As much as I can, as fast as I can.

The house, the documentaries, the social media work that pays the bills, yoga lessons and my personal practice so I don’t go crazy. In between all that, when it still feels like too much, I write.

I writ…

Read more

I’ve been enjoying my days outside. Soaking up cheery summer smiles from strangers at weekend festivals, dancing under clear starry skies, drinking up nature’s company as I dip in rivers and swim in the ocean.

I’ve not picked up my bulky work camera once in three weeks, which I take to be a good sign.

I love documenting the way light washes across my world – the afternoon sun sparkling against the ripples of a clear blue lake and the evening’s rosy reds a dramatic backdrop to these rolling hills. But I also cherish the deep pockets of my day where I lose myself inside the colours of a setting sky.

There is an understated luxury to experiencing beautiful moments quietly, without the opinions or reactions of anyone else. I do not have to share. Those precious moments alone make my heart sing.

Yesterday as I sulked over summer nearing to an end, a friend sent me this message:

I immediately thought, ah right. Sounds like a pattern – I guess I’ve never been good with goodbyes.

To which, my friend replies:

“You’re too sentimental.”

My brothers have always said that I’m the sentimental one in the family. I’ve been told more than once that I’m too sentimental for my own good. Tough it up, someone once remarked.

But I don’t think my sentimental nature makes me weak, for rubber is soft but it’s also enduring.

My world simply has a different kind of stretch to yours. I am rubber in my agility to squeeze through cracks and then moments later, expand like a balloon, light with air.

I do not respond to situations with logic; it is far simpler. I respond with my heart.

I used to feel self-conscious about this. Like uh-oh. Do I need to fix that? Is something wrong with me and do I need to go in for repair?

Living now in Japan where poetry echoes through my day, I wonder if my shame is because I grew up in a world where being sentimental was costly.

You see, we cannot monetise or optimise sentimentality. In fact, it is quite often in the way of “better”, more progressive goals like tearing down old buildings for high-rise condominiums that can make for higher rental yields. My country’s version of a nightmare is an army of children who prefer old-school pen and paper drawings to an AI-produced piece of art.

Ours is a city that needs to move on fast, and in a world like that, the voice of sentiment is the voice of the slow and lazy devil.

I am sentimental because I am of the nature to love.

I am of no use, being sentimental in a country run by quantifiable KPIs and calculations that can be triple-checked and verified. The economy would crash around people like me, unable to see black for black, insisting we account for all the million shades of grey that colour into the solid lines that draw up fences and divide down countries.

I frustrate people who want to move fast because I am always the last one out of the door, my fingers trailing over every last detail of a moving scene, unwilling to leave.

Sometimes I think I am lucky my gaze does not leave visible prints, so the world doesn’t see how deeply it impresses upon me. Months pass and I still wonder about the lived creases on someone’s skin, the lingering adoration in the eyes of a person in love, flushed faces when you’re received by a friend you’ve deeply missed.

It is embarrassing, how much I remember.

I tell people that I am bad at math and that I have horrible memory but maybe that’s a lie. It is only because all that space in my head is reserved to remember the sounds and smells of tiny micro-moments that most people miss.

I remember out of love, and I forget everything else.

Love is not some rare and grand gesture. Love runs deep in the small of everything around us.

They are like little stickers plastered across our days – in the passing smiles of strangers and warm greetings exchanged, in the gentle fragrance of your morning coffee brewed before you, in the company of soulful friends, huddled around the daily display of our sun going down to rest.

These inconsequential moments may not add up into anything more, but they stay with me long after, dotting my days and colouring my lines.

Maybe that is why goodbyes have never been easy for me, because there is so much to remember, and there isn’t enough time to forget.

Allow yourself to be of no use.

Perhaps that is why I’ve been drawn to this slow, quiet, countryside life.

Because here, it is okay that I need more time. It is okay that my feelings need the extra space to breathe. It is okay to be of a sentimental nature that fulfils no grand purpose.

I fill up my lungs and my rooms with all this life that doesn’t want to be forgotten, and I allow my memories to hang on my walls.

You are allowed to stay. You can leave when you’re ready.

I welcome these memories like guests who come in for tea, some stickier than others, others more transient than some. They are always coming and going, going and coming, new memories forming, old ones leaving.

Each moving at its own pace.

And eventually, meaning will form. Your sentimental nature becomes a secret superpower, the reason why people enjoy spending time with you, the reason why words can string and fuse together effortlessly, creating beautiful shapes and colourful music where the old tree they removed once stood.

If you are of a similar nature to remember long after the rest of the world has forgotten, then remember this:

You are not a rectangle of logic, moving to the constant ticking clockwork of life. You are elastic in your ability to bend to the force of bad weather and twist to the shape of a graceful dancer. Your very softness is also your strength.

Tend to your sentimental soul in a world that isn’t often kind to those who feel deeply. Write, sing, dance, move, make tea or make art.

Keep your life a few minutes empty every day to pull your imagination wide open and transform these leftover fragments of love into something beautiful.

You don’t have to fight the turn of every season. Those goodbyes will come when your hellos are ready.

I’ve spent the past week settling into my house slowly. I stare at these empty rooms and there are moments where I feel incredibly alone out here. There is just so much to do and I can’t help but to worry if I can really do it all.

I tell myself to move slow, but in the last week, wisdom has been hard to hear.

My mind buzzes with ideas all day and throughout most nights. Even with my eyes closed, my mind swims and sings and soars. She paints my dreams alive with colour, and creates an imagination wild and limitless. My monkey mind like a rocket blazing through the night sky, spinning circles around me.

I used to hate that about myself.

I wondered why I couldn’t be more like my brothers, my friends or my classmates. Why did I always get bored so quickly? Why did I always have to juggle multiple passions and interests at once to keep myself entertained? Why couldn’t I be content with where I was and settle down into one single thing?

I spent years pressing myself down into a square. I wanted to fit into the Singaporean system. I wanted to thrive in the country I thought was home. I ruled my unyielding spirit with a strict regiment.

On the inside, my walls were torn up, its wallpapers ripped apart in rebellion. But on the outside, everything held together precariously with a single thread. Hold it together, I’d pray, and we can make it to the end.

To what end?

But what was I holding it altogether for? This control I clung onto – which carrot had I been enticed towards, and who hung it there?

I thought staying and persisting was what it meant to be filial. To be a good partner, a good friend, a good, contributing force to society.

Alas, whatever I had tried to hold together fell apart.

My iPhone recently reminded me of old images and videos I took of my mum.

Growing up, my mum was tough. (And a control freak too – her words, not mine hah). But towards the end, when cancer had mellowed and softened her, she was so adorable. In the little pockets of her life when morphine honeyed over her pain, she’d stare at me with her large eyes full of childlike adoration, blinking affection into mine.

When there was no pain, everything was good. Everything tasted nice. We’d walk small, slow steps and she’d hold onto us, but really it was us who held onto her.

She was so thin by then that I worried the winds would take her away, magical helium in her lungs, lifting her into the sky. I’d spend time with her every day, stroking her skinny hands.

As long as we had each other, everything would be okay.

I no longer remembered what she looked like healthy, but this stripped-down version of my mum, I loved too.

At the very end, when my days revolved solely around her, we moved through so much pain and misery and grief and love that it cracked me open from the inside.

Oh, to be cracked open with love.

The only silver lining of cancer is that we had so much time to talk. I told her about my dreams, my plans, my ideas. I still remember doing a radio interview once, where I shared that my greatest inspiration was – still is – my mum.

I remember forcing my mum into my room to listen to the replay of the interview. I remember her turning to me in surprise: “I’m your inspiration? I didn’t know that.”

I wasn’t always generous with my words, but I’m glad I gave her that.

We’d have tea and talk about the cruelty of missing someone who would no longer be around. I recount this often and I might have even have shared this interaction before, but I remember remarking in frustration: “What do you mean you still miss your mum? It’s been so long!”

“You never stop missing those you love,” she replied simply.

In two weeks it’ll be her fourth death anniversary.

As I build up a new life here, I think about her a lot. I wish I could speak to her, I wish I could hear her voice, I wish I could tell her how I’ve leapt.

I’d give anything to have another moment with her, lying in her laps, her hands gently patting my back, her soft touch soothing me to sleep. I have too much pride to cry in front of her, but from my end of the call, I’d let my tears fall freely. I’d let our pauses hang silent as I regain a wobbly composure to tell her: I’m okay, just a little bit tired.

Which is true. I am okay, just a little bit tired.

But I breathe, I write, I go for long drives, I dust myself off and pick myself up again. These three years of uncertainty have stretched me and given me steel. I am stubborn with a fire I never knew I had.

When I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, I’d remember that I no longer have a life I am trying to escape. How many people can say that?

Sure, things are still uncertain, but precisely because they are uncertain, I do not take anything for granted. I am deathly afraid of what it would mean if nothing works out, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive.

I think this is what it means to be with my human fears, my human sorrows, my human frustrations and my human joys. I am deeply present and fully alive.

I think we cannot avoid the very things we fear.

What are the mountains saying?

I took a four hour drive yesterday through mountain roads. Summer is a beautiful time – the greens turn gold at dusk as the sky splinters into a colourful burst of pink and purple.

Driving through these windy roads, I remember that the mountains move at a different speed. They do not shift moment to moment the way the ocean does. They still and steady, moving through decades and centuries, roots expanding, trees shedding, new leaves sprouting. A forest thickens and thins, oblivious to the hurried pace of our human lives.

I take it all in.

When you feel pulled by the winds of our speedy world, remember: you can refuse it. You can place one hand over your chest, and one hand on your belly. You can move to your own breath and reject the rush. Sometimes you follow the flow, sometimes you sink your feet deep and resist.

I am with the mountains as I settle into the shared patience of an unmoving thing.

My short life knows not what these aged forests do. I do not, and cannot know it all. The answers will come, just not on my clock.

So follow the stubborn hands of your joyful spirit. Trust in the tides that have scooped you up and taken you here. You only have to look back at last summer to see how far you’ve already come.

And when you can, quiet your frenzied mind. Listen, like really listen.

These mountains speak a wisdom that only silence can hear.

“There are dos to do today, but there is time.”
- From this little song

It is my first morning alone in the new house.

Last night, as I settled into bed, I wondered:
How many walls make a house?
Four? Seven? Ten?

In my house, I have more than four walls. On top of that, I have a functioning kitchen, a toilet, a dining table and a futon rolled out on tatami mats. That’s enough. Everything else is extra, says Ali, one of my oldest and closest friends, who lined up her vacation dates with my move-in dates to help me settle into this new house and this new life.

She’s returned to Singapore, so now it’s just me.

I blinked my eyes open this morning, and adjusted my gaze to take in this unfamiliar room. Lying on my futon, I look out directly to blue summer skies beyond my curtain-less windows. If I roll over to the right and prop my head up at an angle, I can see Mount Yotei peeking out between the gaps of my neighbours’ homes.

