I really like interviews where the subject is absolutely no holds barred. Plenty of rich material to bring in after a very fun chat with Chef Bjorn Shen of Artichoke Cafe+Bar

You can read the full article here.

Sculpting Spaces in the Tropics: 13 Houses in Aamer’s Taher’s Design Journey is a beautifully-produced, 192-page book featuring a collection of tropical houses in Singapore that captures the artistic soul of award-winning architect Aamer Taher.

For this book, I was the editor and project manager. Every time I looked at the proofs, I started fantasising about living in these gorgeous houses. I also discovered that architectural theories are fascinating – love the balance between technical precision and poetic interpretation of spaces.

This is taken from Tales of the South Pacific by James A.Michener. It won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

It was a personal mission to publish a piece on this place before it is gone. I’m grateful for alternative platforms like POSKOD.SG that tell the (for lack of a better term) “little stories” that would usually not get a chance on mainstream newspapers or magazines.

It also helps that POSKOD is under the good hands of Tym, who provided invaluable help in making a very personal story more digestible for public consumption.

You can read the full article here.

I really enjoyed doing this story, it was a full-on destination piece that allowed us to get a lovely overview of the island. Also, I fell in love with Langkawi and hope to be there for a much longer period the next time round.

You can read the full story here.

Because I have been writing in a lot of other places/spaces! This is a good/bad thing.

Good in a sense that I have my work cut out for me at least till June, but bad in a sense that one’s website is supposed to be a Very Important Marketing tool, and according to all these career experts, it is crucial that I Put Myself Out There.

So here I am, dusting off neglect spam, and really scratching my head on how I can spruce things up here a little.

On a somewhat related note, I have been getting queries from a few tertiary students about writing their essays for them. Please take note that I am not that kind of writer. I like to frighten such people by saying that I do part-time lecturing and take academic integrity very seriously. But really dudes/dudettes: why are you taking this course if you are obviously so repelled by it?

I am really liking the mixture of professional and personal projects I’m taking on now. Also, I’ve discovered a little secret about myself – I am terrible in fulfilling huge, grand resolutions but I can handle “monthly pet projects”. I am going to slot this website for some project love after June. In the meantime, I’ll try to pop by here more often and tell you more about what’s been happening.

Tea and writing are soul mates. Both, to some extent, require solitude and contemplation, which are essential sanity restorers in this overstimulated world.

I really enjoy writing about tea – combining two of my most favourite things in the world!

You can read the full article here.

After an eventful week filled simultaneously with adventure, beauty, luxury and nature, the challenge is to be able to capture the essence of the place with words. It has to be broad and detailed factually, yet filled with enticing little snippets of personal observations that hopefully transport the readers to this place in their minds.

Every new destination in a journey is a myriad of juxtaposing elements that hardly ever make sense; the trick is to discover and carve out your own lessons and memories from it.

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.

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.