11 June 2018: A Love Letter To Rome

So here I am, sitting on the beautiful balcony in our Airbnb in Rome. It's 8:30 PM and the sun is about to set. My lack of descriptive vocab will never be able to accurately convey the beauty and serenity this city brings about, but I am trying my hardest. The city of Rome is filled with so much beautiful architecture, people and skies. My heart raced today when I saw the piazzas, the concrete statues built by the ancient Romans - artifacts that have lasted through decades and weathered through so much. I hope I never forget how this feels like. It shifts things a bit into perspective you know, that I am but a speck of dust in this universe. Being able to zoom out and look at the bigger picture, I guess. People leave. Everything is temporal. 

I look up and I see the skyline of old Italian houses mixed with the silhouettes of domes - churches, basilicas, statues of mythological creatures and roman soldiers defeating lions and octopuses showing signs of strength and triumph.

Never would I have imagined exploring Rome for the first time alone. I went to so many places, took in everything in silence and tried to absorb as much as I can. My feet are sore but this is what I am grateful for: The luxury of time, the fresh air and freedom. I am here! Now. Alive, present and sitting on the balcony watching the sky burst into shades of purple, pink and blue hues. There are little to no clouds in the sky and the sunset is enchanting and I am so in love. There is a breeze and soft beats playing from a rooftop bar somewhere nearby. 

I wish I could capture this moment and keep it in my memory forever. I am so at peace right now. Rome, you're a first for me. I've had many firsts this year and you're one I thoroughly enjoy. I love every alley, every old Italian concrete wall, every monument, every piazza, basilica, temple, church and park that I had the opportunity to chance upon today. You are exploding with stories of the past, historical sites filled with pain, triumph, worship, religion and essentially stories of how the people of the past used to live.

I am grateful I had this time alone out here, forcing myself out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to navigate with just google maps and a paper map. You are a special one, Rome. For now, this is enough. I'm taking in deep breaths and looking out into the skyline. The sunset, oh my God. God has made life so beautiful. I am so thankful. I am okay. I am enough. This is enough. 

I love you, Rome. Thank you, Italy. 

Takeaways From A First Job: You're Not Gonna Love It

So I've come to realise I only ever write whenever I'm faced with a huge pain in the butt, heartbroken or whenever I'm transitioning through different milestones in life. Guess this is me transitioning out of my first full-time job! Yay, maybe I should Facebook milestone this ASAP. 

Writing this because it's a useful reminder for myself (and anyone else who reads this space) about the exponential growth that you will face in your twenties, upon graduation and when you enter the workforce with your initial wide-eyed wonder and drive, and then slowly deteriorating and like a car running low on fuel. How I spent my 11 months fighting hard at work and trying to balance all the other wonderful millennial twenty-something problems I have, attempting to find purpose and meaning despite the struggles, and how I eventually learnt to let go (practically) and found another job.

I'll talk about what made me and how I actually got up from my butt and managed to find another job and quit my audit job another time. This post is already getting a bit lengthy but I hope it helps. 

I spent 11 months as a full-time auditor in one of the big 4 audit firms and like many others, this became my first job because it was "safe", it was "something related to my field of study" because I graduated with a double major in accounting and finance, and it was honestly the only job offer I had at the point of graduation. Times are hard, man.

3 THINGS TO EXPECT FROM YOUR FIRST JOB:

1. Expect yourself to know nothing

Despite interning with the firm for about 2 months prior to joining full-time, the first few months was a huge learning curve for me. Be ready to learn, have an open mind and be super (i mean super) open to constructive criticism. If your colleagues have a better or more efficient way of working things out, never be afraid to ask them to teach you (and hopefully they'll be willing to share), but never ever think that it's embarrassing to ask "stupid" questions!! This is so important!! Throughout my 11 months I've asked pretty "stupid" questions that miiiighttt have made me look like an audit noob to some of my seniors, but I'm lucky that they're all pretty understanding and just know that a year or two ago, they were in the same shoes as I was. That makes everything seem a whole less awkward.