I am taking mental notes – this is the window with a view. That is the room where the sun warms the floors at eight in the morning. This is where the creaky floorboard is.

I let my mind wander and colour these empty rooms silly. The walls I want to paint, the curtains I need to buy, and all the art I can’t wait to put up.

I breathe in the entirety of this house, realising that this is a special time in my life. You don’t get many first meals, first homes and first days to learn a space so intimately.

Maybe this is what hope looks like.

The possibilities of a life.

On the first morning in this house, my walls shook with the deep-bellied laughs of my old friend at breakfast. On the second, the same rooms lay thick with silence and the trepidation of a life waiting to take off.

What will the third sleep bring? What about the fourth?

I’ve dreamt of waking up to the mountains for a long time, and now I am here. I am a 30-minute drive away from a hike where I can watch the rising sun pour her colours over the place I live.

Every day, I am surrounded by good air, good water and good produce. Here, I can live simply. I do not have to tussle with the crowds, or grow frustrated waiting in traffic. I can pick up some actual life skills that will take me further than corporate bootlicking ever would.

Of course, every dream has its realities.

I cry over leaky sinks, and hold my breath as I sort through the stack of bills written entirely in Japanese. I spend every single day weighing through what feels like a thousand micro-decisions and by the end of it, I am not just physically, but mentally beat.

More than a few nights every week, I clasp my hands tight and squeeze my eyes shut in a silent prayer to whoever/ whatever is listening: Please, don’t let me lift this life up entirely on my own.

Learn to be hopelessly optimistic.

I think this might be the most useful skill I’ve picked up out here.

When I get stuck worrying about worst-case scenarios, I remember that my anxiety is also energy. I can channel that energy into action instead.

So I try.

I put on good music and write everything down – my plans, my pessimism, my to-do list that only grows and never ends, my frustration at how everything gets further out of reach the more I leap.

I pour myself onto a piece of paper and then I stand up tall.

I refuse to be knocked over by my paper-thin worries. Instead, I choose foolish optimism.

I allow what I do not yet understand to slide off my shoulders. I am not in control here, I remind myself. I gulp in fresh air with a hungry ferocity. My mind sings to the music of silence and melody. My belly fills up with hope.

I put one foot in front of the other and I just keep moving.

In yoga, there is a pose where we press our chest and legs up towards the sky and grip our toes with our fingers in a precarious balance. Then on an exhale, your neck goes soft and your head drops back.

The first time I tried it, I remember saying aloud: That’s impossible.

My neck does not want to go there. My tops of my shoulders cling on for control and it does not believe that I can trust what I do not yet know.

But my teacher’s wisdom rings in my ears: Your body already knows. Move intuitively.

When I finally submitted to the skies, I was free. I dropped my head back and felt my chest lift. Then, as if on cue, fresh tears sprung into my eyes.

Here, have it.

Three years of uncertainty has led me here, and I do not know how the next few years will go, but it will go.

Somehow, I will get somewhere.

A new finish line.

I am now close to my 1000th day out here, and I’ve begun sketching out a new finish line.

The ideas that were brewing in the background have now taken on shapes and colours and language.

I am trying to create a physical space. I want to keep sharing stories. I am starting a collective practice of moving through this world thoughtfully.

In this dream, there is a house. There will be space for yoga and more. There will be magazines and books and the combined spirit of everyone who has touched me along the way, living on its walls.

I can see it in my head, even if I can’t yet speak about its entirety.

Someone asked me recently, how I am so certain of this vision. His questions were eager and I can understand. I was that person too. I am still that person.

But there is no secret, you just have to find your own way through.

The only comfort I can gift you is that I am right here with you. Along with everyone else who has tried and clamoured and scarred and bruised along the way.

I think a lot about my grandparents who packed themselves onto overloaded boats, sailing through rough seas for days from China to Singapore. I think of their hungry aspiration for a different life, their fierce determination in the lonely beginnings of doing something new.

I am the grandchild of immigrants, and I draw strength from knowing that I come from the same blood. I shall not cower from the hardship of my impossible goals.

A soft opening, the healing house.

I am asking here first, because this is where it all began. If you’ve been following my story for awhile, you might understand what I am trying to create.

I am setting up a small, seasonal space for a yoga-creative (kind of? casual?) residency.

It is still somewhat shapeless and free-forming, but I have three partitioned, empty rooms in the unit next door to mine, and I’d like to extend the invitation to share space with people who need to rest.

The idea of the healing house is simple.

You come with a creative project you want to work on and I will provide the space for you to be as you are. There will be morning yoga classes to attend if you’d like to join, and in return, I only ask for your openness to contribute to the house – contributions can come in many forms:

Gift the house your favourite pottery, a jar of something from your home country, or a poster that reflects your taste. Maybe you’re a maker with skills to add to the space, or a creative who can put together a mixtape for the house… the possibilities are endless. The only currency I do not accept is cash.

I am getting the space ready as we speak, and I think I will be able to host residents/ friends/ guests (what do you call people who stay in your home for fun??) in October and November. I’m thinking a stay of 2 weeks and up would be best so we all have time to breathe and marinate in fresh ideas, and the spot is ideal for people who can drive or at least cycle.

At this point, the space is simple and bare-boned, but I would like to nourish it collectively.

Does this sound like a crazy idea? Would you like to come? Throwing this out here so these ideas can be shaped by actual people, needs and thoughts.

🍃

As usual, thank you for being a part of my world. Hoping all is well as summer continues to heat up everywhere. And in case you needed the reminder (as I always do), hydrate!! Drink water!!

It’s been awhile. I’ve been intentionally taking time away for long and deep, slow breaths. Reminding myself that my real life exists outside these screens.

I take walks, I lie out in the summer heat until it gets unbearable. I listen to birds sing and take in the forest’s morning light twinkling against deep summer greens.

I show up at the table with my little writing ritual – a cup of something warm, a table, and a spot next to the window. (There is always a window. I cannot write if there are no windows.)

Today, I’m reflecting on my time in Singapore.

Singapore was different this time.

The sky was still dark when my alarm went off at five in the morning. Every day, for one month. 5:00AM alarms, empty roads and quiet mornings. I plonked myself down on my favourite seat in the first double-decker bus of the day and closed my eyes.

That was my favourite time of the day, before the city woke. When it is quiet, where there is space and there is no one I need to answer to.

In the hours before the sky breaks, I get to have myself all to myself. These mornings are free, but I feel rich and indulgent. “I am not for you,” is what the first 3 hours of my morning says.

I reach the yoga studio and roll out my mat. I do not rush. I luxuriate in a morning unhurried, filling my lungs up with my first big breath, I find flow.

The routine is simple. Almost boring really, but it keeps me alive. It is the only time in my day when Singapore feels liveable.

Where is Singapore’s soul?

I have been wandering through our country in search of spirit. I keep my eyes wide open and my ears peeled for the sound of a stranger’s heart singing in our hot, humid winds.

And perhaps because I am looking, I am finding.

A month ago, hidden in basement three of a mixed-used development, a mother cradling her child as she tends to her cafe.

She bakes her breads fresh daily, and shrugs as I compliment her food. It is the best tomato soup I’ve ever had. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just tomato soup. Maybe because I make it with love?”

I nod my head with vigour.

Along this familiar Upper Thomson stretch, new bakeries and cafes line up next to old-timers: the famous prata shops are still here, and my favourite bak chor mee stall still tastes the same. I mumble a silent thank you. In Singapore, where the fate of your favourite hawker is never guaranteed, I don’t take my satisfied cravings for granted.

I walk a bit more and find myself in a small bakery, vibrant and full of personality. I am surprised by the selection here - there is so much to choose from.

“The owner comes in at 4am to bake,” a staff explains.

She chats with me patiently, explaining house favourites and pointing out must-tries. I am conscious of the people waiting behind me but she doesn’t rush. She looks me in the eyes and smiles, making sure I’ve gotten everything I need.

Her deliberate pace reminds me to walk at my own, and I am grateful for the reminder on a random Friday morning.

This happens again, and again.

Dedication built into the walls of a yoga studio open at 6.30AM six out of seven days a week, determination folded into the crusty dough of a freshly toasted pizza made with yeast fermented naturally.

“This (sourdough) starter is alive,” says Mason, the hands and brains of Chooby Pizza. “That’s something I’ll never change.”

Compared to using commercial, instant yeast which ferments within an hour or two, his doughs take an entire day to rise. Every starter is different, and the depth of flavour changes with the duration it is fermented for.

“If I use commercial yeast, it will have a generic taste. Maybe it will taste like any other bread.”

I love spending time with people like that. People who insist on doing something different, even when it isn’t easy.

What keeps you alive in a Singapore that is forever changing?

Recently I read that we’re losing more of our natural forests. It is sad to think that in space-scarce Singapore where nature already occupies so little space, we're choosing to make room for even less.

Perhaps that is why these people move me so deeply.

In our pragmatic city, I am finding myself in this world of slow breads, slow pizzas, slow mornings and slow pursuits, where I can still breathe.

This is the brand of Singaporean ambition I want to throw myself behind. These small Singaporean businesses, keenly aware of the pressure on their shoulders, defiant in doing something different.

It is this playfulness, existing within the narrow sliver of Singapore’s alternative possibilities, that keeps our city’s soul alive. They are forever playing a game of Tetris, figuring out how to realise their imaginations in a city that struggles against itself – our lack of space working against the size of our dreams.

And perhaps that’s always been in our DNA.

We were once an impossible country, but defiance and stubbornness has taken us far. What then, will our stubborn dreams look like in the next season of Singapore’s becoming? And what kind of ambition will carry us there?

I think a country's soul isn’t only found in its new creations, but also in what it chooses to protect.

Our forests are a defiant reminder that we are more than products to be optimised. These slow pursuits are alternative blueprints for another generation’s daring imagination. We have to somehow make room for the dreams that don’t yet make sense, the ones that don’t fit into a neat spreadsheet or into orderly rows of HDB blocks.

So if you want to look for our soul, I think you’ll find it here – in the determined hands of ordinary Singaporeans, humble in their creation of different shapes with new ideas, as if to say:

“I know it’s unusual. I know it’s hard. But still, I want to try.”

Something about Singapore takes me right back to the way I once was – it’s strange but when I’m there, nothing is enough. There isn’t enough time, not enough money, and never enough room.

Life is too little and I am always wanting more.

I am not criticising the country. I just can’t quite figure out why the place draws out this version of myself, even when I am determined not to be that person again.

Now that I’m back in Japan, I’m hoping to slow things down.

In my time offline, I’ve been working on a few personal projects – documenting interesting people in Singapore, surrounding myself with the same spirit I search for out here in Japan. I hope I will be able to find the time to put things together and share them soon.

But first, I will rest.

Between all this busy, I somehow managed to print issue 04 of the physical mailers I send out to paid subscribers.

