Adi Jamaludin

To Cane or...

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 10 May 2026 04:38:00 +0000

To cane or not to cane. That is the question currently making its rounds in Singapore, especially after the Ministry of Education announced that caning will continue to be part of the disciplinary framework in schools for serious bullying cases. Suddenly, everybody became an expert. Parents. Keyboard warriors. People who have not stepped into a school since Nokia phones had antennas. Everybody has something to say.

Some are strongly against it. They argue that caning perpetuates violence. Others say it traumatises children. A few even claim it teaches fear rather than morality. Fair points, honestly. But somewhere within all the noise, many people seem to have forgotten one important thing: in Singapore schools, caning is never the first step. It is the last door after all the other doors have failed to open.

That part somehow gets conveniently ignored.

The image people paint online is as though schools are waiting in dark rooms holding canes like some WWE entrance scene. As though discipline masters wake up every morning whispering, “Ah yes, who shall I traumatise today?” But anyone who has worked in schools, especially in student development, counselling, teaching or the arts scene, knows discipline frameworks are far more layered than that.

When bullying happens in schools, investigations are conducted. Witnesses are interviewed. Students are called in repeatedly. Teachers spend hours trying to piece together what happened because every story has ten versions. The victim gets support. The bully also gets support. Parents are contacted. Counselling sessions happen. Reflection exercises are done. Teachers monitor the students. Peer relationships are observed. In some cases, restorative circles are conducted where students attempt to understand the harm they caused.

And then comes the difficult part.

Sometimes, despite all of that, nothing changes.

Some students continue bullying because they know the system is reluctant to escalate. Some parents refuse to cooperate. Some even defend their children regardless of evidence. Every teacher knows this line by heart: “My son would never do such a thing.”

Of course. Apparently every bully in Singapore was manufactured by Shopee and delivered anonymously.

What many fail to realise is that schools today are already heavily centred around rehabilitation. Ministry of Education itself repeatedly states that discipline is an “educative process” and that caning is only used as a last resort for boys involved in serious offences. The framework already prioritises counselling, emotional support, reflection and restorative practices before harsher punishments are considered.

But here is the uncomfortable truth many people do not want to admit: not everybody responds to counselling.

Some students respond to empathy. Others respond only when consequences become tangible.

And this is where many people misunderstand the purpose of caning.

Caning is not primarily meant to teach. It is meant to deter.

There is a difference.

Teaching is reflexive. It happens after the mistake. You explain why something is wrong after someone already crossed the line. But deterrence works before the act. The mere existence of a severe consequence discourages people from crossing the line in the first place.

People who say “Caning teaches nothing” are technically correct. Because that is not its central function.

A fire alarm also teaches nothing. But it prevents disaster.

The irony is this: if deterrence works properly, caning rarely needs to happen. The system exists precisely so it will not need to be activated often. If students know serious bullying may lead to public disciplinary consequences, many will think twice before doing it.

And honestly, schools are not dealing with harmless pranks anymore. Bullying today is more vicious because it follows students home. Social media ensures humiliation becomes permanent. In the past, somebody got bullied in school and escaped after dismissal. Today, the bullying continues on TikTok, Telegram, Instagram and group chats at 2am.

A bruise heals faster than a viral humiliation video.

Yet oddly enough, society seems more uncomfortable with punishing the bully than with the suffering endured by the victim.

That imbalance is strange.

People often speak about the psychological impact of caning. Fair enough. But where is the same energy when victims experience anxiety, trauma, depression or social isolation because of prolonged bullying? Studies consistently show bullying has long-term effects on mental health, self-esteem and academic performance. The World Health Organization has repeatedly identified bullying as a major risk factor for adolescent mental health struggles. Victims often carry emotional scars for years.

And yet whenever harsh punishment enters the conversation, suddenly empathy becomes selective.

One of the more fascinating examples people keep bringing up is Michael Fay, the American teenager caned in Singapore in 1994 for vandalism. The incident sparked global outrage. The United States protested. International media painted Singapore as some authoritarian dystopia where chewing gum probably got you sent to Alcatraz.

But here is the interesting thing nobody talks about anymore.

After the case became widely publicised, open vandalism of the sort Michael Fay committed became extremely rare in Singapore. Michael Fay became less of a person and more of a warning sign.

And perhaps that is the uncomfortable point critics dislike acknowledging: deterrence works precisely because consequences become socially visible.

In fact, public caning in schools has never really been about physical pain alone. Many former students will tell you the emotional embarrassment was worse than the actual strokes. The anticipation. The shame. The loss of status. The collapse of the “tough guy” image.

And maybe that matters more than people realise.

Bullies often thrive on power, ego and social dominance. Bullying is performance. It is theatre. It is someone trying to establish superiority before an audience. Public disciplinary consequences dismantle that performance. Suddenly the bully is no longer feared. Suddenly the bully looks vulnerable, accountable and human.

That shift matters psychologically.

Of course, none of this means caning should be abused. There are legitimate concerns. Excessive corporal punishment can absolutely become harmful when done irresponsibly. Even Ministry of Education acknowledges this and emphasises strict protocols. Only authorised personnel may administer it. Approval processes exist. It is limited to boys and serious offences. Counselling and restorative measures continue alongside punishment.

And before people start shouting online, “See! Gender inequality!”, there is also a legal and medical rationale involved. Singapore’s framework does not permit corporal punishment for girls partly because of longstanding concerns regarding potential physical implications and broader legal norms surrounding female corporal punishment.

But perhaps the bigger issue here is not even caning itself.

Perhaps the bigger issue is that schools are increasingly expected to parent children while some parents slowly outsource responsibility.

Teachers today are expected to educate, counsel, monitor emotional wellbeing, teach cyber wellness, manage mental health concerns, detect abuse, stop bullying, communicate with parents, run CCAs, complete administrative work, and somehow still smile during morning assembly like they slept eight hours.

Then when discipline measures are introduced, suddenly everyone says schools are “too harsh.”

But where exactly do people think discipline begins?

At home.

A school can reinforce values. But if a child repeatedly learns at home that accountability can be escaped through excuses, denial or aggression, eventually schools run out of tools. And when schools run out of tools, society starts blaming schools for being “ineffective.”

You cannot simultaneously remove every disciplinary consequence and then complain about worsening student behaviour.

At some point, boundaries matter.

And perhaps that is what this debate is truly about.

Boundaries.

Children need to know where the line exists. More importantly, they need to know the line means something. A society without consequences eventually becomes a society where victims feel abandoned.

This does not mean every child deserves harsh punishment. Far from it. Many bullies are themselves struggling emotionally. Some come from unstable homes. Some repeat behaviours they themselves experienced. That is why rehabilitation remains important. But rehabilitation without accountability becomes meaningless.

Kindness without boundaries is not kindness. It is avoidance.

And strangely enough, Singapore’s education system already attempts to balance both. Ministry of Education consistently frames discipline as restorative and educative rather than purely punitive. Schools investigate cases, provide counselling, engage parents and support both victims and perpetrators. Caning enters only at the extreme end of repeated or severe misconduct.

But because the word “caning” sounds dramatic, public discourse often reduces the entire framework into one simplistic headline.

Sometimes I wonder whether people are actually reacting to the punishment itself, or reacting to the symbolism of it. Caning reminds society that consequences still exist. And perhaps in an era where many systems are becoming softer, more negotiable and more therapeutic, the existence of hard consequences makes people uncomfortable.

Yet schools are not utopian spaces. They are ecosystems filled with real human behaviour. Some students are kind. Some are cruel. Some are impulsive. Some test limits repeatedly. Educators deal with all of them simultaneously.

And honestly, anyone who has seen a badly bullied child cry in a counsellor’s room knows why schools cannot afford to be entirely toothless.

No punishment system will ever be perfect. But pretending severe bullying can be solved entirely through “talking nicely” feels equally naïve.

Sometimes students need guidance.

Sometimes they need counselling.

Sometimes they need second chances.

And sometimes they need consequences serious enough to interrupt destructive behaviour before adulthood does it far more brutally.

Because the unfortunate reality is this: outside school, consequences become harsher. Assault becomes criminal record. Harassment becomes legal action. Workplace bullying leads to dismissal. Society itself operates on deterrence. Laws exist not merely to rehabilitate but to discourage.

Schools are merely introducing students to that reality in controlled environments before the adult world does it with less mercy.

Perhaps that is why the old phrase still survives despite all the debate: spare the rod and spoil the child.

Not because violence is glorious.

Not because punishment is enjoyable.

But because consequences matter.

And maybe, just maybe, what frightens society today is not the cane itself.

It is the reminder that discipline still requires discomfort sometimes.

May the 4th Be With You (But Also… Please Go and Rest)

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:29:00 +0000

Every year, Labour Day comes and goes like that one colleague who says, “Let’s catch up soon,” and then disappears for six months. We acknowledge it, we enjoy the public holiday, we post something vaguely grateful, and then on Monday, we go back to replying emails at 8:57am, pretending we are not already tired. This year feels a little different though, or maybe it isn’t different and we are just more honest now, because lately there is a quiet message humming beneath everything we do: you are not enough, not yet, not quite, almost there—but try harder. It doesn’t always come from a boss standing over your shoulder like a secondary school invigilator; sometimes it’s more subtle, it’s in the KPIs that get revised just when you thought you finally understood them, it’s in the “just one more thing” that is never just one more thing, it’s in the way productivity is measured like a game score, and somehow the scoreboard keeps updating itself. You hit the target and the target moves, you improve and the benchmark rises, you rest and someone asks why you’re slowing down, and somewhere along the way, you begin to wonder if you were ever enough to begin with.

The most dangerous part is not even the pressure itself but how quietly we internalise it, how we start speaking the language of productivity as if it is our mother tongue, saying things like “I’ve not been very productive today,” or “I feel useless,” or “I didn’t achieve much,” and not noticing how quickly “productive” becomes “useful” and “useful” becomes “worthy,” as if we have collapsed our entire existence into output, as if we are not humans but slightly upgraded printers, and when the printer jams, we apologise. Let me confess something here, there are days I end my work feeling like I’ve done nothing even though I know, objectively, that I’ve done a lot—emails replied, lessons conducted, students engaged, scripts drafted, people spoken to—but because none of it felt big, it felt like it didn’t count, as if meaning must always come with scale, as if quiet effort is somehow lesser, and I know I’m not the only one, because somewhere out there someone is folding laundry, replying messages, checking in on a friend, meeting a deadline, and still thinking, “I didn’t do enough today,” which is wild when you think about it, because if a friend told you they did all that, you would probably say, “Wah, not bad ah,” but when it’s ourselves, suddenly the bar is Olympic level.

Labour Day was never meant to celebrate productivity; it was meant to protect people from it, and that is the irony, because the day exists because there was a time when people were worked to the bone, when hours were long, conditions were harsh, and rest was considered a luxury instead of a right, and Labour Day was a line drawn in the sand to say we are not machines, we are not infinite, we are not here only to produce, and yet somehow we have come full circle, not in the same visible ways but in quieter, more insidious ones, where the pressure doesn’t always come from outside but from within, where we optimise ourselves, track our habits, measure our time, and somehow even turn rest into something we must earn, where even our breaks have goals and we say things like “let me just rest productively,” which I don’t fully understand but it sounds stressful. There is something else we don’t talk about enough, which is that exhaustion doesn’t always look like collapse, sometimes it looks like functioning, you wake up, you go to work, you do what needs to be done, you smile when required, and inside there is just less—less excitement, less curiosity, less energy to care—you’re not burnt out enough to stop but you’re tired enough to forget why you started.

So maybe this Labour Day, the question is not how can I be more productive but what have I already survived, because if you really sit with that question properly, you might realise something uncomfortable, which is that you have been doing a lot, more than you give yourself credit for, you have navigated difficult conversations, met expectations you didn’t set, adapted, adjusted, compromised, shown up even when you didn’t feel like it, and no, not all of it was perfect, but it was real and it mattered. We don’t celebrate survival enough, maybe because it feels too basic, too ordinary, but surviving is not nothing, especially in a world that keeps asking for more. There is a line I keep coming back to, which is that your worth is not your output, and it sounds simple, almost cliché, but if it were truly simple, we wouldn’t struggle with it so much, because deep down many of us still believe that if we produce more, we matter more, and if we achieve more, we are more, and when we don’t, we shrink, we apologise, we question ourselves.

But think about the people you love, your family, your friends, that one person who sends you memes at 2am, you don’t measure their worth by how productive they are, you don’t think, “Wah, today my friend very valuable, completed seven tasks,” you value them because they are there, because they listen, because they laugh, because they exist in your life, so why do we apply a different metric to ourselves. Maybe it’s time to reclaim time, not in a grand, revolutionary way, but in small, stubborn acts, like taking a break without explaining it, meeting a friend without checking your phone every five minutes, going for a walk without turning it into a step-count challenge, spending time with your family without thinking about what’s waiting in your inbox, and sometimes just sitting and doing nothing, feeling slightly uncomfortable, and then realising the world did not end. And while we are at it, maybe we can widen the lens a little, because productivity doesn’t just affect people, it affects everything, the way we consume, the way we produce, the way we treat the environment, animals, resources, because when everything is about more—more growth, more output, more efficiency—something always pays the price, and often it is not us directly but the things around us, the environment that absorbs the excess, the animals that lose space, the quiet ecosystems that don’t get a say, so maybe valuing rest is not just about us, maybe it is also about learning to take less, to pause, to not always push for more, because a society that only knows how to accelerate will eventually forget how to sustain.

I realise this is starting to sound a bit serious, so let me lighten it slightly, if life really is like a certain space saga, then most of us are not the main character, we are not out here swinging lightsabers and saving galaxies, we are more like the side characters trying to keep things running, fixing things, holding things together, making sure the ship doesn’t fall apart, and you know what, that matters too, not everything has to be epic to be meaningful. So this Labour Day, maybe we don’t need a big resolution, maybe we just need a small acknowledgment, a quiet one, “I did okay,” not amazing, not extraordinary, not viral-worthy, just okay, and sometimes okay is more than enough. Give yourself a bit of credit for the work you’ve done, for the effort you’ve put in, for the days you showed up even when you didn’t feel like it, you don’t need a performance review to validate that, you were there and that counts, and if you can, give yourself something else too, which is time, time to rest, time to breathe, time to remember that you are more than what you produce, call someone you’ve been meaning to call, sit with your family a little longer, play with a cat, which I highly recommend because cats have no concept of productivity and are living proof that existence is enough.

We like to call ourselves warriors, fighting through deadlines, battling expectations, surviving the week, and maybe that is true, but even warriors need to rest, even warriors need to put down their weapons and remember who they are outside the fight, otherwise what are we even fighting for, so here’s to you, for making it this far, for doing what you can, for trying even when it’s hard, Happy Labour Day, and since it happens to fall on this particular date, may the 4th be with you, but more importantly, may you be with yourself.

Some Hats Don’t Fit

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 04:42:00 +0000

There is a phrase many teachers know too well: “wearing many hats.” Sometimes it sounds noble. Sometimes it sounds like a fashion disaster. On some days, it feels less like wearing hats and more like juggling helmets while riding a bicycle uphill.

Teaching has never been a one-dimensional profession. A teacher does not simply walk into class, deliver content, and disappear into the mist like a magician after assembly. Teachers plan lessons, mark work, counsel students, manage parents’ concerns, organise events, write reports, attend meetings, sit through professional development sessions, and somehow still remember that Farhan prefers to sit near the fan and Melissa cries when glue gets on her fingers.

Then there is the additional portfolio.

For readers unfamiliar with the system, schools often appoint teachers to take charge of extra responsibilities beyond classroom teaching. One common example is overseeing a CCA, or co-curricular activity. These are student groups that happen after curriculum hours—drama, choir, band, robotics, sports, debate, uniformed groups and more. Students usually opt into CCAs based on interest. In other words, many of them show up because they want to be there. That already changes the energy of the room.

Now, before I continue, let me make an important disclaimer. I am not overgeneralising. There are many outstanding teachers who take on extra portfolios with grace, passion, and astonishing stamina. Nor am I discouraging teachers from stepping forward into additional responsibilities. Schools need people who contribute beyond the classroom. Leadership matters. Service matters. Community matters.

What I am saying is simpler: the matching matters.

Not every teacher should take every portfolio. Not every extra role is suitable for every person. And if a portfolio does not align with one’s interests, strengths, temperament, or capacity, it should be reflected upon seriously before accepting it.

Because when the mismatch happens, students feel it almost immediately.

I am currently collaborating with a particular CCA group, and like many CCA groups, the students are energetic, eager, and emotionally invested. They volunteered their afternoons for this. Nobody dragged them there like they were going for dental appointments. They chose it. They come with curiosity. They come with hope. They come wanting to improve.

Now imagine this group being led by someone who is visibly unmotivated.

Imagine students excited about rehearsal while the teacher-in-charge is calculating how early they can leave. Imagine students proposing ideas while the adult in charge treats enthusiasm like an administrative inconvenience. Imagine a room full of sparks supervised by someone carrying a bucket of water.

Students always know.

They know when an adult loves the craft. They know when an adult is merely surviving the session. They know when shortcuts are being taken. They know when standards are lowered not out of wisdom but out of fatigue or indifference.

Research on student motivation consistently points to the importance of teacher enthusiasm. Patrick, Hisley, and Kempler (2000) found that perceived teacher enthusiasm was associated with increased intrinsic motivation and vitality among students. John Hattie’s synthesis in Visible Learning also identifies teacher credibility, passion, and relationships as significant influences on learning outcomes. Students may not use academic jargon, but they recognise energy when they see it.

This becomes even more important in a CCA context.

In a formal classroom, students may participate because attendance is compulsory. In a CCA, participation is often sustained by interest, belonging, and emotional connection. Educational theorists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, through Self-Determination Theory, argue that motivation flourishes when three needs are met: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. CCAs naturally lend themselves to these three. Students choose them (autonomy), develop skill (competence), and form bonds (relatedness).

But an uninterested adult can flatten all three.

A disengaged teacher can reduce autonomy by over-controlling or under-supporting. They can stunt competence by settling for mediocrity. They can damage relatedness by making the environment transactional rather than communal.

And then we wonder why students slowly lose interest.

Sometimes the reason is not the students.

Sometimes it is the climate.

Let me be fair here. Teachers are not villains in this story. Many are stretched thin. Workload in education systems globally has been widely discussed, including by OECD reports and UNESCO studies highlighting burnout, administrative burden, and retention challenges. A teacher who appears unmotivated may actually be exhausted. A teacher taking shortcuts may be functioning in survival mode.

So this article is not an attack on teachers.

It is a plea for honest placement and honest reflection.

If someone loves music, perhaps let them lead band, choir, or performance projects where that passion can breathe. If someone enjoys mentoring youth through discipline and leadership, perhaps uniformed groups fit naturally. If someone thrives in movement and competition, sports may be a better match. If someone lights up in storytelling, creativity, and rehearsal rooms, then drama may become more than an assignment—it becomes service through joy.

When interest and responsibility align, students benefit.

The teacher who genuinely enjoys theatre will stay back to refine scenes, not because of KPI points but because the work matters to them. The teacher who loves coding will excitedly troubleshoot with robotics students. The teacher who cares about football will watch game footage voluntarily. These teachers go the extra mile because to them, it does not always feel like an extra mile.

Meanwhile, if someone accepts a portfolio purely to fast-track career progression, titles, or optics, they should ask themselves a difficult question: at whose expense?

Because students are not stepping stones.

A CCA is not a decorative bullet point on a résumé.

It is a living space where young people invest time, identity, vulnerability, and hope.

The Secondary One student joining drama for confidence. The shy clarinet player finally feeling seen. The child who struggles academically but shines in scouts. The teenager who only feels competent on the netball court. These students are not side quests in an adult’s advancement narrative.

They are the point.

There is also a misconception that passion means perfection. It does not. A passionate teacher can still be messy, tired, learning, and imperfect. They may forget props. They may misplace forms. They may accidentally print the wrong schedule and send twenty children to the hall at the wrong time. Human beings happen.

But students usually forgive imperfection when they can feel sincerity.

What they struggle with is apathy.

A teacher who cares but stumbles can still inspire. A teacher who is polished but detached often cannot.

School leaders also have a role here. Allocation of portfolios should not merely be based on vacancies, hierarchy, or who looks free on paper. Capacity and chemistry matter. Interest inventories, professional aspirations, existing strengths, and workload realities should be part of the conversation. Strategic staffing is not indulgence; it is stewardship.

And teachers themselves deserve permission to say, respectfully, “This may not be the best fit for me.”

That sentence is not weakness.

It may be wisdom.

We often praise sacrifice so loudly that we forget discernment. Not every yes is noble. Some yeses create quiet casualties later—burnt-out teachers, neglected students, stagnant programmes.

Sometimes the better contribution is saying yes to the right thing and no to the wrong one.

Students already understand this principle instinctively. They choose CCAs they are interested in because interest fuels commitment. It would be ironic if the adults overseeing those spaces ignored the same truth.

I think often of enthusiastic students arriving after school, hungry to create, compete, rehearse, learn, laugh, and belong. They deserve adults who meet that energy with care. Not necessarily with endless energy—nobody has endless energy—but with genuine care.

The teacher in charge of a CCA is not merely managing attendance or booking venues. They are curating memory. Years later, students may forget worksheets and timetables, but they remember how that space made them feel. They remember whether an adult believed in them. They remember whether someone bothered.

That is no small portfolio.

So yes, take on extra responsibilities if you can. Step up when needed. Grow into leadership. Contribute beyond the classroom.

But please, when possible, choose roles that meet your spirit halfway.

Because when the right teacher meets the right CCA, magic becomes possible.

