(MON)DAY #23 THE GIFT OF GIVING

It's hard to believe that 2016 is drawing to a close and 2017 is just round the corner.

With Christmas just a few days away, many of us are feeling our nerves cracking under the weight of gifts that we've yet to prepare.

Before you run to Orchard Road for last minute shopping, or click frantically online in search for gifts that will arrive in time for that Christmas dinner, STOP. Take a breath, calm yourself, and consider gifts that will keep giving to others, beyond the one intended recipient.

#SYRIA & #ALEPPO

2016 has been a year of disappointments and tragedy. Nearly five years on, the people of Syria are still fighting and the most recent news from Aleppo was heart-breaking. The world watched as innocent civilians send out final pleas for help, in a city already cruelly marked by devastation and destruction.

Like many others, I was equal parts stunned by the violence and helplessness. Then I decided to do something. I started by signing Amnesty International's petition demanding the safe evacuation of people from Aleppo, joining my voice with others.

This year, S requested that I use the money I would have spent on a gift for him on charity. I decided to donate it to Doctors without Borders, so that those in need can receive medical aid, regardless of their race, religion, gender or political leanings. Their work in Syria has become more difficult, but ever invaluable.

#REDUCE / #RECYCLE
Retail therapy may bring great joy but it also drives huge production, use of resources and waste.

This festive season, why not try supporting alternatives to fast fashion instead?

Instead of buying a piece of fast fashion or retail, try shopping at Dark Horse Vintage instead.

If vintage isn't for you, here are some of our favourite businesses that source for their materials and labour ethnically and consciously:

• For the Yogis and active bunnies - Teeki 
• For the jewellery lover - Article 22 produces lovely pieces handcrafted in Laos from Vietnam War shrapnel
• For the beauty love - Lush 
• For the sun lover - Riz Board Shorts
• For the fashionista - People Tree produces garments made of organic cotton and sustainable materials, using traditional skills that support rural communities

#SUPPORTINDEPENDENTBUSINESSES
The last and the simplest - support your local independent businesses.

Behind every indie is a person (or more) who has poured passion into their business. When you buy from them, trust me when I say that you make their day(s).

By Pastel Fox

Some of my favourite local businesses:

• For fresh blooms to light up someone's home and heart - Bloom Room
• For socially conscious fashion - MATTER, THE MINDFUL COMPANY
• For kids - Sea Apple
• For entertainment - The Projector 
• For men - Gnome & Bow
• For the beauty lover - Allies of Skin 

(MON)DAY #22 THE ART OF SLOW TRAVEL

As an avid traveler, I was eager to see everything, do everything and go everywhere. Hence whirlwind tours such as my ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ inspired Graduation Trip in 2011 where I covered New York, Toronto, New Orleans, San Francisco and LA in three weeks. 

Memorable? Yes.

Restful? No.

Meaningful? The jury is still out on that front.

Since my last frenetic campaign across Europe two years ago (five cities, two weeks, frazzled nerves all around), I’ve changed my habits in favour of slow travel. I have a reasonable amount of annual leave and despite their precious nature, my typical trip now lasts at least five days to a week (a full week, gasp!) in a single location. 

From Bali to Rome, slow travel allows me to savour each city slowly, sate myself carefully and come back more rested.

Here are ten nifty steps to help you get started on the art of slow travel.

1. Location is everything. 

But in a world as vast and diverse as ours, you’re never short of options. The trouble will be deciding. 

Want a beach holiday with a bit of everything - sun, sand, ohmmm and shopping? Book your tickets to Bali.

Looking for exotic adventure in a developing country? Head to Myanmar.

Is art, history and culture more your thing? Pretty hard to beat Rome (but I’m biased).

Are you a city slicker who can never get enough? London! New York! Tokyo!

2. Plan loosely

With at least a week (or slightly less) in a single location, you have plenty of time! Make a list of things that you’d like to do, see, try, taste in the location of your choice. Mark out your ‘must dos’ for special attention (i.e. make sure you do them).

Find out the best times to do these things - mornings are normally the best for temple runs while some restaurants only open for business in the evening. Find out if you need a guide for these things and book them. 

Then, plan loosely. You don’t need to have an excel sheet with an hourly-break down. A good balance would be one to two major activities per day. 

You’ll leave plenty of time to have sleep-ins, long lunches, and wander the city like a local. If you like something and want seconds, you can even go back and get it! 