(If you’ve subscribed to my mail, keep an eye out for it within these few days, or in a few weeks if you’re based outside Singapore. )

I knew early on that issue 04 would feature a strong woman. Someone gritty, determined and full of life. Then I met Ibu Kentri, and everything clicked.

Her dreams are large and unapologetic. Being in her company was to be in the presence of gravity. I can’t quite describe it, but I suppose some people have the ability to help your feet find ground. They remind you that your journey may be windy and uncertain, but you are often capable of much more than you think.

I am grateful for a curiosity that takes me towards people like her, and places like that. I hope to continue going on these tiny adventures and I hope I never stop seeing the wonders of our world in the deep creases of these weathered hands.

Today’s letter is short. I just wanted to pop in to share that I am still going! Still dreaming, still writing, still leaning into courage and learning to be brave.

The act of courage is a daily commitment. Some days it is a lot, but I know where to reach for strength and I am taking pauses to remember that it is a privilege to live my dreams.

Thank you for reading, may all be well on your end. Till the next one!

I am a wobbly existence, at times shape-shifting to match the gusty urgency of things that demand my attention, at times still and shapeless like the surface of the ocean on a windless day.

Uncertainty used to be unbearable. I resisted the way life wanted to bend. I wanted to know. I needed to know. The unknown was a long breath hold I was too afraid to let go of.

But time is a powerful teacher.

Perhaps the reward of my latest life gamble is the nurturing of an enduring patience, warm enough to melt uncertainty’s prickly exterior into soft goo.

For the first time in years, I am light as a bird, finding float in a fog. Me? Lightness in a fog? Who would’ve thought?

Uncertainty forces you to shake what doesn’t want to be rattled.

There is a rigidity to the way I once was. I understood how the drawers of our society were organised, and I folded myself into one that would fit.

From a young age, I noticed the patterns of the game.

Cross your legs, sit up straight and pay attention. Smile. Be easy. Be likeable. Be yourself, but don’t be difficult. Be yourself, but not too much.

I was understandable. Agreeable. I was still me, but a held back version of myself. I took my sharp edges with me and wore my stiff collared shirts into adulthood. I hated the performance, but I had people in my life I didn’t want to disappoint, and that turned my life into a stage I didn’t even realise I was on.

The first step to shaking the pressure loose is to pay attention to the tension.

Where in your body does life weigh heavy? Where is the rigidity and why is it there? What beliefs are you still clinging onto, and which ones have you outgrown?

We all have walls that we’ve unknowingly put up to protect the parts of us tender and soft. Find the walls, and you’ll find the door.

The real challenge begins there, in your hesitant hands resting on the knob.

To know, you must first not know.

My walls were layered in bricks of fear.

Each one an inherited idea of what being a good Asian woman looked like – a responsible daughter, a supportive sister, the glossy possibility of being an agreeable wife and a devoted mother.

These are all fine things to be, except it felt like too many roles to play, too many layers of skin I had to wear. I never felt like I was enough because I was always trying to meet some invisible expectation I conjured for myself.

But if not, then what?

At least in this fictitious world you’d have a fictitious role to play. At least you have a made-up goal to chase. I think most of us get stuck here. The idea of tearing down our world and restarting again is too scary to confront.

What was the point of that anyway? What lies on the other side? Is it worth finding out?

These are questions no one can answer for you. Only you can decide if it is an important discovery.

For me, life was never the same again after I watched my mum – thin to the bones, as she clung on to life. What was she holding onto that she was so afraid to let go of?

Her final months battling cancer rattled me.

At the end, her eyes were full of spirit. Perhaps it was precisely because it was all ending, that her bright eyes carried so much more – a desperate desire to live that I couldn’t comprehend.

So like a madman, I blasted off my walls and chose to continue the adventure I felt she had left behind for me. With all the courage I could muster, I pushed past the door, trusting that the only way to know, is to first not know.

Uncertainty is normal.

You survive uncertainty by stretching the rubber of your soul.

I am convinced that there is no other way.

My rigid ways were useless in the fog because there are no rules in this unknown. The usual laws of gravity didn’t apply. It was scary because the unknown carried the appeal of everything possible and the weight of nothing to be done, both at the same time.

I woke up daily to the confronting question of: Ok, now what?

I leaned into the things that made my eyes sparkle. I searched for hope everywhere I went, and each time I found a glimmer of light, I followed. Each time, it was coloured in a shade of what we all recognise – love.

I’d find it in the spirited eyes of those who worked with their hands, and feel it in the texture of air on my skin during a deep yoga practice. I reached for it in the depths of the ocean and chased it down in the speedy rush of my snowboard gliding against powder.

I stretched the corners of my heart wide open and allowed room for new ideas to form. For love to come, for love to leave.

A yoga teacher I had the privilege of studying under when I was in India said this to us: “The point of love is not to have, to attach or to own. Be grateful that love has a place to flow.”

There is generosity in a life like that. Generosity towards others, and generosity towards yourself. You will survive the sharp edges of our rigid world when you can allow life to flow.

Be rubber in the knowing that life might twist and turn, but you can bend and you will not break.

There’s always space.

Recently, I restarted a daily ashtanga mysore practice. It is tough and intense and some days, it feels really brutal. Today was one of those days.

As my teacher pulled me into a deep balancing lotus, he tapped the space between my folded knees as he remarked: “Find space here.”

I stared at my calf pressing tight against my thigh and all I could hear were my ankles screaming to be released. More space? What are you talking about? I didn’t know if I wanted to cry, or if I wanted to laugh.

“There’s no space.” I muttered in dejection.

Unfazed, he replied calmly: “There’s always space.”

And he was right.

A few seconds later, I found myself contorted into a shape I had been avoiding all year. Inside that deep compression, even when it didn’t seem possible, there it was.

There’s always space.

I am grateful for a few things today:

One, that I have this space – folded into this newsletter, delivered into your inboxes, on the blank digital canvas of this app – for my words to land.

Two, that I have yoga classes to teach. I repeat this like a broken recorder to my friends around me: it feels like such a miracle that since I have shared my interest to teach, I have found practitioners who want to be taught.

Both my words and my yoga practice do not belong to me.

The golden evening light of Singapore’s setting sun moves from the warmth on my chest, into the colour of my expressions. I am simply letting light pass through me, and I am glad (so glad!) that there are ready hands, open to receive.

Thank you for your kindness.

I am sweaty and sticky as I sprawl out under the bright blue skies by the beach, my lips pulled into an easy smile.

When you’re cold, all you can think about is being cold. There were times in winter where I could think of nothing but how the cold would bite at my bones each time I stepped out of my house. Today, flanked by coconut trees along the coast, I am grateful for the sun’s warmth and the ocean’s salt in my hair – this is one of my favourite things about experiencing life with seasons. After Hokkaido’s long and bitter winter, I no longer take the tropical island heat for granted.

Here, the wind pulls my spirit high, and the scent of a warmly pressed, fresh towel wrapped around me lifts me out of my heavy head.

I look out and the sky never ends. It is blue in a thousand shades, as far as the eye can see. I remember again, that life is big and full of possibilities.

I’ve spent a long winter dreaming of this trip, patiently yearning to be warm again. Now that I am here, I recognise what I’ve been waiting for.

My year has passed in a blur.

I’ve packed my life up in boxes only to unpack and repack them again. I moved across countries, between states, and around so many temporary homes both in Singapore and in Japan, that home is no longer a place in the world but a deep knowing in my bones.

Life threw me into one tumbling wave after another, and I barely held myself above everything that threatened to pull me under.

Now, I’ve somehow arrived at the midway point of 2026, and I feel like a different person than the one who started the year timid and worried.

Relax into life’s timing.

I have learnt that I can will myself to achieve many things, but I will always bow down to time. It tangoes to a dance I’m not sure we are ever meant to learn. We have no control over the timing of new arrivals or early departures, and that knowledge is as frustrating as it is humbling and freeing.

I can only peel my ears open and ready my legs for the walk. Life takes care of the rest – people are placed along our journeys in its divine time, opening new doors and inspiring fresh beginnings.

It might sound silly of me to say this with so much certainty, but I had a strong feeling that this trip would play out in a transformative way. I simply had to hold my palms open and arrive.

In the last week and a half, I was led into deep waters off the coast of Amed where I spent my days learning to hold my breath underwater. I had been pointed towards free diving serendipitously, and in it, I found something profound.

The timing of it all was eerily precise. The sport came to me right as I needed it, and I am lucky I was able to hear it call.

One breath is all you need.

In free diving, you dip yourself head-first into an upside-down underwater world. I’ve never really liked the ocean, but at 20-metres underwater, I discovered freedom.

The sport is deceivingly simple – you hold your breath and go deep. Except long breath-holds get painfully difficult and uncomfortable, and when you’re 20-metres underwater and nowhere near the surface, you are forced to confront yourself.

Surrounded by silence and the vast blue, your fears ring loud. Can I go even deeper? Do I have what it takes for another pull? Will I make it?

Your mind contends with survival as your body’s urge to breathe kicks in. Your heart races and your anxiety rises. Your diaphragm tugs against your belly – these are contractions, you later learn – eager for air.

Underwater, these split-second moments drag out into eternity. I searched for ease in the rubber between my seconds, and spent each dive looking desperately to escape my own skin.

But one dive led to the next and another. In that deep expanse, I found the reassuring gaze of my coaches and leaned into their stories of surrender.

Then like clockwork, I arrived into mine.

Something strong, some place firm, someone unyielding.

In the gap between my last breath and the next, I met myself empty. There was nothing to be, no more to do and no one to please. Everything that I need I already have.

Pull. A voice echoes, quietly at first. Kick. She instructs with a certainty I don’t question.

Then on my final 24-metre requirement dive, I hear her unmistakably. Her voice familiar and resolute, loud in my ears as I tug, every pull taking me deeper into the abyss. It was mum.

I am with you. Always.

My fears melted away as I kicked for the surface, feeling her close to me, pounding against my chest. I break the surface and gasp for air. Adrenaline pulses through every cell in my body as I burst with glee.

I am alive. Very much so.

I am wrapping up this entry on my final evening of this 3-week trip, hidden away in Bali’s misty volcano mountains. For four days, I have done nothing but write and still and steady. I’ve moved well, eaten well and slept well, and I am ready for what lies ahead.

Because from here, life becomes uncertain again.

I will return to Japan in July, and where I go from there, I don’t really know. Will new jobs roll in? Will I be able to chip away at the little dreams I am hoping to realise? Will I meet more people who will point the way forward? Will this all work out?

I hope so. I trust so.

Whatever it is, I will hold my spirits high, my chest soft and my belly full of fire. These are the lessons I carry with me from the ocean.

If a single breath can get me so far, I wonder what might unfold when I fully commit.

I have a small announcement to tease: I am working on something exciting! I have taken a little leap and a proper first stab at my dreams, and it involves a small space where more of us can gather in Japan.