And when the wrong teacher meets the right students, sometimes the students pay the price.

That Intimate Gathering

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:21:00 +0000

Friendship is a strange thing. We talk about it so casually that we sometimes forget how miraculous it actually is. We say, “Oh, that’s my friend,” the same way we might say, “That’s my umbrella,” or “That’s the bus stop.” As though friendship is common furniture. As though it is guaranteed. As though it can be bought from IKEA, assembled with an Allen key, and tightened when loose.

But it is not.

Yesterday, on what I jokingly declared the last day of Hari Raya festivities, I invited a few close friends over to my home for what I called an “intimate gathering.” I used the word intimate because if I said “open house,” some people in Singapore hear it as an invitation to bring three cousins, two neighbours, and a mysterious plus-one named Hafiz whom nobody actually knows. So no. This was intimate. Like an gallery exhibition, but with ketupat.

There is something deeply comforting about preparing your home for people who have seen you in every era of yourself. The polished era. The broke era. The dramatic era. The overconfident era. The era in which you made terrible life choices but defended them passionately. The era in which you insisted bangs were a good idea. Real friends have seen all of it.

As I laid out the food and adjusted cushions that nobody would sit on properly anyway, I found myself smiling at the thought that these were not guests I needed to impress. They were people who had known me for more than twenty years. People who had seen my rise, my fall, and my unnecessary detours.

When they arrived, there was no ceremony. No stiffness. No fake laughter. No one said, “So what do you do now?” because everyone already knew. No one tried to sell insurance. No one asked, “When are you getting married?” which already makes them elite company in many social settings.

We sat. We ate. We talked.

And somewhere between the laughter and the second helping of rendang, I realised how much our conversations have evolved.

There was a time when our gatherings were powered almost entirely by gossip. We were younger then. Poorer, perhaps. Less developed emotionally. We treated workplace gossip like national news. Who said what. Who was dating whom. Who got promoted unfairly. Who cried in the pantry. We consumed these stories like they were premium content.

Then life shifted.

Suddenly the conversations became about housing. BTO applications. Renovation nightmares. Interest rates. Whether vinyl flooring is worth it. Why every kitchen design on social media looks beautiful but appears impossible to clean. We discussed square footage with the seriousness of economists. Someone would say, “This resale price is madness,” and everyone would nod as though we were members of parliament.

Then came the supplement era.

You know you are entering another phase of adulthood when people no longer ask, “Where shall we party?” but instead ask, “Do you take magnesium glycinate or citrate?” We now compare fish oil brands with the intensity we once reserved for music albums. One friend swears by collagen. Another speaks about gut health like he has personally met his intestines. Someone says turmeric helps inflammation and suddenly we are all pharmacists.

And now, recently, the conversations have become something else entirely.

We talk about ageing. Not in a tragic way. In an honest way.

We talk about parents growing older. About losing people. About energy levels that now require planning. About the difference between being busy and being fulfilled. About what success really means now that we have chased enough shiny things to know some of them are made of plastic.

We talk about wisdom too, though no one uses that word because it sounds like something printed on a teabag.

We speak more gently now. We interrupt less. We listen more. We laugh harder.

Most beautifully, we celebrate one another without bitterness.

That, I think, is rare.

There are friendships built on proximity. You were classmates. Colleagues. Neighbours. You happened to be in the same room enough times until familiarity masqueraded as closeness.

Then there are friendships tested by time.

The kind that survive your worst moods, bad decisions, embarrassing eras, unexplained disappearances, emotional immaturity, and that one period when you were impossible to advise.

My friends and I have seen each other in seasons that would not look good on Instagram.

We have seen each other broke. Heartbroken. Confused. Unemployed. Overconfident. Spiritually lost but pretending otherwise. We have seen each other became petty over small things. We have seen insecurity dressed up as arrogance. We have seen pain disguised as anger.

We have also seen perseverance.

That friend who kept failing before finally succeeding. That friend who quietly carried family burdens while smiling in public. That friend who reinvented himself after life knocked him flat. That friend who built something meaningful while everyone else was too distracted to notice.

So when one of us wins now, the joy is genuine.

Because we know the backstory.

We know the nights no one saw.

We know the rejection emails, the debts, the tears, the disappointments, the detours, the lonely train rides home.

Success looks different when you know the invoice paid for it.

That is why there is no envy in the room.

Or perhaps I should say there is no room for envy in the room.

Envy usually grows in distance. When you only see the highlight reel, you compare. When you know the full story, you empathise.

How can I resent your success when I remember the years you struggled?

How can I be jealous of your joy when I watched you survive sorrow?

How can I begrudge your harvest when I saw you plant in drought?

This is why mature friendship feels sacred. It is not blind admiration. It is informed love.

We do not celebrate each other because life has been easy. We celebrate because it was not.

At one point in the evening, I looked around the room and felt an emotion difficult to name. Gratitude, yes. Pride, perhaps. Relief, definitely. The kind of relief that comes when you realise some relationships have escaped corrosion.

Because let us be honest. Many friendships do not survive adulthood.

Some are outgrown.

Some are neglected.

Some become transactional.

Some cannot withstand one person changing while the other insists on freezing time.

Some collapse under ego.

Some die not with betrayal, but with silence.

That is why surviving friendship deserves more respect than it gets.

People celebrate weddings, graduations, promotions, anniversaries. As they should.

But I also think we should celebrate the friend who still shows up after twenty years.

The friend who knows your flaws and stays.

The friend who tells you the truth without humiliating you.

The friend who can tease you mercilessly and defend you fiercely.

The friend who remembers who you were, while honouring who you are becoming.

That is an achievement.

Yesterday did not feel like I was merely hosting people.

It felt like I was witnessing a living archive.

Inside that room were shared jokes older than some adults. Memories from eras with different hairstyles and worse fashion sense. Stories we have told so many times that they now belong to mythology.

“Remember when you did that ridiculous thing?”

“No, remember when you did that even more ridiculous thing?”

Friendship needs these stories. They become emotional landmarks. Proof that you existed in many forms and were loved anyway.

And perhaps that is what moved me most.

To be known across time.

Not just known now, when you are more accomplished, more articulate, more put together.

But known then.

Known when you were messy.

Known when you were insecure.

Known when you had dreams larger than your discipline.

Known when you were trying too hard.

Known when you failed publicly.

Known when you doubted yourself privately.

And still, to be welcomed at the table.

What a gift.

I think modern life sometimes underestimates friendship because it cannot always be monetised. It does not come with a certificate. There is no LinkedIn update that says, “Promoted to Deeply Cherished Friend, Senior Level.” No one gives speeches at award ceremonies saying, “I’d like to thank my boys for staying loyal through my nonsense.”

But maybe they should.

Because friendship has saved many people quietly.

A timely phone call.

A ridiculous joke during grief.

A meal shared when money was tight.

A sofa offered during crisis.

A truth spoken when everyone else was flattering.

A presence that asks for nothing.

These things do not trend online, but they sustain lives.

As the night ended and the containers of food looked respectfully attacked, I felt deeply blessed. Not in the shallow sense of saying blessed because the lighting was nice and the food plated well. I mean truly blessed.

Blessed that time did not steal everyone.

Blessed that some bonds deepened instead of thinning.

Blessed that success did not turn us arrogant.

Blessed that suffering did not turn us bitter.

Blessed that laughter still comes easily.

Blessed that after twenty years, there is still more to say.

I also felt happy in a mature way. Not fireworks happiness. Not dramatic happiness. Not the happiness of winning something loudly.

A quieter happiness.

The kind that sits beside you gently and says, “Look. This matters.”

And it does.

In a world obsessed with novelty, there is something radical about continuity.

In a culture chasing upgrades, there is something noble about loyalty.

In a time where many connections are instant and disposable, there is something beautiful about relationships built slowly, repaired honestly, and sustained deliberately.

There is also something amusingly human about how we treat the people dearest to us. We can spend hours talking, laughing, interrupting one another, catching up on years compressed into an evening — and still forget to take a photo. We remember to photograph food, desserts, shoes, sunsets, and occasionally our own faces from suspiciously flattering angles. But the people who matter most? Somehow we forget.

Perhaps that is because when we are truly present, documentation becomes secondary. We are too busy living the moment to archive it. Too engaged in laughter to arrange ourselves into rows. Too occupied with real connection to say, “Wait, everyone freeze and look natural.”

Still, I am grateful that just before the last group of guests left, I managed to capture one photo. One frame. One small evidence that on this particular night, these people were here, healthy, laughing, alive, together. Years from now, when memory softens at the edges, that photograph will remain firm.

It will remind me that friendship once gathered in my living room wearing festive clothes and comfortable smiles. That time paused briefly. That life, despite all its complications, had been kind enough to allow this.

So yes, yesterday was an intimate gathering.

But it was also more than that.

It was a celebration of endurance.

A reunion with people who have carried fragments of my history.

A reminder that some of life’s greatest wealth cannot be seen in bank statements or property portfolios or supplement collections.

It is seen in who still answers your call.

Who still laughs at your old jokes.

Who still roots for you when you enter rooms they are not in.

Who still remembers the younger version of you and loves the present one too.

I sincerely hope everyone in this world gets to experience that kind of friendship.

At least once.

To have someone who has stood by you through thick and thin, metaphorically and literally. Through joy and nonsense. Through achievement and embarrassment. Through growth spurts of the soul.

And if you already have such people, do not assume they know their value.

Invite them over.

Feed them.

Laugh with them.

Tell the old stories again.

Take the photo.

Celebrate how far all of you have come.

Because sometimes the friendship itself is the achievement.

Sometimes the real open house is not the one with decorations and food.

It is the one where hearts remain open after all these years.

Should a Child Not Be Allowed to Learn AI Before the Child Study History?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 05:23:00 +0000

There is a particular kind of stress that only comes from being handed a microphone and a question you did not prepare for.

That was me recently at a Toastmasters Division-level Table Topics Contest. For those unfamiliar, Table Topics is the speaking equivalent of being pushed into a swimming pool and being told, “You look like someone who knows freestyle.”

You are given a prompt on the spot. No notes. No time to rehearse. Just two minutes to think, structure, entertain, persuade, and ideally not black out. Five contestants stood there that day, each pretending to look calm in the way people do when internally they are hearing drums of war.

Then came the prompt: should a child not be allowed to learn AI before the child studies history?

Now, some people hear that question and immediately think policy, curriculum design, educational priorities, syllabus sequencing. I heard something else. I heard a misunderstanding.

So when it was my turn, I asked the audience whether they agreed that history should take precedence over learning AI. Then I challenged the framing itself. Because too many of us, especially in Singapore, hear the word history and immediately picture a classroom fan that is somehow never strong enough, a textbook thicker than justice, and the memorisation of dates that vanish from memory five minutes after the exam.

We reduce history into formal schooling. We mistake history for assessment. We confuse history with sitting down.

And that, I think, is where we get it wrong.

History is not merely a subject in school. It is a way of understanding how the present came to be. The historian David McCullough once said, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

That line matters because history is not trapped in archives. It breathes through ordinary life.

Take Singapore. Sit in a Ya Kun Kaya Toast outlet for five minutes and you will likely see parts of its company story displayed on the walls: when it began, how it grew, what it served, what it stood for. That is history.

The kaya toast on your plate is not just breakfast. It is migration, trade routes, adaptation, working-class routines, kopi culture, inherited taste, and national memory with butter. Your soft-boiled eggs are basically edible anthropology.

But many of us walk past these things as though culture is wallpaper. We think history only counts when it comes with footnotes.

Singapore, to be fair, is excellent at organising learning. We timetable it. We standardise it. We colour-code it. We sometimes laminate it. But the danger of being efficient is that we may only recognise learning when it looks official.

If a child reads about the Japanese Occupation in a textbook, we say they are learning history. If the same child listens to a grandparent describe rationing, fear, resilience, or kampung life, we call it “just conversation.”

That is absurd.

Research in education has long shown that learning happens socially and contextually. Lev Vygotsky, known for his work on social learning, argued that knowledge develops through interaction with others and culture. In simpler terms: children learn not only from books, but from people, environments, rituals, stories, and participation.

So yes, a museum can teach history. But so can a hawker centre. So can family gatherings. So can old songs played in the car while your uncle insists they “don’t make music like this anymore.”

Every family has one uncle who behaves like a heritage board.

That was the core of my speech. Why are we debating whether a child should learn history before AI, when the child is already immersed in history every day?

The food they eat has history. The language they speak has history. The festivals they celebrate have history. The roads they travel on have history. The housing estate they live in has history. Even the slang they use has history.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody invented “alamak.”

A child does not need to wait for Secondary Two to meet history. History has been sitting beside them since birth.

The real question is not whether history comes first. It already did.

Now let us talk about the shiny robot in the room: AI. Some people treat AI as though it is an optional future topic, something children may encounter one day, like taxes or lower back pain. But AI is already here.

Recommendation algorithms shape what children watch. Search tools influence how they find answers. Translation tools affect language use. Generative systems are changing writing, art, coding, customer service, and education. UNESCO has repeatedly stressed the importance of AI literacy, especially ethical literacy, for young people navigating a digital world.

So if history is already around us, AI soon will be too—if it is not already.

Which means forcing a false choice between them makes little sense. It is like asking whether a child should learn to walk before learning to breathe. Both are happening in different ways already.

Many public debates suffer from this problem. We love false binaries because they are dramatic. Books or screens. Science or arts. Tradition or progress. Discipline or creativity. History or AI.

But real life is messier and wiser than debate prompts.

Children need historical awareness and technological literacy. They need memory and imagination. They need roots and tools.

The futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

That applies beautifully here. History helps us learn from the past. AI forces us to relearn the future. Why choose one hand when we were given two?

History is not just nostalgia. It provides safeguards. When children learn history meaningfully, they understand patterns: how power can be abused, how propaganda spreads, how inequality grows, how innovation can help and harm, how societies respond to change.

These lessons matter enormously in the age of AI.

If you understand the history of industrial revolutions, labour displacement, surveillance, or media manipulation, you approach AI with sharper eyes. You ask better questions. Who benefits? Who is left behind? Who controls the tool? What values are embedded in the system?

History gives moral depth to innovation. Without it, progress can become speed without direction.

Likewise, AI can enrich the study of history. It can help students explore archives, compare sources, visualise timelines, translate documents, and widen access to knowledge. Used well, technology can animate curiosity.

The issue is not AI itself. The issue is whether we teach discernment.

A calculator did not destroy mathematics. The internet did not destroy reading. PowerPoint, regrettably, did wound many presentations, but that is another article.

I think the speech resonated because it did something audiences appreciate: it questioned the assumptions hidden inside the question. Sometimes the smartest answer is not choosing Side A or Side B. It is asking whether the road itself was badly built.

Too often we inherit narrow definitions of learning. We think knowledge only counts when graded. We think culture only counts when curated. We think history only counts when old. We think technology only counts when new.

But life does not divide itself so neatly.

Winning the contest means I now proceed to the District level, which is exciting and mildly terrifying. But beyond trophies, certificates, and the temporary ego boost of hearing your name announced, I hope the speech nudged some people to reconsider how they view history.

History is not dead matter sealed behind museum glass. It is not the punishment of memorising dates in tropical humidity. It is not merely learning about dead people.

History is alive.

It is in your grandmother’s recipes. It is in the queue system at hawker stalls. It is in the MRT map. It is in why certain neighbourhoods look the way they do. It is in the songs played during festive seasons. It is in the names we carry. It is in the words we borrow from one another. It is in the stories we repeat.

And if we are paying attention, it can make us humbler.

Because history reminds us that many things we think are permanent are not. Empires fell. Technologies changed. Norms shifted. People adapted.

Which is comforting, really.

It means we can too.

So should a child learn history before AI?

Maybe the wiser answer is this: a child is already learning history. A child is already entering the world of AI. Our job is not to place these in competition. Our job is to help them meet both with curiosity, wisdom, and humanity.

Also, if possible, with good kaya toast.

Is it the writer, the director or the actor - A Hari Raya reflection.

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 05:07:00 +0000

Every year, after the first day of Hari Raya, somewhere in Singapore, a folding table is being opened, a bunch of fairy lights are being tested, and a group of performers are trying to remember where they placed the ketupat props and the Baju Melayu used as costume.

This is the season of Hari Raya assembly touring programmes.

For those unfamiliar, these are performances that travel from school to school during assembly hours. They are fast, efficient, educational, and powered almost entirely by adrenaline. One moment you are performing in a primary school hall in Jurong. Two hours later, you are in a secondary school in Pasir Ris pretending not to be sweating through your baju melayu.

I have spent many years in the educational and entertainment scene, and I have a soft spot for these programmes. They serve a real purpose. Students get exposed to culture, performance, and ideas beyond textbooks. They learn why Hari Raya Aidilfitri matters, what fasting teaches, why forgiveness is central to the celebration, and why every Malay household seems to own at least one suspiciously breakable glass jar of kuih.

These shows matter.

But this week, during one rehearsal, I heard something that made me pause.

The director said, “Don’t use Singlish.”

Now, before I continue, let me be fair. Directors often say things quickly during rehearsals. Sometimes they mean rhythm. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes diction. Sometimes they are simply one technical problem away from emotional collapse. So I do not think the statement came from malice.

Still, it opened an interesting question.

Can you write Singaporean characters in recognisably Singaporean ways, but then ask actors not to sound Singaporean?

Because the script, to my ear, already sounded like Singlish.

And if the writing sounds local, but the actor is told to sound not-local, then everyone enters a mysterious theatrical limbo.

It becomes neither fish nor fowl.

Or in local terms, neither nasi lemak nor chicken rice.

Singaporeans often misunderstand what Singlish is. Many think it is just “bad English.” That is the lazy version of the conversation. Linguists have argued for years that Singlish is not random brokenness, but a rule-governed contact variety shaped by English, Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Tamil, and other languages.

Researchers like Dr Anthea Fraser Gupta and Professor Lionel Wee have written extensively about how Singlish carries grammar, identity, and social meaning. It is not simply mistakes in a trench coat pretending to be language.

When someone says, “Why you never tell me?” many hear an error. But others hear efficiency, familiarity, tone, relationship, context.

Language is not only about correctness. It is also about belonging.

Now let me be clear before someone sharpens a red pen.

I am not saying every school performance should be in full Singlish mode.

I am not suggesting an actor should walk on stage and say, “Eh cher, relax lah, today assembly only what.”

There is room for Standard English. In fact, schools need it. Students should be exposed to clear, competent Standard English, especially in formal educational settings. This is practical reality.

But art requires nuance.

If a script is written around local rhythms, local humour, local family dynamics, and recognisable Singaporean speech patterns, then forbidding all traces of Singlish may create something stranger than Singlish itself.

It creates artificial speech.

You know artificial speech. We have all heard it.

“Mother, I am feeling emotionally conflicted about whether to attend the open house.”

No Secondary Two boy in Bedok has said this voluntarily.

Or:

“Greetings, Grandmother. Shall we proceed to consume festive snacks?”

If your grandmother hears this, she may check for fever.

Theatre, especially for young audiences, depends on recognisability. Children and teenagers know immediately when adults are pretending. They may not articulate it, but they can smell falsehood faster than critics.

If dialogue sounds fake, they disconnect.

If dialogue sounds true, they lean in.

That does not mean realism is the only style. Exaggeration, comedy, stylisation, poetry — all these have their place. But even stylisation needs internal truth.

And Singapore truth often includes code-switching.

We are a country of linguistic multitasking. We switch registers constantly. Many students can speak differently to teachers, parents, grandparents, classmates, and customer service staff within the same afternoon.

“Good afternoon, Mr Tan.”

“Eh bro where you.”

“Nenek makan already?”

“Hello yes I’d like to check my parcel.”

This is not confusion. This is sophistication.

Sociolinguists call this style-shifting. We call it daily life.

So when performers are told “no Singlish,” I sometimes wonder: do we mean no lazy diction? No unclear pronunciation? No slang overload? No culturally specific syntax? No particles like lah, lor, meh?

These are very different instructions.

A better direction might be:

“Keep it clear.”

“Keep it natural.”

“Use local flavour sparingly.”

“Make sure students from all backgrounds understand.”

“Don’t flatten the rhythm.”

That is usable direction.

Because “no Singlish” can become a blunt instrument. And blunt instruments are better for opening durian than directing actors.

There is also a class issue hidden in these conversations.

Sometimes people reject Singlish not because of intelligibility, but because they associate it with being less educated, less polished, less prestigious. That discomfort says more about social hierarchy than language quality.

Meanwhile, some of the smartest people in Singapore can shift effortlessly between Standard English and Singlish depending on context. That ability is linguistic range, not deficiency.

The late Lee Kuan Yew strongly supported the Speak Good English Movement, launched in 2000, emphasising global competitiveness and clarity. That concern was understandable. English connects Singapore to the world.

But even as policy pushed Standard English, Singlish never disappeared.

Why?

Because people do not only speak to impress markets.

They speak to connect.

A grandmother saying “Eat already?” carries warmth that no grammar guide can fully measure.

A friend saying “Steady lah” can do more emotional work than a three-paragraph email.

A teacher joking lightly in local cadence can win attention faster than twenty slides.

Language has emotional architecture.

And theatre should know this better than most industries.

Performance lives in rhythm, breath, timing, tension, pause. Local speech patterns are rich with comic timing. Anyone who has heard an auntie say “Never mind, I say nothing” knows terror has entered the room.

That line, delivered correctly, deserves awards.

In children’s theatre and school assembly shows, humour is not decoration. It is pedagogy. Students remember what makes them laugh. If a joke lands because it sounds like someone they know, then learning enters through the side door.

You remember the character.

You remember the message.

You remember the scene where the uncle overate rendang and blamed destiny.

That said, there are dangers too.

