Popagandhi

I’ve thrown myself headlong into work — real work (I work at Uber.com now), and foundation work.

India is an important part of my life and I owe everything to her. Over the past couple of months, my friends and I have been busy putting a little NGO together, the Gyanada Foundation.

Today (Tues, 12 March) between 7 and 9 in the evening, I’ll be hosting our soft launch at Artistry, 17 Jalan Pinang.

Here are the event details! Hope to see you there.

I’ve had more thoughts on the anti-white paper protest since the weekend, I’ll need to write it down into a slightly longer piece. But here’s what I posted on Facebook that got passed around a fair bit.

Point is, Singapore is at an interesting stage in our politics and civil society and it’s going to take a while to smooth out the kinks. Where I stand is, I don’t think, extreme in any way — but the values of race and inclusion are very, very important to me, and sometimes that is perceived to be too pro-immigration.

***

I was told today that I lacked moral courage for not going to the protest; that I was merely a keyboard warrior. I was also told ‘see? no racist or xenophobic speeches!’

Hmm, let’s see…

1. I have volunteered for years with the opposition and I have been on the frontline of elections. What have you done for your country except to happily throw it into the dustbin of nativist trope?

2. The political figures and figures on the political periphery (cannot confuse the two as there were too many political also-rans and wannabes best kept out of Parliament) involved should know what associating with Gilbert Goh means. I am especially heartbroken because some of these figures also purport to be the only party to stand for ‘human rights’; the other because it was inaccurately portrayed to be THE xenophobic party due to the unfortunate former membership and candidacy of said event organizer.

3. There has been a lot of moral relativism around today’s protest. There should be none. Someone said Gilbert’s stance is a lesser boo boo than the PAP’s bigger boo boos. Or something similarly puerile to that effect.

The only boo boo there is is that there should be any moral relativism at all. The racial profiling of the foreigners among us is vile and must be condemned unequivocally. There is no intellectual or high brow anything to this. It is basic human dignity.

Associating with someone like Gilbert Goh, a mere demagogue and an opportunistic one at that, merely cheapens the cause you and I both care very much for: how we can find an alternative to the White Paper which we believe will spell disaster for Singapore.

4. Some of you attended and said you needed to be there to (1) express your disagreement against the White Paper (2) shout down the xenophobes. It is regretful we have an impaired democracy in which a citizen finds he or she cannot sufficiently be heard except by gathering in one sanctioned park. It is even more regretful this democracy is so impaired that bright men and women consider the right to assembly and to be heard more valuable than the demagoguery involved.

5. My allegiance to The Cause has been questioned because I refuse to toe the ‘us vs them’ line of reasoning. I am old enough to remember the extreme political repression of the generation before us, but not old enough or idealistic enough to buy into the ‘anything, anyone but the PAP’ school of thought. I am a patriot first and an opposition supporter second. I am worried by the perception that not buying into the lock stock and barrel of all anti-PAP rhetoric necessarily means one is a traitor, spy, mole or PAP agent (I have been accused of all of the above).

Addendum: the more I do this stuff the more I think we need to grow the opposition not because I hate the ruling party. But because when they stop being the best guys for the job (and they’re starting to seriously show signs of that), I don’t want this country to descend into the mob. It’s capacity and the long game we need to build, not the Tan Jee Say REJECT EVERYTHING model. I will now actively seek out an organization which better fits this worldview.

I have a tattoo on my lower back. It was given to me by the grandson of a tribal village chief. I grimaced for hours on the floor as he used the primitive tools and ingredients that had tattooed his Iban people for centuries, on me, a girl from a big city.

I’d always wanted a tattoo, but didn’t know what; this one crept up on me. Like the girl I was there with (we had a crazy idea: we would visit and live with an Iban community in a longhouse and celebrate Hari Gawai with them), I wasn’t expecting any of this. The girl, the tattoo, or that I would have such a story to tell many years after the fact. I chose a bunch of tribal motifs from an album and told him to make it up. I got lucky: I like my tattoo very much, even if it is what some people would call a tramp stamp. I’m proud of it. There’s a story to tell each time anyone asks about it.

The girl is no more in my life but the tattoo remains, defiantly representing all of the new beginnings I will embrace in life. Tomorrow, I start a new life and more and more I feel as though the year of grieving and floating, which so profoundly altered my path and direction in life as well as my livelihood and future plans, is finally about to draw to a conclusive close.

I am finally ready for another tattoo. This time, I know exactly where it should be, what it should say and what it should look like. I would not have known this without the pain of my first tattoo. It will be a beautiful Sanskrit verse from the Bhagavad Gita and I intend to have it inscribed on my upper left shoulder. This time, I will harbour no plans or illusions about the permanence of anything other than that of the Sanskrit verse on my shoulder; this time, I will learn to love without needing to know the world.

