Felix Leong : In Hues of Blue

First of all, just wanted to say that thanks a lot for those who have been following my updates through this blog.

As you noticed the long hiatus, lots happened for the past three months (actually it's just me transitioning back to my old job, literally) and it's has been an excruciating time for me as I find myself doing a very deep soul search all over again.

As previously said, the seventh chapter is forthcoming and hence I felt that today's the day. No poems, but a simple goodbye. Goodbye in the sense that I've decided that I'll now continue to blog in my personal website - this is mainly due to the fact of my intent to change the intent of my posts and to graduate from the small internal dialogues of my head.

"It's time to close the old books and start afresh."

I still haven't really decided the format of my new writings will be, so it's pretty much back to my beginnings back in 2004 when I first started it all. The theme of this chapter "Reprise", in a sense, has really came full circle. So it'd be a lot of experimentation for now but I doubt it won't be anything personal this time - all the small announcements were done via Twitter and Facebook already and the only thing I think that warrants me to blog is just the drifting thoughts, so we'll see how it goes :).

So for those who needs automatic updates of my new blog, just subscribe to my RSS feed and you are ready to go :). (I suspect I'll tinker with the current theme :p)

So, final words for the blog, thanks for all the kind support and wisdom shared and I really hope to see you over at A Day in Life.


Much love,
Seh Hui "Felix" Leong

~ #3 ~
Running away
On a lost path
Without an end
in sight

A unknown shadow
Creeping;
An instinct
"to escape from...?"

~ #2 ~
Remembering
A distant past
with a vision
so bright

A weary soul
Limping;
Forgotten
"that I'm trying"

~ #1 ~
Approaching
The ominous shadow
with a terror
unable to subside

A frozen pair of eyes
staring;
timidly asking
"What is it"

~ #0 ~
Engulfing,
or so it seemed
Yet left nothing
in sight

A clueless soul
Trembling;
Forgetting
"......."

Eight months ago, I agonized myself with the thought of car ownership. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience as there's two "blocker" thoughts that runs uncomfortably through my veins: the negative connotation of carrying debt (I was effectively debt-free at that point of time) and the fear of driving. Both of these things literally shrink my balls (ahem, being a guy, guess that's the best illustration of how I felt :p), but in the end, I managed to get away with it.

Fast forward eight months later, as in now, I find myself revisiting the topic of credit, and of a bigger scale, no less.

You see, with my recent decision to move back to Kuala Lumpur, I was presented with an overwhelming amount of options: each with its own set of merits and tradeoffs. And at this present stage, a whole new option is open to me: the option to buy my own home. That's really a completely foreign territory which my brain is still having a rough time absorbing.

With so many parameters in making a decision which I'm totally clueless about, keeping a cool head is the one thing I really need at the moment.

... Now, what was I talking about from the start? Oh, the car. Seemed that the I've already reached a stage which I'm already capable of taking up bigger financial commitments, I guess the better response would be to pat myself at the back? The things that mattered now are to get out from yet another comfort zone and to learn financial matters that is waaaay beyond my level of comprehension.

Looks like I could use more help and role models.

It been months I had it now, but I now had my own paper journal that I'm proud of owning.

It's actually one of those "way too expensive" things that I found at Kinokuniya which I have adored for quite some time and only recently had the resolve to cough up a premium to get it (and for those who didn't know, I'm quite a stationery nerd ;)): It's a fabric bound, bright yellow, B5-sized ring binder file from Kokuyo, which really had sex appeal that immediately catches people's eye without going blind (yellow is one of those bright colours that I'm quite allergic to, to be honest). Somehow the colour really gave me an feeling of joy, creativity and playfulness and it's a joy to feel the textured and somewhat silky fabric while I'm holding on to it. And B5 was just the right paper size for me for not being too bulky like A4 or a bit too small and restrictive like A5. (Yeah, I'm quite anal about such details :p)

So it's quite easy to tell I really fell in love with this perfect format as my own personal, paper-bound journal.

In fact, the last three artworks are actually done while scribbling on it, and I'm personally finding myself writing down more thoughts in that thing: collecting material for any future creative exploits and projects. At times when I can't really find anything significant to write on this blog, the best outlet for me to express draft concepts is through this journal.