Writers sometimes use Singlish lazily. They sprinkle lah, leh, lor onto weak dialogue like coriander on a bad dish. Suddenly every character sounds the same. Suddenly every local person is reduced to stereotype.

That is not authentic writing either.

Good local dialogue is not about particles alone. It is about social rhythm, subtext, economy, status, relationship, and timing.

For example:

“You coming?”

“See first.”

This is two words and one emotional thesis.

Or:

“Up to you lah.”

Translation: It is not up to you.

Writers must understand these textures.

Actors too must know when less is more. Too much exaggerated Singlish can become parody. Then audiences laugh at people rather than with recognition.

So yes, balance matters.

Maybe that is my real point.

Not “use Singlish” or “ban Singlish.”

But understand what kind of speech the piece needs.

If the script is about a Malay Singaporean family preparing for Hari Raya, some degree of local cadence may be natural. If it is a narrator delivering factual educational content about zakat or fasting practices, clearer Standard English may help. If it is a comedic sibling scene, let them sound alive. If it is a principal character summarising key takeaways, tighten the register.

Registers can coexist in one show.

Just like in Singapore.

And perhaps especially for Hari Raya programmes, authenticity matters. Hari Raya is not only dates and definitions. It is lived culture. It is food, prayer, travel, forgiveness, family politics, WhatsApp logistics, children asking for duit raya with suspicious confidence, and one relative asking when you are getting married.

If the performance strips away all living speech, then culture becomes museum display.

Neat. Polished. Dead.

Students deserve better than that.

They deserve culture that breathes.

I also think we need to respect actors more in these moments. Actors are not malfunctioning speakers who accidentally produce local rhythm. Many are responding instinctively to awkward writing. If a line refuses to sit naturally in the mouth, actors will adjust tone, pace, stress, syntax.

Sometimes what looks like rebellion is actually rescue.

Writers should listen when every actor trips over the same sentence. That sentence may be guilty.

Directors should listen too. If performers keep leaning local, maybe the truth of the scene is asking for it.

And if everyone is confused, ask the oldest Singaporean question of all:

“So… what exactly you want?”

Clear communication solves many rehearsal-room wars.

As someone who has worked across education, theatre, and training spaces, I have seen that young audiences do not need sterile perfection. They need clarity, sincerity, and engagement.

They know when something is real.

They know when adults are talking at them.

And they know when a joke sounds like it was approved by six committees.

So to all of us making assembly shows, cultural programmes, and educational theatre: let us worry less about policing labels and more about serving truth.

Use Standard English when it serves clarity.

Use local speech when it serves character.

Use humour when it serves memory.

Use heart always.

And if you truly do not want Singlish in the script, then perhaps do not write dialogue that sounds like it came from three cousins in Tampines arguing over whose turn it is to wash plates.

Because if you write:

“Eh faster lah, late already.”

Then ask the actor to make it sound British, even Shakespeare may resign.

In the end, language is a tool. Theatre is a mirror. Education is a bridge.

The best Hari Raya shows can do all three beautifully.

Also, actors, please return the ketupat props after the final school. Every touring season, one goes missing.

Is Covid Still a Thing?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:28:00 +0000

There is something almost comedic about telling people you have Covid in 2026. Not tragic-comedic. More like sitcom-comedic. The kind where a laugh track plays after every line.

“I have Covid.”

“Again?”

Pause.

Then the follow-up, almost always delivered with the same mixture of disbelief and mild annoyance, as if I had personally revived the virus for attention.

“Is Covid still a thing?”

I never know how to answer that question. Because what does it mean for something to still be a thing? Rain is still a thing. Mosquitoes are still a thing. Office politics is unfortunately still a thing. If something exists, inconveniences people, and refuses to die quietly, then yes, it is still very much a thing.

Covid, apparently, did not receive the memo that society had moved on.

So there I was, on the second week of Hari Raya, stuck at home. While the rest of the world was out in their emerald baju kurung, taking family photos under flattering daylight, comparing whose sambal goreng had the best texture, and collecting enough kuih crumbs in their cars to start a bakery, I was indoors with a thermometer, tissues, and a face that looked less festive than a government tax form.

There is a special kind of loneliness that comes with being ill during a season built around visiting. Hari Raya is movement. Doors opening. Slippers outside the gate. Children running through corridors like they are training for national athletics. Uncles asking questions nobody requested. Aunties handing you food with the authority of military commanders.

“Eat.”

“I just ate.”

“Eat again.”

To be sick during Hari Raya is to watch joy happening from the sidelines. It is hearing laughter through your phone speaker while you calculate whether your throat hurts less than yesterday. It is seeing photos of cousins colour-coordinated in pastel while you yourself are dressed like a damp goblin in home clothes.

Still, being forced to stay home does something useful. It makes you think.

Perhaps too much.

And one thought kept returning to me: we human beings are astonishingly quick to forget fragility.

The pandemic years were not that long ago. We remember them in memes now. Banana bread. Video calls. People discovering they disliked their own families after three straight weeks indoors. Suddenly everyone became an amateur epidemiologist. We spoke of variants and vaccines and transmission rates like we were all guest lecturers at medical school.

Back then, mortality was not theoretical. Vulnerability was in the room with us. We washed groceries. We crossed streets to avoid coughs. We looked at strangers the way villagers in horror films look at mysterious travellers.

Now? Someone sneezes beside us and we say, “Allergies, probably.”

We are experts at forgetting whatever makes celebration less comfortable.

I understand why. To live in constant fear is exhausting. No one wants to move through life trembling at every germ, every ache, every suspicious burp after sambal belacan. Caution without joy becomes prison. But joy without caution becomes stupidity wearing perfume.

Somewhere between paranoia and recklessness is adulthood.

The body, after all, is not a machine with unlimited warranty. It is more like an old family car. Sometimes dependable. Sometimes dramatic. Sometimes making a strange sound that disappears the moment the mechanic arrives.

We assume we are fine until we are not.

Recently, I spoke to someone who had been hospitalised for shingles. Shingles is one of those illnesses that sounds almost decorative. Like roofing material. Like something you compare at a hardware store.

“Do you want terracotta tiles or shingles?”

It does not sound like something that can flatten a person.

Yet it can. Painful, debilitating, and serious, especially when untreated or affecting vulnerable people. But because it is not fashionable in public conversation, it rarely enters our imagination. We do not discuss shingles at coffee tables. No one posts inspirational captions about recovering from shingles with sunrise photos.

Some illnesses suffer from poor branding.

If a disease trends online, we respect it. If it does not, we dismiss it.

But the body does not care what is trending.

When the immune system is weakened, strange doors open. A virus lying dormant decides it is time for a comeback tour. A minor infection becomes major. A wound you ignored because you were “busy” suddenly demands centre stage.

Even a scratch from a thorn on a harmless-looking plant can become serious if neglected under the wrong conditions. That is the unsettling truth. Danger does not always arrive dressed dramatically. Sometimes it enters disguised as something small, silly, ignorable.

Much like relatives who say, “I’m only staying five minutes.”

Then they leave after midnight.

Hari Raya itself teaches us many beautiful values—gratitude, forgiveness, kinship, generosity. But I wonder if it should also teach us maintenance. Care. Attention. Listening.

Because while we are busy repairing relationships, we must also remember to maintain the body that carries us to those reunions.

You cannot hug everyone if you collapse in the driveway.

You cannot seek forgiveness if you are in urgent care explaining that the chest pain started after your fourth plate of lontong.

And before anyone gets defensive, let me be clear: I am Malay. I know our festive logic. We say things like, “Just one more piece,” while holding our seventh piece. We insist we are full while reaching for dessert. We speak of moderation the way some people speak of mythical creatures—often referenced, rarely seen.

The table during Hari Raya is not merely food. It is history. Rendang simmered from inherited patience. Ketupat folded with ancestral geometry. Lodeh carrying coconut milk like it has no enemies. Sambal gleaming with threat.

To eat is cultural participation.

But even culture benefits from portion control.

Sometimes that slight heartburn is not random. It is your body filing a complaint. Sometimes the dizziness after rich food is not because “weather hot lah.” Sometimes fatigue is not laziness. Sometimes breathlessness is not age catching up in one afternoon.

Sometimes the body whispers before it screams.

We are terrible listeners when celebration is loud.

We postpone care because joy is scheduled. We say we will rest later, drink water later, see doctor later, monitor symptoms later. Later is one of the most dangerous words in health. Later assumes there will be an uncomplicated future waiting politely for us.

Often there is.

Sometimes there is not.

I do not say this to be gloomy. I say this because maturity is not only learning to forgive siblings, tolerate in-laws, and stop arguing in WhatsApp groups. Maturity is recognising that life remains fragile even when life feels normal.

Especially when it feels normal.

Normality can make us careless.

We think because disaster is no longer headline news, it has retired. We think because masks are off, risk is gone. We think because we survived previous things, we are guaranteed future victories.

But the body has its own calendar. It does not celebrate public holidays. Viruses do not check whether it is festive season. Blood pressure does not say, “Let us postpone until after visiting hours.” Infection does not care that your outfit was expensive.

Nothing humbles vanity like fever.

Being home with Covid this Raya has reminded me that health is often invisible until absent. On healthy days, we barely notice it. We complain about boredom, traffic, slow internet, text messages ending with “Can?” But when health leaves, even temporarily, our desires become embarrassingly simple.

To swallow without pain.

To breathe clearly.

To taste food properly.

To sleep.

To have enough energy to stand in the kitchen without negotiating terms.

Suddenly the glamorous life goals disappear. No one with a fever says, “I wish I had optimised my LinkedIn profile.”

They say, “I just want to feel normal again.”

Perhaps that is why illness can sometimes sharpen gratitude better than motivational speeches ever could.

And maybe being stuck at home during Hari Raya is not only deprivation. Maybe it is instruction.

It tells me that celebrations are precious precisely because they are not guaranteed. That visiting loved ones matters because one day someone will be missing, or unwell, or unable to travel. That laughter around the table is not routine—it is fortune.

It also tells me to stop pretending resilience means invincibility.

We praise people for pushing through. Working despite fever. Hosting despite exhaustion. Travelling despite pain. Smiling through discomfort. Sometimes resilience is admirable. Sometimes it is just denial in formal wear.

Real strength can look boring. Cancelling plans. Taking medicine. Resting. Getting checked. Saying no to another serving. Leaving early. Drinking water. Sleeping.

No dramatic soundtrack. No applause.

Just wisdom.

So while Hari Raya continues outside my window, while messages come in from homes full of chatter and gravy and awkward family jokes recycled since 1998, I sit here with my test kit and my thoughts.

And I think perhaps the most festive thing we can offer one another is not only food or forgiveness.

It is care.

Ask relatives how they are really feeling. Mean it. Notice who looks tired. Encourage check-ups without turning into an interrogator. Let elderly family members rest. Let children nap. Let people decline food without accusing them of betrayal. Keep medicine where it is easy to find. Keep ego where it is hard to access.

And if someone tells you they have Covid, maybe do not begin with, “Again?”

Maybe begin with, “How are you feeling?”

Because yes, Covid is still a thing.

So is shingles.

So is burnout.

So is dehydration.

So is cholesterol.

So is the quiet ache someone has been ignoring for months.

So is fragility.

But so is kindness.

So is caution.

So is recovery.

So is the chance to do better with the bodies and people entrusted to us.

Hari Raya teaches us to return to one another. Perhaps it should also teach us to return to ourselves—to listen, to slow down, to care before crisis forces the lesson.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to drink warm water, eat plain porridge, and stare longingly at photos of rendang like a man separated from his true love.

Settled-ness

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 13:36:00 +0000

On the first day of Hari Raya this year, I found myself noticing something strange.

Nobody was fighting.

Now, to be clear, I do not mean a WWE-style folding-chair incident in the living room. My family has never been that dramatic. We are more sophisticated. We specialise in subtler sports: passive-aggressive remarks over ketupat, strategic silence during photo-taking, and the occasional sentence that begins with, “Eh, not to say anything ah…” which always means the speaker is absolutely about to say something.

But this year felt different.

There was a calmness in the house. A softness. A strange and unfamiliar atmosphere where people were… cooperating. I almost checked the calendar to make sure it was really Hari Raya and not some alternate universe where everyone had gone for therapy.

The usual sounds were still there. Children running around like they had consumed battery acid. Plates clinking. Someone asking where the sambal was when it was directly in front of them. The television playing festive songs from a decade when microphones sounded tired. But beneath all that was another feeling.

Settled-ness.

That is the only word I can think of. Not excitement. Not joy in the loud, cinematic sense. Not the kind of Raya advertisement happiness where everyone is laughing while carrying trays in slow motion.

This was something quieter.

It was the peace of people who have lived long enough to know what matters and what does not. I think we are all growing older. This is not a groundbreaking observation. Time has been doing this to everyone quite consistently. But it became visible to me this Raya.

My younger brothers are no longer just “my younger brothers.” They are fathers now. Husbands. Men with children to feed, bills to pay, schedules to coordinate, tiny humans to transport, and WhatsApp groups to mute. They arrive not just with themselves, but with diaper bags, snacks, emotional fatigue, and the thousand invisible calculations that adulthood demands. They carry their own households now. And yet, while carrying all that, they still carry responsibility towards our ageing parents. That balancing act is no joke. To care for children while caring for parents is to become a bridge between generations. You are needed from both sides. Someone needs milk powder. Someone needs medication. Someone is crying. Sometimes it is the toddler. Sometimes it is the parent. Sometimes it is you in the toilet, quietly.

There is no applause for this stage of life. No medals are given for remembering everyone’s appointments while pretending you are not tired. And perhaps that is why this year felt more tender. Because when people are carrying so much, they become less interested in carrying grudges too.

When we are younger, conflict can feel like a hobby. We debate everything. We defend our pride like it is national treasure. We insist on being right with the passion of people who still have functioning knees and uninterrupted sleep. We have time to replay old arguments. We have energy to be offended. We can dedicate three whole afternoons to wondering why an aunt used that tone in 2017.

But adulthood introduces invoices.

Suddenly there are school fees, work deadlines, medical concerns, grocery lists, leaking taps, childcare arrangements, tax forms, insurance renewals, and the mystery of where all your money disappears by the second week of the month. Under such conditions, many quarrels lose their glamour. You begin to ask practical questions.

Is this argument worth my blood pressure?

Do I really need to correct this person today?

Must I revisit a misunderstanding from 2009 while holding a plate of lontong?

The answer is often no.

Maturity is not always wisdom. Sometimes it is just exhaustion with better vocabulary.

Every family has an archive. Stored somewhere in memory are the old incidents. The betrayals. The sharp words. The moments nobody forgot even if everyone pretended to.

Families are remarkable institutions. They can preserve trauma more efficiently than national libraries.

Someone remembers who did not attend a wedding twenty years ago.

Someone remembers a loan never repaid.

Someone remembers who insulted whose cooking in 1998.

Someone remembers a sentence said in anger and has lovingly polished it ever since.

These things sit quietly in the room during gatherings, even when uninvited. But this Raya, I sensed an unspoken agreement.

We all knew where the sensitive landmines were.

We all knew which stories could reopen wounds.

We all knew which bandages, if ripped off for entertainment, would only make everyone bleed again. And somehow, collectively, silently, maturely—we stepped around them.

No meeting was held.

No family charter was signed.

Nobody stood up and said, “Dear all, for Q2 we will be prioritising emotional regulation.”

Yet it happened.

People changed the subject. People let comments pass. People chose mercy over momentum. That is no small thing. There is pressure sometimes, especially during festive seasons. To say we must forgive and forget, it sounds too neat. Rhymes well. Fits nicely on greeting cards. But real life is rarely so tidy.

Some things cannot be forgotten because they shaped us. Pain leaves fingerprints. A harsh childhood, neglect, humiliation, betrayal, absence, addiction, emotional coldness—these do not vanish because ketupat has been served. Memory is stubborn.

So perhaps forgetting is not always the goal.

Perhaps what we need is a gentler version of freedom. To remember without living inside the memory. To acknowledge harm without allowing it to steer every present moment. To know what happened and still decide that the story will not own the rest of our lives.

Forgiveness, then, is less about declaring someone innocent. It is more about refusing to keep drinking poison because somebody else was toxic. It is releasing yourself from permanent attachment to injury.

And sometimes forgiveness is partial.

Sometimes it arrives in installments.

Sometimes it looks like being civil at lunch.

Sometimes it looks like not retaliating.

Sometimes it looks like saying, “I understand why they became that way,” while still keeping healthy distance.

Sometimes it looks like helping an ageing parent despite unresolved history.

That too is grace.

There is another reason the house felt softer this year. Life has frightened us recently.

We almost lost our mother on multiple occasions. Nothing rearranges priorities like hospital corridors. Nothing exposes the fragility of our dramas like seeing someone you love become suddenly vulnerable.

The people who once seemed permanent begin to look human.

The mother who managed everything becomes someone needing help to stand.

The person who held the family together becomes the reason the family gathers more gently.

Mortality has a way of silencing petty noise.

When you realise time is finite, old grudges start looking embarrassingly expensive. You begin to understand that one day, the voices in the house will go quiet.

One day, the chairs will be empty.

One day, the recipes may survive longer than the cooks.

And so if there is laughter available now, you take it. If there is peace available now, you protect it. If there is a chance to be kind now, you stop postponing it. We often mistake drama for aliveness. If things are calm, we think something is missing. If there is no tension, no shouting, no emotional plot twist, we assume life has become dull.

But settled-ness is not boring.

Settled-ness is expensive.

It is purchased through years of mistakes, apologies, heartbreaks, funerals, near-misses, sleepless nights, reconciliations, and the slow education of pain. It is earned. It is the wisdom of knowing not every thought needs expression. It is the discipline of letting small irritations die young. It is the compassion of recognising everyone is carrying private burdens. It is the elegance of restraint.

Young people often think peace is natural.

Older people know peace is maintenance.

Maybe that is one hidden purpose of Hari Raya. Yes, it is celebration. Yes, it is food. Yes, it is seeing relatives you only remember through forwarded messages. But perhaps it is also practice. Practice in returning. Practice in greeting people despite history. Practice in generosity. Practice in patience when someone asks why you are still single, still childless, still thin, still fat, still working there, still not working there, still existing in ways that confuse them. Practice in forgiveness. Practice in becoming the sort of person who can sit in a complicated room and still offer warmth.

Not because everyone deserves it equally.

But because you deserve to become someone peaceful.

As I watched my brothers tending to their children, checking on our parents, managing spouses, carrying bags, serving food, laughing at nonsense, I felt proud. Not loudly proud. Not cinematic proud.

Quietly proud.

We have all been shaped by the same storms in different ways. Yet here we were. Still showing up. Still trying. Still learning how to love each other with the tools we have. That is enough to honour.

Families do not become perfect. They become possible.

Sometimes that is miracle enough.

As the season continues, I do not wish people perfect families. That would be unrealistic and frankly suspicious. I do not wish people flawless reunions, because someone will still say something unnecessary before dessert. I do not even wish people total forgetting. Some histories deserve remembrance.

What I wish is something quieter.

May you find settled-ness.

May you know which battles no longer deserve your strength.

May you carry responsibility without losing tenderness.

May you forgive where you can, protect yourself where you must, and release what no longer serves you.

May old wounds stop auditioning for lead roles in your present life.

May you laugh loudly, eat slowly, and leave with your peace intact.

And if your family gathering is chaotic, awkward, emotional, noisy, or gloriously imperfect—may you still find one small corner of calm within it. Sometimes that is where celebration truly lives.

Selamat Hari Raya.

May peace visits you too.

Finding the Funny in a Serious World

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 07:55:00 +0000

Last Thursday, I finally had the energy to meet a friend for dinner.

I say “finally” because the last few weeks have been one long blur of work, writing, rehearsals, emails, and the occasional existential sigh while staring at the ceiling fan.

You know the kind.

You lie down thinking you will rest for five minutes, and suddenly you are contemplating the entire trajectory of human civilisation.

Anyway, over dinner, my friend said something that caught me off guard.

She told me she had been reading the entries I’ve been posting on this blog.

Then she asked, very casually, in between bites of chicken rice:

“Why have your recent writings been so serious?”

Now, I hadn’t really thought about it.

To be honest, I haven't been taking the time to reflect on my writing lately. I’ve just been writing. Putting words down. Hitting publish. Moving on to the next thing.

But her comment stayed with me.

On the train ride home, I found myself scrolling through my own blog entries like a stranger who had just discovered them.

And she was right.

They were… serious.

Reflective.

Philosophical.

A bit like a lecturer who forgot he was supposed to be entertaining the class.

Which made me wonder: Am I becoming too serious?

Or maybe the better question is this.

Am I simply tired?

There is a particular kind of fatigue that creeps up quietly. Not the physical kind where you just need a nap, but the mental one where everything in the world starts to feel heavier than usual.

The news feels heavier.
The conversations feel heavier.
Even the act of thinking feels heavier.

And when that happens, your writing sometimes becomes a mirror of that weight.

So today, I decided to try something different.

Today, I want to talk about something lighter.

Or at least something that appears lighter on the surface.

Content.

Not the emotional kind. The digital kind.

The things we consume every day without thinking about it.

Videos.

Articles.

Memes.

Comment sections.

TikTok clips that last seven seconds but somehow convince you to stay for forty minutes.

The modern human diet is no longer just nasi lemak and kopi.

It is also information.

And like food, what you consume eventually becomes part of you.

If you spend your entire day reading angry news articles, you will start to feel like the world is collapsing every five minutes.

If you spend your entire day watching motivational videos, you will briefly believe you can wake up at 5 a.m., drink celery juice, run ten kilometres, build three companies, and achieve enlightenment before lunch.

