Making spirits bright
I've been steadfastly abstaining myself from LJ-ing because I simply have too much work to do. But now that things have finished and settled down, I can return to the quiet luxury of maintaining a blog.
1.
About work: the Singapore government has designated one part of the institute that I work for as the country's third school of law. This, in addition to running subsidised full-time undergraduate programmes next year, is keeping me occupied at work. I attended my first press conference on the job, and watched how my bosses spin it to the journalists. It's interesting seeing things from both the back (preparing the media release) and the front (attending to suss out information). Some things I couldn't say outright, but still end up making its way to print because we have a good relationship with the media. I'm glad to say the grand unveiling of the information is over, and now the quieter, tougher work of actually living up to expectation begins.
With all the madness at work, I finally had a chance to see how I fit into the great grand scheme of things. Being someone who's been trained to be always doing something, somewhere, for some purpose, there were moments when I felt not up to far with my colleagues. They're trained media specialists, with years of experience at adeptly handling journalists and broadcast new crews in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia in fields as diverse at national speak english campaigns to viral outbreaks in hospitals. So they glossed over everything with a kind of worker bee functionality. Since I have no formal media degree, I do get shunted around sometimes. Plus my chosen field - social media and online news reporting - isn't taken very seriously by some people in the organisation and the media, so I've come to an understanding that stuff that goes to newspapers and broadcast always comes first. While it can be demeaning to be lower down the priority list or pecking order, it also means that I still deal with media (obliquely) but minus all the running around and phone calls. My straddling two worlds - the very structured media landscape and the unknown animal that is the Internet - is sort of reminiscent of my time at the Youth Olympics as well, a neither-here-nor-there feeling, which I think I'll always experience as long as I'm in the field.
2.
In November, a group of friends and I are going to push-forward with a self-publishing experiment. We've got all the content, gathered contacts and are planning a book launch. Our publicity has been on Facebook, and word of mouth. It may not be the best thing to rush through a first publication, but I can safely say I'm not getting anything out of this. It was an experiment and will always be. But it will be worth the trouble to see how much buzz we can generate, who will give out book a chance and whether or not it's a commercially viable thing to do on the side. (Yes, I'm not a struggling writer, I need to emphasise to people whom I meet).
In the meantime, to coincide with the Singapore Writers Festival, I have an uncharacteristically violent short story forthcoming in an free anthology by local e-book retailer Booktique.
And because work has been stressful and planning for all the above has been even more mad, I've been pouring my soul into - seriously - Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction. Why? Because I watched the Rebuild series and thought, hey there's a plot hole there! So after a long discussion over tea with a secondary school friend who hosts a local anime blog (Animenauts), and I'm churning out short pieces. To make it sound even weirder, after I wrote 3 pieces with cool-sounding titles - Athletics, Phantom Pain and Cosmonaut - I looked at them and thought: wah seh, if I just changed the names, I could submit these to journals and magazines. Does this prove anything? No. But it shows that, when in doubt, fanfics sometimes help me to think straight writing-wise.
My switch from original fiction to fanfiction has coincided with a sudden preference for all things EDM. So now Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Avicii, Popeska and a friendly Russian producer called Archie V have been annoying my colleagues who now think my cubicle sounds like a club on Saturday night.
3.
December's trip to Taiwan is confirmed. Plane tickets, hotel, itinerary. Roy and I will be doing the Taipei Fubon Marathon - but just the half-marathon route. If all goes well, I'll be visiting Wulai, Juifen, Shifen and Yangmingshan. It's not that I deserve a break or want new photos on my wall, but rather I'm not getting any younger, and as an adult, I can be less ashamed of saying to people who depend on me, I'm taking a break and going to a place where I can think of you in retrospect. And later return with more energy to be depended upon.
1.
About work: the Singapore government has designated one part of the institute that I work for as the country's third school of law. This, in addition to running subsidised full-time undergraduate programmes next year, is keeping me occupied at work. I attended my first press conference on the job, and watched how my bosses spin it to the journalists. It's interesting seeing things from both the back (preparing the media release) and the front (attending to suss out information). Some things I couldn't say outright, but still end up making its way to print because we have a good relationship with the media. I'm glad to say the grand unveiling of the information is over, and now the quieter, tougher work of actually living up to expectation begins.
With all the madness at work, I finally had a chance to see how I fit into the great grand scheme of things. Being someone who's been trained to be always doing something, somewhere, for some purpose, there were moments when I felt not up to far with my colleagues. They're trained media specialists, with years of experience at adeptly handling journalists and broadcast new crews in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia in fields as diverse at national speak english campaigns to viral outbreaks in hospitals. So they glossed over everything with a kind of worker bee functionality. Since I have no formal media degree, I do get shunted around sometimes. Plus my chosen field - social media and online news reporting - isn't taken very seriously by some people in the organisation and the media, so I've come to an understanding that stuff that goes to newspapers and broadcast always comes first. While it can be demeaning to be lower down the priority list or pecking order, it also means that I still deal with media (obliquely) but minus all the running around and phone calls. My straddling two worlds - the very structured media landscape and the unknown animal that is the Internet - is sort of reminiscent of my time at the Youth Olympics as well, a neither-here-nor-there feeling, which I think I'll always experience as long as I'm in the field.
2.
In November, a group of friends and I are going to push-forward with a self-publishing experiment. We've got all the content, gathered contacts and are planning a book launch. Our publicity has been on Facebook, and word of mouth. It may not be the best thing to rush through a first publication, but I can safely say I'm not getting anything out of this. It was an experiment and will always be. But it will be worth the trouble to see how much buzz we can generate, who will give out book a chance and whether or not it's a commercially viable thing to do on the side. (Yes, I'm not a struggling writer, I need to emphasise to people whom I meet).
In the meantime, to coincide with the Singapore Writers Festival, I have an uncharacteristically violent short story forthcoming in an free anthology by local e-book retailer Booktique.
And because work has been stressful and planning for all the above has been even more mad, I've been pouring my soul into - seriously - Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction. Why? Because I watched the Rebuild series and thought, hey there's a plot hole there! So after a long discussion over tea with a secondary school friend who hosts a local anime blog (Animenauts), and I'm churning out short pieces. To make it sound even weirder, after I wrote 3 pieces with cool-sounding titles - Athletics, Phantom Pain and Cosmonaut - I looked at them and thought: wah seh, if I just changed the names, I could submit these to journals and magazines. Does this prove anything? No. But it shows that, when in doubt, fanfics sometimes help me to think straight writing-wise.
My switch from original fiction to fanfiction has coincided with a sudden preference for all things EDM. So now Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Avicii, Popeska and a friendly Russian producer called Archie V have been annoying my colleagues who now think my cubicle sounds like a club on Saturday night.
3.
December's trip to Taiwan is confirmed. Plane tickets, hotel, itinerary. Roy and I will be doing the Taipei Fubon Marathon - but just the half-marathon route. If all goes well, I'll be visiting Wulai, Juifen, Shifen and Yangmingshan. It's not that I deserve a break or want new photos on my wall, but rather I'm not getting any younger, and as an adult, I can be less ashamed of saying to people who depend on me, I'm taking a break and going to a place where I can think of you in retrospect. And later return with more energy to be depended upon.