I'm still learning the skills of good journal keeping and organizing thoughts (despite having kept this online journal for like... 5 years?), and it's really good investment in getting a ring binder file because it gave me the flexibility of moving paper around in the journal as needed so I don't really need to be too fixated on the fact that I'd find it hard to change stuff later on. One small accomplishment that I'm quite satisfied with is the fact that I finally managed to nail down the five major categories of notes, which really reflects on my interests: arts, personal development, Japanese, drifting thoughts and software development.

I'm also experimenting with various means of recording my thoughts: especially through colours, drawings and freeflow organization. I even purposely bought unruled paper (i.e. blank stock paper) for the purpose of the experiment. The format of the stuff I have recorded is still quite a bit rigid, but it's really a good start as I'm starting to introduce new design elements to it.

On the online front, I have been using Twitter quite extensively recently: mainly to jot down things that would used to be impromptu or filler posts here. I'm not really into following people through that channel, but rather more like the Impromptu posts I used to do it here to capture some of my smaller thought nuggets and putting them up for the world to read (and hopefully inspire). If anyone of you who would like to get these small little updates, feel free to follow me via Twitter @ felixleong :).

Anyway, I'm currently going through yet another adjustment/transition in life. I'll post the details later but the main point is that I'll be moving back to Kuala Lumpur again within this month or the next. I'm still in search for a room or a cheap apartment unit which I could share with my sister, so if any Malaysian readers who happened to read this, I would really love to hear from you if you had any leads to great places to stay which are close to the LRT (excluding KTM).

Till next time!

Basically that's what I noticed when I was at the gym today and I personally find it slightly amusing :p (though, in a certain sense, it was a self-deprecating joke).

What happens when you need to find your own filing cabinet among a sea of hundreds of them?

Worse, they are all arranged closely together: meaning you have to pull them out one by one if you are unlucky to have yours in the deep end of the sea of cabinets.

Even worse, you notice that all labels are stuck in the front and the only way you are going to find yours is to move them out one at a time.

Worst of them all... these things are heavy.

That's the most amusing experience I got when I moved into the new office (or rather my second coming :p) today.

Partly influenced by a scene in Honey and Clover (I think even the description below was probably my retelling and interpretation of the narration of that particular scene), I sort of sketched out the thing about the creative process in which creative ideas can be seen like a black box of sorts containing materials that could potentially be manifested into a particular form.

Through a human nature of curiosity and a fulfilling need to express oneself, vision or just plain playfulness, we tend to find ourselves immersed in piecing the pieces together and make something out of it using our own hands.

However, being a world as it is: ours is a world filled with infinite possibilities, there's times that when our eyes were set on a farther horizon, all we could see is a sea full of these black boxes which we may not know what the outcome may be.

At times like this, sometimes one may feel helpless, overwhelmed and even lost; yet at a same time we may feel excited, engaged and optimistic on how each of our choices and focus would lead us into.

As we manifest something, we are not only creating - we are, ourselves, creating and manifesting our "selves".

I guess that's what creativity is.

Am addicted to Project Euler: math can indeed be addictive when you know there's an absolute answer that you need to solve ;).

Now 9 more to go to achieve Level 1.

Not feeling well for the past few days, mainly due to recently life disruptions (and probably lack of discipline :p). The picture above pretty much reflects my recent conditions.

In an environment without any TLC (tender loving care) and a lousy appetite, cookies are always your best friend.

That's what I thought :p.

Recently found myself overwhelmed by expectations: mostly those of my own. Recently been reading, listening and watching stuff from successful people via blogs, articles, books, podcasts and webcasts. So much in fact that I felt quite overwhelmed, in a way.

It quite funny in the sense that when your eyes are much more open once you listen to the more enlighten spots that people had reached, it's hard not to feel a bit... ummm, small? ^-^|| Like, at some point the feeling of being inferior sort of kicks in and makes me anxious and impatient to get into the spot of "being successful", even though I'd admit now that the definition of "success" is more like "whatever they had achieved". For one thing there's nothing wrong about wanting what people have had right now, just that it'd be counter productive if the bar of my expectations was set perceptually too high that dampens my spirit to achieve them.

For now, I'm still sorting out my dreams and goals and compartmentalize them in some way. I think it'd be better that way rather than facing a unconquerable mountain of messy dreams. Then it's the perfect time to do some soul searching as well as doing small acts towards achieving them.