I went to Garden by the Bay for a walk after work last week. There are lanterns setup as a part of mid-autumn celebration. A lot of tourists also roaming around. Seems tourism already back to normal. Marina Bay Sands hotel also full of people, at least at the taxi drop off point.
​Here's some of the photos I took while there. The skies looked a bit dark though, it's because it was really going to rain heavily. 

Since last year, I've been starting to walk more for exercise. Usually I'll go walk until Rail Mall, but since Railway Corridor opened mid of this year, I went few times, but usually I will stop until around 3 km, and go back home. Today I went a bit further until Buona Vista area. It's approximately 6 kms+ and total around 8000ish steps. Started to walk around 7 am this morning.

Finally reached Buona Vista area after 1.5 hrs (roughly). Went for breakfast at McDonald's near Metropolis. That place is not as crowded because mostly people go to office there. After that, I walked a bit to Holland Drive market, went to NTUC to buy some groceries, went back to Holland Drive market and bought some food. Then finally took bus to go back home. Reached back home around 11 am. 

I hope everyone have a great Sunday!

Today, my housemates and I went to Shen the T-Rex exhibition in Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall.
The exhibit open from 10 am - 10 pm from Friday - Sunday (28-30 Oct 2022), before going for auction in Christie's in HK. We didn't get any reservation because it's fully booked! But, as mentioned in the article in the internet, walk in visitors are allowed. 
We reached around 10.10 am this morning, and the queue is a bit crazy. lol. 

When we saw this sign, we thought OMG. should we not waste our time by queuing? Fortunately, the security mentioned this is just estimation, by a lot* Just to be a bit kiasu. He mentioned, maximum people in the room should only be 120 (by government regulation), and usually people will be around only 10-15 mins to take photos. Shen is the only exhibit there*. LOL. He also mentioned there are other exhibits of paintings and jewelry in the other building, we can register and see it also, after seeing Shen. 
So, we waited a bit, around 30 mins queuing. Lucky the weather has been good. 

We took a few pics, selfies etc. Then in total, I think we spent 10 mins the max here, didn't go for the other exhibits. because. hungry. lol. 

Finally have some time and tried to create my first NFT collection. Go to Opensea to check them out.
Will work on new collections in the mean time.

Created fruit flash cards for kids.
Here some sample low res image. 

It's listed in my Etsy shop.
Visit when you can, also there are other products available now. 

I've recently went for dinner with a few ex colleagues. The question that struck me was, what did you do this year? Anything new? Everyone seems to do things that they loved to do. 

I think the whole year 2021 gone in a flash. I think I didn't do much in 2021. I didn't answer this question. ~somehow I was blank, didn't know what to say.

When I think again, I didn't do as much drawing as I used to. I didn't read as much books as I wanted to. Also, I feel burned out from doing those things and instead found something that I didn't think I have as much interest as I was with drawing, but I picked up this skill. I learned a bit of python. It helped me to do some web scraping of information, it's also, somehow helped me a few times in my current job. I'm so glad I did it. At least, I did something that's helpful.

So, what to do this year? I just hope things get better, so we can go back to travel, at least so I can go back to my home country and see my family.

​Happy New Year 2022. Stay safe!

Today I randomly listen to a podcast called "Our daily bread podcast" on Spotify. It's as if reading daily bread that I received last time in school/church, only in podcast form. The speaker talked about how to find joy in our every day mundane habitual activities, he also referred to a blog by James Ward called "I like boring things".

I read a few of the blog posts. Totally random everyday things, the last post called Loop was written May 2019, talking about when the author taking a walk, which reminded me about the walk I did recently.

Since working from home, for nearly 2 years, that means my physical activities has greatly reduced, and I realized a lot of health problems
arises. For some people, the things I experienced might be a small thing, but I believe it's a reminder that there might be issues that can be bigger if it's not handled properly. I went for a health check and doctor also suggest to go for 30 mins exercise every day.

So to start, I went for a walk in the morning in botanic garden, halfway then return back to the starting point, 30 mins walk from the start to the end. I feel more refreshed as a result. Although it's hard at first, I'm getting use to this, after few more times, it becomes boring, as I took mostly the same route every time. Basically I want to incorporate this as a habit, so I will not think much about it, and just do it.  

Every time I'm doing something for the first time, there's a joy/excitement in doing new things at first, and a lot of things to discover.
The example that I experienced is, I want to be better at French. I listened to a lot of French language learnings podcast, more than 30 mins every day, but soon I would loose interest in it.

I feel if I can set up a habit of the things that I want to achieve, and be consistent with it, I would achieve what I want. Of course I'm aware that habit is not something that is built overnight, so, I'm trying, and I think the key is to find joy in the meaningless. Find what makes you happy in doing these things, and it won't be chores to do, but habits, good habits to have.

This is my second work that I did for HonestKitchen. They are basically a company that sells food for your pet. Go and check them out the website here.
Check the GIFs I created for them, or use them in your instastory in Instagram, and search "honestkitchen".