Updates to come! You’ll be the first to know.

Thank you as always, for keeping me company as I pack you along for the ride.

I was riding home on my scooter last night when I realised that somewhere along the way, I’ve gotten used to the dark.

Every day, my ride back to my one-week home in Amed takes me through a narrow little alley before spitting me out into a quaint little wooden cabin by the sea. Here, it is quiet and there is no one. I am a 10-minute ride away from town, nestled between the mountains and the sea.

The first night I stayed here, I had no neighbours. I arrived into darkness, each hut pitch-black and empty except for mine. After I was shown to my room, the homestay owner rode off, leaving me alone in the middle of what felt like nowhere.

That night, I crawled into bed and curled onto my sides. I closed my eyes and felt a familiar pang of loneliness tug at my chest, its pull heavy and sad.

We can’t run from our shadows.

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt this way.

The past few months have passed in a blur – I’ve busied myself with the preparations of a new chapter, and chasing down a new beginning has been a tiring but welcome distraction. My eager hands gave me a lot to do, and for months, I simply followed its flow.

I was propelled by the momentum of an uncertain life and I just kept it up, doing one thing and then the next. My life, my work, my day-to-day chores – tick, tick, tick.

But life catches up with you, it always does. It hits you when you least expect it to. The longer you go without a proper pause, the bigger the withdrawal when it comes. Loneliness is the dreadful aftertaste of numbing yourself away from yourself.

It’s the feeling of returning to a cold, empty house after a summer vacation spent hopping from one island to the next, chasing one sunset after the last. It is the crash you feel when the high of reaching the summit fades, the empty drop in your gut when you are left hanging between what’s done and what’s next.

Now that I got myself here, where do I go?

Some of us climb out of one hamster wheel only to crawl into another. We find ourselves the next peak to summit, the next person to love, the next beautiful thing we must own. We’ll be happy once we get it, we tell ourselves. But then we get there and that same crushing feeling pulls the rug out from under us in the middle of the night, and we’re back to where we were again.

Another mountain, another hamster wheel, another hazy desire that leaves us emptier than the last.

Don’t be afraid of the dark.

I can say this now, but I used to be deathly afraid of the dark.

I grew up in a noisy, happy home. I didn’t have to befriend the dark because I never needed to. There was always someone to eat with, someone to bicker with, someone to distract from the quiet of the night.

Then I grew up.

I moved countries, I lived alone, I went through heartbreaks and grieved the loss of people I still love. I tried to run – I drank, I partied, I busied myself into exhaustion just so I didn’t have to face it all.

But how much farther will you go until you realise that what you’re running from lives inside you? Beneath all that exhilaration was just more darkness, lurking in the corner.

At some point, we have to unpack the baggage we’ve unknowingly carried into our adult years. We have to lighten the load.

No one enjoys being left out in the dark, but we can learn the way our waters wash up on our shores at night, and look out instead for the distant shimmer of the night sky. If we just stay with our shadows, like really stay with it and feel it pull, its grip on us will soften and come loose.

Our tears will dry, our breath will steady, and our chest will find its lift once more.

In the same way that the sun must make way for the moon, our shadows will disappear in the light. No bad feeling holds a permanent weight over us and everything will pass.

Our nights will eventually give way to the day. Find comfort in this natural law of life.

Navigate through hope.

When people ask me if I am happy, I reply with something even better: I am hopeful.

I used to think I left my old life behind in search for joy, happiness or contentment. But somewhere along the way, I realised that I didn’t want to spend my days chasing down a fleeting high. These feel-good emotions are nice to have, but they are often not within our control.

They are what I call outcome-emotions. The danger is that joy is addictive but it is not designed to last. If we only want to feel good, then all we’d have is another another chase. We’re always reaching for the next thing that promises fullness, only to find ourselves empty again.

I don’t care for the carrot of this elusive high dangling before my nose, there for a cheeky taste but never quite for me to have. I’m not saying don’t be happy – I am saying don’t live in search of happy. Let happy come.

That’s why I cling to hope. Hope is different.

Hope is quieter and steadier, a gentle flame that is warm in the dark. It is there with you in the hunger. It is there on the good days, and it is there on the bad. Hope bubbles when we must stew in the dark.

And the good news? If you’ve lost it along the way, it can be found again.

Look for it in wonder. Find it in stillness. Seek it out in the things and people you love. Navigate life through the language of curiosity, and hope will never be far.

Even on my worst days, I am hopeful. That is how I know I will be okay.

The maps we need in our lives will never be hidden in places we cannot find. They are there, shimmering under the moonlight, waiting for us, asking to be seen.

When you navigate with hope, there is no destination demanding your arrival. There’s only the single step ahead of you unfolding into a path. Trust your steady steps and cling to its light.

Hope will get you far.

How are you?

Can you believe we’re almost six months into the year? It’s scary how fast time passes – I hope your year has been going good.

I am smiling again, my chest is light and my breath is easy. Being by the vast ocean, warm and sticky under this Bali heat has been a much needed respite. I’ve spent the last week taking free diving courses, and it has been such a profound experience for my mind, body and soul. I am glad I made the decisions that led me here.

Small announcement:

I’ve really missed teaching yoga, and so I’ve teamed up with one of my favourite little boutique studios, Fang Studio, to offer weekly classes in the month of June when I am back in Singapore.

All classes are multi-leveled, but if you’re trying out yoga for the first time, I’d encourage you to come for the yin-yang class to start.

Class-sizes are deliberately kept small, and the studio is located at Pearl’s Hill Terrace, just off the busy streets of Chinatown. I hope to meet more of you on the mats before I leave again for Japan in July 🫶🏼

Single drop-ins: $22/ spot
4-class pack (shareable with 1 friend): $18/ spot

Reservations can be made anywhere. Drop me a message!

My mind is light as it sways to the gentle rock of the hammock in the breeze. My eyes are closed, and the world is golden behind my lids. I try to ignore the distant screech of someone drilling through metal from a construction site and focus instead on the sound of water moving through a nearby water feature.

It works. My knees curl into my chest and I sink heavy into the ropes holding me off the ground. Finally, I am catching my breath again.

Here, it is easy to absorb into a flurry of lunches, coffees, dinners and drinks. There is always something to do, some errand to run or someone to meet. Singapore keeps humming, all day long. Even in the night, the city never sleeps.

This is my longest trip back to Singapore after close to six months in Japan, and the plan was just to go with the flow. I wanted to say yes to all that life presents – after all, it’s been awhile. Maybe I am a different person now, maybe I am able to hum my own tune, and maybe I can hold my pace better in a city that wants to pulse fast.

There is a kind of exhaustion that lights you up and keeps you hopeful. The kind that I’ve been lucky enough to experience in the last two months, exhaustion from working hard at the things you love.

You hit your bed, excited for a brand new day.

But there is also exhaustion of a different kind – the kind that drains you quietly. Your battery leaking out to a flurry of background activities and before you know it, you’ve gone flat and you don’t know why.

There is no perfect pace.

This place I call home is lined with greens of a million shades, filled with familiar faces I look forward to seeing every time. On Saturday evenings, my big family gathers over a long table that is never long enough to accommodate all of us, all at once.

We take turns to eat and share in conversations that are loud and hearty. There is always warm food on the table, always a silly story to laugh at.

My aunts have nurtured a warm home by keeping their doors open to us week after week, ever since I was a young child fighting with my cousins over toys we had to share.

In this house, love is never in short supply.

I step through the doors and I am immediately wrapped in generosity. To be loved in my family is to be held in firm hands and to be fiercely believed in, even when they do not understand why you’re doing what you do.

I was brought up by these matriarchs who each play a role in holding us together – my oldest aunt cooks while another hosts. My younger aunt is a glue, keeping conversations alive while my only oldest uncle busies in the shadows, making sure the rooms are lit and the fans continue to spin.

Over dinner, I am surrounded by a table of sisters who share the same bright, spirited eyes my mum has. We all miss her, her absence remembered in the stories we exchange.

I am lucky to grow up in a family where love never runs dry. It is a free flowing abundance passed along from aunt to aunt, brother to sister, wife to husband, parent to child.

They are the reason I never have to ration my adoration for the world and its wonders. It is here, there and everywhere within our walls. There is enough for everyone.

“I want you to be happy.”

That was the first thing a close aunt said to me when we caught up, her words exactly mirroring my mum’s. These words are familiar, worries once uttered softly between my mum’s parted lips. Tears sprung into both of our eyes immediately, warmth I know so clearly, so deeply.

It is hard to be in a Singapore that is void of my mum. There are so many things I want to tell her. I still miss how she’d get upset with me over things we’d disagree on, how we’d both simmer in the heat of an argument before quickly laughing over it again.

I think we only figured out how to be in each other’s company later on in life, and I wish we had more time to enjoy that easy rhythm where things began to make more sense, where we could sit down to discuss life’s big questions.

Sometimes I’d get angry.

Why did you not warn me that losing you would be so hard?
Why didn’t you prepare me better for this?

I remember once asking her, “When did you finally stop missing your mum?”

“I never did,” She said simply.

“Come visit me at the crematorium often, like what I do when I miss your ah po.”

My mum prepared me for a world without her by surrounding us with people who aren’t stingy with their affection. It only hurts that I cannot cling on to the shape of her, but I try not to forget that in return, I get to remember her in awe, in wonder and in love.

Grief doesn’t get easier, but it becomes less of a stranger.

I think you never finish feeling the pain of losing someone you love, but you learn to recognise its gloom when it makes an unexpected visit.

Today is Mother’s Day, and it is the fourth one celebrating my mum without her hands in mine.

Along these city streets, I see posters on walls promoting mum-daughter events. I catch myself in envy, wishing I had a mother I could attend these things with. It feels unfair, that I had to lose her to know her. That death carries a permanence I still cannot fathom.

Walking through these narrow alleys, there is no distance between me and my grief. I find myself all of a sudden inconveniently squished into a tiny room with the ache of missing someone I love dearly.

But I do what I know to do. I write. I talk about my mum. I stubbornly celebrate her life, so that its weight cannot harden inside me.

Through these stories, pain softens into goo, flowing freely from my eyes, my heart, my soul.

Today, the sun hangs high and the skies are a bright shade of blue. In this radiance, the leaves turn a vivid shade of yellow and green, the colour of hope. It is hard to stay sulky when the weather is determined to cheer you on.

I turn my face up to the expanse beaming down on us and I feel her, warm like the sun shining on my skin, buoyant as it holds me in these moving waters, tender in the kiss of a gentle breeze passing through my fingers.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mama.

I love you and I miss you. Always, always, always.

I wake up to a final morning in the house I’ve called home for 29 years, and I feel my chest sink. Today, I woke up wishing I didn’t always feel this much.

