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One Date, Two Destinies: A Book Release

Hello, everyone!

Happy Malaysia Day to all of you who are from Malaysia!

On another and related note, those of you who know me probably know that I am a big fan of Lee Kuan Yew. 

Well, that’s a bit of a small understatement. I mean, it would have to be for someone who was somehow so moved that he decided to write an entire book about Lee Kuan Yew, which is by the way exactly what I did. 

This Malaysia Day, 16 September, I’m very happy to announce the release of “One Date, Two Destinies: Lee Kuan Yew and the Birth of Malaysia and Singapore”, at a (Malaysia Day) discount!

Pick it up here or here:
https://victortanws.gumroad.com/l/september16th 

Also, here’s a sample that you can have a look at to preview the contents!

One-Date-Two-Destinies-Lee-Kuan-Yew-and-the-Birth-of-Malaysia-and-Singapore-SAMPLE-1Download

This was a fun project to engage in, writing about the entire track of Lee Kuan Yew’s history from his birth up until the end. 

I think it is crucial to look back at the past to understand history better, and this is one of the first things that a person will understand, I think, if they look just a little bit beneath the surface of Malaysian history and that which we call Malaysia. 

I don’t think that there is quite a project that is like this, but I think that it was an extremely fun one – It contains many of my own personal reflections about Mr. Lee and the role that he played in Malaysia and Singapore, and in our shared history together, one that was born from a time of what can rightfully be called trauma. 

I hope that you will find it meaningful and valuable for your own personal development and growth even as you reflect on these stories. 

Thank you for your support in advance if you would like to purchase the book!

Yours, 

V.

My Meditation

This isn’t a New Year’s resolution post, but it’s a little observation about something that I really want for the year, and that is the ability to think fast and process faster.

This is my meditation, differing from any other meditation I’ve seen.

I know it seems like a bit of an unconventional choice, but somehow or another, talking and thinking and articulating is just how I calm myself down one moment at a time. You’d think that the opposite would be true, that somehow speaking would be stressful and you’d try to avert yourself from just talking without any deeper purpose.

The mind, people say, has to be calmed down, taken away from the stresses of daily life, that you may achieve a greater peace in the contemplation of nothingness.

But for me, it doesn’t seem that that’s so.

In fact, talking calms me down and it is meaningful. Because I know it’s a skill, and developing that skill really is what I want.

And improve I have.

I think I first started seeing this when I began to just repeatedly talk on YouTube.

You see, there’s a bit of a challenge to that activity when you are talking on YouTube.

After all, you’re just constantly looking for the next thought or idea; you can’t very well sit on the old ways and just allow the old thought patterns to percolate there – The universe doesn’t give you a consolation prize if you can’t articulate anything.

So, to actually make a video that you are satisfied with, it has to be a complete thought – nothing more, nothing less.

Now, the thing about practicing this over a long period of time, though, is that through the practice, you become a little bit better, and through that whole process of ongoing completion and forward movement, before you know it, there you are, out with a video.

But why this is relevant to me, though, is that it’s not that I make an entire video – rather, it’s that I completed a thought, an articulation, an idea. Which, by the way, allows me to move on to the next project just immediately; to think even faster, ideate even more, and to create something that I consider meaningful as a product of my mind.

A big part of me puts my self-worth into this skill, and perhaps that is unhealthy, and partly that is because I tie that self-worth to whether or not I can use my mind to make a difference in this world, or to create something that wasn’t there before.

Maybe it is egotistical, but that is just how I think of it – that every single time I create a piece, a video or otherwise, something new was added to the universe that was not there before. Something accessible by the experience of another that would never have been possible if not for what I had chosen to say, think or do.

Am I able to make use of little time to go on to the next thought? Am I able to do it faster? When I think about my process of making videos and how I’ve managed to speed up over the course of time with a small possibility of getting better each way without compromising quality, I just feel a sense of empowerment. The sense that maybe I’m an actual thinking and articulating person who isn’t bound just by reading and referencing things. I have this feeling that my mind is actually free to come up with new directions, to express them, and to move forward. Why should I be restrained? By the old ways, says my mind, even as new ideas come in minute by minute.

Maybe it’s not meaningful to everyone else in the same way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. But for me, I can really feel a sense of progress whenever I am able to do something like this. To just express myself. And to allow the inner part of me just to move forward like an automaton, not stopping for anyone, but instead just progressing, pushing through with the idea until it reaches completion. That I am able to do this spontaneously, without any provocation, is, I think, what one of the crowning graces of the last year.

This is my meditation, this is my muse, this is what I enjoy. My own personal little Everest that resides within my own mind.

Let’s get even better this year! 

Yours, 

Sepup.

What we share and what we don’t.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but on the topic of what we choose to share on the internet or in published life, I think that personal standards and egoes are a pretty interesting topic.

As it goes, I think if you’re going to type something and spend time doing it, ideally it should be the case that every single part of what you type, say, or think should go out – otherwise why did you even come up with it in the first place? Are you crazy???

But the thing is, our standards often stop us – we said that phrasing wrong; we used the wrong word; other people will judge us if we release this in this way!

The thing is, I concede that having high editorial standards is a wonderful thing; we don’t want to create something that would embarrass us; we want our personal ego and feelings to be validated when we create things, much the way that a child wants to perfect a drawing or painting they’re giving their very best work into – and if it doesn’t come out right, we don’t want to show it to the world.

I guess that matters a little less if you’re talented, if you create stuff with sufficiently high quality control by virtue of just breathing, existing, not even really thinking so much – if that were the case, you don’t need to think too much since anything you do will end up amazing… Or do you just feel that it’s amazing but you have no good read on things?

All told, though, I do think it’s actually pretty impressive what you can get away with as a ‘post’ if you just really don’t care who reads what you’re saying and you’re just concerned with what you think about what you created. Regardless of whatever the origin of the behavior is, whether the creator’s talented or untalented, they at least are willing to share themselves out there with the world to be judged whether for good or for bad.

I respect that bravery, and hope to be more like these kinds of people.

Here’s to a year of better flow 🙂

Time’s Unending Bound

THE SAD THING IS that we are bound by time.

Every single one of you – the reader, the writer, the person just casually scrolling by – all of you are bound in this common experience, only to be reminded of it every single time you lock at the clock – the year itself has all of 31557600 seconds, all of which are passing moment by moment as you sit, breathe, and think about everything that’s happening.

At the end of it, where will you be?

Plenty of us, including me, would have forgotten this – the reflection will be done, we may have moved, started different jobs, Some of us will be alive, some dead, others married; at bottom, all of us will have become quite different people from the people who began on this path of reflection.

I am constantly captivated by the fact that this experience is limited – that we are once-in-a-lifetime phenomena only to take place in the course of these few breaths, only to be gone – and it is a nice reminder to be a little better, to manifest a little more through this beautiful, wild, sometimes chaotic life.

What’s this year going to bring in this limited span of time and what will my human capacities bring out? 

How will we use this time better, more efficiently, recruiting the people around us into something better than we had before?

That’s something to think more deeply about in the days ahead, as we move on with our ambitions, each small step ahead.