Without thinking about it too much, you wouldn’t realise how sinister they are. I’d just come out of one of the longest meditation sessions I’ve done - a whopping 25 minutes - and when I opened my eyes, there it was: four different screens sitting on the desk in front of me. Right after coming out…

One thing I remember Jamie Oliver once said was that you can tell what kind of people are behind the food once you eat it. No well-ordered family will be able to serve you bad food. Something similar came up as I watched Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown (S8, E8) about Rome. As you might be familiar…

It is weird that I want to be there and not here, even though I know there is so much here I have yet to experience. There: San Francisco at the moment, but somewhere else could be good too. Here: Singapore, where I was born and grew up. Time to leave to come back. Deep down, I want to be away so…

This picture is so weird! Photo by Neko Tai on Unsplash I just realised this: I really want to meet as many weird happy people as possible. Who are these weird happy people, you ask? Well, they are people who appear to be stupid or foolish but always seem to be having so much fun on their own. You…

I was wrong. I think I jumped to conclusions a little too quickly about the Gutenberg editor. You can use it while still retaining the charm of a simple code-like editor - they just call it a “code editor”, actually. In this mode of the Gutenberg editor, I can write comfortably in Markdown like I…

Photo by Aidan Hancock on Unsplash I’m used to writing my posts in Markdown, that lightest touch to add formatting to text in the publishing world. It is reliable, does not remove my fingers from the keyboard, and keeps the visualisation part of writing where it belongs - last. Gutenberg is…

Matt D’Avela is a filmmaker and rising YouTuber who has managed to build a community of people who are or aspire to be minimalists.  Recently, he published a new video in which he shared how through minimalism, he came up with a simple rule for managing his personal finances. I really like it: Spend…

In the morning making my way along the Singapore River to get to the gym I’ve been practising meditation on and off for something like three years now. Some days immediately after sitting through a 10-minute unguided meditation session, I’m able to see a truth very clearly: the truth that everything…

Parts Unknown: Cologne, Germany One of my favourite documentaries is Parts Unknown hosted by Anthony Bourdain. It is gritty, personal, and so very real, owing largely to Anthony Bourdain’s no-bullshit and warm personality. My heart still aches thinking about how he left us. In one of the episodes…

You’ve probably heard of Sim Lim Square but have you heard of Sim Lim Tower? They are buildings across the street from each other but stock vastly different things. Here’s a very quick post to help you clarify where to go to buy electronics in Singapore. Sim Lim Square - for consumer electronics Go…

More or less how I feel right now It’s been an interesting month of being vegetarian for the first time. I was compelled by ethics but ultimately made the leap to experimenting with vegetarianism because of its purported health benefits and the influence of a few newfound friends (colleagues) who…

The bowl that changed my perspective I’ve always been sceptical of the magnitude of change that an individual’s action can bring. Four years in university thinking about and grappling with environmental and social issues never managed to change my mind. I’d always kind of been a “conscious business…

I have a little news to share. For the first time in this blog’s history, we have SSL (secure sockets layer)! Why is this interesting? Well, I actually didn’t pay for the SSL certificate. I just checked my email a few days back and received an email from my hosting service provider, Bluehost, about…

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash A CEO, who is also a founder, gathers all new employees in a room during onboarding week and tells them this: “This isn’t the time to keep quiet. Your first two to three months is when you should speak up the most. You are not blind yet, like the rest of us are…

A glimpse into our Singapore office! I initially intended to write one post summarising the top three things that I think are done well at Smartly.io in terms of company culture, but I haven’t found the time to. So instead of one big post, here’s the first of multiple smaller posts detailing…

My most unbelievable first week of work at Futurio 2018 in Haikkoo, Finland I’m currently working in an organisation that makes me feel valued. The company invests resources and takes risks with me, and in return, I invest what I can in the future of the company. It’s really so beautifully simple…

I met a small surprise challenge on my flight home from Helsinki today. I hadn’t asked in advance for vegetarian food. It didn’t even occur to me to do that! In fact, I’m not even sure how one goes about indicating dietary preferences to an airline for “special” meals on flights and what additional…

Photo by Alex Mercado on Unsplash It’s official. Well, sort of. I’m going vegetarian! For a month, for now. To know how I went from omnivorous all my life to seriously trying to be vegetarian, I’ll have to do a bit of storytelling. As far as I can remember, it all began somewhere on the highway of…

Photo by Tim Bennett on Unsplash I’ll admit, I have always been a little sceptical when it came to spending money to advertise on Facebook. While it’s completely self-explanatory, and with Cambridge Analytica, totally self-evident that Facebook has loads of data on its users individually and in…

If you’ve read a few posts on this blog, you’d know that most of them revolve around the topics of technology (technical and non-technical), society and life in general. Starting today, I’ll be focusing a bit more of my time on topics around marketing (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and other types of…