Posts tagged "life"
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Road, Gravel, Mud
It’s been a while since I’ve written about work. Even longer since I’ve gotten on a bicycle. In so many ways, running a startup is like a race. Some people like to do sprints. Some people like lycra. More and more, I find myself preferring endurance sports and comfortable clothing — perhaps because that’s the closest…
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So You Want To Be A Startup Founder
I was asked to speak at a local university's Young Entrepreneur Network event. Sometimes, I say yes to these things. For anyone interested, here are the slides. I wanted to share, mostly, my personal journey — how I got here. I also wanted to share some strategies for thinking about creating a startup if you're…
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Signals and Noise
I've been on the internet for a very long time, but my online self really only found its home when I got this domain in 2003. 14 years: enough to see blogs decline into the mushy wasteland that is Medium articles, video in every website we now load, and a million apps to help me connect with everything that we love.…
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Munduk
Munduk. Two people, suspended between heartbreak and fury, met on Hong Kong Street after almost 2 years without each other. Their hearts, recently broken by others, found each other agreeable — even safe. They made a plan. The universe attempted to foil it. To no avail. Through long public holidays, expensive flights,…
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Do What You Don't Know
Like so many people who grew up with the Internet, there have been many incarnations of my online self. To some, I will forever be the queer blogger who started writing about the lesbian experience as a teenager in Singapore in the early 2000s. Some find that courageous; I found it much more difficult to change…
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On The Spectrum
What's it like to be on the spectrum? It is to be able to do wonderfully complex and abstract things, at the speed of light, yet to be stumped at how to give straightforward directions to others. To be diagnosed after the age of 30 is to learn quite resolutely: the weirdest feature in my being is not who I am, but what…
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What 31 Feels Like
Wonderful but sometimes a downer. Comfortable but invigorating. Stable but enervating. Fun but sometimes mild. Energetic and delicious. World-changing and domestic, depending on the day. Upwards trajectory but sometimes down. 31 is about being happy in my own skin: that it's really okay to have greasy hair and…
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Panic at the Disco
Gay clubs were for flowers. Update: I wrote this piece before we learned more about what happened. I'm sorry about misgendering or mis-identifying the victims. I'm 31 in a few months. Not old, but old enough to remember how coming out was not on Tumblr, it was at Taboo. I would go with my best friends, all of us so…
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In Small Rooms with Betawi Women
Not for the first time, I found myself in a tiny room on a hot day, the youngest among old women. Each with a different thing to say to me, also the only person not from around these parts. You're so old now! And unmarried! Your hair is too white! Eat more soy beans! One woman rubbed my tattoos, making a screechy sound…
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When I Was Young
I'm seated now by the side of an old vending machine in Jakarta airport, with power sockets so dirty and old I had to think twice about plugging my cables in. Yet in all of Terminal 1, one of the oldest airport terminals in a country not known for modern aviation facilities, there was only this one socket free.…
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Tan Boon Chye
When I came home (to Singapore) a couple of days ago, I instructed the taxi driver to go to the Caltex station at East Coast. Most cabbies know this place, but he didn't. He's 74 years old, so he only knew this spot as "Tan Boon Chye & Co" (brain GPS never update firmware). Tan Boon Chye & Co was the…
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Paths
12 years ago this time I was deciding where I should go, what I should study, at university. I was also four months away from deciding I would try to be happy in spite of my newfound queerness. 11 years ago this time I was in Kolkata, volunteering with an organization, not knowing I would go on to do that in the…
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A Sucker Punch in the Gut
It seemed like a good idea to quad-bike around parts of Turkey, 2009. The difference between travelling alone, which I’ve done plenty of, and exploring possibilities alone, which I’ve done less of (but gotten more from), lies in how much of a sucker punch those decisions give me, specifically in my gut. I don’t follow…
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The Borneo Express
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be somewhere else. In all of my childhood day dreams, of which I had many, daily, and often, I imagined being an explorer out at sea. Being a pilot about to set off for yonder. Even the short stories I scribbled all had to do with stowing away, seeing new lands,…
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Lying on a Sack of Rice
I had one of those days today. The day when your to-do list is piled so high that you can't see the end of the tunnel. The day when your caterer cancels your big order a few days before Culture Kitchen. The day when all of your mega business problems are on the verge of getting solved, but almost. The day when you feel…
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My Life on a Bike
Every morning, I get on a bike to work. Except I don't ride it. I bargain with someone on the street, or use an app to book one at other times. Do you want masker? They ask. It's the Indonesian word for face mask. Gak mau masker, makasih pak. Sekarang pergi ke Jalan Hang Tuah bisa? A string of words that I sometimes…
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The Lonely Road
If it has ever occurred to you to start something, you know how lonely that can get. If you do that chronically, you probably over-estimate your abilities, have a high threshold for pain, or you're downright insane. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Welcome Drew Graham. Let's kick some ass. For almost a year,…
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Split Language Disorders
It is a well-documented fact: multi-lingual people have multiple personalities. I am no different, though I was only recently cognizant of that. Of how my languages affect the way I perceive myself, present myself to the world. How I trade, make contracts; how I fall in love. For as long as I can remember, 'foreign…
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Mee Lay
When I was growing up, I thought all families had the same weekend lunches as mine: a giant cauldron of yellow noodles, simmered so long in an anchovy broth that they fell apart when you picked up your noodles with chopsticks. You had to use a spoon. Ah ma made them every Sunday, but ah gong made the chilli. Even…
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To the Mountain
Going to the mountain. In all of my 29 years, my grandparents had been such a big part of my life that I could have never conceived of a life without them. Like the 1128-episode TV serials they watched, Ah Gong and Ah Ma just went on and on. In the background, their voices blended in with the voices of the Chinese TV…
58 posts tagged "life"