Jan 1

Jan 1 (Unofficial) First Post - and Last Post of 2019 (written on 29 Dec 2019)

2019 - what a year it has been – I did so many things that many other people would do over a few years and I did all these all in the span of less than a year.

In December last year I first met Meishan, who’s now my current wife, on Tinder. In January this year, I started my search for a resale HDB flat and she was looking around for a flat together with me despite the fact that I spend most of January living in Kuala Lumpur for work. When I was considering the location, I had in mind the life we would have together. And that was only in January – a month after we met. I confirmed the purchase of the flat in early March, started looking for renovation contractors and got the keys to flat in mid May. Renovations got underway and I proposed to Meishan in June.

We found out Meishan is pregnant in early July and we moved into the newly-renovated flat end July. We have been living together since then….and we got married on 2nd November 2019. And guess what, I got myself a new job in the midst of all these. I started work at the new place in late November.

Met the love of my life, bought my first property, moved in, got married, switched work and joined a much bigger company and now we’re gonna be first time parents!

2019 - what a year it has been!

If I could I would want to break down all the outstanding episodes and lessons that happened this year in 2019. And that’s one of the reasons why I started this blog - to help me reflect on experiences I’ve had and the lessons I've learned. You know I was just thinking about this yesterday - I have been always trying to learn new things, get inspirations and gain new perspectives by reading books and articles. But perhaps the biggest lessons could be learned from my own experiences. And maybe I can gain better contextualized insights into my thoughts, actions and behavior from simple self-reflections. And this is what I intend to do this with this blog.

I think people who know me well enough know that I can be quite a private person. I feel the older I’ve become the more I do not need to broadcast my entire life (on social media). (And this is also one common trait I share with my wife – I find this is not very common amongst people these days.) So yes a lot has been thought through before starting this public blog – I hope I stick to my words and keep this blog going.

I have another purpose behind setting up this blog – I hope to benefit others by sharing my experiences. I hope this blog can benefit people who have or are going through the same experiences; or are thinking about the decisions that I have made before. One possible area could be about work – what I have learnt at work, making my career switch from banking to being a entrepreneur, my experience starting and running a business, working at a local tech startup, etc.

A big part of it also comes from the fact that I’m a fan of podcasts and I have learnt a lot from listening to podcasts. There have been many insightful and entertaining interviews on podcasts with fantastic hosts and interviewees which provide helluva learning content. I am grateful for all these and I would like, in my small capacity, give back through this blog. Starting a podcast is also something I would like to explore down the road. For many reasons: I love the medium of podcasts – I listen to it on my work commute; the intimacy of sharing content via voice; reigniting the art of human conversations in a tech and text-heavy world, etc.

And now before I leave this beautiful stadium – Bishan stadium - which is about 15 minutes walk from my place, and 2 days before the end of 2019, I would like to really pay tribute to my wife.

She is incredible; she's amazing I really mean it when I tell her that without her I am nothing. She has been a solid rock in my life since she entered my life. Of course we have our moments when we fight like crazy and moments when I get really really frustrated. But at the end of the day she's an amazing person with values that I relate to and really want in a life partner and the mother to my children.

I'm so thankful - I think I can’t say this enough. You always say that life is too short for us to get enough of each other. That's very sweet of you to say that. I just want to make sure that in this short life than that we have together to treasure each other and make the most of this life together. I'm sure there is so much more I can learn and will learn from you and there is so much more that we will experience together as a couple, as co-parents together, as life partners. I love you to bits!