Five Places I Visited and Loved in the Past 12 Months

1. Helsinki
2. Copenhagen
3. San Francisco
4. New York City
5. Stockholm

Five Things I Learned in the Past 3 Months

1. Diving
2. Swimming*
3. Git
4. Ruby
5. Still looking for the fifth big thing. For now it looks like it’s going to be Fightshape

*Note: I could swim, but badly. I took up Shaw Method swim lessons to dramatically improve my technique and confidence.

Five Things I Bought Recently

1. A 27″ Korean IPS monitor (A Yamakasi Catleap Multi)
2. Steelcase Leap
3. A Sony NEX-5 with 16mm lens
4. Xbox 360 with Kinect and many amazing games (Assassin’s Creed! Borderlands 2! Dishonored! Wow)
5. Das Keyboard

Five Challenges I Will Soon Tackle

1. Advanced diving course with many specialties
2. A job
3. A hopeful transformation into a real programmer
4. A massive overhaul/redesign/ renovation of my room in Singapore. It needs to look less like a place that 12 year old me once lived in.
5. Another tattoo

And at some point, a haircut, too. And a piece of fiction.

Oh shit.

In several status updates

Admittedly I have posted very little on the everyday occurrences in my travel. Here are some snippets, culled from Facebook.

Day 1: Two sleep-deprived people board a plane full of evangelical missionaries offering ‘free healing’ in the plane (true story), dinner in the streets and accidental romantic date at a blacksmith-themed cocktail bar with a toilet that was so awesomely creepy it freaked out the one half of us that actually writes horror fiction as a profession. Shai halip in Little Arabia, 24-hour tacos and the latest episode of Scandal.

Street vendors selling holographic pictures of puppies, kittens, Jesus and Mary, naked women and ferocious tigers, across from a fake Viagra/Cialis/ made-in-China sex toy shops.

Bangkok is my happy place. Tomorrow: at least two massages.

Day 2: In no particular order: grilled chicken hearts, the breakfast of champions; flashing at passengers on the Khlong San Saeb river taxi each time (not me, btw), having random thai men cat-calling us coz Sam is in a very sessy dress (they called us ‘black and white girls’. Um. Brown and yellow is more accurate); beef boat noodle carnage, talking security guards into letting us trespass private property so we can take a shortcut, Gibson-esque massive overhead bridges, stalker pandas and mushrooms, great crackling massages, pork cracklings;

Pork satay, dogs and teddy bears and dogs in frilly clothes; hanging out with exes, discussing whether one’s Portuguese ancestry is to blame for epic marine vessel conquering flag-planting fantasies (no: it’s just Sam); ominous Elliott Smith songs in hotel toilets, streetside mobile bars. Pork tacos in the fridge.

A swim is on the menu tomorrow. Pandas are everywhere.

Off my rockers/tits high on chilli padi. It was a beautiful yum poo dong – raw blue swimmer crab salad smothered in beautiful chilli – the cold raw crab tastes like crab ice cream. But so off my rockers chilli high coz I am so clever I ordered it extra extra spicy. I love chilli padi highs. So beautiful, this world

Day 3: Looking for soi Polo chicken and seeing random chickens and people wearing I ♥ Chicken T-shirts everywhere (surreal), having a crab-gasm over the raw blue swimmer crab in a yum poo dong, coffee in random little sheds in Lumpini, more great massages, Phra Athit jazz and beer and evil plotting, a knock-out pad thai.

Home tomorrow!

Sam and I are at a girlie bar on Nana, showing bar girls pictures of fried crickets. We are looking for the Nana Cricket & Grasshopper street vendor. I don’t know how to say “where are the edible crickets” in Thai. Yet.

Apparently I accidentally cock-blocked an Italian dude at a bar in Bangkok. All I did was drink whisky and talk about apps and their project timelines. A thai MILF then decided to tell me she thinks I must be gay, and proceeded to tell me she used to be butch with many girlfriends until a guy drugged and raped her and she got pregnant. (all this happened in thai)

The Italian dude left, very sadly.

Must. Stop. Accidentally. Fang dian-ing* at people. Even sideways in my peripheral vision while eating potato chips and drinking whisky.

Note: ‘fang dian’ = a Mandarin term made up by some friends, meaning ‘to put electricity’. It refers to my track record of accidentally attracting unwanted attention through what they suspect is the sheer Cyclops-like, err, traits in my… eyes.

Day 4: jok moo! Pork porridge with salted egg, century egg, innards! Flip-flops and Hello Kitty (don’t ask) and cable shopping! Skyfall! Prawn bisque! Accidentally fang-dian-ing: me at people, Sam at buildings! Giant sea creatures! Girlie bars! Mobile bars! No crickets!