When I first started out, I knew nothing about excel shortcuts and basic every-day functions like vlookup and how to construct a bloody pivot table. Took me close to about 4 months of everyday excel usage to really familiarise myself with those shortcuts and formulae. It's been about 11 months but it's still safe to say on a scale of 0 being "knowing absolutely nothing" to 10 being "knowing everything", I'm probably just made it to a 1. Or maybe a solid 1.5. We'll get there.

2. Expect lots of struggle and patience (!!) is truly a virtue

What is life without its constant struggle? I read somewhere that life is really all about choosing the things and problems that you would sacrifice yourself for because let's be real, we can never live a pain-free and problem-free life.

During the 11 months doing a nature of work I was not necessarily good at was hard because as much as I tried not to overhype the thought that I will l o v e my job (just like what every movie, advertisement and instagram post tried to tell me), I couldn't let it go. Screw you social media and ridiculously inflated expecations!!! I couldn't see it in the right perspective that would make me hustle hard and see the meaning behind the work I was doing. If the work you're doing is boring/meaningless, then you just have to find a way to change your perspective in order to get by and not get too depressed, right? Right.

Having patience with yourself is so important because we always love to set unrealistic expectations for ourselves and it really takes time and effort to try to reach that realistic expectation vs your actual performance and work and realising what are the factors contributing to your performance. It's hard but also very normal to constantly benchmark yourself against others.

I'm still trying to find that right balance in making sure that I'm not lagging behind too much but also trying to be okay with my own pace when I work. It's not always good to compare though I would say a good amount of healthy competition and stress would help propel you in your performance at work.

3. Expect yourself to pick up the shit if things go south 

I don't know about you but I was so conditioned to handle problems at work almost the exact way I handled problems I faced in exams/school. It was so difficult trying to seggregate the nature of the two problems, because it was almost natural for me to go into my auto-pilot "how-to-solve-problems-when-in-school" mode.

Whenever I got stuck with a problem in an exam, we were always taught to skip it and move onto the next question. Even training myself to do that was a chore because I was always the kind of kid that refused to move onto the next question until I solved the one I was stuck on. And when the questions got harder as we moved up the educational ladder, I had to train myself to let go and move on. But you know, being students, we always had a lowkey choice as to whether or not we could: a) leave it blank b) give some sub par answer and hopefully try to score some method marks here and there c) wreck your brains out and try your freakin' hardest.

I'm an a or b kind of girl, 100% honest with you. This is also probably why I never got my first class.

Okay, back the point. Because I was so used to being okay with blatantly giving up whenever I hit a hard question or doing bare minimum enough to get me a couple of method marks here and there, this approach was the only approach I was able to come up with when I was faced with problems at work and it was naaahhhtt guuud!!! It was a struggle, man. I literally had to force myself to rewire my thought process and it really trained me not to keep giving up. All I could tell myself was that it was impossible to give up because the responsibility was mine to deliver on my part and no one else was going to pick up the shit unless I did something about it.

Shit doesn't move unless you do because you're the shit. - Rachel Tan, 2017. 

3 THINGS NOT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR FIRST JOB: 

1. Don't expect to make friends, just colleagues.

Basically, have the most open mind you can possibly have.

Coming back from Melbourne did give me a broader perspective and I was definitely more open to chat and socialise, but the problem is: I went into orientation holding the same expectation that the people there were going to do the same. Maybe I was already conditioned to think that way because many of the Singaporean friends I made in Melbourne all mostly held the same mentality that they're all away from home, so they're more open and willing to put themselves out there to strike up conversations with other people. After a relatively huge culture shock and feeling like a fish out of water throughout my 3D2N orientation program, I went home crying and completely hating everything because I was unable to "make friends" like how I used to back in Melbourne and in school. That was one misconception that I had when I entered into my first job - I expected everyone I met to be friend material where we would have that "instant click" and we'll all be BFFs having brunch and really top notch conversations. But instead, I was swamped with boring questions and lots and lots of work-related talk, "what clients are you on?" "Do you know any seniors?" "What sector are you in?" "I heard xx was a terrible client.." the list goes on. 