3. Choose your Companions Carefully

There isn’t a right or wrong way to travel, but everyone has their own style and finding someone who gets it is incredibly important. 

If you haven’t travelled with this person, it’s best to start that conversation on their travel habits (not just what they like to do, but how they like to do it).

That person who must get up at the crack of dawn and requires all to? Out.

How about the one that must plan every single minute of the trip? Out.

The one that needs to be on the move, always? Out. 

The art of slow travel requires company that understands and subscribes to it too. Share this article with them to get the discussion going. 

Of course, you don’t have to travel with a plus one. Going solo is a great option too. 

4. Where to Stay?

They say home is where the heart is, so go with what you like. 

Personally, I like staying slightly out of the center of things - close enough to where all the buzz is, far enough to get a little peace and quiet. 

Tip - if you’re doing a trip longer than a week and am planning to AirBnb it, I like to mix it up with a couple nights at a great hotel at the end. One with amazing beds and sheets is an extra nice treat at the end of the trip that’ll make you feel twice as rested (but not cost an arm and a leg). 

5. Just Do It

As the folks at Nike will say, just do it! That’s the only way you’ll find out if slow travel is for you. 

Bon Voyage! 

(Mon)day #21 Three Things a True Blue Romantic needs

It is very easy to identify what I call an obvious romantic like me. A stereotypical romantic is into arts, culture, music and poetry. The arty-farty. 

Naturally there are closet romantics too. Sometimes they may seem like the most practical and no-nonsense type of people who claim they value stability over romance and may even chastise their hopelessly romantic counterparts. Yet when they are alone or have a chance to ruminate, they carry the same kind of ideals which they amplify silently in their heads. Usually these ideals remain so obscure that they won't even realise until they manifest into issues which they have to overcome.

So this is really for all of us who grow up in this romantically-charged era. (Our parents included) 

Most of us are somewhat true blue romantics. 

There's nothing wrong with romance. Romanticism has allowed individuals to connect over emotions. It has given birth to great art, Korean dramas series and sensational Tumblr postings. Even this piece of writing can be a defiant demonstration of Romanticism! (I must be idealistic and romantic enough to think that a post can even seed some thoughts into strangers.) 

The thing is you can't just survive on romance. If you currently are, then evidence has shown that this soon will also pass. (I know, cryptic!)  

I thought I'll share some books, articles and films that I've come across recently. They may help make a Romantic's perspective more hm, holistic.  The best way though is to really go through real-life events that will shake your beliefs and make you deeply question behaviour like following your heart and feelings. 

Nevertheless, here are the three things that may give you a shortcut to wisdom (ok, I might have dramatised):

1. The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

"If you find them attractive, you get on with them, they like you, that is about as good as you need," said Alain de Botton in an interview . (Watch the video clip on the site too) 

Really, is that all we need? What about a sense of humour? What about that ability to be spontaneous? What about mind-blowing, unexplainable chemistry? What about that bit about making each other a better person? 

It sounds a bit sad and yes, unromantic to reduce "love to be a skill, rather than an enthusiasm" we have known it to be. My personal observations and experiences have made me more receptive to the notion of enlightened romantic pessimism highlighted in the novel.

Still reading this novel has kind of sobered me up even more. Repeatedly, this book drills the concept into me  that each individual is grappling with his or her own inner demons, madness, insecurities and demands that sometimes he or she can't fully articulate.

So we unleash them in words and actions that look like idiocy, intensity or insensitivity to the other party.

What we see may not always be what they mean.

Maturity comes when we fully understand that no one person can fully sympathise with you, and that is perfectly normal! Another sign of maturity that Alain has defined is the ability to recognise our own madness without being defensive.

My favourite quotes:

• "There's no such person over the long term. We are too varied and peculiar. There cannot be lasting congruence (!). The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste, but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and good grace." 

• "We accept that in a number of areas, our partner will be wiser, more reasonable, and more mature than we are and we would want to learn from them. We should bear having things pointed out to us. Only if we were already perfect, could the idea of mutual education be dismissed as unloving." 

• "Compatibility is an achievement of love, not a pre-condition." 

The last quote overthrows many literature and articles on love and that age-old debate - is compatibility or chemistry more important for a relationship? The novel is saying that none matters as much as your willingness and openness to acknowledge that people are compatible with you until they aren't and vice versa. I've seen the seemingly most compatible couples break up and seemingly most incompatible couples still working out...