New Bangkok Notes

• I still love Bangkok as much now, as I did when I first started frequenting it… circa 2004?
• Oh gawd I feel old these days.
• That’s directly related to how all I want to do these day is have massages. My back creaks; my body creaks along with it. My new go-to place for a massage is at Ruen Nad massage studio on 42 Convent Road, off Silom. It really is one of the best massages you can have for that little money (1 hour goes for 350 THB). It’s a little pricier than the less fancy places but the masseuses are uniformly great, and the ambience — in a restored old house in a fancy part of Bangkok — is really unbeatable. Also, Convent Road has some of the best street food in that city.
• The row of street stalls next to Sala Daeng BTS station still has a curious mix of gay p0rn and pirated DVDs. The latter tend to be arthouse (non-p0rnographic) movies, including a great many films which are simply just not available online… or in your local video store. The range of movies is quite breathtaking. I love Silom.
• If you are ever in Bangkok, do yourself a favour and eat a meal — go for the degustation — at Bo.lan. Chefs Bo and Dylan create exquisite food — slow food — and are rather experimental whilst strongly grounded in the traditions. Every meal I have had there, which is still too few, has been revelatory.
• I like the northern neighbourhoods. Victory Monument is home not just to impoverished foreigners/English-teachers, it’s also home to Boat Noodle Alley, a massive Gibson-esque skywalk/pedestrian bridge, as well as to Saxophone jazz bar, which is a reliable spot to kick back with a beer and listen to some great music. I also like the neighbourhood of Ari, which has too many pleasures to name.
• If you like jazz with some fairy dust, Iron Fairies is a Dickensian blacksmith workshop restaurant and pub (seriously). It’s beautiful. Think Steampunk meets Dickens meets jazz meets industrial chic. There’s great live jazz featuring local musicians, some nights. We were there on a Monday and it was going strong. The Thonglor neighbourhood that it’s in is also chock-a-block full of great little spots. They tend to tend to lean quite heavily towards ‘hiso’ (the Thai equiv of the Singaporean ‘atas’, with regards to class).
• Hiso/atas is totally fine by me. I like my upper-middle class hipsterism in strong doses. I also need a bit more down low to counteract too much hipsterism, though, and Thonglor does dish out the down low in appropriate amounts too. soi 38 on the other side of the station is packed with great street food, but one of my favourite meals on this trip was at Jok Moo. Like the name suggests it specializes in pork congee. It was quite a battle ordering two bowls of pork congee in the specific configurations we wanted (salted egg and century eggs, one with innards and one without)… in my limited Thai, but my hunger prevailed and we succeeded. The porridge held its own against some of the best Chinese congees in Singapore/Malaysia. They also seem to have solved the age-old problem of never having hot-enough fritters: they have these little packets of fried fritters resembling you tiao but not really, and they’re always cripsy. There is nothing more disgusting than soggy you tiao in your congee, and nothing more wonderful than having congee with fresh, hot fritters as well. It’s one of the biggest conundrums I think I face as a Chinese person: would I rather eat soggy fritters or not eat any at all?
• Jok Moo is at the start of Sukh soi 38. Alight at Thonglor station and head for the even-numbered side. Locate soi 38. Jok Moo is the first corner shop on the right at the start of the soi, after some watch or hardware shops. It only has Thai words written on its signage. There’s some seating at the back. Have the lemongrass drink. Basic English is understood here. Pointing helps, if all else fails.
• The pad thai at Thipsamai on Mahachai Road really is what it’s cracked up to be. A tip: don’t order the version with the shrimp oil. I love my calories and I love my oily fried noodles in all shapes and sizes, but the shrimp oil really kicked me in the guts… after. They also have a new dish: pad thai without the noodles. If Mos Burger can do burgers with lettuce instead of buns, I guess Thipsamai can do pad thai without the noodles. Although both food concepts totally go against every fibre of my being.
• The fried chicken at Soi Polo, off Wireless Road near Lumpini. Run, don’t walk. Also order the yum poo dong — the cold crab salad that gave me the chilli high described above. Both are beautiful. The Star Trek movie dubbed in Thai, not so much.
• One day I will find the fabled coconut ice cream at Sam Yan.
• Did I do anything other than eat in Bangkok? We watched James Bond. Took photos with giant sea creatures. Introduced Sam to grilled chicken heart breakfasts, and to the river boat experience I love (the commuter Klong San Saeb, not the one on the tourist trail).
• Bangkok is still one of my favourite Asian cities and I don’t understand how anybody can ever hate it. Well, I do — it’s not for everyone. But if you like hulking, in-your-face Asian metropolises like I do, Bangkok is It.
• One day I will make a concerted effort to get better at my Thai.

in hindsight

Some songs I cannot hear again. Some songs make me think of you. Not of you in the general sense one does of missing one another. Not even in the way one thinks of losing a loved one or saying goodbye.