Ultimately, it was my first job and inevitably due to the flaws of the human mind, we're most likely to enter into a new environment with a set of ideals and expectation. That's no one's fault. And that's honestly really okay, but the lesson learnt is when your expectations and ideals are not being met (high chances that this will happen), you cannot sit down, sulk, get angry at people and the circumstance you were placed in. Instead, get back up on your feet and readjust your perspective on the situation and remember to always try to have an open mind, open heart and listening ears. Back in school, we were given the privilege to choose who we wanted to work with. But at the workplace, you can't possibly choose who you want to work with and who your colleagues are going to be and most importantly, not everyone's going to be your friend. You just have to adapt and adjust to your surroundings and the people around you. This was initially very hard for me to navigate around but I've learnt that humans are social creatures and we are all equipped with relatively strong adaptation skills. Trust in those innate skills and you'll slowly find yourself being able to adjust quickly to new surroundings and different people.  

2. Don't expect work-life balance (the way the social media makes it out to be)

Millenial shit. Instagram hypes it up too much and we forget about the daily grind that most of us goes through rather than the 2% of instagrammers with their perfect "hustle-hard-but-still-got-time-to-post-really-sick-flatlays-of-my-new-chanel-bag" posts. However, this really taught me how to prioritize my limited time to do really meaningful things. 

During peak I worked non-stop and at a point in time, I was so burnt out from work that I literally spent my weekends sleeping and only headed out for meals with my family.

(hey but at least I still had my shitty humour in tact during peak period yeah.. ;-) )

I learnt that I get energy from spending time with friends and family, where I get re-energized for the week with the conversations and time I have with them. So during the peak period where I couldn't get out of bed and stayed at home all day, I was upset and the work week seemed like it dragged on continuously for 2 weeks. It felt like there wasn't a break so I decided to go out every weekend, whether or not it was to run a lame errand with my family or it was a quick catch up session with a friend. This helped my brain mark the end of a work-week and tell myself it was time to relax, even just for a bit. 

3. Don't expect everyone to have the same work ethic as you

This is still pivotal learning issue for me because I understand that different companies uphold different values and cultures. Cultures are mainly defined by the majority of the employees within the company and what they stand for and how they function as a whole. What I've learnt during my time in a large Singapore-based audit firm is that no matter what, somehow this bad mentality of the number of hours I put in at work somehow correlates to how much work is being done, ultimately reflecting whether or not I'm a "hard worker" or a "slacker".

It's probably a generalisation but this is personally what I've experienced throughout my 11 months working and maybe it's a very "Singaporean/kiasu" thing to do. I entered the work with a very Australian-laid-back-super-into-work-life-balance mindset, where I initially stood very firm on not turning on my work laptop at home, getting off from work at 6:30/7pm every day and keeping my weekends very isolated from work things. However, as time went by and evidently many of my colleagues and seniors had very different perspectives on this whole work-life balance thing, they had no qualms working till 1/2am every night and sacrificing weekends slogging out at the office (at least the office has air con on weekends, they say. LOL), it got very hard to stand by my strict work-life balance values.

I've also had people give me judgmental looks when I say that I want to maintain a work-life balance, and others discouraging me from it because it comes across as if I have other things in life that are more important and that in itself was a negative connotation. Looking back, prioritising a life outside work is NOT a negative thing and it's NOT something that appears to be "slacker" or "lazy" because it just goes to show that you prioritise a life outside of work more than the other person and that is OKAY. 

What's NOT okay is the bad culture that deems you as "slacker" or "lazy" just because you don't clock in at least 4 hours of overtime and you don't work weekends. Eventually, I caved into the peer pressure and found myself routinely coming home and turning on my laptop to continue with more work and seniors would find it okay to send me emails at 1am, expecting me to read and sometimes respond to them as soon as it gets sent out. That's when I started feeling very depressed, overwhelmed and that work never ends. I no longer had the values I initially once felt so strongly about and that made me feel like I disappointed myself or lost myself in the process.