I peel myself off my sheets and sit up, taking in the view of the big old tree outside my room. Its branches like arms – far reaching, extending beyond my windows. From here, I can see squirrels running along the skin of its bark. If I squint hard enough, I think I can see it breathe.

I close my eyes and take in the morning songs of my neighbourhood. Birds singing as they soar across the soft, pink skies. Leaves fluttering in the breeze, yellow and green as they catch the orange glow of the morning sun.

I make myself one last cup of coffee and take it to my room. It is empty, so I hold the cup, warm between my hands, and sit down on the wooden floorboards, staring out at the greens and yellows and reds and pinks beyond.

I see my family in every corner of this house. My brothers and I running through the corridor. The punches we threw as we fought over the different TV shows we wanted to watch, the different computer games we wanted to play.

I’ve stayed here long enough to recognise where the different scuff marks on our floor and our walls come from. I can hear my mum’s incessant nagging in the water stains I see on the wooden countertop. In the shadows, I feel her. Memories of her lingering in the steadiness of these walls, a force holding down everything that shivers and shakes now that she is gone.

I take a final look at this two-storied home.

One last time, watching the way light streams in through its windows, casting shadows across every room. I think about my parents 31 years ago, holding three kids as they walked into this home on their very first day.

How excited they must have been for the life that lay ahead. A house, a family. Three babies with big lives ahead of them. How proud they must have been to own a place they could dream in.

I am lucky to have grown up in steadiness and stability. To breathe predictability in abundance and to be sheltered under the protection of parents who valued an environment of safety and security in raising three young children.

Maybe that is what makes saying goodbye so hard.

It is not that I want to live here forever or cling on to these walls irrationally. I am only sad because I know I am not just saying goodbye to concrete walls and ceramic tiles. I am also waving away a younger version of myself, the one who never took any risks because she never had to take any risks.

I will miss this house because it is the only one I’ve ever known. The house and my life were one steady, stable and unchanging thing, but things are different now and life is not the same.

I was a baby when I was first carried through these doors. I walk away today as an adult holding my life in my own two hands.

I keep my heart open and shoulders soft as I close down this long chapter of love and loss – releasing the people who have gone, unbuckling painful memories invisibly wrapped around my chest, freeing myself from these old stories so I can write new ones.

In a few hours, we will handover our keys. Our house will be home to a new, young family. A teenager will take over my bedroom and this space will hold a different girl with different dreams.

There will be new life, in here and out there, and where there is life, there is hope.

Towards hope is the path I shall always follow.

My coffee is finished and the music of the morning has stopped. I close the windows and draw the curtains behind me. My taxi arrives, and with the last of my belongings the car turns down these familiar streets I can walk with my eyes closed.

I feel an urge to cry, but no more tears arrive.

It is a heavy day but I am lucky. Very lucky.

Before I go, I wanted to leave a short note here to share about the gathering I held last Saturday under my favourite big old tree, ten strangers held together on the front porch of my childhood home.

The universe has a funny way of bringing together people who need to meet, and in our whimsy unison, we were nourished with new ideas, perspectives and energy that added colour to the inner walls I carry within.

It was a bright and special day, a little dream come true.

To the eight strangers-turned-friends and my two best friends who never hesitate to support me in my endeavours, thank you for helping me pull this off.

To many more!

I wanted to pop my head into your inbox to say hi.

Time real…

Read more

At four in the morning, an announcement rings over the speakers. We’ve arrived at our destination port in Hokkaido. I am still groggy as I peek out of the window to see the sun rising over the Japanese seas.

Another day begins, another season awaits.

I am back in Hokkaido, where the air is still cold and it still feels like winter. Here, there is no sakura in sight. Spring is still waiting around the edges, in the way the sun lingers longer in the skies and the sight of fresh green sprouts poking through the ground.

In the three weeks I was away, I zoomed around in my van, looking for stories to tell.

Between planning daily driving schedules, prepping for shoots, file wrangling, handling budgets and filming, I even managed to get myself showered and fed every single day. All on my own, with barely any tears shed (except the one night I really missed mum).

There were days it felt like too much to handle, but sometimes you surprise yourself with how much you can do alone when you’re doing something you truly love.

In my search for stories, I found spirit – the very spirit I was drawn to two years ago when I left Singapore. This very spirit reminds me why I’ve continued to stay out here.

I do it for life I get to see, teeming in the shine of someone’s eyes, hands warm, hearts open.

Farmers who live in harmony with the way earth pulls and shifts over its grounds. Craftsmen roaring with steady passion, their hands moving over their chest as they speak, as if holding together what is overflowing.

This world feels more liveable when I am sharing in the company of others who see life in its varied shades and colours.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

If chapter one of this adventure began when I left Singapore two years ago, and chapter two started when I took on a full-time job in Niseko, then this is chapter three. Where everything restarts again.

On my bad days, I feel like I’ve ruined everything.

Have I thrown my life away? I land on that thought and quickly silence it. It feels silly to sulk over the very choices I’ve made in search of a life I want.

I traded my steady future for something foggy and unclear. I live alone, I don’t have many friends here, a job or even a place to stay in right now. I don’t want to exaggerate and say I’ve got nothing out here, but I don’t have much.

It doesn’t make sense to still be here. And yet, somehow it does.

Because when someone asks me, “Where is home?”, my finger hesitates between two islands and then hovers over my chest. It’s in here.

I think back to the time in my twenties when I had certainty, when I had steady shelter and work. When I never had to worry about modern comforts, but still went home empty. I had a life, but it wasn’t mine.

I look around me now.

My life is packed down into a little van. I brush my teeth in a public toilet, squatting over camp grounds as I make myself lunch. My daily worries shuffle between charging ports and parking spots. Alone, there is so much more to do. My days hold together, barely, but just enough so it doesn’t fall apart.

Just enough – that’s what I have.

And maybe that is where the magic lies. When you’re not greedy for more or worried about less, you find yourself in momentary bliss, because things are right where they need to be.

Chapter three.

I am still scared. Still terrified.

I have recurring dreams of me running, chasing, wanting. But I try to remind myself that this state doesn’t last forever. Not the uncertainty nor the blissfulness, because nothing alive freezes in permanence.

I am building again, working on ideas and planting roots in places. My two eager hands are busy, determined to shape something meaningful. It will take time, but I try to remember that I am not in a hurry.

If this is chapter three, then chapter three begins from the centre of my heart.

The centre of my heart is tender and soft, while all at once steady and strong. From skin to muscle to brain to soul, I am striding to a rhythm from beyond. With just enough, I am bonded to my path unfolding in all its strange and unexpected ways.

It is comfort I can return to after a stormy day, in joy or in sorrow. I can take myself places, to go where it is terrifying to venture. I can hop in little leaps at first, knowing I am still in preparation for bigger ones.

I look down at my feet and I see muscles where there once was none. I trust that no matter how far I fall, I will find landing in the centre of where I still stand.

There is newfound grittiness in a determination like that, and I am hopeful for the distance I can go with two laboured legs, ready to walk.

Two weeks ago, I moved out of my staff housing and into a friend’s riverside cottage for a few days, where we worked together to build out my little van. Then I left on a two-day ferry from Hokkaido to Nagoya, and when I woke up, I was spat out into the warm sunshine of spring.

Here, flowers have begun to bloom and young spring greens have started shooting out from the ground. Spring’s miracles. Did you know that in winter, even under the biting cold and all that snow, these plants and shrubs continue to breathe underground?

Spring is confirmation that there’s growth even when no one else sees it.

Naked to the eyes, nature turns its attention to its roots, invisibly expanding and drinking and growing and readying itself to bloom.

Then with the combined miracle of sun and rain and warmth, its leaves unfurl and its petals peel open. We tend to celebrate its blossoming, to see it colour and shine in new light, but we mustn’t forget that that it had first laboured in the dark, stubbornly deciding it will not give out to the cold.

It’s been a week since I’ve witnessed spring in its becoming from my little van.

I still remember when I dreamt up the idea of having this story mobile. I’d be able to move around from spot to spot, meet people, make stories, spend my days writing, shooting, editing. It felt like what I needed to do.

But how would I do it?

I don’t know carpentry. I don’t have the tools to build it. I can’t speak well enough to ask for help. What about the cold? How would I stay warm? Where would I sleep?

Then a friend reminded me, you just haven’t met the person who will help you.

As it turns out, I had already met the carpenter who would help me. I just didn’t know it yet.

He had displayed his personal handcrafted snow surf at a woodcraft market months earlier, next to a few laminated information sheets written entirely in Japanese.

Without knowing why then, I spent time translating everything he wrote, and I took photos of every single laminated sheet. To remember, maybe. Because in his writing I had sensed soul. He wasn’t just building to build. There was something more.

Or maybe I had already known, that our paths would eventually cross.

But I forgot about it, until I remembered again.

My invisible ideas with its roots, quietly reaching, drinking and working in the dark. Waiting for the right conditions to bloom.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of cars pulling up next to mine. Doors opening, a thud as it closes. Footsteps fading into the distance. The ocean howling beyond.

I curl and stretch and blink my eyes open. The morning sun hung low across the waters, its golden light streaming through my makeshift curtain, warm on my skin. Through my blinds, I see a surfer stepping into the sea, ready for his morning play.

The sight of someone eager to feel alive at six in the morning makes me feel less alone. I smile and roll myself out of bed.

I know the feeling of waiting in the dark.

It wraps around me in the quiet before sleep. I felt it last night and the night before and in the many nights since I’ve decided to leave my old life behind. It is felt in the gap of being known – by the people around me, by the world or maybe more frustratingly, by myself. The unknown carries a blur of loneliness and aloneness; where one starts and the other ends is never so clear.

Still, you feel it. All of it.

Heaviness in the way it blinds you to light. Lightness in the way it draws you towards yourself. Brightness when you catch its momentary sparkle, pulse racing, heart beating, hopeful for the life you can almost feel in your hands.

Out here on my drive, joy has a taste on my tongue and texture on my skin.

I stare out of the windows and the world invites me in with its arms wide open. I wind through mountain roads with its greens and pinks and reds and browns. I gaze up at the skies, broad and blue. I sway to the music of birds singing in the rain. I feel its wind pull through my hair and taste rain on my lips. I stop curbside in the middle of nowhere to watch in stillness as mountain fog rolls through its valleys.

Within this 1.5 x 4 metre rectangle, I have a home that is fuelled by wonder.

It is small but its inconveniences have given me rhythm. I am always playing a tetris game of packing and unpacking, storing and securing. I lose my things, only to find them later when they want to be found.

In here, I cook. I clean. I write. I drive. I sleep. I read. I dream.

Home is a place I can dream in.

Every morning, I make myself coffee and its fragrance takes me to a different place. I look out at the ocean and at the mountains and at the people, and I dream with my eyes wide open.

My morning cup so full with imagination, I am bursting open with life.

In an interview I did with a zen priest last week, he said: “Without imagination, your life is only half-lived.”

A life half-lived. I thought about that for many moments after.