Worse – far worse? – the songs of dread. The songs of the silence between us gnawing ever more loudly until we could no longer ignore it. The songs that dig deep into your soul and gives it a little twist with every word and chord.

Did you not hear it die? It fell with a little thud.

In your car. In the rain. In the house. In the routine. Your impatience. Leaping out at me from behind the telephone.

Everybody is a different person with different people. It would be a lie to say otherwise.

With you I was young and hot-headed. A boat without a plan. I was perfectly happy to let you captain it. But we never knew where or how to dock.

Sweet Disposition.

I was a person without a home in those lost days. A wanderer without a country. From bus to plane to taxi to your car. To a home which was never ours. And an us I’m growing increasingly unclear of. Is this a dream? Or is this reality?

Seven Wells.

1825 days. Half of them spent on planes. Half of them ten thousand miles apart. If not literally, then as some impenetrable chasm I never learned to cross.

I hate those songs.

You wanted to know how it came so easily to me. How I moved on. I did not. Did you know of all those nights I drank myself to imbecilic stupor to write poetry in languages I don’t speak? It looks like I walked away from our life with scarcely a moment’s thought. But it was a burden I could not bear.

The thought of loving forever a woman who did not want to marry me. The idea that I had to banish all hope for a family. That, when I left you, tethering on the edge of madness, you loved me tremendously but not enough, seemed to be what you were saying. My hopes. My dreams. It was all you. It was madness that made me circumnavigate the globe to win your heart. And it was madness that made me travel the world to lose it. We never wanted to be the people who stayed together from not having a good reason to leave. Better now than at 35, or something like it. In the end I could not bear the thought of not being enough.

I can never go back to that city and not feel quite desperately breathless again. Not for a long time at least. Waiters who want to know why I’ve disappeared. Friends who I haven’t and won’t see. That city, at the start, was all you and all us and all our secret nooks and our very own places and special people and our house and our dog. That city then grew into a nightmare that was all broken dreams as they fell apart and things that could never be and places I could not find and things I could never be. I tried to hide it and blamed your taxi drivers and horrible traffic and the pollution and the inbred circles and the wanky artists but in the end it was all us, falling to pieces and me doing the only thing I knew how to which was run very far away from responsibilities and rent because like I said I was a different person then.

The good thing about falling to pieces and putting yourself back again is you do it so many times you get faster at it, if you remember how. I ran as far away from that city as I could and hurried to build a new life for myself, it was selfish of me to. I ran and I ran and I buried myself in a dozen women’s pillows and I walked home from their darkened kitchens like a zombie every morning mortified that my life as I knew it had ceased to exist and that I had swung a fairly giant axe in its direction.

I never want to have to run again from the woman I love. I never want to turn the other way in silence biting my tongue letting an argument fester until we no longer speak. I never want to hide who I love or have to be hidden.

The seventh well can’t be found.

I’m sorry you loved me I’m sorry you wasted five years I’m sorry you gave up so much I’m sorry I hate KL I’m sorry I’m not a private person at all I’m sorry I moved on so quickly I’m sorry I loved you too damn much I’m sorry my disease made me an emotional basket case I’m sorry I never learned to stop crying I’m sorry you hate crying I’m sorry I wanted my girlfriend to also want me as much as I wanted her I’m sorry I don’t know how to be older and better I’m sorry I wish I’d done a little better

63 random things from the past 3 months (inspired by Michael Ruby’s “Fleeting Memories“)