Neither of these things are entirely accurate.

Reality is usually somewhere in between.

But what fascinates me is how content quietly shapes our perspective of the world.

Take the last week, for example.

Earlier this week, I was on the MRT during the morning rush hour. The carriage was packed, which is not surprising because Singapore has mastered the art of fitting twelve thousand people into a metal tube designed for maybe half that number.

Standing in front of me was a man who was deeply invested in a video on his phone.

Now, when I say deeply invested, I mean he was laughing.

Not a polite chuckle.

Not the socially acceptable “hehe.”

I mean the full, uncontrolled kind of laughter where your shoulders start shaking and you are desperately trying to contain it because you are surrounded by strangers.

Naturally, everyone around him became curious.

We all tried to glance at his screen without making it obvious that we were glancing at his screen.

Singaporeans are very good at this. It is a subtle national skill.

Eventually I managed to see what he was watching.

It was a video of a cat falling off a sofa.

That was it.

A cat.

Falling.

Off a sofa.

And yet this man looked like he had just discovered the meaning of life.

For a moment, I found it ridiculous.

Then I found it strangely comforting.

Because in that cramped MRT carriage, surrounded by tired commuters who were mentally preparing for another workday, this one man had managed to find genuine joy in something utterly meaningless.

And somehow that felt… hopeful.

Later that same day, I opened social media and immediately encountered three posts about global crises, two political arguments, and one person declaring that civilisation as we know it is about to collapse.

You see what I mean about content diets?

One moment you are watching a cat fall off a sofa.

The next moment you are questioning the future of humanity.

Another incident happened just a few days ago.

I was at a coffee shop waiting for my order when the uncle behind the counter shouted a number.

“Forty-two!”

Nobody moved.

He shouted again.

“Forty-two!”

Still nobody.

Then a man at the corner table slowly looked up from his phone and said very calmly:

“Uncle… I think forty-two already gave up.”

The entire coffee shop laughed.

Even the uncle laughed.

Number forty-two, whoever he was, had apparently abandoned his drink and disappeared from the story entirely.

But for that brief moment, the entire room shared a collective joke about a ghost customer who had lost faith in coffee.

It was a small thing.

A silly thing.

But it reminded me of something important.

Humour is often accidental.

It appears in the small cracks of everyday life.

The problem is that when we fill our minds with too much heavy content, we sometimes lose the ability to see those cracks.

Everything becomes serious.

Everything becomes a debate.

Everything becomes a problem that must be solved immediately.

But sometimes the healthiest response to life is simply to notice that someone ordered coffee and never came back for it.

Now, I should clarify something.

Finding humour in life does not mean ignoring the serious things.

The world is complicated.

There are real problems that deserve attention and thought.

But if your entire worldview becomes a constant stream of seriousness, something inside you starts to dry up.

Your ability to laugh.

Your ability to be amused.

Your ability to notice the absurdity of being human.

And being human is, quite frankly, very absurd.

We are the only species on this planet that can simultaneously worry about climate change, check Instagram, eat fried chicken, and argue about pineapple on pizza.

If that is not strange, I don’t know what is.

Which brings me back to my friend’s comment.

“Why have your recent writings been so serious?”

Maybe the answer is simple.

Maybe I have just been consuming too much seriousness.

Too many long articles.

Too many debates.

Too many think pieces written by people who sound like they haven’t laughed since 2003.

And eventually that tone leaks into your own writing.

But the truth is, humour is not the opposite of seriousness.

Sometimes humour is simply another way of surviving seriousness.

There is a thin line between cynicism and humour.

Cynicism says the world is ridiculous and therefore nothing matters.

Humour says the world is ridiculous and therefore we might as well laugh while we are here.

I prefer the second option.

Because if life occasionally feels like a very long and confusing theatre performance, then laughter is the moment when the audience realises that everyone else is also slightly confused about the script.

So perhaps moving forward, I will try to balance the things I consume.

A serious article.

Followed by a cat falling off a sofa.

A philosophical essay.

Followed by a video of someone trying to open a plastic container for three minutes.

A long discussion about the state of the world.

Followed by the memory of a coffee shop uncle calling out for customer number forty-two who may or may not exist anymore.

Because sometimes the funniest parts of life are not the jokes we intentionally tell.

They are the strange little moments that happen when nobody is trying to be funny at all.

And perhaps that is the real lesson here.

If you want to survive the weight of the world, you must occasionally adjust your content diet.

Consume a little seriousness.

But also consume a little absurdity.

Because somewhere out there, right now, a cat is probably falling off a sofa again.

And someone on the MRT is laughing like they have just discovered happiness.

And honestly?

That might be enough for today.

That Childcare Hours Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Last week, while scrolling through my phone on the MRT, I stumbled upon yet another online debate that seemed to have caught fire across Singapore. The question was simple, but like all simple questions, it carried the weight of something much larger: should childcare centres extend their operating hours so that parents who work late can pick up their children later?

At first glance, the argument sounds reasonable. Life is busy. Work ends late. Traffic happens. Meetings run overtime. Emails multiply like rabbits. If parents cannot reach the childcare centre by closing time, perhaps the childcare centre should simply stay open longer.

Problem solved.

Except… it doesn’t really solve the problem, does it?

It only moves the problem somewhere else.

Because if childcare centres extend their hours, someone else must stay back longer. The teachers. The assistants. The cooks. The cleaners. The people who also have homes to return to, families to care for, dinners to cook, elderly parents to check on, and maybe even their own children waiting for them.

So the question quietly shifts from “Should childcare centres open longer?” to something more uncomfortable: whose time exactly are we extending?

This debate fascinates me because it reveals something deeply Singaporean about the way we approach work and time. For decades, we have inherited a philosophy that quietly equates long working hours with reliability. The last person to leave the office is often perceived as the most committed. The one replying emails at 11.47pm must surely be the most hardworking.

We admire stamina.

We reward presence.

But we rarely question efficiency.

Somewhere along the way, productivity became confused with endurance. Work became less about completing a task and more about occupying time.

I once worked in an office where people stayed back until 8pm almost every day. Not because the workload demanded it, but because nobody wanted to be the first person to leave. The moment someone packed their bag at 6pm, you could almost feel the room quietly judging them.

“Half-day ah?”

It didn’t matter that the person had completed all their work. What mattered was the optics of staying.

This is the strange theatre of modern work culture. Everyone performs busyness.

And like all theatre, the performance continues because the audience expects it.

Now this brings us back to childcare centres. When parents are unable to pick up their children on time, the immediate instinct is to stretch the childcare hours. Extend the closing time. Add a buffer. Give parents more flexibility.

But perhaps we should ask a different question instead.

Why are parents working so late in the first place?

Singapore is not exactly a sleepy town. Our work culture is famously intense. Many employees officially end work at 6pm, but “official” and “actual” are two very different things. Meetings start late in the day. Messages arrive after dinner. Some offices operate on the quiet expectation that if the boss is still around, everyone else should also still be around.

It is the unspoken rule of proximity.

So when a parent rushes across the island trying to reach a childcare centre before closing time, the problem might not be the childcare centre’s schedule. The problem might be the entire structure of the workday.

Other countries have already begun questioning this structure. Experiments with shorter work weeks have been conducted in places like Iceland, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe. The results have been surprisingly consistent.

Work output did not collapse.

Companies did not fall apart.

In many cases, productivity actually increased.

When people know they have less time to work, they tend to focus more sharply. Meetings become shorter. Emails become clearer. Unnecessary bureaucracy begins to shrink. The workday becomes leaner because it has to be.

Human attention, it turns out, functions a little like a battery. It drains over time. Stretch it too long and the later hours become filled with half-thinking and slow decision-making. Tasks that could have taken twenty minutes begin to take an hour.

Anyone who has stared at a spreadsheet at 6.45pm knows this feeling. Your brain is technically still present, but your spirit has already boarded the MRT.

This is why the argument for shorter working hours is not just about comfort or lifestyle. It is about efficiency.

A tired workforce is not a productive workforce.

A distracted workforce is not an efficient workforce.

And a society that normalises exhaustion eventually pays for it in ways that are not always immediately visible.

Burnout.

Health issues.

Strained family relationships.

Children who spend more time waiting than being with their parents.

Which brings us back to the childcare debate again.

If we keep extending childcare hours, we may be quietly accepting a reality where parents simply work later and later. The childcare centre becomes a buffer zone for a system that refuses to change.

Instead of adjusting the structure of work, we stretch the structure of care.

The irony is almost poetic.

The people caring for children must now sacrifice more time with their own families so that other families can cope with longer work hours.

It becomes a chain of borrowed time.

Now, to be fair, there are parents whose jobs genuinely demand irregular hours. Healthcare workers, security personnel, transport operators, and many others keep society running at odd hours. For them, extended childcare services can be necessary and meaningful support.

But that is different from designing an entire system around late work as the norm.

The danger lies in normalising the exception.

If the baseline assumption becomes that everyone works late, then the solution will always be to stretch the support systems further. Longer childcare hours. Later school buses. More evening programmes.

At some point, we might accidentally design a society where childhood itself becomes a waiting room.

Children waiting for parents.

Parents waiting for weekends.

Everyone waiting for time.

The funny thing is, Singaporeans are actually very efficient people. Put us under pressure and we become incredibly resourceful. Deadlines sharpen our instincts. Constraints often bring out creativity.

Give someone three hours to finish something and they will probably finish it.

Give them eight hours and suddenly the task expands to fill the entire day.

This phenomenon even has a name: Parkinson’s Law. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

If this is true, then stretching the workday does not necessarily produce better work. It might simply produce longer work.

And longer work does not always mean meaningful work.

I sometimes imagine what would happen if Singapore collectively decided that the standard workday should end earlier. Not dramatically earlier. Just enough to change the rhythm of the evening.

Imagine parents leaving offices at 5pm instead of 6.30pm.

Imagine children being picked up without the frantic rush.

Imagine dinners that are not squeezed between emails.

Imagine teachers and childcare workers returning home while the sun is still negotiating with the sky.

It sounds almost radical, which is amusing because in many parts of the world, this is not radical at all. It is simply normal life.

Of course, cultural habits do not change overnight. Work culture is like an old sofa. Even when it becomes uncomfortable, people hesitate to replace it because everyone is used to sitting on it.

But every now and then, a debate appears that invites us to question the furniture.

The childcare hours discussion might be one of those moments.

Instead of asking how late childcare centres should remain open, perhaps we should be asking how early people should be allowed to return home.

Instead of stretching care systems indefinitely, perhaps we should redesign work systems more thoughtfully.

Because if the goal is truly to support families, then the answer might not lie in longer childcare hours.

The answer might lie in shorter workdays.

And who knows? We might even discover that when people are given back a little time, they become better workers, better parents, and possibly even happier citizens.

Which, if we are honest, sounds like a very efficient outcome.

Ramadan and What Needs to be Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 16:18:00 +0000

Every Ramadan, the reminders begin.

You see them on Instagram stories. On WhatsApp family groups. Occasionally even on Twitter—sorry, X—where people suddenly discover their inner philosopher for thirty days.

The reminder usually goes something like this:

“Please be nice. It is the month of Ramadan.”

Sometimes it is longer.

“It is Ramadan. Please watch your words.”
“Let us respect one another during this holy month.”
“Please avoid arguments. It is Ramadan.”

And every year, when I read these messages, I feel a small itch somewhere in my brain. Not anger exactly. Not quite irritation either. More like confusion. Because hidden inside these reminders is an implication that nobody seems to notice.

That kindness apparently has a season.

That patience has a start date.

And—perhaps most strangely—that decency has an expiry date.

Which raises a slightly awkward question. What exactly happens on the first day after Ramadan ends? Do we all gather together and say, “Alright everyone, the thirty days are over. You may now resume being slightly unpleasant”?

Imagine if someone reminded you, “Please brush your teeth. It is the month of January.”

You would probably stare at them and say, “I brush my teeth every day.”

Basic hygiene does not require a specific month.

Yet somehow, basic kindness has slowly been turned into a seasonal campaign.

It is like those supermarket promotions. “Limited time only. Be nice from 1st March to 30th March. While stocks last.”

The irony, of course, is that Ramadan was never meant to work this way.

Ramadan was never designed to make people good for thirty days.

It was meant to remind them how to be good for the other eleven months.

To understand this properly, we have to return to the central act of Ramadan: fasting.

On the surface, fasting looks like deprivation. No food. No drink. From dawn to sunset. When described like that, it sounds like a slightly uncomfortable diet plan designed by someone who hates breakfast.

But fasting is not really about hunger.

If hunger alone made people virtuous, then anyone who skipped lunch would automatically become morally enlightened. Unfortunately, most of us know that being hungry often produces the opposite effect. Hungry people can become very creative in their irritability.

So clearly, the hunger is not the point.

The point is restraint.

Restraint of the body.
Restraint of the tongue.
Restraint of the ego.

Ramadan is essentially a training programme for self-control.

The Prophet Muhammad once explained that fasting is not simply about abstaining from food and drink. If someone continues to lie, insult others, or behave badly, then the fast loses its spiritual meaning.

In other words, the empty stomach is not the achievement.

The improved character is.

Ramadan merely amplifies the reminder.

But the lesson was never meant to disappear after the moon changes.

The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

The same is true of kindness.

Kindness cannot survive as an occasional event.

It has to become a habit.

And habits do not check the calendar.

Yet modern life has a funny way of packaging virtues as campaigns. We have Earth Hour. Kindness Week. Mental Health Month. All good initiatives, of course. But they sometimes create a strange psychological loophole where we start thinking certain values belong to certain time slots.

“This is the week to be generous.”

“This is the month to be patient.”

Instead of asking a simpler question.

“What kind of person am I trying to be?”

Ramadan, traditionally, was never meant to be a public campaign. It is actually a deeply personal exercise in self-awareness.

In Islamic tradition, the month is often described as a time of tazkiyah, purification. But purification of what exactly?

Not the stomach.

The heart.

During Ramadan, Muslims are encouraged to observe their behaviour more closely. Hunger has a funny way of sharpening awareness. When you are fasting, you suddenly notice things about yourself that normally go unnoticed.

You realise how quickly you become impatient.

How easily you react.

How ready you are to defend your ego.

It is like holding up a mirror to your own habits.

And ideally, you begin correcting them.

Maybe you pause before replying.

Maybe you swallow the sarcastic comment.

Maybe you decide not to escalate a disagreement.

None of these moments are dramatic enough to post online.

But they are the moments that actually matter.

The writer C.S. Lewis once observed, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

Ramadan is meant to cultivate exactly that.

Not public reminders.

Private discipline.

Social media, unfortunately, has made virtue very visible. People post reminders. Share quotes. Upload aesthetic photos of dates and Ramadan decorations that look suspiciously like they came from Pinterest.

None of this is necessarily bad.

But it sometimes distracts from the quieter work happening underneath.

The real Ramadan is not the Instagram story.

It is the moment when you are exhausted, thirsty, slightly grumpy—and still choose patience.

The real Ramadan is when someone provokes you and you decide not to respond with equal energy.

That restraint is the real achievement.

Another beautiful aspect of fasting is the way it produces empathy. When you feel hunger yourself, even temporarily, you gain a small glimpse into the experience of people who live with that feeling every day.

The stomach becomes a teacher.

Suddenly food is no longer just food.

It becomes gratitude.

You become aware of how easily comfort can be taken for granted. Food appears. Water flows. Life continues.

But for many people, those things are uncertain.

Ramadan is meant to awaken that awareness.

Which is why generosity is so strongly encouraged during the month. Charity increases. Communities gather. People share meals.

But again, the deeper lesson is not supposed to end with the final iftar.

Hunger still exists after Ramadan.

So should compassion.

The Dalai Lama once said, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

Notice the wording.

He did not say, “Be kind when the calendar says so.”

He said whenever.

Kindness, after all, is one of the rare things in life that is usually free. You do not need wealth to speak gently. You do not need resources to listen carefully. You do not need a special religious occasion to treat someone with dignity.

Most kindness costs nothing.

A softer tone.

A moment of patience.

A willingness not to embarrass someone publicly.

These are small decisions.

But they accumulate over time.

Maya Angelou once wrote, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Kindness is memory-making.

And memories do not operate on a lunar calendar.

If Ramadan succeeds in its spiritual purpose, something subtle should happen after the month ends.

You should leave slightly different.

Not dramatically different. No one emerges glowing like a saint from a medieval painting.

But perhaps slightly more aware.

Maybe you pause longer before reacting.

Maybe you complain less.

Maybe you notice other people’s struggles more quickly.

The changes might be small.

But small adjustments in direction matter.

A compass shifted by just a few degrees can eventually lead to an entirely different destination.

That is the quiet ambition of Ramadan.

Not temporary politeness.

But permanent recalibration.

Which is why those seasonal reminders sometimes feel strange.

“Please be nice. It is the month of Ramadan.”

Perhaps the reminder should be slightly different.

Perhaps it should simply say:

“Please be nice. You are human.”

Because the deeper lesson of Ramadan is not really about one month.

It is about remembering what we are capable of being.

Hungry people who still show patience.

Tired people who still show empathy.

Human beings who choose kindness not because the calendar told them to—but because they finally understand why it matters.

Soon the moon will change again. Ramadan will end. The social media reminders will disappear, replaced by other trending topics.

But people will still need patience.

They will still need understanding.

They will still need kindness.

And that is when the real lesson of Ramadan quietly begins.

Raya Songs, Raya Scoldings, and the Art of Letting People Be

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:10:00 +0000

Every year, without fail, Hari Raya arrives with three things: kuih raya that mysteriously finishes itself, family group chats that suddenly become very active, and—most importantly—new Raya songs. And every year, without fail, we argue about them. Scroll through social media anytime during Ramadan and Syawal and you’ll see the same comments, recycled:

“Raya songs nowadays got no soul”

“Back then was better”

“This doesn’t reflect the real spirit of Hari Raya”.

The comment section becomes less Aidilfitri and more Aidilfitnah, and somehow we do this every year as if it’s a brand-new debate.

At the centre of this annual discourse is always a comparison between the so-called “golden era” of Raya songs and what we’re getting today. When people talk about the good old days, they’ll name-drop legends like Aishah, Sudirman, and Siti Nurhaliza—artists whose Raya songs were poetic, reflective, and emotionally loaded. Songs that reminded us about forgiveness, longing, balik kampung journeys, and why Raya mattered beyond the outfit and the Instagram photo. The kind of songs that could make you feel sentimental even if you were just sitting in traffic, stuck somewhere between home and nowhere.

Fast forward to today, and suddenly the vibe has shifted. We now have playful, meme-able tracks like Lala Raya by Agy or Raya 20 Simpang, and instead of gentle nostalgia, the internet collectively brings out the pitchforks.

The criticism is immediate: “This doesn’t represent Raya".

The verdict: “Embarrassing”.

The sentiments dragged across Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp family groups.

But here’s the thing—since when did Hari Raya only have one acceptable meaning?

Yes, older Raya songs were poetic. Yes, many of them carried spiritual and emotional weight. But that doesn’t automatically make them the only valid interpretation of Hari Raya. Raya is not a museum exhibit to be preserved behind glass. It is lived, experienced, reinterpreted, and reshaped by each generation. For some people, Raya is about repentance and spirituality. For others, it’s about reunion, laughter, chaos, food, and surviving three open houses in one day. Some experience joy. Others experience grief. Some feel closeness. Others feel awkwardness. All of that is Raya.

So when someone creates a Raya song that leans more playful, satirical, or light-hearted, does that automatically make it “wrong”? Or does it simply mean it doesn’t reflect your version of Raya? That distinction matters more than we often acknowledge.

One detail that often gets conveniently ignored in these debates is context. In Agy’s case, his Raya song was self-funded. No government grants. No public funds. No taxpayers’ money. Just personal resources, personal risk, and personal expression—and that matters. When someone self-funds their work, they are not obligated to represent anyone but themselves. They are not a cultural ambassador by default. They are an artist, sharing their own interpretation of what Raya means to them.

The internet, for better or worse, is an open playground for self-expression. That’s where creativity thrives—through trial and error, through cringe moments, and yes, sometimes outright failures. But without that freedom, we don’t evolve. We stagnate. If every artist was pressured to conform to one “approved” Raya template, we’d still be stuck remaking the same song every year with different singers. Nostalgic, sure. Exciting? Not really.

Of course, this is usually the point where the familiar concern appears in the comment section:

“But what if other races misunderstand?”

"What if non-Malays think this is what Raya is about?"

It’s a valid concern, but it’s also a misplaced responsibility. Educating others about Hari Raya is not the sole job of one artist or one song. It’s a collective responsibility—and honestly, an individual one too. If someone’s entire understanding of Raya comes from one TikTok song, then the issue isn’t the song. It’s the lack of broader exposure and conversation. Representation is not a solo job. It’s a community effort.

Instead of expecting every Malay artist to carry the weight of cultural education on their shoulders, maybe we should ask ourselves what we are personally doing to explain Raya to others. Because shouting at artists online isn’t education. It’s just noise.

And this is where things start to get uncomfortable. We Malays love to say we value adab, kindness, and community, but the way we sometimes treat our own artists tells a different story. The energy spent trashing, mocking, and belittling Raya songs could have been channelled into something far more productive. If you don’t like a song, that’s fine—taste is subjective. But there’s a difference between saying, “This isn’t for me,” and declaring, “This is an insult to Raya.” One is an opinion. The other is a moral judgement. And when moral judgement becomes our default response, we stop being a community and start acting like cultural gatekeepers. Ironically, that behaviour reflects far more poorly on us than any silly Raya song ever could.

