Shisha-ing in Singapore

 

My to-go place for shisha-ing would be at Sufi's (48 Arab Street). I think their shisha is real great tasting. I had rose vanilla, while Kristen and Phan took up the place's recommendation which was strawberry mango mint (i think). Had their wedges, lassi and turkish tea. All good 'cept the waiting time was pretty crazy. Can't blame them, the place is really huge and it was packed with customers from the front all the way to the back alley.

My second place of choice would be Going Om (63 Haji Lane).

I would probably give Merdandy a miss. Their shisha tastes like soap water which was a real disappointment considering that I used to frequent there a lot just two years back.

Of course all in all, the shisha tobacco in Singapore is nothing like the ones you can get in Malaysia apparently. I have yet to try. Well, for now I will endure the long waiting time and continue to shisha at Sufi's while I'm in Singapore. :D

agent is distressed

first cny ever to see so many close to me shed tears. everyone's baggages seem to have been amplified from the stressors of preparing for the festivities, further compounded by having to meet curious relatives whom you only meet once a year to summarize what they missed; whether it is a missing partner, an unfulfilled year that just passed by, or the uncertainty of the future. still, everyone who dares to step out of their houses into the homes of the vultures still managed to put up a smiling front. interesting.

sure there is nothing to hide, but i found it tiresome having to explain complicated matters over and over again. so instead of doing the talking, i become either reticent or unusually interested in their lives. move the topics to common items like recipes and cooking (for mothers and aunties), travelling (to dads and uncles), schools and social-life (to peers and cousins) and then to the popular topics of technology accessories like apple iphone/macbooks vs every other brand.

good enough. sadly, nobody else seemed to share my love for 9gag.

but the usual bits of cny were still fun. like reunion dinner with my family and close relatives, paying visits and sitting awkwardly in sparkling residences, tasting and comparing every single pastry at every house, collecting delightful red packets, fresh new clothes, and lou-heiii.



oh how i love to lou-hei. unadulterated shredded vegetables stirred in plum sauce, peanut, sesame, raw salmon, crispy cracker pockets, and prosperity messages to hail a good chinese year ahead.

once again, i say i will begin

hello hello,

funny how quickly time flies, and once again it is a new year. 2012, the beginning of the end. well, as bleak as the year is said to be (with the Mayans predicting that the world is coming to an end and all), i have decided to make it a point to blog more often. so many precious moments, I have failed to capture in the last half a year. i felt like a top, spinning happily and seeing the colours go by. but what became of me when i began losing speed was that i began to spin very unstably. and i did not realise that change. much to the discomfort of many of my closer friends back in singapore who were both worried and annoyed with me.

that's okay. i am now back in singapore, gathered myself a little, and I hope I am a little more matured than when I first ventured down-south.

okay, so it is already very well into the first month of 2012, but it's never too late to come up with guidelines to navigate through the year. furthermore, school only begins on the 27th of feb. and really, guidelines only prove themselves worthy during chaotic times (yes i actually find school life chaotic).

don't shoot me, but my guidelines for the new year are extremely unoriginal. but here they are anyway:

1) immerse myself in the moment
- really means quit drifting away when people are talking and focus on the person's conversation. or at the very least, make it less obvious when im not listening :\
- quit being judgmental and so afraid of the unfamiliar. get to know others, and discover new things.

2) treasure the ones i love
- my-out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude is atrocious. i love my family and friends but sometimes (all the time?) i have a tendency to forget.
- not make them so worried by taking care of myself: basically smoke less and eat healthily.

3) keep my eyes on the prize
- psychology. i will commit myself to living and breathing psychology this year.

4) schedule, for more time.
- perhaps, when i am more mindful in scheduling my life, i would enjoy everything i commit myself to. i would be more patient, and less uptight.

5) Update this blog
- then I can keep track of my progress.

okay toodles.

baby blues

Kat: "you can't hang on to baby sentences and in the same way baby scenes... you can't have babies... means to an end. it's brutal"

me: hahaha kat that's so profound

Kat: "i didn't make that up... that's what we were told on the first day of newsroom class... and yet, people held on to babies in their reports... and got brutally edited"

These were the content of a conversation Kat and I were having a few weeks back. It was loosely about being able to suck up criticism and be making necessary changes. Well, this thought floated back to my mind now that I am finally done with the coordination of pitch training for the top 11 startups who are going to pitch at this event that I am organizing.

I noticed a trend (non-significant since it was only out of 11 startups) who had flashy decks and they were unusually resistant to feedback that Aneace dispensed. The result was that they made minimal changes to their deck which were merely cosmetic changes that does not include the fundamental elements that Aneace earlier suggested .