This was an issue I really struggled with and spoke to a few close friends about, but eventually, the solution to this problem was really asking myself what was important and what I could do to stop feeling negative about work and how to make myself feel better. It took a huge amount of effort to consciously not turn on my laptop once I reached home and dealing with the guilt that ensued from not working when I came home was something that was a tough pickle to deal with. Logically I knew that it wasn't necessary to feel guilty for not working during after-office hours, but irrationally I felt like I was "slacking" or that "other people are still working now, and you're not, this is why you will always suck." !!! SOooooo many people struggle with this in the workplace I was in, but I think what's needed is really not to give a shit about what others might think of you but at the same time be answerable to the quality and quantity of work you've done during office hours. 

OKAY!!! I'm done with this long-ass rant and I'm glad I've managed to pen my thoughts down despite it being pretty repetitive! Huge shout out to my best friends, my rock my shelter and everything else in between, and my new friends/colleagues that were the best source of strength and comfort whenever work got too hard, you guys also know who you are. It's been a hell of a ride working at the big 4 and despite it's crazy challenges like the mad working hours with crazy deadlines and sometimes difficult team mates, I have learnt so much and this experience has made me come out stronger than before (ugh cliche, I know).

To the next chapter in life, here I come!

TwentyOne (21)

I would love to just copy and regurgitate whatever I wrote in my 20th birthday post because I just realised that I still relate and I still stand by the same things that I previously mentioned in that birthday post. 

But this year is a little bit special because 1. I'm freaking 21. It's probably not that much of a big deal. I exaggerate too much. 

2. I'm back home and I get to celebrate my actual birthday with my family and friends here in Singapore. No more early or belated birthday dinners! 

Would first like to give some love and shout out to the following friends that have been so selfless and patient with me. I'm terrible at these things, and usually closer to the event date I tend to lose all excitement and give up. 

1. Thanks to Kevin, for always never failing on bringing my ideas to life in terms of beautifully created invites and the postcard as a door gift! Everyone loved them so much. 

2. Thank you Sufang, @fang_cakes for making the best cake and desserts for my 21st! I really wouldn't have anyone else bake my cake for my 21st. The earl grey berry cake was to die for and got completely wiped out at the party! Thanks for also turning my matcha brownie suggestion into real matcha brownies which tasted so good and perfecting the best batch of soft baked cookies I've had in a longgg while. Always feels good supporting a fellow TK girl and junior! :-) 

2. Thanks to Mistika, Marcus and Kayla for always being so positive and encouraging! Also kudos to them for waking up early to help set up the venue. I am eternally grateful. 

3. Obviously thanks to everyone that made it to the party. The title of the FB event was "IT'S NOT A PARTY WITHOUT YOU" and it truly wouldn't be half as fun if you guys didn't show up. I would just be eating catered food for 30 alone in a huge function room. Not cool.

This year celebrating back home, I managed to finally celebrate my birthday with old friends that have seen me through since TK days together with the new friends that I've made in Melbourne, whom I have come to love and appreciate so much. Always something about being in a room filled with people you have met and come to love over the past years. 

Here I am, trying not to overuse the word love too much, but honestly, there aren't any better substitutes that can accurately describe how I feel this weekend. Last year was my last year celebrating in Melbourne, so it was more bittersweet than anything. I was gearing up to say goodbye to a lot of things in Melbourne. This time around, it feels a lot lighter and happier in a sense that this birthday isn't tied up with leaving - something that has been so present in my life the last 4 years. I was always leaving. I celebrate coming home, being back and finally entering adulthood. 

Tonight I finally had some time to myself to sit down and take in all that has happened the past 2 days. I was surrounded by a group of my closest friends yesterday and today, I was with my family members. The laughs I've shared with everyone, the hugs, wishes, conversations and gifts....  I can't even. While sending out my thanks and appreciation messages to my uncle and aunties, I found myself tearing up, overwhelmed by all the love I've received. It is so surreal and I am really very blessed. 

The last few days have been slightly hard to get by and recently a lot of conversations circulate around the topic of the future which is very ~uncertain~. Being someone that is afraid of uncertainty, I've been very anxious about a lot of work and career-related things, and after hearing all the advice my friends and family gave, to be honest, it makes me even more afraid but also comforted at the same time. It's probably weird now that it's typed out in words, but somehow it makes sense in my head. The thing that I've been trying to get myself to do is not to keep worrying. 