Here’s a radical idea: instead of spending hours trashing songs we don’t like, why not spend that time creating alternatives? Write. Sing. Produce. Share poetry. Make videos. Tell stories. Offer different perspectives on Raya. Culture doesn’t move forward through complaints—it moves forward through contribution. If we truly believe certain Raya songs miss the mark, the solution isn’t cancellation. It’s addition. More voices. More interpretations. More representations of what Raya could be. Because the moment we stop allowing experimentation, we kill creativity, and once creativity dies, tradition becomes hollow—performed out of obligation rather than meaning.

At its core, Hari Raya is often described as a time of forgiveness. Of course, forgiveness doesn’t always mean blind acceptance. Sometimes, forgiveness looks like tolerance. It means acknowledging mistakes, choosing not to hold onto anger, and then moving forward with guidance—not humiliation. There’s a Malay word we love to forget online: tegur. To tegur is to correct, yes—but with care. With encouragement. With the intention of helping someone grow, not tearing them down. This is, in my opinion, how we can grow as a community.

This idea is beautifully captured in last year’s Raya song Serumpun by Mimi Fly, which speaks about unity, not uniformity or conformity —about being different, yet rooted in the same soil. Serumpun. Unity doesn’t mean we all agree. It means recognising that despite differing ideals, we ultimately want the same thing: peace, happiness, and harmony with our families and one another.

So perhaps the real question isn’t whether modern Raya songs reflect the “true” spirit of Hari Raya. Maybe the real question is whether our reactions reflect it. If Raya is about forgiveness, compassion, and unity, then how we respond to art we dislike matters just as much as the art itself. We can disagree without destroying. We can critique without humiliating. We can guide without gatekeeping. And maybe—just maybe—if we spent less time scolding and more time understanding, Raya would feel a little more like Raya again. Not because the songs changed, but because we did.

Art is part of Total Defence

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 10:59:00 +0000

I was on the MRT when I read it.

The train was doing what it always does—moving steadily through tunnels and stations, carrying people who looked half-awake, half-lost in their phones. I was one of them. Somewhere between scrolling headlines and half-formed thoughts, I came across an online post written by a fellow Singaporean. The post was firm, confident, and practical. It argued that art was non-essential, that government funding for the arts was wasteful, and that the money would be better funnelled into “more useful” things—things that actually mattered in times of crisis.

I remember putting my phone down and feeling unexpectedly unsettled.

Not angry. Not defensive. Just… affected. In that quiet, lingering way that follows you even after you’ve alighted at your station. It wasn’t because the argument was unfamiliar. We’ve heard versions of it before, especially during difficult periods—pandemics, recessions, wars happening elsewhere that remind us how fragile stability can be. It was because the statement forced a deeper question to surface: when we talk about defending Singapore, what exactly are we defending?

This year, as we commemorate Total Defence Day, that question feels worth sitting with a little longer.

When conversations about defence happen, the language often shifts quickly to survival. Food security. Clean water. Energy. Healthcare. Digital infrastructure. These are critical, and no one seriously disputes their importance. In moments of extreme crisis—war, natural disaster, global pandemics—human needs collapse into something brutally simple. Strip life down to its most basic form and survival depends on three things: food, water, oxygen. Without these, nothing else follows.

But here is where we need to slow down, because survival needs and essentials are not the same thing.

Survival needs are immediate and unforgiving. Miss one for too long and life ends. Essentials, on the other hand, are what allow life to continue with dignity, coherence, and meaning beyond the next hour or the next day. They operate across time. They support not just existence, but endurance.

Take shelter. Many psychological frameworks place shelter high on the hierarchy of human needs, and rightly so. Yet imagine a wartime scenario where you must make an impossible choice: you have limited resources and limited time. Do you build a house, or do you slaughter an animal to feed your family? Almost everyone would choose food first. That choice does not suddenly make shelter non-essential. It simply reveals that essentials are contextual and sequential. Shelter may not save you today, but without it, survival tomorrow becomes unlikely.

The same logic applies when we talk about the arts.

Art is often dismissed because it does not keep the heart beating in an emergency. A painting cannot purify water. A song cannot vaccinate a population. And yet, history shows us something curious: in every major crisis humanity has faced, art has not disappeared. It adapts. It compresses. It hides if it must—but it remains.

Soldiers write poems in trenches. Prisoners sketch on scraps of paper. Songs circulate quietly under oppressive regimes. During lockdowns, people sang from balconies, baked bread, drew, wrote, shared humour online. These were not acts of excess. They were acts of survival of a different kind.

Psychologists have long studied the role of art in mental and emotional resilience. Engagement with music, visual art, storytelling, and performance has been shown to reduce stress, regulate emotions, strengthen social bonds, and provide a sense of meaning in uncertain conditions. These effects are not “nice-to-haves” when fear, isolation, and grief are widespread. They are stabilising forces.

A population that is physically fed but psychologically fractured is not resilient. Defence planners know this. Armies have always known this. Morale is not abstract—it is operational. It determines whether people hold together under pressure or fall apart when circumstances stretch them too thin.

This understanding is embedded, perhaps more quietly than we realise, in Singapore’s Total Defence framework. Defence here is not just military. It is psychological, social, economic, civil, and digital. Each pillar recognises that a nation does not collapse only when its borders are breached, but when trust erodes, when fear overwhelms, when people stop believing in a shared future.

Art threads through all of this.

Psychological defence is about resilience, identity, and the ability to cope with adversity. Art gives language to emotions that are otherwise difficult to process. It allows grief, hope, anger, and solidarity to be expressed without turning inward or turning on one another.

Social defence is about cohesion—about people seeing themselves as part of something larger. Shared cultural references, stories, images, and performances create common ground. They help us recognise one another even across differences.

Economic defence is not only about productivity, but adaptability. Creative thinking fuels innovation. The ability to imagine alternatives, to see patterns differently, to respond flexibly to disruption—these are creative skills, not purely technical ones.

Civil defence relies on trust and participation. Public messaging that resonates emotionally, that feels human rather than mechanical, is far more effective in times of crisis. Art has always been central to how ideas are communicated and remembered.

Even digital defence, often framed in technical terms, depends on narrative. How we understand misinformation, how we interpret threats, how we maintain a sense of shared reality online—these are cultural challenges as much as technological ones.

To suggest that art sits outside these pillars is to misunderstand how societies actually function under stress.

History in Southeast Asia makes this especially clear. Long before widespread literacy, art was the primary medium through which ideas, beliefs, and values travelled. Religion did not spread through instruction manuals. Hindu-Buddhist epics moved across the region through temple carvings, murals, dance, and shadow puppetry. Moral lessons were embedded in stories performed and retold across generations.

When Islam spread through the Malay Archipelago, it did so not just through doctrine, but through stories, calligraphy, and architecture. Art translated belief into lived experience. It made the abstract tangible.

Even colonial powers understood this. They used architecture, exhibitions, language, and visual culture to assert authority and shape identity. Art has always been close to power because it reaches people at an emotional level that logic alone cannot.

Fast forward to modern Singapore, and the pattern continues. Over the years, our government has invested deliberately in integrating art into everyday life—public housing murals, community arts programmes, school curricula, public spaces designed with care. These were not indulgent gestures. They were acknowledgements that a resilient society is built not only on efficiency, but on emotional and cultural grounding.

The irony is that these investments are often most visible in peaceful times, which makes them easy to take for granted. But their value becomes clearest when peace is disrupted. During the pandemic, when routines collapsed and isolation set in, it was art—in all its informal, everyday forms—that helped people cope. People turned to music, baking, writing, humour, creativity. Mental health professionals encouraged creative expression not as distraction, but as a way to process uncertainty.

If art were truly non-essential, it would have been irrelevant then. Instead, it became a lifeline for many.

This is why the post I read in the MRT, stayed with me. Not because it was wrong in its concern for practicality, but because it revealed how narrow our definition of “useful” can become when we reduce defence to mere survival. Total Defence is not about defending our ability to stay alive at the lowest possible threshold. It is about defending a way of life—a society worth sustaining even when things go wrong.

So when we ask what is essential, perhaps the better question is not “what can we do without today?” but “what helps us endure tomorrow?”

Our government has spent a good amount of money and effort to weave art into our daily lives because they recognise it as a form of essential—not for bare survival, but for wellbeing, cohesion, and resilience. Let’s not waste that effort by dismissing art as expendable. If Total Defence is about protecting what matters, then we should be honest enough to admit that art has always mattered—not just in times of peace, but especially when tested.

Love or Loving the Idea of Being in Love?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 14:06:00 +0000

It’s everywhere — on timelines, in cafés with overpriced set menus, in Instagram stories filled with soft lighting and captions that read like poetry but feel more like performance. Love, during this season, is dressed up, filtered, and packaged neatly into something that looks good enough to be admired from the outside. And yet, beneath all that noise, there is a quieter question that rarely gets asked: are we in love, or are we in love with the idea of being in love?

They sound similar enough to be mistaken for one another, especially when emotions are high and the heart is eager. But the difference between the two is not small. It is the difference between something that grows you and something that slowly erodes you. It is also, more often than not, the difference between love and toxicity.

To be in love, in its truest sense, is not poetic in the way movies make it out to be. It is not always pretty, and it is definitely not always convenient. Love, at its core, asks for sacrifice. Not the dramatic, martyr-like kind we like to romanticise, but the quiet, everyday sacrifices that require consistency and humility. It is choosing to show up even when your ego wants to sit down. It is choosing “us” when “me” would be easier. In many ways, sacrifice is not just part of love — it is almost synonymous with it.

This idea isn’t foreign to my culture. In Malay households, love has always been shown more through action than declaration. Growing up, I don't remember my parents saying “I love you” out loud, but they woke up early to cook, stayed up late to worry, worked jobs that drained them to the bones so their children could have more options. Love was a bowl of warm rice with curry or asam pedas, waiting on the table. Love was asking “dah makan?” instead of “I miss you.” Love was sacrifice made so normal that it didn’t even call attention to itself.

Romantic love, when it is real, carries that same energy. It is not about losing yourself entirely, but it is about being willing to give parts of yourself — your time, your comfort, your pride — for the well-being of another. It’s about compromise that doesn’t feel like punishment. It’s about growth that sometimes feels uncomfortable but never unsafe.

Loving the idea of being in love, however, is a different beast altogether.

This kind of love is far more self-centred, though it rarely presents itself that way. It is not about the other person as much as it is about how the relationship makes you feel, how it makes you look, how it completes an image you have of yourself. It is loving the couple photos, the anniversaries, the “taken” status, the sense of being chosen — without fully embracing the responsibility that comes with choosing someone else in return.

In this state, sacrifice becomes selective. You are willing to give, but only when it doesn’t cost too much. You are affectionate, but only when it feels good for you. You stay, not necessarily because the relationship is healthy, but because leaving would disrupt the narrative you’ve built around your life. There is a deep attachment to the label of “being in love,” even when the actual experience feels heavy, confusing, or painful.

This is where toxicity quietly takes root.

A relationship built on loving the idea of love often asks one person to sacrifice more than the other. One person bends, adjusts, forgives, and waits, while the other enjoys the benefits of companionship without fully carrying its weight. Over time, imbalance becomes normal. Red flags get rebranded as patience. Disrespect gets reframed as “this is just how they are.” Pain becomes something to endure rather than something to address.

Culturally, we sometimes unintentionally enable this. We grow up hearing reminders to “sabar,” to “jaga hubungan,” to not be "terlalu ikut perasaan". We are warned not to be following our own impulses or be too impulsive, for the consequences are undesirable. While patience is a virtue, it becomes dangerous when it is used to justify staying in spaces that consistently harm you. There is a difference between sabar and self-abandonment, and love should never require the latter.

Being able to differentiate between loving someone and loving the idea of being in love is crucial precisely because the second can trap you. It traps you in cycles of hope — believing that if you just give a little more, understand a little better, stay a little longer, things will eventually feel like the love you imagined at the beginning. But imagination, no matter how beautiful, cannot sustain a relationship on its own.

One way to recognise the difference is to pay attention to how sacrifice flows. In real love, sacrifice is mutual, even if not always equal in form. Both people feel seen. Both people feel safe to express discomfort without fear of abandonment or dismissal. In contrast, when you are loving the idea of love, sacrifice often feels one-sided. You find yourself justifying why you are always the one adjusting, always the one apologising, always the one understanding.

Another subtle sign lies in how conflict is handled. Love that is grounded in care treats conflict as something to work through together. It may be uncomfortable, but it does not threaten the foundation of the relationship. When someone loves the idea of being in love, conflict feels like an inconvenience or a personal attack. Difficult conversations get avoided, minimised, or flipped back onto you. Peace becomes performative, maintained by silence rather than resolution.

There is also the question of who you are becoming in the relationship. Love, even when challenging, should expand you. It should encourage honesty, self-awareness, and emotional maturity. You should feel more yourself, not less. If being with someone constantly makes you doubt your worth, shrink your needs, or feel guilty for wanting basic respect, it is worth asking whether love is truly present — or whether you are holding onto an image that no longer matches reality.

This doesn’t mean that love is effortless or that relationships should be perfect. No relationship is free from struggle. But struggle in love should feel like effort toward something meaningful, not survival within something harmful. There is a difference between growing pains and emotional erosion, and only one of them is sustainable.

Valentine’s Day, for all its clichés, can be a good moment to pause and reflect. Not just on who we love, but on how we love, and why. Are we choosing someone because we genuinely care about their well-being, or because being with them fulfils a certain fantasy? Are we staying because there is mutual respect and growth, or because leaving would force us to confront loneliness or social judgment?

In Malay culture, we often say “biar lambat, asal selamat.” Perhaps love deserves the same patience — not rushing into it for the sake of having it, not clinging to it just to say we do. Love that is real is worth waiting for, worth working on, and worth protecting. Love that is merely an idea, no matter how intoxicating, is not worth losing yourself over.

Ultimately, love should not feel like a performance you are constantly auditioning for. It should not feel like a role you have to maintain at the expense of your own peace. Love, when it is genuine, feels like a shared journey — imperfect, sometimes messy, but rooted in care, sacrifice, and choice.

This Valentine’s Day, maybe the most loving thing we can do is to be honest with ourselves. To ask whether what we are holding onto is love itself, or just the comfort of believing we have it. And to remember that choosing yourself, especially when something is harming you, is not a failure of love — it is an act of it.

When “Age Is Just a Number” Stops Being the Right Answer

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:58:00 +0000

I just had a birthday. The kind of birthday that doesn’t come with balloons or dramatic revelations, but instead arrives quietly, tapping you on the shoulder and asking you to notice a few things you’ve been politely ignoring. I noticed my knees first. They complain now when I walk too long, like old friends who have decided they no longer owe me silence. Then there was the breathlessness on the stairs, unexpected and mildly insulting. Nothing chronic, nothing diagnosable, nothing that would earn me much sympathy in a doctor’s waiting room. Just changes. Subtle, persistent, undeniable.

Years ago, a friend once told me that every birthday felt like her body was failing her a little more. She talked about joint pain, blurry vision, a general sense of things not working the way they used to. I remember responding immediately, confidently, and with the best of intentions: “Age is just a number.” I thought I was being encouraging. I thought I was offering perspective, maybe even hope. Looking back now, I realize I was also shutting something down.

Because age is not just a number when you live inside a body.

For a long time, we’ve treated ageing like a mindset problem. As though if you think young enough, stretch enough, drink enough green smoothies, and keep the right attitude, time will somehow lose interest in you. This idea is seductive, especially in cultures that worship productivity, youthfulness, and visible vitality. It allows us to believe that decline only happens to people who didn’t try hard enough.

But the truth is more complicated, and far less moral.

Ageing is a biological process that unfolds differently for everyone. This isn’t a poetic observation; it’s a scientific one. Long-running research such as the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, which began in 1958, has shown that people age at dramatically different rates across physical, cognitive, and metabolic domains. Two people born in the same year can have vastly different experiences of strength, endurance, vision, memory, and recovery, even if they share similar lifestyles. Ageing is shaped by genetics, early life conditions, stress exposure, socioeconomic factors, hormonal changes, and sheer randomness. Effort matters, but it is not the whole story.

So when we say “age is just a number,” what we are often really saying is: I’m more comfortable denying this than sitting with it.

The comment “Oh, you don’t look your age” lives in the same neighborhood. It’s meant as a compliment, but it carries a quiet assumption that looking your age would be a problem. That ageing has a look, and that look is undesirable. Embedded in that sentence is the idea that youthfulness is the standard, and deviation from it requires reassurance. The person receiving the comment is put in the strange position of either accepting the compliment—which means agreeing that ageing badly would be unfortunate—or rejecting it and risking social awkwardness.

Then there’s the question: “How does it feel to be older?” This one is trickier, because sometimes it’s genuine curiosity, and sometimes it’s thinly veiled anxiety. What people often want to know is whether being older feels as bad as they fear it will. They’re asking for a preview, a warning, or maybe even permission to relax.

The problem with all these exchanges is not malice. It’s simplification.

We like clean narratives about ageing. Either it’s tragic and downhill, or it’s empowering and irrelevant. Either you’re falling apart, or you’re “ageing like fine wine.” Both stories flatten the truth. Both leave little room for contradiction, and ageing is full of contradictions.

You can be mentally sharper and emotionally calmer than you were in your twenties, and still need to sit down halfway up a flight of stairs. You can be deeply grateful for your body and frustrated with it in the same afternoon. You can exercise regularly, eat well, sleep decently, and still feel the quiet accumulation of wear. None of this means you are failing. It means you are alive.

Gerontologist Margaret Gullette has written extensively about what she calls “age ideology”—the stories societies tell about what ageing is supposed to mean. In many modern cultures, ageing is framed as loss: loss of beauty, relevance, energy, desirability. The anti-ageing industry thrives on this fear, offering creams, supplements, routines, and attitudes designed to help us outrun time. But ageing is not a personal flaw to be corrected. It is a universal process that happens unevenly and often inconveniently.

Medical research supports this unevenness. Studies on sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass, show that it can begin as early as the thirties, but its progression varies widely. Research on lung capacity demonstrates a gradual decline over adulthood, which can explain breathlessness even in otherwise healthy individuals. Osteoarthritis can develop without dramatic injury, simply through years of use. Vision changes such as presbyopia are so common they’re practically a rite of passage. These changes are not moral verdicts. They are physiological realities.

So what do we say instead?

Maybe we stop trying to neutralize age altogether. Maybe we respond in ways that acknowledge difference without ranking it.

When someone says, “You don’t look your age,” a response doesn’t have to be defensive or dismissive. It can be curious. It can be grounding. Something like, “I think age looks different on everyone,” or even, “This is just what my age looks like on me.” That small shift quietly challenges the idea that there is a correct way to appear at any given number.

When asked, “How does it feel to be older?” we don’t owe anyone a polished summary or a motivational speech. We can tell the truth, gently and incompletely, the way truth often is. “Some things feel easier, some things feel harder. My body has opinions now.” Or, “It feels layered. Not worse, not better. Just more.” These answers resist drama without denying reality.

And when someone talks about the ways their body is changing, maybe the kindest response is not reassurance at all. Maybe it’s recognition. “That sounds frustrating.” “That makes sense.” “I’ve noticed changes too.” According to research on empathy and social connection, particularly the work of Brené Brown and others studying vulnerability, people feel more supported when their experiences are acknowledged rather than reframed. Validation does not make pain worse; it makes it less lonely.

There is also a quiet ableism tucked inside the phrase “age is just a number.” It assumes that a body that doesn’t hurt, doesn’t slow down, doesn’t need accommodation, is the baseline. Anyone who deviates from that baseline is encouraged to transcend it with positivity. But bodies are not problems to be solved by attitude. Disability scholars and ageing researchers alike have pointed out that many of the hardships associated with ageing come not from physical changes themselves, but from environments that are unwilling to adapt. Stairs without railings, work cultures that equate stamina with worth, social expectations that reward endurance over care.

Ageing does not happen in isolation. It happens in context.

What complicates this further is that many people experience ageing long before it becomes socially visible. Chronic stress, caregiving, poverty, trauma, and discrimination all accelerate biological ageing. Research on allostatic load—the cumulative wear and tear on the body from repeated stress—shows that marginalised groups often show signs of accelerated ageing at a cellular level. Telomere studies, while still evolving, suggest that prolonged stress can affect cellular ageing itself. So when we dismiss someone’s experience with “age is just a number,” we may also be dismissing histories we cannot see.

This doesn’t mean we have to speak about ageing in hushed, tragic tones. There is joy here too. Many studies in psychology suggest that emotional regulation improves with age. Older adults often report greater life satisfaction, deeper relationships, and a clearer sense of what matters. The U-shaped happiness curve, observed across multiple countries, suggests that wellbeing often dips in midlife and rises again later. Ageing is not a single story moving in one direction. It is several stories happening at once.

Which is why the most honest way to talk about age might be to let it stay complex.

Instead of “age is just a number,” we might say: age is information. It tells us something, but not everything. It interacts with our bodies, our histories, our environments, and our expectations. It deserves curiosity more than correction.

Instead of praising people for not “looking” their age, we might learn to decouple appearance from value altogether. Instead of asking people to sum up what it feels like to be older, we might make space for answers that don’t resolve neatly.

Ageing humbles us. It teaches us that control was always partial. That resilience is not about resisting change, but negotiating with it. That compassion—toward others and toward ourselves—matters more than clever slogans.

I think back to my friend now, and I wish I had responded differently. I wish I had said, “That sounds hard,” and let the conversation unfold from there. I didn’t know then what I know now. But maybe that’s also part of ageing: realizing that some of our best intentions were incomplete, and choosing to speak more carefully going forward.

My knees still ache on long walks. The stairs still ask more of me than they used to. None of this makes me old in any absolute sense, and none of it makes me young either. It just makes me here, in this body, at this point in time. And that feels like a better place to start the conversation than pretending numbers don’t matter at all.