1. Arriving in Budapest knowing absolutely nothing about Hungary
2. Drinking palinka for the first time, feeling the flush
3. The Hungarian energy drinks I drank while wearing funny hats
4. Walking with team Photogotchi along the Halászbástya, feeling a little like Ezio Auditore da Firenze
5. The boys who were carrying giant swans and crocodile paddle boats onto Lake Balaton
6. Sitting in the yard of old times
7. Leaving Hungary thinking fröccs is the best idea in the world
8. Arriving in frosty Helsinki once again
9. The cute studio in Apila
10. That Finnish rapper in a Tiki bar
11. Being miserable, cold and desperately wanting you
12. More palinka, Timo’s flat, tiny spaces and uncrossable chasms
13. Red-heads in the rain
14. Remembering that karaoke in northern Europe is pretty damn weird
15. Mushroom-picking, mushroom-cooking
16. Cycling on a Jopo through the rain
17. Beautiful Finnish brunches on Sunday mornings
18. A lot of fish
19. Tactical Nuclear Penguin
20. American Airlines, truly a terrible way to fly
21. Arriving in America for the first time
22. Pacific Heights. Not having change for the bus to Market Street.
23. Speaking badly in Cantonese.
24. Father of my future children showing me a iBaby monitor in the Apple Store
25. Brilliant people all over San Francisco.
26. Being chased up a flight of stairs by a bouncer in the Castro for not having an ID.
27. Losing my ID. And my credit cards. And my iPhone. In a bar. In the Tenderloin.
28. Being stupid.
29. Being on a work call with Sydney while sitting next to a painting called The Chronological Wall of Dicks and Cunts. Ah, San Francisco.
30. Staff at the Singapore consulate giving me cup noodles and soya bean milk from their personal stashes.
31. Buying a bright yellow Fuji Finest on my second day in San Francisco.
32. Toning my ass, cycling uphill everywhere
33. Excellent vegetarian Japanese food in Valencia followed by a free meditation class down the road.
34. Folsom Street Fair. Many things cannot be unseen, once seen.
35. Ethiopian with Jiten and Family.
36. Family of four sitting in a hipster coffeeshop in San Jose, each with a parrot on their heads.
37. Watching The Nationals vs the Phillies at the Nats Stadium.
38. You never forget your first Shake Shack.
39. America is so great because you can order beer and hot dogs online, and expect to have them arrive at your seat in a baseball stadium in three minutes.
40. One day I will understand more of this great nation, the same one that invented SPAM and Chicken in a Biskit. These inventions speak more about a national character than any other great invention.
41. Rolling my eyes at groupies of ‘famous tech people’.
42. Walking to the Lincoln Memorial, wishing I had seen it earlier because all I see now in that statue is Abraham Lincoln (Vampire Killer)
43. Eating fish tacos with Jason Scott Jones, who knows more about Brooklyn than anybody else
44. Having the cashier ask me why I want to pay US$12 for a can of tuna. Not having a good answer other than ‘it’s very good tuna. Spanish.’
45. My crazy/beautiful Crown Heights pad.
46. Being in love with New York, like they all said I would.
47. Talking to my aunt at JFK for longer than we have ever spoken to each other, all our lives.
48. My 27th birthday party in Crown Heights.
49. The Met Museum with Michael Ruby and Dave Gurien.
50. Leaving New York, loving New York.
51. New York to Budapest via London, Budapest to Singapore via Doha, 12 hours apart
52. Those miserable long layovers in Doha.
53. Wanton mee
54. Having everything fall into place the moment I got home
55. The first day Cookie got home
56. Cooking a delicious spare ribs pasta
57. IKEA, burgers, Thai supermarkets and Mustafa
58. Finally getting my diving license
59. Doing the Gangnam Style at 10m underwater
60. The corner store in Tioman
61. Thinking that learning to dive in the middle of the monsoon was probably not too clever
62. Floating upwards uncontrollably before learning to trust my own buoyancy
63. I am finally ready, maybe.

Recently, a friend from Bangalore messaged me on Facebook and asked me for some help. Her family friend, who was not very educated, had paid a lot of money to an agent in Bangalore to get work in Singapore. He had his work permit issued, and was told to leave for Singapore as soon as possible. There was a gap of a week: he had to leave immediately, they told him. She found this a little dubious, and asked me to help verify if the work permit was real, if he was being taken for a ride.

As we suspected, the entire thing was a scam. He did not leave for Singapore, and narrowly avoided what I can only imagine was a low paying, illegal job for a shady employer. I doubt he will ever get his money back, but I still think that is a better fate than coming here without even fewer rights than a legit foreign worker.

In the process, I learned a bit about how one can verify the authenticity of a work permit. I hope this can be translated into different languages, especially in Indian languages. Feel free to post this in as many places as you like. As long as it helps somebody.

How to Verify Authenticity of Work Permit

1. Visit the Ministry of Manpower’s Work Permit for Foreign Workers page
2. Scroll down to: Work Permit Validity Check Via Work Permit Online. Click it. Note: This service is only available Monday to Saturdays from 8am to 10pm, and unavailable at other times and on Sundays and public holidays.
3. If it’s within the time frame that the WPOL service is online, this is the screen you will see: a lot of legalese. Click Agree.



4. In the main WPOL screen (which looks like this), click the third item on the left which says “Work Permit Validity/Application Status”.



5. You’ll be prompted to enter your details. If you are a foreigner or currently not residing in Singapore, check Passport and enter your passport number.



6. You’ll see many boxes. Go to Option 3 and key in: “Worker’s Work Permit” and “Date of Application of Work Permit”. Both details will be on your IPA letter.



7. If it is an invalid or forged work permit, you’ll see: Error.



8. Follow up by calling the Ministry of Manpower at +65 64385122 during working hours in Singapore.

Hope this helps someone.

National Day came and went. I haven’t written any of those essays I promised to. Sheepish. I will write them, I just need a little bit more time.

