“Staryotes. They live on the mountains so they’re closer to the stars.”

More old art bear with me 

My little green army cap with a red star on it, that I got from a stall in Vietnam as a teenager. That was the spring of 2018, which makes it over 8 years ago now. It's one of my favourite hats, and it's been all over the world with me - Vietnam to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Beijing, USA, and now, finally losing itself to the cruel, incomprehensible bipolar winds of the UK. I did catch it at first -- but I dunno -- somewhere along the rest of the day visiting the V&A East Storehouse, I just noticed it was gone, and I don't remember where it went and it's not with me now.

Upon having realised that it was well and truly lost, I sat down on a bench outside the storehouse, extremely upset. It was almost a decade old and it really was one of my favourite items. Having taken my hat from me earlier, those strong winds continue to push at me still, a bittersweet reprieve from the thick, suffocating British summer.

In front of me was the Olympic park. I just sat and thought, then - maybe, maybe this was meant to be another communist lesson about how inconsequential personal material possessions are. It is not my hat; it is, simply, a hat. It would go against the sentiment of the red star hat if I were to miss it. Perhaps its time with me over almost a decade was simply meant to end here in Stratford.

I find that I always get attached to things -- most of us cannot help it, I think. Yet, to remember that I've also had as much as two phones and a laptop stolen from me (and I also recently lost a treasured water bottle that was a gift from my little brother!) I once again return to the conclusion that the things we own never truly belonged to us in the first place. They're just things. I love and care for my things but we do not own the things we love, after all.

Now that I've written a journal entry to cope with this I like to imagine the red star will stay forever with me in my heart!

I was submitting this project to a festival on FilmFreeway, and FilmFreeway was crashing out at me and not allowing me to add ANY card for payment.

I use 4 different payment methods on Firefox. Then I switch to Chrome and used 4 different payment methods on Chrome. I double verify my account, no dice. I clear my cache and cookies, and log out and back in, and try all my cards again. Nothing. Failure after failure.

The deadline was today, and I've been on this for over an hour. So at this point, I'm full-on panicking, and cursing myself for doing this last minute; the support team will probably not get to me on time if I emailed them.

Then, there on the bottom of the taskbar, Microsoft Edge stares at me with its beautiful, blue-green eye. "Try me," it almost seems to say. "Try again on Microsoft Edge."

Desperate, I open Edge, and log in to FilmFreeway. I enter a single card. As the screen loads, I bring my hands together in prayer. My eyes are closed. "Please god, Microsoft Edge," I whisper. "Please accept my card."

The bank screen comes up in the next second. I am flooded with relief. Microsoft Edge has absolved me. I submit my film into the festival, and get the receipt.