Someone once told me that the opposite of anxiety is trusting that life will turn out okay for you. That is so important but yet so hard for me to do!! I'm trying to slowly trust that life will turn out okay and that things will eventually fall into place. In the mean time, I'm appreciating all the support I'm getting from the best people God has placed in my life, people I'm glad to call my family and friends. 

Lastly, I'm thankful I finally get to have a solid birthday celebration with my OG fam cru. It's best feeling in the world, having our favourite chicken rice at some kopitiam on my 21st birthday.

My heart is now so full from the love that I received this weekend. Thank you, thank you, thank you for loving me as I am.

It's a choppy post, I apologize.
Thanks for sticking it out here with me.

A Full Heart And Wider Eyes

Sometimes life really has a way of letting me know that it is so beautiful and I should really sit down and appreciate it for a moment. 

Travelling in itself has its beauty, tediousness and confusion all wrapped up in a couple of days placed a few thousand kilometres away from your comfort zone. Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I take it for granted and ignorantly set foot into a country without genuinely learning more about its people, culture and stories, but other times like this, I. Fricking. Love. It. 

Meeting new people at home is scary enough. Meeting new people overseas gets me even more anxious and I have mad respect for solo travellers and people who are so comfortable in placing themselves out there to speak to people. But I am so glad I managed to pluck up enough courage (or faked it enough), to find myself 3 MRT stops away from my hotel, in a small little Jap bar, sipping on beer and sharing stories with someone I have only known for 3 days. 

We met for only a short while, but we shared similar perspectives, bonded over our common understanding of gender, family and relationships in general. We had the same worries, agreed on the same issues and laughed about a lot of things. I was so at ease and so comforted that despite the distance, be it by culture, language or the geography, our views on things were mostly similar. Having an opinion is great, but empathy is sosososo important and I have learnt over the years to appreciate it in every person I meet. 

I fall in love with good conversations too quickly. I say it like it's a bad thing. It's not. I am in love with the conversation we shared, that connection we had in that particular moment, and that look we both gave each other as we sighed,"why didn't we meet earlier." It's hard to put it into words but I know what I felt and my heart is full again. It's the same kind of feeling when I saw the whales and dolphins swimming so freely out in the waters of Kaikoura, the same kind of feeling of screaming into the prettiest sunset I have ever seen in my life in the car on the way to Queenstown and the same feeling of taking off your make-up and clothes, being at complete ease with yourself. 

Never ever regret putting yourself out there to meet and talk to new people. Though you will realise that you're no special snowflake- it's really not always all about you, okay? You will also be so comforted by the truth from the phrase: you are NOT alone in crappy circumstances. There will be always someone out there that will share the same sentiments, believe in the same things and have a similar understanding despite the different experiences that lead up to gaining those perspectives.

We are all human after all. That is the greatest common denominator. 

Final Sem Music Favourites

Have been listening to a lot of music lately and here's a playlist with allllllll my favourite music coupled with the right kind of vibes. My best friend told me that this playlist has been helping her get through her day and I can only say the same for myself. 

Since you guys come here to check up on what I've been up to, or just simply killing time- 

why not take a listen? 

I hope you find some of your future-favourite-songs. I love sharing music with friends. 

Also guys, once you go Spotify premium, you can never go back. 

First Thoughts After Visiting The ICU For The First Time: V.

Sometimes life takes you from the law library trying to grasp the concept of bonds and credit risk as though it is the hardest shit you've ever studied, to scolding the receptionist at the A&E department because I have never heard someone (from the A&E!!) so unsympathetic, rude and annoyed after simply asking a few questions so, "could you perhaps have some TACT, especially for someone working in the A&E, what kind of attitude is this", to finding myself sitting in the waiting room to the ICU on a Tuesday night, acting as if I was the cousin of a girl I've never met before.

Everything I knew about this girl was hurriedly scribbled down on the back of my blackball order receipt- her name and her birthday. That's all I knew about her, and then suddenly, while trying to figure out what happened to her, with a few Facebook searches and googling, things started to get pieced together: A facebook photo showing that they went to grampians on Monday, vicroads reporting a car accident today at 6 pm somewhere along grampians, and then an article saying that 3 of the people involved in the accident were tourists. 