I did, however, contribute a piece to the Straits Times after PM Lee’s National Day Rally speech, which I streamed from a house by the lake in… Hungary. I know, I’m still waiting for my life this year to get less random. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

If you’re interested, you can read it here: link (opens a jpg image).

Speaking of random, and Hungary, I am currently hiding out in this secret location —

What am I doing?

Huddling in a house with a team of talented designers and developers, and we are building an ambitious app in a little over two and a half weeks. It’s called Photogotchi and it will be available in mid-September. Yet another example of how the little dots connect for me over and over again, one of the contestants on the autorickshaw rally that I went on a few years ago runs this amazing program where he sends a group of people from all over the world to go to a location in Hungary and live, work and eat together for three weeks, and basically live and breathe tech for that period. You learn a lot: how to work in a group, how to work non-stop fuelled by Hungarian energy drinks (burn, baby, burn..!), how to play hard and even cook for your team and do your laundry like your life depended on it (my current dilemma every couple of days). Most importantly you get to be a part of a motivated team that breathes code, design and ships product — every aspect of it. I’m getting a lot out of this, and if you’re interested you should definitely apply next year to the App Campus program. It helps that Hungary is as amazing as I thought it would be.

When I’m done here, I move on to Finland. Yep, Finland yet again, even if it was only six months ago that I was there. I’m in love with that country, its people, and I’ve made so many wonderful friends that I just had to go again just because I was going to be on the same continent! Finnair, my new favourite airline, takes me there for an affordable price.

When I’m finished with Finland (if I ever do), I’ll move on to San Francisco, where I’ll get to see new friends and old, visit companies I deeply admire, and learn as much as I can from the best brains in my industry. Then I’ll head to Washington DC to see a very dear friend who currently works at the embassy there. Then it’ll be my birthday, and it’ll happen in New York City. This sounds cheesy but I feel like I have been waiting my whole life to finally make it there (just like the song), and I have an incredible schedule lined up already, mostly comprising of meeting people who have inspired me, having a superb 27th birthday party surrounded by some dear friends, going to classes, and doing new things.

If it isn’t already obvious, I am on a mission. I have to sort out myself, reconfigure my life and priorities, and two weeks into my travels and challenges I am already halfway there: I’m closing off bits of a past best left behind, bravely — some say foolhardily — navigating new, unseen waters. I’m in a different headspace from the one I was in six months, a year ago.

Even though it looks like, and God knows it felt like, I was wading in a cloud of randomness for the past six months, my method to this madness has been simple: figure shit out, get stuff done. Fix what wasn’t working, improve my skills.

What I did (God help me if I sound like a pop self-help type now) was easy enough for anybody to do. The main tenets: Ask. Do. Give.

It amazes me how far one can get just by asking. It opens doors you previously didn’t know existed. When I made some of the very big decisions I had to make, on business, love and others, I was temporarily frozen by the fear — what happens next? I didn’t know. The fear was crippling. But eventually I came to see that if I didn’t let fear cripple me in so many other aspects of my life, I certainly wasn’t going to let it win in the most important areas, the ones that affected me directly. I made decisions, some of which I’m not particularly proud or happy to have made, but that were necessary — to me — with less collateral damage now than if I make them years from now. I didn’t know what was going to happen, in terms of work, money, life. But I’ve come to think that maybe I really am one of the luckiest people ever — everything fell into place, and got going, pretty much with a life of its own in which I was a mere spectator who occasionally hit a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘let’s move on’ button. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t developed the shameless ability to ask. The right people at the right places. What’s the worst that could happen? A no? So I did, and I’m all the better for it.

I actively identified a few key areas in my life that needed to be fixed, and tried to find inspiration on how to go about fixing them.

I knew that I had boundless energy when it came to starting things up, but not when it came to completing things — to running the race through to the end. The tedium and minutiae of everyday life bored the hell out of me. So I learned to delegate, and I learned to separate the important from the less so.

I knew that I had no trouble making a lot of money, but plenty of trouble understanding the flow of money, so I went to a handful of trusted older acquaintances and friends and basically said to them: here I am, this is where I am at, this is the situation, this is where I want to be in 5 years, 10 years — in your shoes. Teach me what to do with money in beneficial ways, and not only to myself. One day I’ll write a ridiculous self-help finance book on this process.

I knew that I had no shortage of ideas, all of which excited me and made me jump out of bed — but I needed to make them show for something. That tied in with how I previously and historically always ran out of steam and had no ability to see things through to their full potential. I threw a couple of things at it to try to fix it — mostly through consistency and coffee-fuelled attempts at hard work — but seen through the perspective of what I need to achieve within the next year, there are always creative ways to fix any problems, and in the next few months I will be able to hold actual things in my hands and say: I made this, and I finished it.

