The Archives - 2012
2012 (20 posts)
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Five Places I Visited and Loved in the Past 12 Months Helsinki Copenhagen San Francisco New York City Stockholm Five Things I Learned in the Past 3 Months Diving Swimming Git Ruby Still looking for the fifth big thing. For now it looks like it's going to be Fightshape Note: I could swim, but badly.…
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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…
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63 random things from the past 3 months (inspired by Michael Ruby's "Fleeting Memories") Arriving in Budapest knowing absolutely nothing about Hungary Drinking palinka for the first time, feeling the flush The Hungarian energy drinks I drank while wearing funny hats Walking with team…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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My friend Yu-Mei is putting together a blogging and social media workshop as part of HeritageFest, a NHB event. I'll be speaking with Rosenah Omar at 3pm, on a panel moderated by Notabilia, although I do wish I could split myself and attend the panel on 1960s music at the same time! Here's the…
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Singapore's Ministry of Education recently revealed its new sexuality education programme, now called SEd. (Read more about it on: Today Online, MOE's press release, MOE's SEd minisite) The abstinence-first message was not surprising. The continued insistence on couching the abstinence-first message…
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I must watch too many scifi movies. I'd rarely been convinced of the malleability of time, but these days I measure out everything in two-week units. Time seems to race ahead of me. It always has, now more than before. When I say these days, I don't mean it facetiously. Yes, I turn just 27 in a…
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Five years ago, I said: "Ask me again a year, three, or five from now and all I will remember is driving up, around, up, around, up, around, in the swirling clouds as the rain lashed at my windows and I feared for my life, balanced so daintily in this tin can navigating itself on the hairpin…
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In my mother tongue we have a brilliant turn of phrase. Geh kiang. Separately, they mean fake clever. Together, it means some approximation of 'smart alec', but that's not quite good enough. It's hardly translatable at all. 'Smart alec' does not embody the degree of stupidity we are usually…
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Those of you with elephant memories will remember what this site was 7 years ago. The web was a very different place. This blog was a different blog, I was a different kind of kid (19 years old! Yowch), and the ecosystem was other sites like this with no Facebook, Twitter, not in the ways we now…
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I'm home now of course, whatever home means, and I've been retelling a couple of stories. The same ones, but many of them, just because I've had such a crazy time in the Nordics. This one isn't very much of a story. Just a little tale that, once again, shows you how crazy we Asians are about our…
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I can't say I've been away from my phone or Mac for more than 24 hours, not at any point in the last 10 years. I can't say I have at all. They feel like such natural extensions of my arm, they are almost artificial appendages themselves, not just of my body but also of my brain. I needed to switch…
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I have seen some places in my short travelling life, but rarely a place that offers me chocolate and naked women within two hours of arriving. Helsinki turned out to be such a place. Unknown to me, mostly since I knew so little about Finland other than Nokia, Angry Birds and the cold, when I pinged…
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Tallinn, Estonia 028 - Catedral Alexander Nevsky/ Alexander Nevsky Cathedral "Tallinn, Estonia 028 - Catedral Alexander Nevsky/ Alexander Nevsky Cathedral by Claudio.Ar, on Flickr" Somewhere between lying in a hospital bed, travelling, and coming back to a hospital again, I decided: man, I…
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Or how I am not dealing with hyperthyroidism Ever since I had a vague inkling of ambition, it's been go, go and go. Occasionally go even further, at top speed. Once I learned to catch the wind, I wanted to fly. I was the weird kid who climbed and used my stroller as a skateboard, even before I could…
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A note from New Delhi Taj Mahal Foxtrot, namesake of the book by the same name by naresh.fernandes Another new year, another bad habit: I'm late, again. Just a few days ago, I was sitting at the back of a Toyota Innova, stuffing my face with mithai and chips — not at the same time — thinking what a…
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White cabbage is death. If there is a Creator, it is one of his less glorious moments. The only thing worse than white cabbage is white cabbage soup. I am a soup maniac, but white cabbage soup I do not touch with a ten foot pole. I cannot even sit at the same table when it is being drunk. The sight…