The Ethics of Content Farming

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 08:37:00 +0000

There was a time when the word “farming” felt grounded. It implied patience. Seasons. Waiting for things to grow at their own pace. You planted, you tended, you harvested—only when the crop was ready. Content farming, however, is a different kind of agriculture. It is faster, more mechanical, and often less forgiving. Plan the content. Film the content. Harvest the reactions. Repeat.

In theory, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Many creators are disciplined, thoughtful, and intentional. They batch content to protect their time and mental health. They plan so they don’t burn out. That, too, is a form of sustainability.

But lately, a more troubling version of content farming has taken root—one where human experience itself becomes the crop.

The recent video of a young woman filming herself during what was described as a full-blown panic attack on an SIA business class flight brought this discomfort sharply into focus. Not economy. Not budget. Not at the back of the aircraft where turbulence is often felt more intensely. Business class. Wide seats. Relative comfort. A detail that, fairly or unfairly, became central to public reaction.

Let me be clear before we go any further. I am not saying she was faking it. I am not saying she was not having a panic attack. Mental health does not discriminate by cabin class, income level, or seat pitch. Anxiety can surface anywhere, at any time. The World Health Organization has consistently stated that anxiety disorders affect people across socioeconomic backgrounds, and panic attacks can be sudden, intense, and overwhelming, regardless of external comfort (WHO, 2017).

But intent is not the only thing that matters. Impact matters too.

When deeply personal moments are turned into content without sufficient framing, context, or educational purpose, the internet does what it always does. It fills in the gaps. It speculates. It judges. And in doing so, it can cast an unintended shadow over people who genuinely live with severe panic and anxiety disorders—people who do not film themselves, cannot film themselves, or would never think to reach for a phone in the middle of such an episode.

Clinical psychologist Dr. David Barlow, a leading researcher on anxiety disorders, has long described panic attacks as experiences that often involve an intense fear of losing control or dying, accompanied by strong physical symptoms such as shortness of breath, dizziness, and chest discomfort (Barlow, 2002). For many sufferers, the idea of documenting that moment is unthinkable. Survival, not storytelling, is the priority.

This is where the friction begins.

When such videos circulate without explanation or follow-up, they risk reshaping public perception of what panic attacks “look like.” Viewers begin to unconsciously benchmark. This one was filmed. This one was verbal. This one was coherent. And suddenly, those whose experiences are quieter, messier, or invisible feel further erased. As sociologist Erving Goffman once wrote, society is deeply influenced by “presentation of self,” and repeated performances—intentional or not—begin to define reality for audiences (Goffman, 1959).

Content farming accelerates this effect. What was once a singular human moment becomes a replicable format.

We have seen this before. Crying confessionals. Hospital-bed monologues. Grief vlogs. Public breakdowns edited for virality. Media scholar Zeynep Tufekci has written extensively about how platforms reward emotionally charged content because it drives engagement, often without regard for long-term social consequences (Tufekci, 2018). The algorithm does not ask whether sharing is healing or harmful. It only asks whether people stop scrolling.

And when a certain type of content performs well, copycats follow. Not always maliciously. Sometimes it’s mimicry. Sometimes it’s a genuine attempt to be seen. Sometimes it’s the quiet pressure of thinking, “This is how people talk about pain now.”

But scale changes everything.

If enough of these moments surface in public spaces—aircraft, trains, clinics, hospitals—those spaces begin to respond defensively. It is not a coincidence that video recording is already banned in many hospitals and clinics. These policies were introduced not to suppress expression, but to protect privacy, safety, and dignity for patients and staff. The Singapore General Hospital and the Ministry of Health have repeatedly cited patient confidentiality and the risk of disruption as reasons for strict no-recording policies (MOH advisories, various years).

So the uncomfortable question arises. If content farming continues to treat public infrastructure as open studios, are we heading towards similar restrictions on public transport and aircraft? Not because one person filmed a video, but because enough people did—and the cumulative effect became unmanageable.

Public nuisance laws rarely emerge from single incidents. They emerge from patterns.

There is also collateral damage to consider. Cabin crew. Medical staff. Fellow passengers. When a video frames an experience without showing the broader ecosystem around it, others become unwilling characters in a story they did not consent to. Media ethicist Jay Rosen has argued that context collapse—the flattening of complex situations into simplified narratives—is one of the most corrosive effects of social media culture (Rosen, 2012). In content farming, context is often the first thing to be trimmed away.

None of this is an argument for silence.

Human experiences can and should be shared. Stories reduce stigma. Education saves lives. Many advocates have used personal narratives responsibly to explain what anxiety feels like, how to seek help, and how to support others. Organizations such as the National Institute of Mental Health consistently emphasize that personal storytelling, when paired with accurate information, can increase understanding and empathy (NIMH, 2020).

But the key difference lies in intention and execution.

Is the sharing meant to inform, or merely to perform? Is there reflection after the fact, or only raw footage? Is the audience guided towards understanding, or left to react instinctively? As writer Susan Sontag once cautioned in her work on representation and suffering, exposure alone does not guarantee compassion; sometimes it dulls it or distorts it (Sontag, 2003).

Content farming, at its worst, prioritises harvest over health.

And perhaps this is where we need to reclaim an older idea—that some human experiences deserve to remain human before they become content. That not every moment of distress needs to be documented in real time. That privacy is not a failure of transparency, but an act of care.

Not everything needs to be planted, grown, and harvested for public consumption.

Some things need time. Some things need silence. Some things need to be processed before they are presented.

Because when we forget that, the field doesn’t just exhaust the farmer. It exhausts the lives that depend on it.

The Weight of a Title

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 06:10:00 +0000

I found myself thinking about titles recently. Not in a grand, philosophical way at first, but in that very ordinary, almost irritated manner that comes from watching something unfold and quietly asking, So… what does that title actually do?Not what it promises on paper, not what it implies in a hierarchy chart, but what it actually does when things feel uncertain, when trust wobbles, when people are watching closely but saying very little.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment. No shouting. No obvious rupture. Just that familiar sense of dissonance—the feeling that the words being spoken did not quite match the reality being experienced. And in that gap, that small but significant space between authority and credibility, the question surfaced: when things are difficult, when confidence is shaken, what exactly are we relying on? The title itself, or the person behind it?

Titles are meant to reassure us. They signal authority, competence, experience. They tell us who is in charge so we know where to look in moments of confusion. In theory, a title should make leadership visible and stable. It should calm anxieties and anchor decisions. In reality, titles sometimes do the opposite—they make us question whether leadership is present at all.

We often talk about leadership as though it is something that can be conferred the moment a role is assigned. Manager. Director. President. Head. Chair. The assumption is that leadership arrives neatly packaged with designation, like a complimentary accessory that comes with the job description. Once the label is in place, we expect behaviour, wisdom, and moral clarity to follow.

But lived experience tells us something else. Influence does not always obey organisational charts. Trust does not automatically follow rank. And respect, once lost, cannot be restored by reminding people who outranks whom. If anything, insisting on hierarchy in moments of doubt often accelerates disengagement. People may continue to listen, but they stop leaning in.

When leadership begins to feel distant or performative, something subtle starts to happen among the people. Not rebellion in the loud, cinematic sense, but something quieter and more persistent. A kind of silent resentment. A collective tightening of the jaw. People still show up. Still comply. Still go about their lives. But the faith that once made them believe in the system begins to erode, replaced by cautious distance.

This silent resentment is not always destructive. Sometimes, it is observant. It watches carefully who speaks with clarity, who acts with consistency, who listens without needing to dominate the room. It notices who acknowledges uncertainty instead of hiding behind jargon. Over time, people begin to orient themselves not around titles, but around trust. Around the colleague who shields their team quietly. The community figure who explains instead of dismissing. The neighbour who steps up when no one is watching.

Perhaps this is where leadership begins in its most ordinary and accessible form: conversation. The willingness to speak, to question, to articulate what feels unsettled even when the answers are not fully formed. Starting a conversation is, in itself, a quiet act of leadership. It is taking responsibility for one’s own opinions and having the courage to place them in the open, trusting that others might recognise themselves in them. When enough people do this, ideas begin to gather momentum—not because everyone agrees, but because the conversation creates direction. Even differing views, when held with honesty and restraint, can point us towards something more balanced, away from extremes and closer to a shared sense of what feels right.

History reminds us that many leaders first emerged in precisely this way—long before they were recognised, and often without ever seeking recognition. Mahatma Gandhi was not given a title by the British Empire. He did not hold office. He did not command an army. For a long time, he did not even command unanimous agreement among his own people. And yet, people followed him. Not because they were told to, but because his actions articulated what many were feeling but could not yet name.

Gandhi’s leadership did not begin with speeches delivered from a position of power. It began with posture. With restraint. With choosing to live the consequences of the injustice he was resisting. By walking, fasting, and enduring discomfort publicly, he made abstract ideas tangible. He led by collapsing the distance between principle and practice, between leader and neighbour. He understood the pain points of the ordinary Indian not because he studied them from afar, but because he placed himself firmly within them.

This pattern repeats itself across history. Rosa Parks matters not because she was the first to feel injustice, but because her quiet refusal gave shape to what many had already been enduring in silence. Her action was small in scale but enormous in symbolism. She did not mobilise people through charisma or command. She did so by drawing a moral line and standing still long enough for others to gather around it.

What is striking about such figures is not how loudly they spoke, but how clearly they acted. They did not rush to claim authority. Authority gathered around them because their actions resonated. Their leadership was recognised, not declared.

Titles, in contrast, often come with insulation. They create distance. They encourage leaders to speak about people rather than with them. And when that distance grows too wide, leadership turns performative. It becomes about maintaining authority rather than earning trust. About optics rather than outcomes. About managing perception instead of addressing lived experience.

This is not an argument against titles or hierarchy. Structures are necessary. Organisations cannot function on good intentions alone. Titles help distribute responsibility and clarify accountability. They provide order and efficiency. But when titles become substitutes for credibility, we run into trouble. When leaders rely on their designation to demand trust instead of cultivating it, people comply outwardly and disengage inwardly.

True leadership often feels lighter than authority because it does not need to announce itself. It shows up consistently. It absorbs criticism without deflecting it. It adapts when reality changes. It understands that influence is fragile and must be renewed daily. And perhaps most importantly, it recognises that people are not obstacles to be managed, but participants to be understood.

Maybe the real question, then, is not “What is the value of a title?” but “What remains when the title is stripped away?” When applause fades. When compliance is no longer guaranteed. When all that is left is the relationship between the individual and the people they claim to serve.

Because when history looks back, it rarely remembers titles with fondness. It remembers posture. It remembers courage. It remembers who listened when it mattered. And often, it remembers who dared to start the conversation—long before anyone thought to give them a name for it.

Am I a Failure? A New Year Resolution Aftermath.

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:36:00 +0000

I was having a casual conversation with a friend not too long ago. The kind of conversation that lives somewhere between kopi and confession. She laughed, a little sheepishly, and said she had already ditched part of her New Year resolution. It wasn’t even February yet. And then, just as quickly as the laugh appeared, it slipped away. She told me she felt lousy about it. Like she had already failed the year before it truly began.

What struck me wasn’t that she had “failed” a resolution. It was how quickly that single decision rewired her entire perception of the year ahead. January suddenly felt wasted. February looked suspicious. The rest of the year loomed like a long apology she would need to keep making to herself. All because of a promise made on a date we’ve collectively agreed carries meaning.

There is something quietly cruel about how New Year resolutions work. They arrive dressed as hope, but behave more like ultimatums. Be better. Be thinner. Be calmer. Be more successful. Be more everything—starting now. And when we don’t live up to them, the disappointment doesn’t stay contained to the goal itself. It spills. It stains the mood of the year. It whispers, see, you never follow through.

Somewhere along the way, resolutions stopped being personal intentions and became a kind of social performance. Everyone’s doing it, so you should too. Gym memberships spike in January. Productivity apps advertise “new year, new you.” Social media fills with lists of goals written in confident fonts, as if confidence alone could sustain discipline for twelve months. Psychologists John Norcross and colleagues, who have studied New Year resolutions extensively, found that while many people make them, only a small percentage sustain them long-term. Even among those who do, success tends to be partial, not absolute. Yet culturally, we frame resolutions as all-or-nothing moral victories.

That framing matters. Because when resolutions fail—and many do—they don’t just disappear quietly. They take something with them. Motivation. Self-trust. Sometimes even joy.

What if the problem isn’t that we’re bad at keeping resolutions? What if the problem is the resolution itself?

The idea of compressing an entire year’s worth of growth into a single sentence made on a single day is, when you think about it, absurd. We don’t live our lives annually. We live them weekly. Sometimes hourly. We survive in fragments, not fiscal years. Yet resolutions demand we imagine a version of ourselves twelve months into the future and then hold our present self hostage to that imagined person.

There’s a well-known concept in psychology called the “false hope syndrome,” discussed by psychologist Janet Polivy. It explains how people set unrealistic goals, overestimate their ability to change quickly, and then blame themselves when they fall short. The cycle is familiar: grand intention, early enthusiasm, inevitable obstacle, self-criticism, abandonment. Rinse and repeat, next January.

In that sense, New Year resolutions can become a toxic fad—not because change is bad, but because the way we package change is unsustainable. We mistake ambition for clarity. We confuse scale with seriousness. We think that if a goal isn’t impressive, it isn’t worth having.

This is where I keep returning to a phrase many of us grew up hearing but perhaps stopped trusting: sikit sikit, lama-lama jadi bukit. Little by little, eventually it becomes a hill.

It’s such an unsexy idea. No fireworks. No dramatic before-and-after montage. Just the quiet accumulation of effort. And yet, almost everything meaningful we know works this way. Language acquisition. Fitness. Relationships. Craft. Even confidence. Sociologist James Clear popularised a similar idea in his writing on habit formation, arguing that small, consistent actions compound over time. Neuroscience backs this up too. Research on neuroplasticity shows that repeated small behaviours strengthen neural pathways far more effectively than sporadic bursts of intensity.

But our resolution culture doesn’t reward sikit sikit. It rewards declarations. It wants you to say, “By the end of 2026, I will be a professional seamstress,” not, “In January, I want to learn how to do simple cross-stitching and see if I enjoy it.”

Yet the second statement is far more honest. And kinder.

When we zoom out too far, we lose the plot. The future becomes a performance instead of a process. We stop listening to the present version of ourselves—the one with limited energy, real constraints, and unpredictable life events. Death happens. Illness happens. Burnout happens. None of these ask permission from your resolution list.

Maybe what we need isn’t a resolution, but a practice.

Practices are humble. They don’t promise transformation; they invite participation. You don’t fail a practice—you return to it. The writer Anne Lamott once wrote about “bird by bird,” describing how her father encouraged her brother to take a large, overwhelming task and break it down into manageable pieces. It’s advice that has survived generations because it aligns with how humans actually function.

A monthly or even weekly intention respects reality. It acknowledges fluctuation. Some months you will have energy. Some months you will barely have breath. A weekly practice allows for recalibration without shame. Behavioural scientists like BJ Fogg, from Stanford University, emphasise that habits stick when they are small, emotionally rewarding, and tied to existing routines. Not when they are grand declarations shouted into the void of January 1st.

There’s also something deeply dignifying about letting yourself start small. It resists the capitalist impulse to constantly optimise the self. It says: I am allowed to learn without monetising. I am allowed to try without excelling. I am allowed to be in process.

When my friend told me she felt lousy for ditching her resolution, I wanted to tell her this: you didn’t fail the year. You just discovered, early on, that the promise you made didn’t fit the life you’re living right now. That’s not a flaw. That’s information.

Philosophers have wrestled with this idea long before productivity culture repackaged it. Aristotle spoke about virtue as habit, something cultivated through repeated action rather than a single moral decision. In Eastern philosophy, particularly in Taoist thought, there is an emphasis on flow and alignment rather than force. Even in Islamic tradition, there’s the idea that the most beloved deeds are those done consistently, even if they are small, as mentioned in a hadith reported in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim.

Small does not mean insignificant. Small means sustainable.

Perhaps the kinder question to ask at the start of the year isn’t, “Who do I want to become by December?” but, “What do I want to practice this month?” Or even, “What can I realistically hold gently in my life right now?”

When framed this way, there is less room for self-loathing and more room for curiosity. If January is about learning a basic stitch, February might be about deciding whether sewing even brings joy. March might be about putting it aside altogether, without drama, because interests change and that’s allowed too.

A year does not need to be conquered to be meaningful. It just needs to be lived with some intention and a lot of mercy.

So maybe the problem was never that we lacked discipline. Maybe we just lacked compassion for the human pace. Sikit sikit, lama-lama jadi bukit isn’t a motivational slogan. It’s a reminder that becoming happens quietly, often without witnesses, and rarely on schedule.

And maybe that’s not a failure of resolution—but an invitation to practice instead.

New Year Resolution? No, Thank You!

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 06:37:00 +0000

I don’t have a resolution for 2026. In fact, I refuse to have any. I have voluntarily, cheerfully, and with full philosophical commitment, decided that I will stroll into this new year without a resolution. No marching goals. No colour‐coded trackers. No “30-day challenge” app nagging me like a disappointed parent. I want zero expectations. Nothing to fail. Nothing that makes me feel inadequate when life throws its curveballs — death, sickness, memo deadlines, loved ones needing more of me than I thought I had. I want chill. I want calm. I want a year that is allowed to have room for the unexpected, the unmeasured, and the unplanned.

This might sound like laziness to the outside world. “But you must have goals!” they say, eyebrows at peak altitude, like having no plan is tantamount to parking yourself on a couch with potato chips and a sense of existential guilt. But what if not having resolutions is actually a healthier way to engage with life?

Let’s unpack that gently — not with a bucket of pressure and shame — but with a cup of tea and some honesty.

The Pressure of Resolutions

I’ve watched people in January buzz with energy about reshaping their lives: “This year I will write 5000 words a day, wake up at 4:30, be vegan, meditate for 90 minutes, run ultras, learn Japanese, and launch a TED Talk on Tuesdays.” It’s beautiful in its enthusiasm. But by late January? Most of that fizzles like cheap fireworks under rain.

There’s a psychological concept here called the “expectation–reality gap.” It’s the gap between what we expect will happen and what actually does. The bigger the gap, the more disappointed we feel. When we load ourselves up with resolutions, we’re essentially placing a giant neon target on our backs saying, “Please measure me and judge me by this.” That pressure is stress. Stress creates anxiety. Anxiety leads to self-criticism. And then we wonder why February starts with guilt and ends with abandon.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, has this lovely insight: “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.” That doesn’t mean having no direction; it means giving yourself the grace to start small, unguardedly, and without the gladiatorial armour of high expectations. It’s a permission slip to just be, not perform.

The Fear of Failing

One thing I’m genuinely protecting myself from this year is the fear of failing. Not failing at tasks — that’s trivial — but failing at who I think I’m supposed to be. When I make a resolution, I’m transporting myself into the future I wishI’ll achieve. And trust me, if life has taught me anything, it’s that the future laughs in your face sometimes.

A study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology looked at people who set New Year’s resolutions versus those who did not. It showed that people with strict resolutions often felt worse about themselves by mid-year because they compared their actual behaviours to their ideal self-standards and kept seeing a gap. Those without rigid resolutions were actually more content because they weren’t constantly measuring themselves against a checklist of should-dos. They lived more in the is, not the ought.

I want to chill. That’s it. I want to exist in the present with a calm heart and a playful curiosity about what might come. If someone asks, “So what’s your plan?” I want to be able to say, “To flow with life, not fight it.” That doesn’t make me directionless — it makes me deliberate without pressure. That is a nuance we rarely celebrate.

Chill is Valid

“Chill” is a word that carries quiet courage. It says: “I am okay with the messy, unphotogenic parts of life.” It honours the days where nothing spectacular happens and the days where everything reorganises itself. It welcomes both silence and noise.

There’s a Buddhist concept called “beginner’s mind” — Shoshin — which means approaching life without preconceived expectations, with openness and lack of judgement. It’s not about being passive; it’s about being receptive. My resolution for 2026 — if I had to name it — would be intentional presence with no predetermined endpoints. I want to show up, not show off.

Even successful people talk about this. The great poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” Not “What achievements will you list on LinkedIn?” but “What will you feel, notice, and cherish?” That doesn’t sound like a productivity spreadsheet. That sounds like living.

And let’s be honest: when someone says they have no plan, people tilt their heads like, “Uhh, so … what are you doing?” It’s as though not planning must mean you’re doing nothing. But that’s a shallow reading of existence. You can have richness without a rigid blueprint. You can grow without a seminar schedule. You can love without a goal tracker. You can be curious without a curriculum.

The Irony of Goal-Setting

Goals are not bad. I’m not here to cancel them. But they are cultural pressure, and they don’t always serve wellbeing. We grow up in a world that applauds the measurable: diplomas, promotions, pay slips, trophies. If it’s not quantifiable, it’s not considered worthy. But life doesn’t always respect numbers.

Because here’s the irony: the more desperately we chase outcomes — I must write a book! — the more we cripple the creative spirit that birthed the desire in the first place. The fear of not finishing can be more stifling than the act of writing itself.

Conversely, when we remove the pressure, something surprising happens. Creativity flows. Play returns. The heart becomes lighter. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke had advice for a young aspiring writer: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” Loving the questions has nothing to do with efficiency.

So I’ll love my questions in 2026: What feels good today? What makes my heart calm and curious? What deepens my relationships? What brings joy without the burden of metrics? These are not goals on a chart — they are compass bearings.

