Banksy's Balloon Girl

I’m in this strange open-ended phase where I’m not quite sure where my freelance work is taking me. Things are busy, I generally enjoy the work that comes my way, but sometimes, I get the feeling that my brain has so many mental folders in them that I’m not sure which ones I should put at the top of my pile.

I was just talking to a friend about this – she used to do freelance editing (along with tennis coaching, what a combination!) but quit that arrangement because she felt “too lost”. She said that maybe you just need to be a “certain type” in order to be a freelancer, the kind that takes energetic initiative in getting things started and done. I immediately sort of disagreed – I’ve always believed that the natural human condition is one that embraces creativitiy and openness, but we were brought up to shun this lack of structure and ambiguity.

I sometimes struggle with this  hang-up – I try to cope by doing things like “prioritising” and coming up with to-do lists and action plans. These definitely keep things organised, but I also want to be like the girl who lets the balloon go. She isn’t getting younger (see optical illusion skeleton), she may never see her red balloon again, but this is the only way for her to discover new paths.

I was assigned to write the cover story for Tatler’s February 2012 issue – a Valentine’s Day special interviewing five high-society couples about their marriages (interestingly enough, the photographer for this story was Joel, the same guy who shot for the other couples profile piece I did for Vanilla magazine all those years ago. Maybe we just exude lovey dovey vibes.) . It was anthropologically very interesting talking to these people who lead such glamourous lives, and all their love stories are really sweet. I also loved hanging out at the Christopher Guy showroom where the photoshoot took place. It was almost like playing house in a very sparkly apartment.

You can read the full article here.

It is at times like these when I go back to memories of my favourite writing class at the Missouri School of Journalism where I spent a semester at as an exchange student. The class was called Intermediate Writing and it was there that I was introduced to the fascinating world of Literary Journalism. I loved the immersion story assignments; the fact that I could do a news story that could have my voice and perspective in it. That was the period in my life where I did the most reading, writing and socialising. I wanted to talk to everyone so I could understand their hopes, tears and dreams. I wanted to explore new ways of telling stories and would do draft after draft after draft because there seemed to be so many possibilities in the permutation of words, and somewhere along the way, there was a potential to create something…beyond myself.

And then I remember: Fight for the right words. Good writing doesn’t come easy.

Last March, I wrote about this.

There was a polite rejection letter for this book proposal. But then, through what I can only describe as divine circumstances, the red light changed to green.

And now, I am signing my very first book contract!

It’s as if this book needs to be written; and I am merely the instrument to get the message out.

Will be less cryptic once this project moves along, but this is a reminder to self – the words (whatever they might be) need to be read.

I love making checklists; I love ticking off checklists even more. But I’ve come to accept that there are some items in my Bucket Checklist that may probably never get checked. However, I still leave them there because sometimes, the process of working towards these things brings you to new places and new visions. Or sometimes, they just happen to you randomly, out-of-the-blue, without having to do much (I call this the Phantom Tick), and then you feel so grateful that miracles still do exist.

In a nutshell, this is the work I’ve done this past year:

Editorial
- Travel +Leisure (SE Asia)
- Yahoo Makanation
- MOE Schoolbag
- FRV Travel
- Kitchen Culture in-house magazine

Copyediting
- CBLD website
- WDA brochures

ORO editions
- Ongoing book project management/marketing and editing

Exhibition media content
- ATIC (Abu Dhabi)
- Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall
- Mapletree (ongoing)

UniSIM
- Taught broadcast writing and copywriting modules

I am still riding on the steep learning curve of time management and multitasking, but what a fun ride this has been! So grateful for all the opportunities that came along.

More interesting projects in the year ahead! Need to clean work desk again!

I was asked by a local women’s magazine in Singapore about my 2012 new year resolutions. I’m generally not that great in keeping them, but given that I’ve declared this one nice and loud to the mass media, it is only fair to include it in my work blog as well. Perhaps this will provide better accountability and hopefully more motivation to fulfil this particular creative project!

Now this was an article close to my heart -  covering favourite food around my neighbourhood! I had a lot of fun getting to know the people at my regular food haunts  better, and because I also shot the images for this article, I interacted much more with the staff there who always had an interesting story or two. I’m very happy to get something published on this widely-read online platform and was absolutely fascinated with the flurry of responses this article generated.

Click here to view the full article on Yahoo Singapore.

Here is a piece I stumbled upon which sums up practically everything that I have learnt this year:

She is defined by her past and by her own past alone, not by anybody else’s. She is defined by what she said and what she did, by what she put into the world. She isn’t defined by what she got back. She isn’t defined by the things that happened to her, by things that were done to her, she is defined by how she reacted to it. She is defined by the things she thought, by the preconceived judgments she had, by the mistakes she inevitably made. She isn’t defined by hateful words that were uttered to her, by gossip that was told about her, by the preconceptions people had about her. She is defined by telling the truth, not by people not believing her when she did. She is defined by her art, not by people’s reaction to it. She is defined by who she is, not by what other people think about her. She isn’t even defined by people’s love for her, she is only defined by the love she feels for herself.

A little tribute to the guy who helped to come up with computers that do not make me want to rip my hair out (at least 99.5% of the time).

On the surface level, I don’t think I need much help staying hungry and foolish. I love good food, and I make boo-boos all the time.

But taking this quote a little more existentially, here’s a desert landscape – it looks like the kind of place hungry and foolish people end up in.

It may be a place of loneliness and emptiness, but that’s where hungry and foolish people learn to survive, where they discover the beauty in seemingly unending, futile spaces.

Hungry, foolish people don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but they will go through great lengths to seek out nourishment and wisdom. They seek out life, they laugh when they fall or go the wrong way, and when they finally reach the oasis, they are overjoyed to discover the water has never tasted sweeter.