The tea we drink, only half as good without the imagined hands of a farmer that picked its leaves, or the attentiveness of the person who brewed the tea. The udon I slurped down at seven in the morning, made with a fervour I could almost taste – two young men busy without a break, up since the crack of dawn to feed hungry labourers before their work day begins.

Keep your imagination. Stoke your dreams like wood to fire. Stay awake, and stay alive.

I drove 400km and six hours yesterday to get myself down to Shikoku.

I was hesitant about the drive for days. Do I really want to go all the way down? Should I? I wanted to go visit the papermakers who fed my soul when it was starved of life. I’ve been back thrice now, and I wanted to go back again, though I can’t be sure exactly why.

Then the words of an old friend came to mind: “The time will pass anyway. You might as well use it to do something that you actually want to do. Something meaningful.”

In the month since I left my work, my life has unraveled at a speed that I haven’t known in the last two years. It’s been messy, beautiful, frustrating, confusing, scary and exciting, all at the same time.

The last time I was this tired, it took me two years of doing nothing to find myself again.

Back then, stillness felt like standing in quicksand, my legs locked in one spot, the ground swallowing me whole. Movement only made it worse. I pulled against the mud, fell and fought the stickiness of the ground until I drained out completely.

In that quicksand pit, I lost hope. And if I am being honest, I am worried that the currents are leading me there again.

But I don’t want to be scared of life, and I don’t want to be afraid of doing hard things.

Breathe.

I remember that I now draw from a well of steadiness. I am grateful to have a destination, and for a weathered maturity that knows to take a step back when needed.

This meandering, messy journey is the point.

I look back at little me, doe-eyed and afraid, and I want to call out to her.

I want to comfort her, to tell her: Let it go. Sink. If the ground beneath you loosens, follow. You will learn to swim in the mud. Your eyes will adjust to the dark. Your breath will surprise you underground.

The time will pass anyway. I hear it echo again.

Beyond these pages…

1. The Unstuck Project: One-Day Only

I will be back in Singapore for a month (mid April - mid May) and I am hosting a one day pop-up, supported by my dear friend, Denise, who will be feeding our bellies through the session with slowly and thoughtfully made food.

Throughout the day, we will take time to observe breath, body, mind and soul. We will practice habits of curiosity. We will learn to see without judgement, and spend time together to find our expressions.

It will be held in my Singapore home by the forest, and I’d love to share that space with you. I don’t know when I will have the chance again. (My family is moving out!)

What to expect.

The day starts with tea and morning yoga, followed by breakfast and a slow forest walk. In between, we will find quiet time to journal, have lunch, chat and explore our own expressions.

You’re welcome to bring your own art tools for expression.

Why this? Why now?

I used to be so anxious and rigid in the way I lived. I always had a plan, and I suffocated it with my tight grip.

When I started working with my body and my breath, everything loosened. In nature, I learnt to see the forest breathe, I took time to swim with my words. I listened to my voice and allowed it to speak. Food tasted better, my world felt warmer and my heaviness became lighter.

My practice with movement and expression is a constant well of inspiration, tools I reach for to untangle the endless workings of my mind.

And I thought it’d be fun to share that with you.

Who is this for?

Maybe you’re in the middle of a transition. Maybe you’re trying to find lightness in your day. Maybe you just want to move and eat and share in the company of like-minds.

This is for anyone who needs a bit of a breather.

When?

25 April, 8.30AM - 4PM.

$115/ person. Paid subscribers get $10 off.

Drop me a message or reply my email to reserve your spot. Limited spots available.

2. A Slow Zine: Issue 03

In the bustle of everything going on in my life, issue 03 is in the making!

This time, I was inspired by the idea of becoming, and I share the story of my carpenter-turned-friend, Keita. (Hah I know, another Keita! It isn’t planned.)

I am excited for this story to reach your hands. My inbox is always open to your feedback, and if you’d like to receive this zine, join the mail club as a paid subscriber.

I thought I was finished with this entry but I am called to leave you with these words that have been looping in my mind over the last few days. It says:

Don’t be too precious with yourself.

Not with your ideas, your work, your shame, your love or your affection. Not with your possessions, your fears, your ambitions or your desires.

Don’t be afraid of getting yourself dirty, of scars on your face or pimples on your skin.

What lies inside your manicured life is a life that wants to live. And it must hurt, it must dirty, it must mar and roughen.

Don’t be too precious about life at all.

I hope everyone is well. As always, thank you for being here.

I’ll see you in the next one.

Outside, flaps on the aircraft wings swing up like clockwork and the entire plane roars alive with the sound of wind against metal, sending us into a groaning halt. Over the music playing in my ears, I hear the PA system rattle alive. To all fellow Singaporeans, welcome home.

I feel an unexpected tingle in my chest draw through my fingers and down to my toes. My brows softened and my shoulders relaxed. I was smiling. Home is a place inside me, but maybe it is also a country I can come back to.

Sitting in that plane, I felt like I was riding in a time capsule.

For the first time in 10 years, I was coming back to a Singapore without a partner.

I was not arriving to the once-familiar anticipation from a lover, nobody waiting for me on the other side of those glass doors. No adrenaline-charged hugs or kisses. No eager reunions.

I had left Singapore feeling like an overgrown child, and now I boarded the plane wearing my new adult skin. My life in Japan has sanded down and sharpened the blurred edges of my younger years, and I wondered what I’d find on the other side of this 9-hour long plane ride.

Would home feel unfamiliar? That thought had made me nervous.

As I walked off the plane, I toggled with my phone and checked my notifications. Nothing. I’ve landed in silence at four in the morning.

Am I sad? Instinctively, I scanned my body for tension. To my surprise, I didn’t find any. I was completely relaxed. I felt a slow, quiet glee pool on the inside and buzz through my veins. I was walking, but I could barely feel the ground under my feet. Was I floating? I looked down at my legs to check.

I really am crazy. I chuckled, giddy with glee as I headed to the gates.

I paid a price for this freedom. But in return, I’ve gained something truly priceless. Self-trust. Tolerance. Patience. A sense of deep assurance that my path is unfolding as it is meant to, no matter how meandering and confusing it might feel in the moment.

My phone buzzes in my hands. We’re here. My brother and sister-in-law had offered to pick me up from the airport without me asking, and I am again reminded that love presents itself in many different ways.

In the quiet of the morning, these moments are harder to miss.

My brother meets me by his car and I hold him in a tight embrace. I am loved, cherished and remembered by those I hold dear. It may be a small gesture, but it’s enough to make me feel like the luckiest person alive.

After a short drive, I am dropped off outside my childhood home, the place I spent 29 years of my life growing up in.

I’ve seen my brothers drive away from our house a thousand times, but this morning as I watched him leave, I thought I saw the shadow of our younger selves take off with him. The chaos of three siblings growing up together, fighting and squabbling, riding off in the backseat of his sedan.

In the blink of an eye, we’ve all become our own people.

Now they are fathers and husbands, returning to their children, their homes, their families. I am warmed by the sentiment and all at once nostalgic for the years we shared together under one roof.

There was never a dull day in our house. It was always noisy, always warm. I still miss that chaos.

I turned back now, squinting at our house through the dim moonlight. Green paint peeling off the gates, the house quiet but not dead. Not just yet. It still pulsed and breathed. It still felt like home.

I stepped in through its doors.

Inside, our house had begun to empty out. I could see markings on the tiles where cabinets and sofas were once placed. Our lives here packed away into plastic storage boxes waiting to be moved. It’s been awhile since anyone stayed here and it shows. Beneath my feet, I collected a thin layer of dust as I made my way to my room.

When you live a life split between two homes, it’s hard to maintain the rooms the way you want to. The mess from my last departure was now combined with the clutter of random bits and bops from other rooms that were getting packed away.

Still, I see the outlines of where I once was.

The art on the walls, the scratches on the door, the stack of books by my bedside, waiting to be thumbed through and read.

I set myself up quickly and crawled into bed, exhausted now. Sleep came quickly, comforted by the walls that breathed familiar air into me.

A mystical morning.

I wake up to the sound of birds singing. Outside my room, the leaves of a big, old tree rustle in the morning breeze. My curtains lift in the wind and the subtle fragrance of the forest’s fresh morning dew drifts into my bedroom.

I am between dream and reality. Weightless and suspended, while all at once held. I am connected to the scapes beyond, floating with my eyes closed. I don’t believe in magic, and yet I feel so close to it. Magic.

Eventually, I pulled myself out of bed, compelled to greet the large tree beyond my window. This tree I’ve spent most of my life waking up to. The tree that comes to me in my dreams and in stillness when I am alone. Strong and sturdy, sharing a life with me through my window.

It’s seen so much – the intimacies of a quiet night, my younger years spent laughing and crying, chatting in secret with childhood crushes over the phone, the silent frustrations of becoming, weathered alone behind closed doors.

I’ve always felt a special connection with trees, and maybe it began right here. With this tree watching over me, breathing into me, holding me gently.

Will we really be selling our home? I gazed out at the tree, as if looking for an answer. The tree does not respond, it simply holds the air between us steady, its greens twinkling in the morning sun. I sigh as I nod. It is what it is.

As I sat by my window, I held my palms soft and open.

It is just a house, I try to comfort myself. Except it doesn’t feel that way.

This house holds the lives we’ve lived, with our memories baked into its walls. The forest around us, an extension of home. It has sung us melodies, rocked us to sleep, and soothed us awake. Within these walls, I am safe. I am the kid lying in bed holding my mum’s hands, falling asleep to her slow, easy breaths next to mine.

I move my hand to my heart and allow myself grace. It feels dumb to grieve these concrete walls. Irrational. Dramatic. But I can’t help it. This house is more than just four walls and a roof over my head.

I have continued to linger in my rooms untouched, in the books and clothes and all the pottery I still cling onto, so afraid that I too, will disappear if this goes. What else would I have left in Singapore? Who am I if I lose this too?

I look around again and the house is almost empty now. A new chapter is waiting for me out there, and I am so full with life teeming in my hands. I don’t want to, but I have to flip the page.

I was so busy preparing myself for a Singapore that felt unfamiliar, I forgot that I was also about to leave behind a place that still feels like home.

Two days later, with my backpack on my shoulders, I walk myself out of the gates and this time, I don’t look back.

Sometimes I wish I was less. That I’d feel less, and want less. So that life can simply slide off my shoulders and not attach itself to my skin.

But I am merely human in my experience, learning how to live.

My belonging is and will always be a shifting definition – I am not one place, one person, one idea, one shape, one room, one job or one wall. I am something, someplace, someone and somewhere within. I am nourished in the delicate balance between past and present, fear and courage, joy and grief, desire and peace.

And hidden somewhere in this in-between, is my search for a new home. A place to house all that I am unfolding into. A place within and also without. Will I find it?

I gaze up at that big old tree as I leave, its branches spreading wide and far against the dim night sky. Beneath it, I am still and steady again.