And this resistance was so obviously displayed by a startup asking Aneace, "so... what further advice would you give me on my deck... other than just changing the slides?". That question was posed after half an hour of suggestions from Aneace to improve on the startup's supposedly revised deck (which looked no different from the original deck)

It was really the cutest question ever!

The person was very obviously impervious to suggestions could lead to the possible detriment of his pitch.

I cannot comment as to whether I think it's wise or not for the person to listen to Aneace since I am not a VC with intrinsic interest in the value of the product, and neither have I participated in similar pitching competitions.

What really intrigued me was the resistance to change. It made me think about how erroneous it is to be unreceptive to change. I mean that's pretty obvious problem since there ARE self-help books targeting that problem and also Kat's advise on 'not holding on to babies'.

It seems unintuitive for humans to be so non-adaptive as to not take advise for a problem they have not begun to realise. Even when the problem is explicitly expounded (in this case Aneace stated the problems), it is pretty clear that the persons has just shut-down and decided to pick up only information that supported their own ideas. Interesting..

So what are the solutions which would make this advise-giving possible? What kind of approach should Aneace have adopted with these startups? How could he have identified them and thus the approach to use to reduce the resistance towards his advise?

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On a separate note, I was at my friend's place after dinner and he has this adorable nephew who refused to play with us 'strangers'.

I believe that baby is only a little more than a year old and what I couldn't help thinking was how the baby was able to discriminate familiars and strangers very quickly. It's like humans have an in-built mechanism for biasness. Sure, we have a very developed area in our brains (fusiform gyrus) that is dedicated to the differentiating of faces. And it seems that this ability to discriminate is this precursor for exclusion, leading to selfishness, prejudice, racism, chauvinism... the list goes on..

So to what extent can we forgive discriminatory behaviour as just purely human nature? To what extent should the behaviour be modified? What kind of re-education is needed for extensive prejudice?

Hmmmsss... there ARE interesting psychology papers on prejudice and stuff. Those that I mostly read upon (or remember) are about priming and Implicit Associations. Can't remember if there's anything about the amelioration of these behaviours.


okay, neither are anything new. Just random thought that blab out throughout the day. no wonder im so distracted.

i was giving thought about my supposed 'stoning behaviour' and i realised that it appears more often when i have more thoughts in my mind which makes me unfoccused in the present. It's sth worth investigating this whole thing about stoning. Or maybe a better word is 'daydreaming'.

I should find out if there's any lit on daydreaming. could be a possible thesis topic :P

LOL

how many times am i gonna say that I will update my blog more regularly... only to cast it aside for more interesting endeavours like Sushi-Go-Round and Big Bang Theory.

Well, today i'm merely updating for the sake of touching base with this blog and to feel less guilty about overlooking my commitment to train my mind to be able to focus on a train of thought and not go off tangent.

So let's begin:

I caught X-Men: First Class with Gilbert today and it was frigging awesome! It has to be one better movies I caught this year, along with Kungfu Panda 2 and Black Swan.

Okay bye.

Acacia Rise

I am done with 7 weeks of internship at Acacia Rise, a school that uses guided participation to encourage dynamic thinking through its activities and syllabus. They follow closely to RDI. It was an amazing time there and I feel like I learnt so much more through the interaction with the kids and guidance from the teachers. The kids I worked with made real improvements over the time I was there and that was very affirming to my belief in that particular method of autism intervention..

Obviously there were times I felt pretty miserable, as the day-to-day becomes quite mundane. And then I was juggling two other jobs at the same time, which meant I was pretty exhausted. But I kept myself sane by reading up more about autism, neuroplasticity and watching scientists share their knowledge on platforms like TED.

Well, it's over and now I'm look forward to the work at e27 and my NUS proff. Although Acacia did ask me to go back and help in an adhoc basis. So it's really good. I will get to see my kids!

Okay well updates updates... I chopped my hair shorter cos my days were so busy I felt like my hair was such a burden. I camwhored today, will post up the photos later in this post.

At e27, I am allowed to work from home. SUCK ON THAT. super awesome right. well, not all the time. When I work from home, my family automatically assumes that I am bumming and assigns me chores. Otherwise they keep talking to me and then I get distracted. Another downside is that I'm really working 24/7. The plus-side is that I am working from home, which really sounds like a cool job to have. :\ LOL.

I had a dream we went away, left this city for a day
You took me southwards on a plane and showed me Spain or somewhere
But in reality your not so keen to show me anything
And I thought you liked me.