No Expectations = Less Fear

Expectations are essentially future assumptions: “This should happen.” But life rarely adheres to “shoulds.” When expectation meets reality, we either get disappointment or surprise. If we brace for disappointment, we dull our joy. If we anticipate positive outcomes as fixed, we’re shocked when plans fail.

In psychology, there’s a concept called cognitive flexibility — the ability to adapt our thinking when circumstances change. People with high cognitive flexibility tend to have lower anxiety and higher wellbeing. Whereas rigid expectations often lead to distress when life doesn’t go as scripted. So by letting go of resolutions, I’m not giving up; I’m embracing flexibility. I’m saying, “Life can surprise me, and I’ll be okay.” That’s a powerful stance.

There’s a Zen koan that goes: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Metaphorically, it means do not chase an idealised image — even if it’s spiritual — because the search itself becomes a barrier. This kind of radical acceptance is similar to walking into a new year without a resolution. I’m not running after an ideal self. I’m not chasing a future that may never align with reality. I’m just here.

The Unexpected Benefits of “No Resolution”

What happens when you remove the heavy suitcase of expectations?

You pay attention. You notice small moments. You appreciate the casual conversations, the slow cups of tea, the unplanned laughter. You give yourself permission to adapt.

There was a longitudinal study in positive psychology where people who engaged in mindful living — paying attention to day-to-day experiences without judgement — reported higher life satisfaction and lower stress compared to those who were goal-obsessed. Not necessarily because they achieved more, but because they experienced more fully what was happening around them.

Without a resolution, I get to be present. Not projecting into the future. Not obsessing over performance. Just being here, with life as it is.

And here’s a little humour: people with no resolutions often end up doing things without realising. It’s like that old line, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” Life has its own sense of humour, and sometimes the most meaningful experiences come unannounced — like surprising guests, unexpected opportunities, or moments of joy that weren’t on any plan.

Reframing “No Plan” as Freedom

Some people hear “no resolution” and think it’s an excuse for aimlessness. But that’s a misunderstanding. I’m not saying I will float like a leaf with no intention. I’m saying I will move with intention without predefined targets.

There’s freedom in this. It’s like walking into a forest without a map but with awareness of the path under your feet, the sound of birds, the texture of leaves. You don’t know where you’re going, but you’re walking consciously. You are open, not rigid. You are receptive, not beating yourself up because you missed a waypoint.

This approach honours whatever 2026 throws at me. If it’s a gentle year, I’ll enjoy it. If it’s a stormy year, I’ll navigate it. If it’s something indescribable in between, I’ll breathe through it. This is not passive fatalism. This is mindful participation in my life.

So Here’s My Year

No resolution. No heavy expectations. Just presence, curiosity, and kindness to myself. I want to laugh more. I want to rest without guilt. I want to show up in relationships without checking an achievement list. If I write, brilliant. If I rest, also brilliant. If I create something unexpected, even better.

I want to live a year where my scorecard isn’t in outcomes but in moments felt deeply, kindness offered easily, and presence given freely.

If you asked me a year from now, “How was your 2026?” I want to say, “I lived it with openness. I didn’t crush myself with shoulds. I noticed small beauties. I adapted. I allowed myself rest. I honoured my pace.” That — to me — sounds like a resolution without calling it one.

Maybe resolutions aren’t bad. Maybe it’s the weaponisation of them — as measurements of self-worth — that causes stress. But for now, 2026 is going to be my year of intentional slow living, uncluttered by the tyranny of expectations.

And that — yes — is completely okay.

Staying Until the Next Year

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 05:51:00 +0000

I remember reading A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby many years ago, at a time when I was young enough to think I understood despair, but old enough to know I didn’t fully. The premise was deceptively simple, almost absurd: four strangers, each planning to end their lives, meet one another on the same rooftop on New Year’s Eve. They don’t know each other. They don’t arrive together. They just happen to converge at the same edge, at the same time, each carrying their own private reasons for wanting everything to stop.

What struck me wasn’t the darkness of it. It was what happened next.

Instead of jumping, they talk. They argue. They irritate one another. And eventually, they make a pact — not to be happy, not to fix their lives, not to suddenly believe everything will be okay — but simply to stay alive until the next year. Just that. A postponement. A pause. A small, almost unimpressive commitment.

And somehow, in that waiting, their lives begin to gather just enough meaning to keep going.

I’ve been thinking about that book again lately, perhaps because we are approaching another year’s end. That strange stretch of time where calendars run out, reflections begin, and people start asking themselves quiet, dangerous questions. Was this year worth it? Did I do enough? Am I enough?

It is deeply intriguing — and unsettling — that the end of the year, a moment culturally framed as celebratory and hopeful, is also associated with heightened emotional distress for many. Mental health organisations in both Western and Asian contexts have observed that periods surrounding the New Year often coincide with spikes in crisis calls and emotional vulnerability. Psychologists point to the weight of reflection, comparison, and perceived failure that often comes with year-end thinking.

We are told the New Year represents a fresh start. But for some, it feels more like an audit.

In Western cultures, the New Year is often framed around reinvention. New year, new you. Resolutions are made, goals are set, and the unspoken assumption is that progress must be visible and measurable. If you are not moving forward, you are falling behind. The calendar turns, and with it comes the pressure to become someone better — thinner, richer, happier, more accomplished.

In many Asian cultures, the New Year carries a different, though no less heavy, emotional load. Whether it is Lunar New Year or the Gregorian one, it is often about accounting — not just of personal achievement, but of familial duty. Have you lived up to expectations? Have you honoured your responsibilities? Have you made your elders proud? Success is communal, but so is perceived failure. Reflection does not happen in isolation; it echoes through family gatherings, casual questions, and well-meaning comparisons.

Different cultures, different languages — but the same quiet reckoning.

And for some people, that reckoning hurts.

What fascinates me — and unsettles me — is how the New Year compresses time. Twelve months are reduced into a single judgment. A life becomes a ledger. Moments of survival, endurance, and unseen resilience are easily overlooked because they don’t translate neatly into celebration.

Psychological studies on depression and year-end stress often point to this phenomenon of cognitive summarising — the human tendency to condense complex experiences into simple narratives. Good year. Bad year. Success. Failure.When people are already vulnerable, this kind of summarising can feel brutally final.

This is where A Long Way Down continues to linger for me.

Hornby doesn’t offer miracles. The characters don’t suddenly find joy or clarity. What they find instead is something quieter: postponement. Connection. The realisation that staying is sometimes an act of resistance rather than optimism. That choosing to remain alive does not always require hope — sometimes it only requires company, or curiosity, or the willingness to delay a decision.

There is something deeply humane about that.

We often talk about hope as if it must be bright and confident. As if hope requires belief. But many psychologists and crisis counsellors speak instead about holding on — about helping people get through the next hour, the next day, the next arbitrary marker of time. Not because everything will magically improve, but because life has a way of changing in ways we cannot predict when we give it more time.

Patience is a difficult word here. It can sound dismissive, even cruel, when someone is in pain. Just be patient often lands as just endure. But patience, in this context, is not passive suffering. It is an active choice to delay finality. To say: I don’t know what comes next, but I will stay long enough to find out.

That is not weakness. That is courage.

In many Asian philosophies, patience is not about waiting idly; it is about endurance with awareness. In Buddhist thought, suffering is not denied, but observed. In Confucian traditions, perseverance is tied to moral strength. In Malay wisdom, there is a quiet reverence for sabar — not as silence, but as steadiness. These traditions do not promise that pain will disappear quickly. They suggest instead that staying present through hardship is itself meaningful.

Western narratives, on the other hand, often rush toward resolution. Healing arcs. Redemption stories. Comebacks. While these stories can inspire, they can also alienate those who are still in the middle — those whose lives do not yet resemble a before-and-after montage.

Perhaps what we need, especially at the turn of the year, is more permission to exist in the middle.

Mental health research consistently shows that connection — even brief, imperfect connection — can significantly reduce feelings of isolation and hopelessness. Crisis intervention models emphasise not problem-solving first, but presence. Being heard. Being seen. Knowing that someone else is on the rooftop too, even if they arrived there for different reasons.

This is what Hornby’s characters stumble into accidentally. They don’t save each other with wisdom or answers. They save each other by being inconveniently human — flawed, annoying, persistent.

And maybe that’s the message we need as another year ends.

You do not need to decide whether your life is a success before the calendar changes. You do not need to summarise yourself. You do not need to know what the next year holds. Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is what those four strangers did: stay. Delay. Make a small pact with yourself to remain here a little longer.

Stay until the next year.
Then the next week.
Then the next conversation.
Then the next unexpected moment of meaning.

Hope does not always arrive as a revelation. Sometimes it arrives disguised as time.

So if this season feels heavy — if the fireworks feel hollow, if the countdown feels accusatory rather than celebratory — know this: the fact that you are still here matters. Even if you don’t yet know why. Even if you are tired of being patient. Even if joy feels out of reach.

Life has a strange habit of reshaping itself when given enough space.

And sometimes, staying alive is not about believing everything will get better.

Sometimes, it is simply about choosing not to decide today.

Author’s Note:
If you — or someone you know — are feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or in crisis, please know that you are not alone. There are people and organisations in Singapore who care deeply and are ready to listen without judgment. You can reach out to the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) at their 24-hour hotline — they provide confidential emotional support for anyone in distress. You can also contact Oogachaga’s WhatsApp Counselling, which offers support particularly for the LGBTQIA+ community and anyone seeking a safe, affirming space to talk through difficult feelings.

Reaching out for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. It’s okay to ask for support. It’s okay to stay. And it’s okay to take one small step at a time.

“Have a Merry Christmas!” — But Who Actually Has the Energy for That?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 05:28:00 +0000

A few Decembers ago, I found myself standing in a shopping mall after work, arms full of bags, clothes slightly damp from the rain outside, wondering why I felt so strangely irritable. Christmas songs were playing — the same few, on repeat — and everyone seemed to be moving with purpose. Buy this. Queue there. Wrap later. Smile now. Argue over price discrepancy. Fight over the limited set of discounted items.

And I remember thinking, not for the first time: Why does this season feel so tiring when it’s supposed to feel joyful?

It wasn’t that I disliked Christmas. I didn’t. In fact, I love it! I love it even more than Hari Raya. The promise of slowing down. The warmth of gathering. The symbolic pause at the end of the year. Legs stretched out, resting by the fireplace and sipping on hot cocoa. But by the time December rolled around, my body often felt like it had already given everything it could. Christmas didn’t arrive as rest. It arrived as another quest to prepare for.

Every year, we wish each other the same things. Have a merry Christmas. Enjoy the holidays. Have a good break.These wishes are sincere. Kind. Well-meaning. And yet, for many of us, they land with a quiet irony. Because December is rarely a gentle landing. It’s a tightening.

In Singapore — and across much of Asia — December isn’t just festive. It’s the end. End of projects. End of school terms. End of targets, budgets, syllabi, responsibilities. There is a sense of urgency to finish strong, to close loops, to not “waste” the year. And right in the middle of that, we are expected to perform celebration.

There is also the weather.

December here is rain-heavy. Grey. Damp. Days blur into one another under thick clouds. Sunshine — the kind that usually fuels our energy in the tropics — becomes a rare guest. You wake up to rain. You leave work in rain. Everything feels slightly slower, heavier, more muted.

There have been multiple studies in psychology and neuroscience pointing to the link between sunlight and mood. Research from institutions such as Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes of Health has shown that exposure to sunlight helps regulate serotonin levels, which directly affect mood and energy. Less sunlight has been associated with lower energy, disrupted sleep cycles, and low mood — something often discussed in relation to seasonal affective disorder in temperate countries.

We may not have winter in Singapore, but our December gloom has its own version of that effect. When the sun disappears for weeks, the body feels it. The mind does too.

And yet, this is the moment we choose to pile on more.

Christmas is labour-heavy in ways we don’t always acknowledge. Gift hunting alone feels like a logistical exercise — navigating crowds, prices, expectations, obligations. Then comes wrapping, meal planning, cooking, cleaning, hosting, entertaining. All of this layered on top of normal life, which does not pause just because it’s festive.

For introverts, the cost is especially high. Social energy is finite. Hosting, making conversation across long dinners, being “on” for extended periods — these things take effort. And in many Asian families, presence is equated with care. To not show up, or to leave early, can be read as distance, disrespect, or lack of gratitude, even when what you actually need is rest.

Psychologists have long observed this tension. Surveys by the American Psychological Association consistently show that a large majority of adults experience heightened stress during the holiday season, with time pressure, financial strain, and social obligations cited as major contributors. Social psychology research has also noted that festive family meals are often among the most emotionally draining social events of the year, especially when layered with unspoken expectations or unresolved dynamics.

So if Christmas feels exhausting, it’s not because you’re doing it wrong. It’s because the structure of it is demanding.

What makes it harder is the emotional script we’re handed. Christmas is supposed to feel joyful. Restorative. Meaningful. We’re encouraged to be grateful, generous, present. And when our internal reality doesn’t match that script — when we feel tired, irritable, or numb — we quietly assume the problem lies with us.

But many people are tired. They’re just tired quietly.

There’s also a particular irony to this season. Christmas is often framed as a time to be especially kind and sensitive to others. A beautiful idea, of course. Necessary even. But kindness requires energy. Empathy requires emotional capacity. And by December, many of us are already running low.

This is the catch-22. We are exhausted, yet asked to exhaust ourselves further in the name of care. We are depleted, yet encouraged to give generously. And when we struggle to do so, guilt steps in — guilt for needing space, for wanting quiet, for not feeling festive enough.

Perhaps what we need is a gentler understanding of what kindness can look like during this time.

Kindness does not always mean doing more. Sometimes it means doing less, deliberately. It might mean simplifying traditions instead of preserving them out of habit. It might look like fewer gatherings, shorter visits, quieter celebrations. It might mean saying no without turning it into a long explanation.

In many Asian cultures, we celebrate abundance — of food, of company, of generosity. But there is also wisdom in restraint. In recognising that sustainability, emotional and otherwise, matters. That care given at the cost of burnout eventually stops being care.

Kindness, then, might also mean extending grace to ourselves. Allowing rest without justification. Accepting that not every Christmas needs to be memorable in the same way. Understanding that joy does not need to be loud, elaborate, or exhausting to be real.

So this year, when someone wishes you a merry Christmas, perhaps receive the warmth behind the words. But also allow yourself to acknowledge the effort it took just to get here. The long year. The rain. The fatigue. The quiet resilience required to keep going.

After all, making it through December — emotionally and physically — might just be the most honest holiday achievement of all.

Fear and Where It Stems From

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 07:15:00 +0000

Fear rarely comes from failure itself. It comes from what failure threatens to take away.

When people say they are afraid to fail, what they usually mean is that they are afraid of losing what they have worked so hard to build. A reputation. A role. A version of themselves that has been socially validated. Failure, in this sense, is not an event. It is erosion. It is the slow undoing of certainty.

The more a person accumulates, the more fragile he becomes. This is the paradox no one likes to admit. Success does not always make you braver. Often, it makes you careful. And careful, over time, hardens into fear.

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained this through what they called Prospect Theory. Their research showed that human beings are deeply loss-averse. The pain of losing something is felt far more intensely than the pleasure of gaining something of equal value. Once we have something—money, status, approval—we begin organising our decisions around not losing it. Fear grows not from emptiness, but from possession.

This may explain why fear tends to arrive later in life, not earlier.

When you are young and have little to lose, failure feels temporary. You recover quickly because there is nothing yet to protect. But as life fills up—with responsibilities, expectations, mortgages, dependents, routines—failure begins to feel expensive. It threatens not just progress, but stability. And stability, in modern society, has become a form of currency.

In most cities today, life is built vertically. High-rise homes. High-pressure jobs. High expectations. We stack our lives carefully, floor by floor, hoping nothing shakes the structure. We are told to plan early, secure pathways, and avoid unnecessary risks. Over time, this way of living trains the mind to value preservation over possibility.

Which is why those with nothing to lose often appear fearless.

When your back is pinned to the wall, fear changes shape. It does not disappear, but it loses its authority. Standing still becomes more dangerous than moving forward. When there is no safety net, hesitation stops making sense. You leap not because you are brave, but because staying put guarantees stagnation.

Research by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir on the psychology of scarcity shows that when resources are limited, attention narrows and decisions become urgent. Scarcity, while stressful, sharpens focus. Comfort does the opposite. It spreads attention thin. It encourages delay. One practical way to loosen fear, then, is to stop waiting for perfect conditions. To act while things are slightly uncomfortable. Not recklessly, but deliberately. Movement, even imperfect movement, weakens fear far more effectively than endless preparation.

This is why some of the most decisive moments in a person’s life arrive during periods of loss.

J.K. Rowling once described how the collapse of her marriage and career stripped her life down to its essentials. In her Harvard commencement speech, she spoke about hitting rock bottom and realising that there was nothing left to protect except the work itself. Rock bottom, she said, became the solid foundation on which she rebuilt her life. When the need to preserve an image disappeared, so did much of the fear that had held her back.

There is a quiet freedom that comes with having less to defend.

This is where the idea becomes uncomfortable: a person’s downfall is often not caused by misfortune, but by attachment.

Attachment is natural. Psychologist John Bowlby’s attachment theory explains how emotional bonds form to provide safety. But attachment becomes dangerous when it fuses with identity. When who you are depends too heavily on what you have—or who you are to others—fear multiplies. One subtle but powerful way to counter this is to separate effort from outcome. To measure yourself not by results, but by whether you showed up honestly, took the risk, did the work. When identity shifts from “I must succeed” to “I must engage,” failure loses much of its sting.

Even relationships can heighten fear when they become emotional anchors. Not because love is a weakness, but because the fear of disappointing others can quietly dictate choices. You begin protecting roles instead of values. You maintain appearances instead of asking difficult questions. Over time, life becomes safe, predictable, and quietly airless.

Modern productivity culture reinforces this. We are encouraged to optimise, to measure, to justify every move. Failure is framed as inefficiency rather than exploration. Discomfort becomes something to eliminate, not listen to. And yet, psychological research on resilience consistently shows that people who interpret failure as feedback rather than catastrophe are more adaptable and less anxious over time. A third way to loosen fear, then, is to treat discomfort as data. To ask what it is pointing toward, rather than rushing to silence it. Discomfort often appears just before growth, not because something is wrong, but because something unfamiliar is being asked of you.

This may be why deliberate discomfort has existed across cultures long before modern psychology gave it language. The Stoics practised it not to glorify suffering, but to weaken fear. By choosing small hardships voluntarily, they trained the mind to realise that survival did not depend on comfort. When comfort loses its authority, fear follows.

Self-determination theory in modern psychology echoes this wisdom. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan argue that people thrive when driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose rather than external validation. When motivation comes from within, fear has less leverage. You are no longer negotiating your worth with the world.

So perhaps the real question is not whether comfort is bad.

Comfort is not the enemy. Attachment to comfort is.

Comfort becomes dangerous when it convinces you that stability is the same as safety. When it teaches you to equate stillness with wisdom. When it whispers that risk is irresponsible and discomfort unnecessary. Over time, fear begins to speak on your behalf. It tells you when to stop. When to settle. When to be grateful instead of curious.

Many people never notice this shift. Life looks fine from the outside. Routines are established. Expectations are met. But somewhere beneath the surface, momentum stalls. The leap that once felt possible now feels reckless. Not because the person has changed—but because there is simply more to lose.

And yet, history, psychology, and lived experience suggest a different truth.

Growth almost always demands some form of discomfort. Not constant chaos. Not romanticised suffering. But enough friction to remind you that you are alive, choosing, stretching. Without discomfort, fear has no counterweight. It becomes the loudest voice in the room.

Perhaps this is why moments of forced discomfort—rejection, failure, loss—often lead to unexpected clarity. When illusion falls away, so does unnecessary fear. You realise that much of what you were protecting was not essential after all.

Sometimes, the most dangerous thing you can have is a life that is just comfortable enough to keep you from moving.

So do you need discomfort to succeed? Maybe not to succeed, but to stay honest. Honest about what matters. Honest about what you are avoiding. Honest about the difference between safety and stagnation.

So come 2026, remember: In the end, the greatest freedom may not come from gaining more, but from loosening your grip. From acting before certainty arrives. From measuring yourself by engagement rather than outcome. From listening to discomfort instead of silencing it.

When that happens, fear no longer controls the story.

Failure stops looking like the end of everything.

It starts looking like movement again.

Mariah Carey, The Long Game, and the Art of Staying Eternal

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 06:58:00 +0000

In early September, when the sun still felt like it was auditioning for a job in the equator and Christmas felt like a distant rumour, I wrote about Mariah Carey finally getting her flowers in the form of the MTV Video Vanguard Award. I made the case that Mariah was never just a singer with glass-shattering notes. She has always been a storyteller — visually, musically, emotionally — and that her upcoming album Here For It All wasn’t meant to be a chart juggernaut. It was a strategy piece, a slow-burn ignition, a Charmbracelet-type transition before the real explosion.

Back then, I said her Spotify monthly listeners were at around 27 million, slowly rising, dipping, rising again as fans tried to piece together the breadcrumb trail she was dropping. Fast forward to the album release: the number pushed up to 38 million. And now — with the faint jingle of holiday bells starting to creep into supermarket playlists — she is sitting at a staggering 66 million monthly listeners.

Let me repeat that: 66 million, and we’re not even in the thick of December yet.

Mariah isn’t just experiencing a resurgence. She’s conducting a masterclass in longevity. And she is doing it in an industry that has the shelf-life of unrefrigerated milk.

The Machinery Behind the Myth

I said it in my earlier piece: the whole point of Here For It All wasn’t to produce a number-one album. Mariah doesn’t need that. She’s already the artist with the most number-one singles of any solo artist in Billboard Hot 100 history.

