First off, the fourth part of heartbeat(); is out, featuring two gymbro twins from Stanford (I tried my hardest to generate some, yet these were the best I could make 😭).

Second of all, it’s the last day to say that it’s the new year, and the fireworks are coloring the sky minute by minute, a last hurrah for a jam-packed year – children are screaming in the distance, watching in delight as the explosions move along minute by minute; I think it’s the single New Year in which I’ve seen the largest number of different fireworks displays but also the first new year in which I haven’t actually gone out to take one of those super grainy low resolution fireworks videos…

So here, have one generated with AI 🙂

Since it’s the very last day that I can meaningfully reflect on 2022… I’m incredibly grateful for 2022.

It was the year that I hung out a ton with family (and found deep meaning in that), elected Anwar Ibrahim, learned how to control my time, met and got to know in person one of the most illustrious people of my entire generation, (Ian Ang, I’m talking about you – I don’t know if you’re going to read this one day, but perhaps you will!) the year that a whole process of transformation took place.

It was the year of a painful breakup, but it was the year that I learned how to stop caring so much about what other people think and to focus more on my own journey forward; I learned how to play the cello, saxophone, clarinet, steel tongue drum, flute, the Guqin, started taking lessons in Korean and in cello – it was the year that I stopped feeling the need to push forward out of any sense of need whatsoever – yet, it showed me that many more things are possible than what I could imagine, opening me up fully to the sense that there were many things that I had yet to see and leading me down a pathway of creativity that I would never have even thought possible not by some divine edict or anything like that, but rather through small accidents and intelligent process united with one another.

If there’s something inspirational from my life story, maybe it’s just that I ended up turning 30 without turning disillusioned – or even that I turned 30, turned disillusioned, and somehow had all of that go in reverse somehow because the universe decided that life was too short for me to see it as meaningless in any way, to spend my time comparing myself to the highlight reels of others, or to revel temporarily in successes that are ultimately meaningless in comparison to the small joys of spending time with friends and doing things that you consider are cool.

Since you’re reading this at the moment, I guess that whatever your reason, you somehow care about my journey – Thank you deeply for that, and if you’ve wanted to speak for a while but haven’t heard me reach out for a while, sorry for that – I am not always the best at catching up. In any case, I hope that wherever you are, fellow spirit, that you’ve had a beautiful new year that seems to have ended just as quickly as it has begun.

May the year ahead bring us all many new challenges, even greater opportunities, the resolve to take them, and the fortune to return to another year with even brighter eyes, looking forward even more to the future 🙂

Happy new year everyone, and happy Thaipusam to all who celebrate!