I’m not going anywhere, it seemed to say.

My vision blurred with fresh tears. I whispered a silent gratitude for the unshakeable presence of this steady force. I pressed my eyes tight in a selfish prayer, embarrassed to want but desperate enough to plead.

Thank you. Yes. Please.

Stay.

My humble home with its creaky doors that won’t shut fully, wallpaper peeling off the walls, morning light squeezing in through old floral curtains left behind from the grandma who once slept on the mattress I now lay my head on.

I sat still for a moment to take it all in.

It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks – leaving my job also meant losing a roof over my head, bidding farewell to the loose community of co-workers I shared my life with over the last year, and the imagined stability of a steady, quiet life here.

It was my choice to take this step out into uncertainty again, but that doesn’t make it an easy one. I surprised myself when I teared up, riddled with anxiety, while sharing the change with some friends over dinner.

I remembered then, that a decision can feel right, but also be scary and hazy at the same time.

After all, I am out here alone.

I don’t speak the language well. I don’t know who to call when I need a mechanic, a plumber or a contractor. I am hesitant to leave the world I’ve outgrown because I see the mountains ahead and I am worried.

I don’t just want to muscle my way through the terrain. I want to sing and dance along the way, I want to lie in the grass and feel the ground tickle my skin. I want to be shared in the company of those who find similar comforts. I want to feel my pulse and run its melody through my veins.

Standing here at the edge of a new beginning, I worry this is all too much to want.

What wisdoms will my body teach me today?

Back in my room, I glanced at my clock. Time to get to yoga.

Yoga started as a physical practice for me. For an hour every week, I’d set my life aside and move. It was the only thing that could silence my busy mind, and so I kept returning.

The yoga mat is a microcosm of the world around us. Within these four corners of rubber, I am held against a mirror I cannot run from.

How do I react to challenges? Where is the resistance and what does it say? How do I move through discomfort and ease? Am I still holding on to tension I need to release?

As I flow, I turn my attention to the expanse between each cell on my skin, its hairs brushing against air, the textures of the room touching me through movement, energy rising, light and spacious between my limbs.

I twist and bend, jump and land.

Recently, I’ve been working on going upside down again. Handstands, forearm balances, arm balances.

I have attempted these movements enough times to know that I have hit a wall in expressing these shapes because I am genuinely afraid to fall.

Each time I approach the sequence, my mind enters a negotiation with my body.

If you don’t try, it will never happen.
But will I be able to catch myself mid-air?
What if I fall?
What if I fly?

Today, an agreement was reached fairly quickly.

Go for it. Don’t hold back.

I readied my breath to leap. A string of familiar words came to mind.

“Forget about fear. You may only fall on the floor, not beyond. In the future there is fear. In the present there is no fear.” - B.K.S Iyengar, Light on Life

Inhale. My mind goes empty. And then I hop. Hips light, weight in my palms, my shoulders broad, core tight. Each part moving, searching, steadying, hoping to find a click. But it doesn’t come. I’m falling.

Panic exists only in the microsecond between realisation and reality. Then I land. I am on my feet in a back bend and I think to myself: Oh, so this is what happens when I fall.

I had imagined breaking my back, or contorting my shoulders in some awkward position. But this? This is fine. No, this is better than fine, this is fun.

In the studio, I hear light laughter. No one over worries. I feel myself smile. Pride and relief washes over me. Good job! I hear my teacher say. Another regular student claps for me. Well done!

Here, falling is natural and life is light.

I often forget that I need to tolerate the embarrassment of being bad at something, in order to get good at it. Why did I expect to be good at something I’ve never done? What else has perfection stopped me from going for?

Stop waiting to make a perfect choice.

I came to Japan with nothing but a vague idea of the person I aspired to be. I was grateful for an imperfect room, an imperfect kitchen, an imperfect job and an imperfect life.

Everything in my life is a series of imperfect decisions and imperfect attempts. I don’t have all the answers but I have enough to keep doing the next thing.

The next thing leads to another, which leads to another.

My imperfect days snowball and all of a sudden I have a life in countryside Japan where I can smell the forest and wake up to fresh air on my skin.

I am once again reminded that life falls into place when you lean into it.

Since leaving my job, my world has again opened up in wonderful, miraculous ways.

I didn’t see that I had a community here until I let people in. A small circle of friends have held me up and supported my choices. Those who can, have offered me work, some have generously introduced me to their network, while others have comforted me through companionship and conversations.

Sometimes I wake up in panic, feeling like a clueless child bluffing her way through adult life. I am still far from the woman I hope to be. I try too hard, I sing too loud and I talk too fast. I am awkward as I navigate new relationships, and I am embarrassed to be seen trying.

I thought I’d hate this messy becoming, but it excites me. There is so much more life to live, so many more firsts I’ve yet to experience, and I’ve still got my whole life ahead of me to get better at being human.

And so I shed again.

I trade one imperfect room for another, readying myself for the next test of this messy, tangly, imperfect life.

A reminder for paid subscribers

Thank you to those of you who have joined in on the mailing list. Together, we’re growing a small space for ease, comfort and wonder. Thank you for allowing me in.

If you haven’t sent me your address, please do so through the form linked in your paid subscriber welcome email. I will be travelling in a few weeks and I won’t be able to mail anything out once I am on the road.

As always, I appreciate you guys being here, paid or otherwise. As the recent unfolding of world events continue to hang heavy over us, I am reminded of how lucky I am to have the life I live, and I don’t take that for granted. I hope you are safe wherever you are, and finding ease in life’s little moments.

Till the next one.

Life demanded of me to feel fully the uncomfortable release of everything and everyone I had been clinging onto. But with every cell in my body, I resisted.

I held on, desperate to stay afloat on a sinking ship, unwilling to accept that I was already underwater, and it was time to swim.

You see, I’ve lost too many people in the last few years.

First, it was my mum.

Losing her will always be hard. It was hard then, and it is still hard now.

I still think of her when I am sat before a bowl of porridge, or when I cook myself an MSG-loaded meal of instant noodles (preferably the maggi noodle brand).

In my household, food is a way of love.

Mum would crawl out of bed in her pyjamas when I returned home from late-night study groups or softball trainings and ask me, “Have you had dinner?”

She was never a big cook, but she’d get the stove going and pop in a packet of instant noodles, crack an egg, add some leafy greens and maybe sausages if I got lucky.

“This was what my mum made me when I was home late from school,” her eyes twinkling as she swirled the noodles in the pot, still half-asleep. “Go shower, dinner will be ready when you’re done.”

She’d sit with me as I ate, late-night silence settling into the space between us. I’d feel her gaze on me, tender and warm.

What was going through her mind? What did she see when she saw me? Was she proud of me then, and would she be proud of me now?

Last week, I thought of her as I set a pot of porridge bubbling over my stove.

Porridge I used to hate eating, because it was always porridge, every Sunday. The only meal she’d cook for us when we were growing up was plain, simple porridge. It wasn’t until I lost her and my Sunday porridge privileges, that I began to crave the predictable dullness of soft, sticky, soupy rice.

I cranked open a can of coke to go with dinner, in honour of my mum – the image of her, frail and thin, coming to mind.

She had lost most of her appetite by then, but coke was an uncharacteristic sugar craving she developed in her final years after she got sick, and it always brought a childlike glimmer to her bright, big eyes.

I still see her glisten, her brightness I miss so much.

Sometimes I’d catch it twinkling fondly in the shine of someone’s eyes, and I know I must be crazy, but I’d wonder, is that you? Are you here?

I think of her and I think of all the people who had come before her. The ones who loved her parents, her parents who loved her, and everyone else who poured into her so she could pour into me.

Perhaps grief is the price of being loved so unconditionally, a price I am willing to pay for as long as I live.

When I finally figured out how to live with the loss of my mum, I naively thought that maybe I was finished with grief. Maybe I was turning a chapter. But life had other plans.

In just eight months, I unexpectedly lost one of my closest friends to cancer.

I remember the news taking me out like a gust of wind. It’s aggressive. I’ve got brain cancer. I was in so much shock, my legs wouldn’t move. I sank down on the steps of a stairwell at work, crying. I searched up the prognosis, my hands shaking. Most don’t live longer than months. Even fewer live through a year.

She was wheeled into surgery almost immediately. I packed my bags in a hurry and flew down with a few close friends to see her, to witness her union with her husband. She was wheeled down the ceremony in a simple white dress under the warm lights of the hospital courtyard. Sadness, love, pain and hope hung thick in the air that night. How did this happen in the span of weeks? How is this fair?

Over those eight months, we flew in often to see her. We watched her heal, watched her get strong and hopeful. We eventually stood by her as she walked down the aisle at her garden wedding. Radiant in the beautiful evening sun, basking in the abundance that swam around her.

She glowed in the warmth of that sunny spring day, her hands in her father’s, then in her husband’s. Teary-eyed, joyful, so giddy with love.

“I love you so much,” I told her later that evening as I kissed her cheeks. “I love you too.” she whispered back, her face soft and relaxed as she dozed off to sleep.

But life can be cruel.

Days after, she was back at the hospital and within weeks, she left us.

I remember stroking her hands in those final moments. I remember watching her chest rise and sink as her breaths grew heavy and slow. We’d wipe her tears, moisturise her lips. We sang to her and with her, squealing each time her eyelids fluttered. Did she hear us? She must’ve heard us!

Crying as we walked down hospital corridors to see her, clinging onto each other because I didn’t know if I could walk if I had let go. Crying as I hid away in the bright, fluorescent toilet, my sadness so big and uncontrollable it spilled out everywhere I went. Crying because our pain needed somewhere to go. Six girls, huddled together one last time, our love filling into the gaps she had begun to empty out from.

I lost her, and at the same time, I saw through the end of my 10-year long relationship.

He was someone I thought I’d share my life with forever. We had talked through so many versions of our future together. The kids we wanted to have, the family we wanted to nurture, the lives we were so bold in wanting to live. The person I fell in love with 10 years ago, so different, so changed from the one that stood before me at the end. As was I.

Still, there is love.

We supported each other through life for 10 years. The frustrations we weathered, the disappointments we negotiated, and the eventual goodbyes we accepted.

So many nights, I cried myself to sleep, the pain so crushing I wondered if I might die of a broken heart.

But in the end, we had to part. We had different lives, different dreams. Our lives demanded of us different things, and where the next corner turns, we couldn’t go together.

And so we were released, like flowers to water, our rivers pulling us in separate ways. Our time together was what it needed to be. It was full, it was abundant, and I think it’d be greedy to ask for anything more.

It’s been getting warmer around here.

I no longer wake up cold. Slow mornings are spent snuggling under my sheets as I splay out, feeling the soft, cool fabric brush against my warm skin.

A friend down south recently sent me a picture of cherry blossoms that have begun to bloom.

