date, but I think that was about it. I’m very inconsistent and I conveniently blame it on my exhaustion from life and work and adulting 😬 Jokes aside, I should try to write more and make more progress. Or at least be consistent and do a bit every weekend, at the minimum.

Fitness

I think there was 0 progress hahaha. After coming back from M’sia, the only exercise I did was a long walk where I clocked 8k steps, and badminton every weekend. When we can get slots, we do both Sat and Sun. Obviously badminton isn’t enough T.T But I did better in terms of my diet, I cut calories during dinner because I don’t need that much energy anyway. Call it damage control after all the Malaysian food. Yes I’m Singaporean but there is no shame in admitting that Malaysia has better food.

That being said, some of the food I had for my birthday (in SG) was nice!

Oh yes T and I fell sick towards the end of our CNY trip and I had to take MC for at least a few days after returning to work, so during this period fitness was also badly affected and diet mostly consisted of fish soup 😂

Cooking

Didn’t really do much cooking, especially since we started just drinking oats cereal drinks for dinner. I scrolled through my gallery and found no photos of my cooking 🥲

Gaming

Lego Harry Potter

Hogwarts Legacy!!! That is all.

Went for the Studio Ghibli exhibition with T 💖 It was fun apart from the crowds and being near people who have no sense of personal space 😒 I also liked identifying the different foods in the No Face exhibit, as seen below:

No Face eat durian and chicken rice and laksa (?) issit

Centre bonding with colleagues

Lunch at Ichikokudo Hokkaido Ramen - forgot that their ramen was good because I had a not-so-good experience the last time. But maybe it was another branch so the cook was different. This time I tried a different ramen from the one I usually eat, and it was good! Also, as the food was free (i.e. paid for by company), we stuffed ourselves silly.

Karaoke - in a huge VIP room that had a pool table and a standing mic. Was forced to sing Uptown Girl with some of my colleagues in front of everyone because we lost the game that determined who would receive the punishment

Watching my first anime (lol yes where have I been all this time?), Assassination Classroom. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s about an octopus-like being who becomes a junior high homeroom teacher after blasting the moon (resulting in it becoming permanently crescent-shaped), and his students who try their best to assassinate him before the deadline when he destroys the Earth. Maybe from the premise alone, you’d think that the octopus is the villain, but… I’m rooting for him to survive HAHA. He’s such a great teacher, very inspiring and encouraging and you can tell he genuinely cares for the students, wants to help them realise their potential etc. I imagine there’s some backstory behind the whole wanting-to-destroy-Earth thing, but I haven’t reached that part yet. Also, T and I started watching this anime because we’d just watched Grave of the Fireflies and it was really depressing and made us cry (me)/tear up (T). Assassination Classroom has been really funny!!

Celebrated A’s birthday!! We have known each other and been celebrating birthdays together for more than half our lives now 🥹

Fell sick and got a fever, for the first time in a while - think I caught something when my immune system was down after taking antibiotics for an unrelated condition (which I’m still suffering through… but this condition too sensi to put on Internet ah, if you curious you can ask me personally hahaha). Then J and R came by with salt bread, so sweet pls 💖 (side note which should actually have been in a Dec review, except I didn’t do one so I shall slot it in here: A and S came by in Dec to drop off sourdough bread and S’s homemade strawberry jam which is bombbb, also so sweet of them heh. The jam less sweet though but that’s why I love it hehe. The usual jams in supermarkets have too much sugar - GASP. WHO AM I?) Anyway, just goes to show I’m blessed with such great friends in my life 🥰

CNY trip - my 2nd one, and the longest duration of time I’ve spent in M’sia (2 weeks), plus my first time being out of SG on my birthday - more in a separate post~

Miscellaneous

When your 13-year-old nephew says I love you in a voice message (though I suspect he may have been forced to) and also texts you happy birthday (albeit one day early) 🥹🥹 I treasure these moments because the kids are growing up so fast!! I can’t believe my eldest nephew is going to sit for his O Levels this year… 🥹

Hehehe look at Seb spinning round and round, and other funny things in HL:

Goals for 2025

Read more!

