What I’m Doing Now

inspired by this. Last updated 21 Feb 2025.

Beautiful things I’m enjoying

The Monocle Guide to Good Business (Monocle): Book, non-fiction. Many signs have pointed to me being an ‘entrepreneurial’ person, but I have not been inspired by much ‘entrepreneurial’ content, and so I inferred that starting a business was not for me. This book is what I was waiting for the whole time. It has a focus on more brick-and-mortar, craft-based businesses with heart.

In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers from the Eight African Countries That Touch the Indian Ocean (Hawa Hassan, Julia Turshen): Book, cookbook. I’m the sort of person to say that reading a cookbook doesn’t count as reading a book, but I’ll easily count this one. The book features thoughtful interviews with each of the featured grandmothers touching on their views on food, cooking, family, culture, emigration and nationhood, alongside its many clear and delicious-sounding recipes. I was surprised by how similar the ingredients and structure of many of the dishes were to food I was familiar with (e.g. Indian, South-East Asian), and am inspired to try some of them.

A Deeper Shade (Case Woo) Music, deep house. Singaporeans, this is a local house album that’s really vibey and delicious. It has the feel of the 2000s (I think, admittedly I wasn’t listening to house then), and was surprised to learn that this album came out as recent as last year.

R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta) (Snoop Dogg) Music, hip hop. I’ll be real. This is quite beautiful in its best moments – lots of groovy, R&B, soulful tunes and instrumentals. But it is also unlistenably hilarious for some of the tracks. I won’t spoil which. You should give the album a listen.

I am also enjoying NOT SCROLLING! At the recommendation of a life-hacker friend, I downloaded an app called SocialFocus, which lets you selectively remove elements of social media and browser apps. I now do not see any shorts or thumbnails on Youtube, so the homepage is text-only. I also do not see my explore page on Instagram at all. The quality of life improvement has been immense. Life is beautiful!

Subjectively beautiful things I’m making

I ran Teck Whye Convention’s 5th edition, which was not in Teck Whye, but instead in a big Changi chalet. It was a 24-hour affair that gave me three stress nightmares leading up to it (oh no, it’s the day of the event and nothing is planned!). Thankfully, all went well. My proudest achievement creatively was the interior design – we put in a lot of effort to shifting furniture for the optimum user flow, partitioning the gaping spaces using tension rods and layers of cloth, and bringing our own lamps to create mood lighting.

I’m in the midst of planning the 6th edition of Teck Whye Convention, which will call for people to give their presentation as pairs. Collaborating with others is something I’m challenging myself to do more of this year – to combat the systematic overvaluing of the individual over the collective. And it takes skill and practice to collaborate well!

I’ve recently been baking and cooking more, after a dry season the past few months. I baked three recipes from Nicola Lamb’s amazing cookbook Sift – panela and coriander seed cake, miso walnut chocolate chip cookies, and salted chocolate shortbread. For Chinese New Year, I made a load of dumplings, as I normally do. I also finally put the beautiful Dancong Oolong tea leaves I’d bought back from Chaozhou, China to use through cold-brewing and trying out infusions with fruits and even in milk. All came out quite delicious.

My mom has roped me in to play the bass at an upcoming Chinese New Year performance by her seniors ukelele interest group. I’m thankful that I’d recently been practising the bass more, so I feel marginally prepared going into this. Jamming with others has been incredibly gratifying, as someone who was quite scared of doing so in the past.