It reminds me of the Japanese phrase: もののあわれ monono aware, the awareness that everything is temporary, and that because it’s temporary, it’s beautiful.

The Japanese sakura blooms brilliantly, colouring entire streets and gardens pink, and then they fall. In two weeks, its flowers go from bud to bloom before fading as quickly as it came.

The nature of life is fleeting. Life moves. It dances and sings and swims and soars. To resist its flight is to be frozen on the ground, to live deluded by an illusion of permanent safety.

Someone once said to me, we can’t lose what we don’t have. I think it’s beautiful to see life as a never ending series of love and loss. It is a waste of life, to spend our energy tensed in a tight grip, afraid to let go of what is already slipping through our fingers.

What is meant for you, you cannot lose. The life already in your palms, you don’t get to run from. So if we must cry, we cry. But we must love. We must live. We must dare to risk.

I am still hungry for the lasting sweetness of a beautiful moment. I still yearn greedily for its taste to linger longer on my tongue. But I know that when it is gone, I must allow it to go.

These days, I am learning to remember fondly, and to hold on loosely. To accept love and loss like breath to body. It is just a way of life. We inhale to receive, we exhale to release. We keep going until we go no more.

My short life and yours, a reminder to live, to love, to risk, to lose, to cry and to hurt, to set the day down and to try again tomorrow.

Winter will pass and spring will come. Every day the sun will set and tomorrow, it will rise again. My words were gone, but now they have returned. All flowers will fade, and in time they will bloom once more.

I handed in my resignation yesterday, and in a turn of events, I will have formal employment only up till the end of Feb. After that, a new chapter begins.

“This year, I want to bet on myself. I want to try being confident,” I found myself saying as I resigned, my words held together by a firm conviction I didn’t recognise.

This is the second time I am quitting a full-time gig with nothing but a vague idea of what’s ahead, the second time I am staring down this tunnel of uncertainty, and it doesn’t get easier.

When I left my career and my Singapore life behind for Japan, I didn’t expect to stay out here this long. But I had prayed hard for an opportunity to extend my adventures here, and so when this job came along, I took it on eagerly, hopeful about the possibilities it represented.

Except you can’t fast forward life and teleport ahead of the hard stuff. You don’t get to skip through the hoops you’re meant to struggle through. You have to live out your life’s lessons.

There were many difficult things I experienced last year that broke me and flattened me down. A lot of it had to do with living out here alone, grieving the loss of my old life and the ones I loved, who are no longer around.

But instead of running from that pain, I allowed myself to be soft and slow. To feel my way through it all. I cried hard, I rocked myself to sleep, and I survived.

This year, I am determined to build myself up again.

It is truly hard to believe in yourself completely, knowing that even if one thing doesn’t work out, there will be another. Trusting that you’ve taken yourself here, and you will take yourself there.

Choosing not to focus on what you’ve lost, but instead, looking to the world that could open up because of the ones that have closed.

You’re asked to leap, and so you leap – an awkward hop or a little skip, whatever gets both legs off the ground, however clumsy it may seem.

This reminds me of a dream I had recently.

I was at home, determined to learn how to fly. Yes, fly. In the dream, I built myself a simple flying apparatus – a body bag to tuck myself into, which was attached to a parachute sail.

I put on my harness as my mum and my aunt set me up in my bodysuit, giving me hugs as I walked out of the gates. I remember looking back to meet my mum’s reassuring gaze, seeing hope in her eyes, for all that I was about to do.

I turned back to face forwards, and with no one else ahead, I took a deep breath and leapt towards the massive green jungle beyond.

From the ground, I jumped as high up as I could, and instead of being pulled back down, I found lightness, floating like a balloon to the sky.

Every second that passed took me higher.

The weightlessness of floating mid-air set me free. I couldn’t believe it. I was flying! Wow, I remembered thinking – if only I had known all this time that I could fly.

Soon, night fell.

I was flying in the dark now, and I could no longer see anything beyond an arms length in front of me. I felt my heart tighten in my chest.

What was I thinking, flying out here without a plan?

Just as I was starting to panic, I reached out and felt the rough bark of a tall tree. Steadied by the reassurance of something strong and sturdy, I guided myself down the mystical tree, realising that support was always out there and within, only that I was often too blind to see.

As soon as I landed back home, I picked my flying gear back up. This time, I set myself up on my own. Behind me, I heard my mum’s worried pleas: “Don’t do it again! It’s too dangerous.”

I’ll admit, this is scary.

I do not know for sure how I will get to where I want to go, what I will see along the way, or who I might meet. I do not know for certain that I will make it through every narrow bend in the forest, unscathed and unharmed.

But I head out anyway. Knowing that I can fly, and so I must fly. Because this is life – uncertain and unknowable. I refuse to live out a secondhand script that someone else wrote for me.

Alone and into the dark of the night, I strapped myself in tight.

And then I leap, hoping for magic.

Thank you for your support.

In my last entry, I shared about how you can join in as a paid member to receive mail from me. I am grateful that so many of you have decided to join in, and I want you to know that I do not take your support for granted.

If you’ve signed up as a paid member, you would have received a welcome email from me. In there, is a link asking for your mailing address. If you’ve not provided me with your mailing address, please do.

Otherwise, I will not be able to send mail to you.

Lastly, whether or not you’ve decided to join in as a paid member, I am glad you’re here.

For now and in the foreseeable future, all digital content on this substack will remain accessible to all.

(& lastly, to everyone who celebrates, Happy Chinese New Year! May we find abundance wherever we go.)

My worries are small but surprisingly loud – I worried about not being able to buy envelopes here (I don’t know why this bothered me so much, my town isn’t that remote lol), I worried about how I’d manage this project on top of winter work, and most of all, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to deliver on my promise of future newsletters.

But I think I can do it. I want to try anyway. At least for the next six months, and then I’ll review it again.

So finally, finally, finally, I’ve put the pieces together.

But first, a little bit about the first story.

Here’s how to get on the mailing list.

Option 1: Be a member.

For $5/ month, your membership includes one printed story of wonder, snail-mailed to you every even-numbered month. If you join in on an odd-numbered month, you will receive mail next month!

Subscribe now

*Note: An email will be sent out to you once you’ve joined, with a form requesting for your mailing address. Please remember to fill that up!

Option 2: Purchase a single copy.

Read Keita’s story through a single purchase at $9/ copy, mailed.

(Edit: I am pausing single copy sales for now.)

Thank you. Here goes nothing!

I am excited to start again and this year, I’m directing as much inner fire as I can muster towards my ideas, and you guys are the first people I’d like to share them with.

In 2024, I left a company I co-founded to travel rural Japan and I began writing. I started sharing my thoughts and my soul-searching journey here, and I was surprised that there were others like me who shared similar curiosities.

As I moved through rural Japan, I began to realise the importance of well-nourished spaces around us and within. I grew to respect the rooms and walls that held like-minded people in a single space, allowing us to exchange ideas and to extend warmth in a world that sometimes feels too big.

When I returned to Singapore for two months, I ran kopi pop-ups out of my house and somehow managed to self-publish and launch my first zine, which chronicled my (then) sojourn in Japan.

I leapt and danced and swirled and sang in that first year out, full of joy and excitement for the rush of life I had awakened to.

Then 2025 came, and I slowed to a crushing halt. I confronted grief and loss in close friendships and personal relationships. I struggled to release people and versions of myself that were already gone, and that took a lot from me.

But for all that I had lost, I also received. I received lessons in love – what does it mean to really love someone? And what does mean to also fully love myself?

In those long, painful months of growth, working on my projects gave me energy. I started a traveling notebook project (that is still on the move!), I ran yoga pop-ups in Singapore and facilitated space for unhurried movement and breath in Japan.

Each expression was a new way to facilitate conversations with others navigating life – it made my world seem smaller, and my dreams feel bigger.

The last two years have seeded hope and courage in the deep crevices of my own belonging, and this year, I’m curious to see how I will sprout and grow when I allow myself space to do so.

What’s new?

1. I am starting a slow mail club.

Physical newsletters snail-mailed to your homes every other month, each one filled with one story of wonder, intentionally told slow. The first edition starts with a story of a friend I recently made on a warm autumn day along Lake Toya.

You can either purchase it as a single copy, or join in as a member. With a membership program, I am dreaming up ways to connect with more of you – perhaps through community circles and scheduled calls where we can support each other through life’s scary moments. Maybe small community get-togethers when I am back in Singapore, where most of you are.

I am finalising the payment links and setting things up slowly, but I will share details in the next one or on Instagram!

2. This summer, join me in Japan for a reset.

My palms are sweating as I type this one out, but ah it’s time to give my ideas a proper shot.

Here’s my personal experience with burnout and rest: it isn’t a state we overcome by simply doing nothing. To be deeply rested is to do less, while at the same time being inspired by the life around us, so we remain hopeful and connected with the inner calm I believe we all possess.

My personal practice is a mix of movement (yoga, breath work, nature walks) and creative work. Of course, going for therapy has changed my life too.

I am no therapist, but I am a yoga teacher and practitioner. I am no artist, but writing, photography and self-expression have allowed me to find my way back to myself, again and again.

It is still only a blurry vision, but I wanted to speak this idea into reality. I am planning for the retreat to happen in the summer months (July/ August/ September), when the air warms up enough for morning yoga flows and evening strolls, when we can taste fresh produce grown in organic farms, and sit under trees that have turned a deep green again.

I intend to start small and cosy, so please keep an eye out for that if this sounds like something up your alley. Or you can let me know your interest and I will share that information with you when I have it.

3. Lastly, I intend to devote some time towards teaching and guiding others to discover their voice online.

We’ve woken up to a world where personal branding, founder marketing and self-promotion is the new norm. If you’re anything like me, this is an incredibly scary and intimidating world to feel like you have to show up in.

I often remind myself that I don’t have to be loud to be heard.

I’d never force myself to film a video or write something just because it’s better for the algorithm. I experiment and play around with content – but always from a place of creative curiosity, and always in a way that is safe and kind towards myself.

After all, it is my face, my voice, my words and my reputation behind all that. It is important we find a way that works for us, not just for the algorithm.

I’ve spent my career stubbornly believing in social media as a tool to grow meaningful communities and to amplify stories that need to be heard.

I wonder how much more colour and diversity can be added to the online sphere if shy and thoughtful experts begin to express their unique ideas with the world. What valuable insights could the world benefit from? That alone excites me.

Unless people here are interested (& please let me know if you are), I will likely keep most of that development separate from this newsletter… it feels too work-ish. Maybe more of that on LinkedIn or in another newsletter, if I can manage.

Well, you guys will be updated. But check out my new website if what I’ve talked about piques your interest!

Ah, that’s a lot at one go.

If you’re still here, thank you. Thank you for another year of your generosity, your kindness and for sharing space in your inboxes. I hope you’ve been well.

May we have a fruitful year of being and becoming.

Here’s to a 2026 we can be proud of.