Doing stuff has never been difficult for me. I’m the crazy friend who gets sent these emails saying “I have this great idea. What should I do?” And my only answer is: do it. Or if I can afford to, let me help you. This quarter, whatever stars are aligned (if you believe in that hufflepuff), they’re certainly all pointing at how I’m learning to pick my battles and to keep doing stuff, but only the stuff that really matters in the end. Steve Jobs’ famous line to Sculley rings true in my mind at every milestone: do I want to sell sugared water? Or do the important stuff? In some truly funny ways I think I’d let my grip on reality cripple my ability to see the big picture. Being bogged down by the small stuff, the details — I stopped being able to dream. Of course the dreamer in me now at 27 versus the one at 17 is a very different one: I already know the small stuff and I won’t sweat it. But I don’t ignore them or wish them away. So now, I do, with the tempered mania of a recovering hyperthyroid patient on metaphoric and literal energy drinks (but properly medicated, don’t worry, mum) — banging away at my keyboard, and the world, and all these things I am going to do in it.

This is the point where I say with an Austrian bodybuilder’s accent, I think — I am back. Bitches.

A theme that has persisted in my mind recently is that of how I need to give back. To my community. To the people who made me. My family, my country, my adopted country (India). I have launched or am launching initiatives in all of these. These are battles that are worth it. One project is Culture Kitchen, a food and art project that aims to connect Singapore to the rest of the world through delicious food and intriguing, sometimes edible art. Is Singapore becoming more xenophobic? Maybe. Is there any justification for it? Never. It becomes xenophobia when it stops being about the policies, and when it starts being about the people — anybody. The guy in the train speaking in a foreign language you don’t understand. The waitress who doesn’t speak the correct language. But how can we undo this? I don’t know. What I do know is that I think saying “you are xenophobic”, even when truly well-deserved, already splits the people in camps. In its own ironic way, that also puts people into defensive modes — us versus them, all over again. We must always, always call out xenophobia and never tolerate it. But we must also stem its growth with a light touch. Just as how I will always call out homophobia when I see it, whether it is directed at me or not, on a personal level when I meet somebody from a background that hasn’t given him or her any opportunities to meet real gay people, I would rather give him a chance and be the living example of the gay person he could never hate, than flat out deny him the ability to re-evaluate his opinion. I also have the kumbayah belief — hope? pipe dream? — that Singaporeans, and our electorate, are by and large rational beings who are averse to extremism on either side of the spectrum. Yes, there is some danger that we are following the global trend of slipping towards unfounded nationalism based on birth and race. But I think we can avoid that by starting to have open, honest conversations. Do I think Culture Kitchen will be able to fix anything? I wouldn’t dare be so self-important. I think my job is done not when I change the mind of somebody who is already anti-immigration and/or xenophobic (is there a difference?), but it is when it inspires other citizen-led projects, and when it plants the seed in the mind of just one person — hey, I never knew that about this country. We actually have these things in common. Let me find out more.

In addition to Culture Kitchen I will also have a host of other small mini-projects at ThisIs.sg, which is currently not ready but the basics are there: small island, big heart. Quirky projects celebrating the Singapore spirit.. As a young Singaporean who has chosen a somewhat different path, I am always asked by even younger Singaporeans, “how did you do this?” Since I know so many other kindred spirits who are doing likewise, in their own fields, across a spectrum of various industries and activities, I thought I would collect them all in one place and have them answer such questions in a publicly accessible database. It is my hope that with these, others will see that it’s actually not that scary, not that hard, to follow their dreams, to do stuff, to start first by figuring out what matters to them. God knows I could have done with something like that myself when I was younger and clueless.

So. Giving back. There are tons of other initiatives that we’ve dreamed up, and that we’re laying the groundwork on, but for now there’s all of this. And then some. I wish I started an active giving process much earlier, but here we are.

In between all these projects, shuttling back and forth between various countries, and other things, I haven’t had very much time to sort out the homefront. My dog is now in Singapore, and will be out of quarantine soon. When she does get out and come home to live with me in my family home, I think it will be my first real shot at real life this year.

It’s been a crazy year but at least you can’t call it uninteresting in the slightest way.

Just yesterday I tweeted as a monster, designed a game, went to float on a crocodile boat in lake Balaton, and came back to the house to help set up an NGO.

Perhaps the biggest discovery this year may be that I possibly and probably have an attention deficit disorder too?

Thank you, mad world, for giving me all the shots I have. I am having a ball of a time. And I have to go away to figure out where I’m going to live. I said that to a friend, two decades older, and she simply laughed and said “that’s so Millennial of you.” I’m glad I’m a Millennial (even ChannelNewsAsia thinks so) — it’s damn confusing, but it’s a damn awesome time to be doing all these things with the world as your oyster, baked, fried or freshly shucked.