Alain's words make sense to me in a non-idealistic and non-romantic way. No sparks. No deep stirrings in my heart. I didn't feel an impulse to break into reveries or scrolls of poetry after finishing the book. Nor did it grow into cynicism or disbelief.  (By the way, "cynics are usually idealists with unusually high standards," says the philosopher.)

I simply accepted his words not with resignation, but with awareness.

They just really make sense. 

2. The Happy Film by Sagmeister (Spoiler's Alert) 

Before watching it at Singapore Design Film Festival, I was very close to dismissing it as a hipster film. A movie about happiness? It must be cheesy and lame. Partly convinced by Sagmeister's credentials as a designer, I decided to watch it -- on my own. 

Halfway through the film, I started to shake off my shoes and hug my knees in the theatre. 

A very clear and good sign of pure enjoyment. 

The film was weird and hilarious at times. This documentary was made in over six years. (How did they sieve through all the footage and edit the story when the story they set out to tell obviously had changed?)

I found myself smiling at Sagmeister's silly confession of keeping a rule of not dating anyone who is more than 20 years younger than him. Such sheepish honesty. 

It is a stunning visual treat and awfully real at the same time. Sagmeister's search for happiness and "scientific approach" towards attaining it proved to be futile, because as the adage goes, some things were just not within his control. And even when they were, at that time, he refused to control them and let them run amok and wild. The film, like he said, shows "what a mess life really is." 

Fairly unsettling. Again, it sweeps romanticism out of the window. 

The lesson from the film is there is no point obsessing over happiness; it is the admission that we can't sustain a level of complete happiness. We ought to be thankful for those small moments. 

Some of my favourite quotes:

• "People who avoid commitment are really avoiding conflict..."

• “The unconscious mind is a big elephant and the conscious mind is a tiny rider who thinks he can tell the elephant what to do. But in real life, the sub-conscious mind has its own ideas and direction.”

3. Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck by Jon Acuff 

This is the driest of the lot. The Course of Love talks about love - super relatable. The Happy Film looks beautiful.  Do Over focuses on the thing that we spend sometimes more than our lives on. Being all romantic and idealistic about your career is, to me, a recipe for disaster. Questions like "what's your ideal job" will run up against what this book is about. 

I've come to recognise that there is no job or one role that I pin myself down to achieve. I only have lessons I want to learn and experiences I want to go through. I enjoy sometimes seeing how the currents of change can take me to places I didn't even expect myself to be in. 

My favourite quote: "Choose your attitude every day until eventually it chooses you right back. It's not about feeling happy or feeling committed to your work or feeling like being a good employee. Feelings are the flightiest things in the world, held to the whimsy of a thousand factors. Feelings will tell you the day is already ruined because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed or had a bad commute that morning. Don't listen to feelings. Make choices. Today, choose a good attitude. This is the one thing you can do right this minute to actually shock your boss, improve your work relationships, and dramatically increase your long-term odds of an awesome career."

While the quote downplays the importance of feelings, feelings are not always trivial. They can be sometimes telling, but we shouldn't hold ourselves captive to mere feelings and let them determine our actions. The book also tells us how crucial it is not to have a fixed mindset when it comes to your career goals. 

***

If you ask me if I am still a romantic, yes I am, but I'm no longer a hopeless romantic or idealist. 

There are benefits of being a romantic. You sometimes believe in things larger than yourself and what you can see, feel or hear. You believe in fun and understand that playfulness and lightness can make your day and someone else's day. And of course, romance too ignites hope and sometimes is the force that kick-starts everything.

So as abstract, serious and over-the-top as the term may sound, I quite like the meaning behind enlightened romantic pessimism. It means I'm a romantic at heart, but have gained more insight and become more sympathetic when reality doesn't fit the romantic ideal. 

It also ironically gives me hope because almost everything or everyone you meet in career and relationships and have fondness for becomes equally possible and impossible. 

Sounds a little incomprehensible, but I think you'll get I mean after you have read/watched the three stories! 

*** 

(MON)DAY #20 HOW PRIVILEGED ARE YOU?

How privileged are you? 

Do you know the answer to that question? And do you know how much more or less privileged you are in relation to your peers?