I aim to read 12 books this year; I set a modest goal because in the last few years, I’ve not been an active reader ☹️ I’ve read 7 so far, but err, 5 of them were Harry Potter. (Side note: re-reading Harry Potter has been an absolute joy. I freaking love this series and I don’t think I will ever love any other as much. Also, reading it again, along with re-experiencing that rush of ‘I must continue devouring the book to know what happens next’, not only brings me back to my childhood but also reminds me of how much I used to love reading, which is something I feel I’ve lost as an adult and which I hope to rekindle in myself.) Anyway, I think it still counts even though those are all re-reads, but I do want to read more new books, books that I don’t yet know if I will enjoy, and books that I will end up feeling meh about. Reflecting on my (lack of) reading habits now, I think I stopped reading so much because I wanted every book I read to be a good one. I didn’t want to start a book only to realise I hate it, yet have to force myself to continue because I don’t want to be a quitter.Moving forward, I… aim to give myself permission to put a book on a DNF shelf if I really can’t get through it, and I will try to lower my expectations of books; not every book I read is going to be as good as Harry Potter, and I will have to live with that. Because not every author is going to be as good as JKR either 🙊 I shall try to be more adventurous. I also need to read more so I can be a better writer, which is why I asked AI to generate a list of books that I should read, from the genre I want to write. 2. I also want to write reviews for the books I read moving forward, just to keep a record of how I felt about the book, my thoughts and reflections etc. Mainly inspired by J and A after reading their reviews on Goodreads and seeing how proficient they are in reading 😀 They honestly read so fast!!!

2. Write

Finish my fanfic by end 2025/early 2026 - I've published 8 chapters but I have about 7 more to go. Have already plotted what will happen in each chapter, so now I need to sit down and do the actual writing. 😅

Concurrently, start writing my novel. I’d like to maybe write a quarter of it by the time SWF 2025 rolls around. I’ve already started planning it, but there’s still much, much to be done, even with plot and structure. I feel like such a noob and there are so many gaps to fill. I also feel like my creativity and imagination aren’t what they used to be; this may be related to the fact that I don’t daydream as much as I used to. I’d like to conveniently blame this on adulting and having to fulfil the demands of reality and earning an income.

3. Incorporate more physical activity into my lifestyle

This can be through walking up the escalator at the MRT station instead of standing on the left, and taking the overhead bridge instead of crossing at the traffic light.

But honestly, the year hasn’t started out great because 2 weeks were spent in M’sia consuming lots of calories and, due to time and energy constraints, only being able to exercise thrice. T and I played badminton for 2 hours, twice, and went bouldering with his sister once. That was a new and fun but also scary experience! The scary part being falling. I had difficulty trusting that the mat would catch me and that it would not hurt to do so. But after getting the hang of it, it felt like an achievement every time I reached the top :) Even if I could only do 1 and 2 dots hahaha. It’s okay. As part of my mindset shift: I don’t have to be good or the best at everything I do.

I also hope to join a gym and sign up for gym classes, but am thinking of doing this after fasting month.

Eventual goal: Lose the fats/weight I’ve gained over the last 4 years of being in a relationship LOL. I miss the body I had at the end of 2020/beginning of 2021 🥲

4. Cook more

This is also in line with my health goals; ideally, I’d be a meal prepper and at least half my meals on weekdays would be cooked beforehand so I can save money and eat healthy. Sadly, there are limited options for food near my workplace, even with me relaxing my dietary choices 😔 I love fish soup but the broth for the fish soup near my office is made with pork bones 😔 As I’m sick at the point of publishing this, I can tell you that T and I have been eating fish soup (near our place, halal) almost everyday for the last week (as T is also recovering from a flu bug which he may have passed on to me). He’s better now and at the tail end of the illness while I’d say I’m about 1/3 through. Tho technically the flu bug is a Feb update haha.

Expand my repertoire beyond Western cuisine to include more Asian dishes, which imo is harder to cook, with all its spices and effort required.

Learn to cook soups, porridges, congees, and all sorts of noodles etc so that I don’t need to go out to eat them!

5. Play games

Like my computer games which I already bought and are sitting, unplayed, in my Steam account. This goal includes finishing Hogwarts Legacy, as bittersweet as it will be 😢

And also play Tommy’s and my Switch more. We’ve been focusing on Lego HP 1-4 and have finished almost 80% of this! Currently going back to free play the levels so we can be True Wizards hehehe. After this we’ll likely go on to HP 5-7.

6. Tidy up the house

Clear out my old books and clothes which I no longer need. My wardrobe is bursting - I can’t even fit all my clothes, some of them are in other storage - and my bookshelf needs a bit of a refresh too.