What she needs — what she has been strategically building — is momentum. Momentum that would lift All I Want for Christmas Is You back to the top of the charts, allowing it to clinch two more weeks at No. 1. Just two. Because with those two weeks, the song would become the longest-running number-one hit in Billboard Hot 100 history.

She isn’t competing; she’s completing a legacy.

And the results? As of this writing, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has climbed to Number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard reported it with the kind of excitement journalists usually reserve for stock market surges and pop culture scandals. And everyone in the industry feels the same way: the reindeer haven’t even fully woken up yet.

Mariah isn’t chasing relevancy — she’s pulling the industry calendar behind her like a sleigh.

The Vanguard Case, Reopened and Proven

I remember laying out Mariah’s resume like a lawyer arguing a case: Fantasy, Always Be My Baby, The Roof, and her later co-directed projects like You’re Mine (Eternal). These weren’t side quests — they were visionary statements.

Her 1995 Fantasy video was self-directed in an era where women in the industry were expected to show up, be beautiful, and let male directors manage the “real work.” But Mariah said nope, I’m wearing rollerblades and I’m taking creative control.

By the time she reached The Roof in 1998, she was crafting atmospheric, moody visuals critics still call “one of the most cinematic videos of the era.” Entertainment Weekly once described it as “a storm you want to live inside,” which is possibly the most Mariah line ever written by a non-Mariah.

Then there’s her narrative work: directing A Christmas Melody for Hallmark in 2015 — a feat critics from Variety admitted was “unexpectedly warm and surprisingly assured.” In 2020, she produced Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special, which became one of Apple TV+’s most-streamed holiday releases that year, according to Apple’s internal reporting cited in entertainment news.

When you line all this up against past Vanguard winners — Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Michael Jackson — the comparison stops feeling like a defense and starts feeling like a coronation.

Missy plays in futurism, Beyoncé works in world-building, Michael mastered cinematic spectacle. Mariah? She builds interiority. She shoots emotion. She frames longing. She captures nostalgia. And this is not lesser; it is simply different. Critics from Rolling Stone once called her “the architect of intimacy.”

And intimacy is harder to pull off than spectacle.

Charmbracelet, MC17, and That Deliciously Slow Ascent

Back then, I argued Here For It All was her Charmbracelet moment — the quiet before the storm. History is beginning to agree with me.

When Charmbracelet came out in 2002, critics greeted it like it was a polite handshake. Meanwhile, Mariah was already working on the blueprint for The Emancipation of Mimi, which would go on to dominate 2005, earn major awards, and sit comfortably among the greatest comeback albums in modern music.

Here For It All is doing the same thing. It isn’t an album begging for radio. It isn’t sprinting for viral TikTok moments. It’s laying groundwork. It’s reintroducing Mariah not as a legacy act, but as an artist with something left to say in the streaming age.

And the streaming age is finally treating her like royalty.

Her numbers didn’t spike because of nostalgia. They spiked because she and Gamma — the music company now backing her — have clearly figured out the formula:
Slow drip content.
Seasonally timed releases.
Cross-platform visibility.
And a return to yearly productivity, which was Mariah’s original pace in the ’90s.

I have a feeling — and this is based on instinct, trend, and the energy radiating from her recent interviews — that we may get another album next year. Not a low-key, experimental one. A real, proper, butterfly-spreading-its-wings album. The kind that says, “I’m back, darling.”

What the Industry Really Thinks of Her

One of my favourite things is digging up what other artists say about Mariah — not the memes, not the fan jokes, but the real professional admiration.

Adele once said in a BBC radio interview that Mariah’s songwriting is “so underrated people don’t even realise how many hits she wrote herself.”

Beyoncé told V Magazine that Mariah “is one of the blueprints,” especially for women who write, produce, and manage their own sound.

Bruno Mars once joked during a concert that “Mariah is the Christmas boss,” and the crowd roared because everyone knew it was true.

And Kelly Clarkson — the patron saint of belters — said on her talk show that Mariah’s vocal arrangements “should be studied in universities.” Honestly, if universities can have modules on Harry Potter and Beyoncé, they can certainly have MC101: Whisper Register Strategy and Emotional Layered Harmony Construction.

Even critics have softened. The New York Times once called her “a composer in a diva’s clothing,” and that was during a period when critics weren’t exactly generous to her.

Mariah inspires admiration not because she demands it, but because she outlives every cycle, every trend, every snarky remark.

She plays the long game. And the long game always wins.

The Mythology of Mariah (Every Diva Has One)

Every great icon has a mythic quality. Aretha had the myth of divine authority. Whitney had the myth of the voice blessed by angels. Beyoncé has the myth of unstoppable work ethic. Taylor Swift has the myth of storybook authorship.

Mariah? Hers is the myth of the butterfly.

She has referenced it for decades — in art, in interviews, in metaphors. The butterfly as transformation, the butterfly as fragility and strength, the butterfly as the creature that floats rather than fights yet still reaches spectacular heights.

And maybe that’s why her December dominance feels less like a comeback and more like a migration pattern. Butterflies return. They always return.

In Filipino folklore, butterflies are believed to carry the spirits of loved ones visiting for a moment. In many Malay folktales, the kupu-kupu is seen as a symbol of rebirth, flitting between worlds. In Greek myth — which Mariah probably read in school — the soul itself is often portrayed as a butterfly.

Mariah’s career is a continuous metamorphosis: from ingénue to auteur, from disaster headlines to chart royalty, from cautionary tale to case study in reinvention.

Every December, the butterfly doesn’t just emerge. It commands the season.

And Now? The Present Moment Feels Delicious

We are days, maybe weeks, away from witnessing history again. All I Want for Christmas Is You at #5 is already impressive — but we know this pattern. December is a wave, and Mariah is the surfer who invented the board.

With the rise in her monthly Spotify listeners, the renewed attention from Here For It All, and the machinery of Gamma pushing her visibility, the probability of hitting #1 again is not a dream. It’s math.

Two more weeks at the top.
That’s all she needs.
Two weeks to transform a cute holiday hit into a record-breaking titan.

And once that happens, I don’t think she’s stopping. I agree with myself (which is always fun): this is the transition era. The slow ascend. The moment before the fireworks. If she returns to her old pattern of releasing music annually, 2025 might actually be the beginning of her third imperial phase.

The Butterfly Takes Flight

So here is how I see it. The world is cold. The year is ending. Lights are going up. Trees are being decorated. And somewhere out there, Mariah is gearing up — vocally, emotionally, strategically — for her annual migration back to the top of the charts.

Picture it: a winter landscape, soft, glowing. Snow drifting like confetti. A single butterfly lifts itself against the cold, wings shimmering. It shouldn’t survive winter, and yet somehow, it does. It doesn’t just live — it glides upward, finding warmth where there shouldn’t be any, finding light in a season defined by grey.

That’s Mariah.
That has always been Mariah.

Every year, she returns.
Every year, she rises.
Every year, she reminds us that longevity isn’t luck — it’s flight.

THANK GOD for BFCM!

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 05:17:00 +0000

Every year, as November rolls around, I watch the same global ritual unfold with a mixture of amusement and mild existential despair. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sweep across the world like a pair of energetic siblings who have no sense of boundaries. They barge into the room, flip the table, scream “SALE!”, and suddenly everyone loses their ability to behave like reasonable adults. What was once an American tradition tied loosely to Thanksgiving has now become a worldwide cultural event, one in which people would quite literally elbow strangers for a discounted vacuum cleaner. There is something absurdly poetic about this—humans, the so-called most intelligent species, willingly regressing into territorial jungle creatures over electronics that will be outdated by next year.

I used to think Singaporeans were above all this, that we were too polite, too paiseh to fight over material things. But then came one particular November some years back, when I innocently stepped into an electronics store because I wanted to look at portable speakers. It was not even Black Friday yet; just the “pre-pre Black Friday warm-up sale.” The crowd inside was so intense that I swore the air itself was being pulled into the vortex of human desperation. A middle-aged uncle grabbed a demo speaker like it was the last loaf of bread in a famine. A teenage boy stood guarding a stack of discounted power banks as if he were protecting an ancient relic that held the keys to immortality. I watched two aunties argue furiously about whether the kettle they wanted was part of the “Buy 1 Get 1 Half Off” or the “Buy 2 Get a Free Mug” promotion. In the end, the kettle sold out, and both aunties left without buying anything, but somehow still angry at each other.

That was the moment I realised: this wasn’t just consumer culture—this was something primal.

Anthropologists and psychologists have long tried to explain this kind of behaviour. Robert Trivers, the evolutionary biologist famous for his work on self-interest and reciprocal altruism, once argued that humans perform better under perceived threat because our bodies and minds are still wired for survival in prehistoric conditions. Essentially, your brain doesn’t know the difference between a carnivorous beast stalking your cave and 10 other shoppers eyeing the same discounted TV at Best Buy. The fight-or-flight response kicks in, and suddenly buying a TV feels like a life-or-death mission. When framed like that, it makes complete sense why people have been known to camp outside stores overnight, equipped with sleeping bags and snacks, as though preparing for battle at dawn.

It’s funny because the stakes today are embarrassingly low. Our ancestors hunted wild boars; we hunt vouchers. They fought wolves; we fight for promo codes that expire at midnight. But the instinct is the same: get the resources before someone else does. Sociologist William Graham Sumner wrote in the early 1900s about the “in-group and out-group” mentality, the way humans naturally divide themselves into “us versus them” whenever there is something desirable at risk. He was probably thinking of tribes, immigrants, and economic groups—but honestly, if he had lived long enough to see a Black Friday sale, he would have updated his theory to include “us: people who want the AirPods” and “them: people who also want the AirPods.”

This instinct for domination sometimes reveals a darker, uglier part of human nature. The willingness to shove others aside, to snatch something out of someone’s hand, to sprint across the aisle with the moral integrity of a raccoon—it all points to a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that arguably no longer serves us. We don’t need to conquer one another to live. We’re not competing for shelter, clean water, or basic safety. Yet, somewhere deep within, we continue to behave like scarcity defines us.

Perhaps it's because scarcity is how many of us were raised—especially in Asia. Growing up, an auntie once scolded me at a pasar malam because I hesitated for two seconds before buying a packet of chicken wings. “If you don’t buy now, finish already!” she declared, snatching the tongs from the seller and handing me a packet as if she were rescuing me from myself. And honestly? She wasn’t wrong. Scarcity is part of our cultural upbringing. We queue for everything: food, public events, bubble tea, MRT, discounted Hello Kitty plushies from McDonald’s. Of course, when Black Friday came to Asia, we adapted to it like fish discovering new water.

But the East and the West do approach this phenomenon differently. In America, Black Friday is a national performance. People camp outside stores in tents, armed with coffee and protein bars, bonding through shared madness. The moment the doors open, they rush inside with the enthusiasm of Olympic athletes and the strategy of military tacticians. It’s loud, chaotic, physical, and spectacular. There’s even a sense of camaraderie in the chaos, like everyone is collectively aware that what they’re doing is ridiculous, yet they’ve all agreed to the absurdity for one day.

In Asia, however, we don’t trample people in stores—we quietly annihilate each other online. The Westerners go to war with their bodies; we go to war with our Wi-Fi. You don’t see us physically pushing one another, but watch an Asian shopper during a major online sale. Their finger is hovering over the “Buy Now” button at 11:59 PM, their heart beating at 120 BPM, their Shopee Pay topped up like they’re preparing to enter a digital gladiator arena. And don’t even get me started on flash sales. A one-cent face cream? Gone in 0.1 seconds because someone with lightning-speed reflexes (likely fuelled by bubble tea and childhood trauma) beat you to it.

The origins of Black Friday itself were not glamorous. In 1950s Philadelphia, the police coined the term to describe the traffic jams, crowds, and shoplifting that happened the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers tried rebranding it as the day they finally went “into the black,” but the truth is far less pretty. It was, from the beginning, a day defined by chaos. Cyber Monday came decades later in 2005 when marketers noticed people shopping at work using faster office internet. That’s all it was: an observation turned into a global ritual.

There’s something almost mythological about the annual frenzy. And speaking of myths, every society seems to have stories warning us about human greed. In Malay folklore, there’s the tale of Si Tanggang, the ungrateful son who rejected his poor mother once he became wealthy. Though the story focuses on filial piety, at its core it’s a lesson about the dangers of pride, material hunger, and forgetting your humanity in the pursuit of worldly gains. Tanggang desired status so desperately that he denied the very woman who raised him—and in the end, he turned to stone. I sometimes wonder whether, metaphorically, modern consumerism slowly turns us into stone too—not physically, but emotionally. Hard, cold, reactive, unthinking.

On a more personal note, I remember once seeing an elderly auntie at a store during a sale period holding onto a blender box with both hands. She was tiny, maybe in her seventies, wearing sandals and a simple floral blouse. A tall man approached her and reached for the box, saying, “Auntie, last piece, I take lah.” She didn’t let go. Her grip tightened, her face hardened, and she said, “I also human.” That sentence hit me like a truck. “I also human.” Three words that capture the entire psychology of Black Friday. Everyone wants something, and everyone believes they deserve it. And the moment someone challenges that desire, even the gentlest person becomes a lion protecting their kill.

But must it be this way? I’d like to think not. Humans may be wired for competition, but we’re also wired for cooperation, empathy, and connection. The same evolutionary instincts that push us to hoard resources also push us to care for our communities. Studies in social psychology—from the classic work of Muzafer Sherif to modern behavioural economics—show that humans thrive most not when they outcompete one another, but when they collaborate.

Maybe the real challenge is unlearning the scarcity mindset we’ve inherited. Perhaps the world won’t collapse if we don’t buy the discounted gadget. Perhaps we won’t lose anything meaningful by letting someone else have the last item. Maybe the real victory lies not in beating others to a deal, but in recognising that enough will always be enough if we decide it is.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday give us a mirror—one that reflects both the desperate consumer and the reflective human being. One who is terrified of missing out, and one who quietly wonders, late at night, why missing out even matters. One who fights for the last item, and one who feels strangely empty after buying it.

Maybe the lesson for us moving forward is not to ban sales or judge people who enjoy discounts, but to slow down and question why we feel the need to fight in the first place. What are we really competing for? Status? Comfort? Validation? A sense of worth? A feeling of control?

Because in the end, it’s never about the toaster.

It’s about the fear beneath it, the longing behind it, and the hope that maybe this one purchase will finally make us feel like we’re winning at life.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the real myth isn’t Tanggang turning into stone.

Maybe the real myth is the belief that happiness can be bought—especially at 40% off.

A Climate Reflection from the Tropics - Do We Really Need Jackets ?

noreply@blogger.com (Adi Jamaludin) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 05:45:00 +0000

As I write this, the world’s attention is turned toward COP30, the global climate summit happening right now in Belém, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, running from 10 to 21 November 2025. It’s one of those international gatherings where leaders fly across the world to discuss how to reduce pollution, protect forests, and save the earth from irreversible damage — the kind of big-picture issues that remind us how small we are.

Yet, even as the world negotiates the fate of the planet, I’ve been thinking about something strangely ordinary. Something almost embarrassingly mundane. Something that sits quietly in the background of business meetings and job interviews, never questioned, always expected.

Jackets. Suits. Formal wear.
That entire layered uniform we inherited from colder countries — one that somehow still remains the gold standard for “professionalism.”

It feels like the world is burning, but we are still buttoning our cuffs.

So I want to ask: Is the business jacket still practical, or even ethical, in hot, equatorial countries like Singapore?Or are we clinging to an old idea simply because we’re used to it?

Let’s take a moment to sit with this thought properly — and perhaps sweat a little less in the process.

How the Suit Became a Symbol of Seriousness

The suit, as we know it today, didn’t come from the tropics. It came from Europe — specifically, from centuries of tailoring tradition that evolved in colder climates. In the 19th and 20th centuries, dark woollen suits became the unofficial uniform for businessmen, politicians, lawyers, bankers. They conveyed seriousness, structure, and a controlled sort of masculinity that made sense in societies where the weather could dip into the single digits.

Over the decades, cultural symbolism layered itself onto the fabric. People came to see suits as the visual language of respectability, competence, and wealth. Psychologists studying workplace perception found that just the sight of a jacket could lead people to assume the wearer was more reliable or more capable — even before they had said a single word. Sociologists wrote about how dark colours like navy and charcoal projected authority. The suit became a silent declaration: I am here to be taken seriously.

And of course, like many Western norms, this idea travelled. It showed up in former colonies, in growing Asian cities, in corporate training manuals. Suddenly, across Southeast Asia, sweat became a symbol of success.
If you were hot and uncomfortable, it meant you were dressed “properly.”

But the symbol stayed the same while the climate — and the world — changed dramatically.

The Tropical Reality We Cannot Ignore

Singapore has never been a cool country, but recent years have pushed our limits. On 13 May 2023, temperatures hit 37.0°C, matching the hottest reading recorded in 40 years. Meteorologists noted that this wasn’t some freak event — it was a sign of a warming trend. By 2024, Singapore experienced its hottest year on record, with higher-than-usual night temperatures and a relentless stretch of warm days.

The Centre for Climate Research Singapore has been warning us that temperatures above 35°C may become increasingly common. And anyone who has walked from Raffles Place MRT to Battery Road at 2 pm would agree — the sun doesn’t just shine; it interrogates you.

And yet, on many weekdays, you’ll still see people walking through this heat in full jackets, long-sleeved shirts, and sometimes even ties. Their faces are shiny. Their backs are damp. Their blazers are absorbing every drop of humidity like a sponge.

We do it for professionalism.
We do it for respect.
We do it because “That’s how business is done.”

But must professionalism be uncomfortable?
Must respect be sweaty?
Must seriousness come with heatstroke?

The climate is changing. Our dress codes?
Not so much.

The Hidden Environmental Cost of Dressing Up

Beyond physical discomfort, wearing jackets in tropical climates hides an environmental cost we rarely acknowledge. When we insist on layered “business wear,” we are also committing to the production, maintenance, and eventual disposal of those layers.

Consider the sheer material footprint: a typical business ensemble involves a jacket, a shirt, and sometimes a tie. That is significantly more fabric than a simple, breathable shirt. More fabric means more cotton farming, more synthetic fibre production, more dyeing, more shipping, more packaging, and more waste.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that the fashion industry accounts for around 8–10% of global carbon emissions. Every piece of clothing — especially formal wear — arrives with a carbon history long before it reaches your wardrobe.

And once it does reach your wardrobe, it often goes to the dry cleaner.

Despite its name, dry cleaning relies on chemical solvents like perchloroethylene, which environmental agencies have long flagged as hazardous. Add in the electricity required to run the machines, the heat used to press the garments, and the plastic covers used for transport — and you end up with a surprisingly high environmental cost for a single jacket.

Most formalwear is also produced far away — China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Turkey — before travelling thousands of kilometres to reach us.
All this, in exchange for something we may wear for a few hours in a climate where it feels unnecessary.

The symbolism may remain impressive, but the footprint is not.

What If Professionalism Didn’t Require Layers?

This is where Steve Jobs enters the room — not in a suit, but with the quiet authority of a black turtleneck.

He was one of the few global leaders who proved that minimalism can be a form of power. Jobs didn’t just simplify technology; he simplified himself. His signature outfit wasn’t about fashion. It was about intentionality — stripping away the unnecessary to focus on what mattered.

In a world drowning in excess, Jobs embodied a radical idea:

Success doesn’t need layers. Clarity doesn’t need a collar. Sustainability can begin with simplicity.

He did not need a jacket to look credible.
He did not need a tie to look competent.
He did not need to bake under stage lights to appear serious.

His wardrobe communicated something quietly revolutionary:
I don’t need extra fabric to validate my ideas.

Imagine that philosophy applied to Singapore’s climate. Leaders wearing breathable, tailored shirts. Public servants dressed in structured, heat-friendly fabrics. Entrepreneurs in linen. Executives ditching jackets not out of rebellion, but out of responsibility.

Minimalism, when done right, is inherently sustainable.
Less fabric.
Less waste.
Less energy.
Less pretense.

And honestly, wouldn’t a leader who chooses comfort, climate sense, and sustainability look — and feel — more grounded than one fighting a losing battle with humidity?

A Little Scene to Consider

Picture this: You’re walking to a meeting at 1.30 pm. The sun is sharp, the humidity clings to your skin, and the pavement radiates heat. You are wearing a jacket because your company insists on it. You can feel sweat trickling down your back, forming a small but determined rebellion under your collar.

Now imagine the same walk without the jacket. You are still presentable. Still neat. Still professional. But now you are breathing easier, walking lighter, and arriving at your meeting without looking like you’ve jogged there.

Which version of you looks more capable?
Which version looks more prepared?
Which version respects the climate you live in?

Sometimes, practicality is the most professional choice of all.

Rethinking Respect in the Climate Era

We’ve been taught that certain clothes command respect: suits, jackets, ties, dark colours, stiff collars. But maybe respect isn’t in the garment. Maybe it’s in the person. Maybe it’s in the work. Maybe it’s in the awareness that our choices shape the planet.

A leader who cares about sustainability is worth taking seriously.
A businessperson who dresses in tune with the climate shows intelligence.
Someone who refuses excessive layers shows respect not just to others, but to the environment.

In a heating world, perhaps the most powerful statement we can make is choosing clothes that honour the climate we actually live in — instead of clinging to symbols built for different skies.

COP30 may be discussing global emissions and forest conservation, but our everyday choices matter too. What we wear, how much we consume, how often we clean our clothes, how much we buy — these things shape the world in quiet, cumulative ways.

Maybe the jacket had its time.
Maybe it served its purpose.
But perhaps professionalism in the tropics doesn’t need to be measured in layers.

After all, success isn’t what you wear.

Success is what you sustain.