Singapore turns 47 in 8 days. I am no fan of the yearly circus that is the National Day Parade, although being far from home for most of the last ten started me on the habit of tuning in no matter where I was, just to feel like a part of it. It’s still no artistic or musical marvel and the overt nationalistic tones still grate, but that is the whole point, I guess.

August seems to be a month of political introspection for me. Two years since I began to think about how I could do more about the things that had made me choose to leave. Almost exactly a year since I started to think about my journey home. Where once it was hard to even say ‘home’ and know exactly where it is, I now do.

After all, I live here now, meaning I’ve spent more than 14 continuous nights here (which I haven’t done since 2008). I’m trying to compress my thoughts about Singapore, our politics, changing demographic, current and future challenges into smaller, digestible pieces. No better time to do that than now. I’ll be posting five essays in the new Nation Essays series that I’m starting here, that may or may not become a regular feature.

If you want to receive an email each time I post an essay in the series, enter your email address here. It will only be used for this purpose.

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The donation drive for last week’s #downtownlinetragedy victims will close tonight, Fri­day, 27 July, at 2359hrs.

If dona­tions marked “Bugis MRT acci­dent” arrive by cheque after the dead­line and includes contact information, TWC2 will email the donor to ask whether he/she would like a refund or if the donation should be put towards the organization’s gen­eral fund. Refunds, should you select that option, will be made promptly.

If how­ever the dona­tion is received after the dead­line marked “Bugis MRT acci­dent” but with­out any con­tact infor­ma­tion, the dona­tion will be accepted into the organization’s gen­eral fund.

Thank you so much, kind souls in Singapore, for showing all of us that Singapore still has plenty of compassion, empathy and dignity.

Closure of donation drive: TWC2 will stop collecting donations for the victims of the #downtownlinetragedy tonight (Friday 27 July 2012, 2359hrs). For more information please read this link

Edit: The Paypal link we previously posted isn’t working. To donate via Paypal, please to go the donate page on TWC’s website, and click the Paypal icon there.

Clarification: Questions have been raised in various comments about the commission we mention here. Just to be clear, the commissions are charged by the various online payment platforms. We do not receive a single cent or even come close to looking at it. It’s all run through a registered non-profit.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. This morning, we awoke to tragic news that two workers had died while building the Downtown Line in Bugis. They were buried alive by cement while pouring wet concrete into a mould. The scaffolding collapsed. They were stuck in the cement and the rescuers had some difficulty prying their bodies out. Investigations are now saying that the wet concrete was almost as heavy as a swimming pool. (link) Whatever the outcome, and whatever its impact on our labour practices will be, there is simply no other way to put this: these guys came here to build our nation, often at great risk to their lives.

Singapore is what it is today because of the migrant workers that have built our structures, poured our wet cement while we were sleeping, dug and laid our roads. It was true when it was Samsui women doing that, and it is even more true now that we have migrant workers from China, Mongolia, India, Bangladesh and other countries coming here in droves in search of a better life, offering their services to us at minimal cost and maximum risk.

As Miyagi said, these guys are doing our national service.

A bunch of us spent all of this afternoon trying to figure out how we can do our part to help. We spoke with various government ministries, who are doing what they can on their part, and to organizations. The organization Transient Workers Count Too, which promotes equitable treatment for migrant workers in Singapore, stepped in. They’ve offered to take in donations for the victims. I must stress that as a non-profit registered under the Societies Act with experience in managing and disbursing donations, they have the structures and practices in place that Miyagi, mrbrown and I do not have. If you have queries about the accounting practices and methods of fund disbursement, feel free to reach out.

In the meantime, what we would like to do is to create an avenue for those of you who want to help to do so. The money goes towards the families of the two deceased workers, as well as to the injured workers who are unable to work while they recover.

This is how you can donate:

BY CHEQUE:

Make a crossed cheque payable to: ‘Tran­sient Work­ers Count Too’, write your name and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent” at the back of the cheque and mail it to: 5001 Beach Road, #06–27 Golden Mile Com­plex, Sin­ga­pore 199588.

Send an email to info@twc2.org.sg with your name, cheque no., amount and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent”, so that the dona­tion can be prop­erly recorded and a receipt sent to you.

BY SGGIVES (ONLINE)

You can donate using your credit card here. A small com­mis­sion is charged by this dona­tion col­lec­tion agency. Under the “Spe­cial Occa­sion / Per­son” field, type “Bugis MRT Accident”.

BY PAYPAL (ONLINE)

You can use your Pay­pal account or credit card to donate here (scroll down and click the Paypal button). How­ever, a com­mis­sion of 4% or so is charged on every dona­tion. There is no field for you to input the pur­pose of dona­tion, so it is advis­able to drop twc2 an email after you’ve donated by this method.

Whatever small amount you can offer goes a long way.