It's so scary, how traffic and accident news that we so often passively glance through or hear on the radio are actually affecting REAL people. To large extents, even. It's perhaps ignorance on my part, and to only realise it now... but the magnitude of it all... it's still something that I'm trying to comprehend. 

Having her parents - complete strangers call me, was the first time I heard pure fear and worry for their loved one, in the ICU, 6069km away from them. They weren't within reach, but a stranger like me was waiting right outside the ICU for news about their daughter. 

"If you see her, tell her mummy and daddy loves her and she will make it through." 

"Okay auntie, I will." 

I still get goosebumps when I think about that. 

Being someone that is absolutely terrible with hospitals, terrible I mean like my knees turn real jelly-like at the thought of blood and I feel lightheaded and anxious with the overpowering sterile smell (which has a terrible association with death in my mind), but being able to make it to the door of the ICU, prepping myself to go all out to see a stranger, all wired up and bloody, to pray for her, was something that was a considerable feat, given my crappy ability to handle hospitals. I never expected myself to be placed in a situation like this and I am so glad that through it all, I had Jodie and Anthony that were so willing to provide the support and comfort by just.... being there with me. 

V's parents are currently catching a red-eye flight to Melbourne right now and till now, they don't even know how she got involved in such a serious accident. They got a call saying, "your daughter might not make it", that's it. I can't even imagine how they must have felt and how much sanity they lost upon hearing such terrible news. Next thing they knew, they're on a flight to Melbourne, on a cab to the ICU. 

It's been such an unpredictable Tuesday night, and through this experience, it has really allowed me to sort quite a bit of my self-indulgent, narcissistic perspectives into place. The fragility of life has too often been taken for granted and the lesson that life is uncertain is something that I should be learning how to embrace.  

I am so tired... but there is so much to be thankful for and I hope that by writing this, tonight's incident can serve as a reminder for myself that you should always help someone to the best you can, regardless if you know them or not. 

V may not be someone I hold onto dearly - I only know her by the scribbles on the back of my blackball order receipt, her one FaceBook profile picture I have access to, and now we're also fake cousins (i lied to the hospital), but a life is still a life. She has people that love her so much and while she's fighting for her life on that bed and through the CT scans tonight, her parents are fighting back tears and hoping, praying and wishing for a miracle only God can provide for their beautiful daughter. 

I can only do the same.

(edit: I am sosososo amazed by the crazy amount of support the family is getting from everyone that heard about this unfortunate incident. Be it from strangers, family friends, acquaintances etc. Humanity is real, and it is beautiful y'all. Never hesitate on reaching out to help people when they are caught up in crappy circumstances.)

+++ surplus +++

It's simple economics. If you have excessive supply - too much to give, too much of you (the skin and the fats that drape all over your body), the demand will never be optimal. "Too emotional." "Too tall." "Too big." "Too rough as a girl." "Too nice." If you draw the graph up and look at the figures: 174 cm, uk10-12, 41 ... let's not even get to what my weight is because that is a fucking exuberant amount. 

All my life I've been told that I've been in excess. And so I wish for the day there will be a demand that meets this excess supply. People naturally seem to gravitate towards the things that are limited in supply. If it's a love that is hard to get, people go crazy over that challenge. The lesser your tummy rolls, the lesser the cellulite, you will be more desirable. That is probably why I am never wanted enough in these ways. Because what I have is too much in supply. It becomes a waste.

I ache for a love that I have never received, and the validation that I've been struggling to find in everything else but myself. I am always half empty, finding means and ways to empty everything else from inside of me because I am too much, always too much. 

Self-love is foreign and complicated. The hair on my arms stand when I think about loving any part of myself. My fingers are unable to tie the words "self" and "love" together on the keyboard without my mind denying any truth that that word might have on me. 

For someone to be told their whole life that they are in excess, it is funny how I feel inadequate with everything that is seen as excessive.

I have been sleeping too much and it is evidently proving no good. 

NTS: To be deleted. 
Because bad thoughts should not cloud up empty spaces.