I am privileged. I went to a good school with good teachers (along with some weird ones) and never had to worry about not having enough. Most of my friends that I have met through school and those in my social circle are likewise in a similar if not better socio-economic class.

But while I at least have that self-awareness, life shows you all the time that there are many out there who don't.

I urge you to try this experiment out. This a simple but powerful experience to illustrate how much impact things that are out of our control by simple virtue of birth and circumstance can affect the rest of our lives.

Answer a series of questions about your life and take a step forward or backward.
At the end of 35 questions, look at where you stand against everyone else.
That is privilege.

Do it with your friends, but not just your friends. In a country like Singapore where the school you go to influences the diversity of your social network, that immediately skews results.
Do it with your colleagues from all walks of lives, friends of all cultures.
Do it with strangers, if you have the opportunity to.
If you can't, just do it on your own, like I did.

I think it will be a profound experience of discovery.

Here are my answers and my privilege result:

If your parents worked nights and weekends to support your family, take one step back. 

Steps taken so far: 0

If you are able to move through the world without fear of sexual assault, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 0

If you can show affection for your romantic partner in public without fear of ridicule or violence, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 1 step forward

If you have ever been diagnosed as having a physical or mental illness/disability, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 1 step forward 

If the primary language spoken in your household growing up was not english, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 1 step forward 

If you came from a supportive family environment take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 2 steps forward 

If you have ever tried to change your speech or mannerisms to gain credibility, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 2 steps forward 

If you can go anywhere in the country, and easily find the kinds of hair products you need and/or cosmetics that match your skin color, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 3 steps forward 

If you were embarrassed about your clothes or house while growing up, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 2 steps forward (Personally I think this is a result of the socio-economic group I found myself in. It was a privileged group and there was a lot of upward comparison that made me feel like we didn't have as much. However on hindsight everything I had was more than adequate). 

If you can make mistakes and not have people attribute your behavior to flaws in your racial/gender group, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 3 steps forward 

If you can legally marry the person you love, regardless of where you live, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 4 steps forward 

If you were born in the United States (or in our case, Singapore), take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 5 steps forward 

If you or your parents have ever gone through a divorce, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 5 steps forward 

If you felt like you had adequate access to healthy food growing up, take one step forward

Steps taken so far: 6 steps forward 

If you are reasonably sure you would be hired for a job based on your ability and qualifications, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 7 steps forward 

If you would never think twice about calling the police when trouble occurs, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 8 steps forward 

If you can see a doctor whenever you feel the need, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 9 steps forward 

If you feel comfortable being emotionally expressive/open, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 10 steps forward 

If you have ever been the only person of your race/gender/socio-economic status/ sexual orientation in a classroom or workplace setting, please take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 10 steps forward 

If you took out loans for your education take one step backward.

Steps taken so far: 9 steps forward 

If you get time off for your religious holidays, take one step forward. 

Steps taken so far: 10 steps forward 

If you had a job during your high school and college years, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 10 steps forward (I did teach tuition but it was more for extra spending money so I don't count that). 

If you feel comfortable walking home alone at night, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 10 steps forward 

If you have ever traveled outside the United States (or in our case, Singapore), take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 11 steps forward 

If you have ever felt like there was NOT adequate or accurate representation of your racial group, sexual orientation group, gender group, and/or disability group in the media, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 11 steps forward 

If you feel confident that your parents would be able to financially help/support you if you were going through a financial hardship, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 12 steps forward 

If you have ever been bullied or made fun of based on something that you can’t change, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 12 steps forward 

If there were more than 50 books in your house growing up, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 13 steps forward 

If you studied the culture or the history of your ancestors in elementary school take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 14 steps forward 

If your parents or guardians attended college, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 14 steps forward 

If you ever went on a family vacation, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 15 steps forward 

If you can buy new clothes or go out to dinner when you want to, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 16 steps forward 

If you were ever offered a job because of your association with a friend or family member, take one step forward.

Steps taken so far: 17 steps forward 

If one of your parents was ever laid off or unemployed not by choice, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 17 steps forward 

If you were ever uncomfortable about a joke or a statement you overheard related to your race, ethnicity, gender, appearance, or sexual orientation but felt unsafe to confront the situation, take one step back.

Steps taken so far: 17 steps forward 


My final result: 17 steps forward from the starting line
What's your privilege?