Why Would I Write

  • December arrives

    Hello all. I am back. It feels good to be writing something unrelated to Peter Pan – something I’ve been doing over the past month for Nanowrimo. I wrote a story about Peter Pan’s adventures after his adventures with the Darlings in Neverland. It was a grueling 26 days (I managed to finish it ahead of time, despite skipping 2 days worth of writing when I was in Penang yay me) but it was a good experience. It also proves that I’m capable of churning out 50,000 words a month since I’ve managed to complete Nanowrimo twice. The last time I did it, it was back in 2014. Taylor Swift’s 1989 was released around that time, so I spent the whole month listening to the album and writing. This year, Taylor’s album only dropped midway through Nanowrimo so I didn’t get to do the same thing. Nevertheless, I still got to enjoy the album on its own. It’s not as good as 1989, IMO, but it definitely marks a progression in Swift’s music and style. Lyrics are a bit edgier, dealing with themes of revenge and reputation but fans of her brand of music should still enjoy it.

    Other than that, I’ve been catching up on some shows – One Punch Man, Westworld, Attack on Titan, Whiplash, Daddy’s Home, Coco, Murder On The Orient Express, Justice League, and I’ve started reading again. I’ve also recorded a new song (on my iPad – check it out below). So yay me! It’s been a productive month before I start my new job (TBC).

    Vocals need to be rerecorded and drums need some finetuning, so expect another recording in the near future.

    December is here, the best month of the year (of course). Malls are playing Xmas music, which is fantastic. For some reason it puts me in a cheery mood. So much better than the songs played during other festivals.

    The year is ending soon, so I guess it’ll probably be time to do some reflections over the past year. If anybody is interested. Maybe go over my goals again and see what I’ve accomplished and what I have to push back to 2018.

    The Big Bad Wolf Sale 2018 KL is happening next week, so I’ll probably drop by to pick up a book or two or three or four or five or six or seven or eight… more books to add to my backlog collection. Haha.

  • Hiatus: November 2017

    As some of you will know, I’m participating in Nanowrimo this year, so until the end of the month I will put my blog on hold as I don’t believe I’ll have the capacity to write my novel (I need to churn out about 1.7k words a day!) and update this blog at the same time. On the bright side, I have about 10 years worth of archives to go through if you want to read my work (haha). I may post something here every now and then, but it’ll likely be unsubstantial. For all those of you who are doing this year’s Nanowrimo, all the best! And if you’re thinking about it, go ahead! Make sure you sign up at the Nanowrimo website and feel free to add me as a writing buddy. I’ll also be posting my daily word count to Instagram. Here’s to a fruitful November!

  • Parking Ticket Technology

    A week ago, I received a fine for parking my car in a spot without putting a ticket on my dashboard. Why didn’t I pay for the ticket? Well, the parking ticket machine wasn’t working, so I couldn’t get a ticket from it. Since I was going for a quick lunch I decided to chance it. After all, I was only going to be 20 minutes. Turns out, that was enough time for a cop to issue me a fine. I paid off the fine yesterday, so I’m in the clear.

    Today, I parked my car again in a public parking spot. Guess what? Another broken ticket machine. Didn’t feel like picking up another fine so I purchased a set of parking coupons. Paying for parking is not an issue to me. I believe in paying for convenience – like using tolls and not having to park 10 streets away just to hike to your destination. But when the process of paying for parking is such a hassle, that’s when I get annoyed.

    We’ve got Touch and Go. We’ve got credit cards. We’ve got smartphones. Why do we still have to scratch pieces of paper (a few if you plan to park for longer than an hour) just to park our cars? If you want to charge for parking, the least you could do is keep those machines maintained. Or let us leave money under our windshield wipers for the cops to collect. How about billing us directly? After all everybody has an e-wallet tied to their MyKad and all car license plates can be traced to an owner.

    In the UK, they use cameras to capture your car plate number when you drive into the city. When you’ve arrived at your destination, you can just login and pay the charge within two days. No fuss, everybody wins. Also, you don’t have to carry bags of change around with you. Why haven’t we come up with a proper parking system yet?

    And I know, this issue isn’t just in Malaysia alone – a few years ago when I was in Singapore, I had to do the same thing when I left my car parked for a day. And man, it cost a fortune. Also, a lot of time was spent poking holes in the parking tickets and making sure they fit properly on my dashboard.



    We’ve already made advancements in malls, most of them allow you to pay with Touch and Go now. It’s 2017, I think we should have the same for outdoor parking spaces. At the same time, maybe revamp our toll systems. Or make Smart TAG batteries last longer (I’ve seen way too many people getting stuck in Smart TAG lanes on the morning drive to work, I use the Touch and Go lane – no battery problems). The technology is available, we just need to embrace it.