I passed a milestone without realising it. For the fanfic I am currently writing, I have blown past the 100,000 words mark:

(Stats as of today)

This is excluding another 32,000+ words or so of scenes from my ‘Random Scenes’ folder, a place where I flesh out scenes that may or may not eventually work their way into the story. Quite a few have, and they connected the dots nicely.

This is by far the story that I have stuck to the longest in terms of plot and length, and I even have a vague idea of how to tie it to a climax and ending. I have already written out some of the last few scenes (in my random scenes folder, naturally).

It’s fun to reread scenes where my character was ten, and compare it with the tentative last scene when she was twenty. And it’s not just age-wise — the dynamics between the characters changed, the way they hold themselves or speak change. It’s as if I am sculpting, but instead of a statue it is a life I am shaping.

And the pleasant surprises along the way! Some little details turned out to be important, and sometimes a random piece fit neatly into the context as if I had it planned all along. I can’t help but wonder how true this is for the books I read — does anyone ever say that some of the brilliant strokes in plot had a completely random and unplanned beginning?

Sometimes it’s hard. Nothing flows from my fingertips and the dialogues were awkward. But many a times it feels like magic, bringing a scene to live and painting a moment that changes lives. It is often the smallest moments that are the most enjoyable — a quiet realisation, a pat on the back, a question that turned out to the profound — these sometimes give me more satisfaction than the big, pivotal scenes.

I have learned that writing a story is as magical as reading a story can be, and I love it so, so much.

*

On a practical note, I highly recommend a writing software like Scrivener. I used to be a little sceptical about writing softwares, because what else do you need other than a screen and words? Wouldn’t Microsoft Word or even an open-source word-processor be enough?

But Scrivener had been liberating for me. The ability to keep one central file, with all assorted ideas, plot notes, maps, along with the actual story or any number of random scenes in one place played an important part in me progressing so far in the story.

It becomes easy to start a new section and let the random idea take you places. You can move chapters or sections around with ease. There’s no need to keep track of a ton of different word documents and try to figure out which is what. It’s awesome, and I can’t imagine writing without it again. Check it out if you do any sort of long-form writing!

My last post here was on the first day of the year, and it may seem like I haven’t been writing much. But the truth is exactly the opposite — I have been writing so many words over the past month that it must have been my second-most productive month ever in terms of writing (the most productive month, of course, goes to July 2014, when I won the Camp Nanowrimo challenge that requires a 50,000 word output in a month). Over one particularly satisfying weekend, I hammered out over 10,000 words, only realising that I had crossed the milestone when I started rereading what I had written.

I wish I can say that I made huge progress in the novel I am planning, but the truth is all those words were for fan fiction.

I was inspired by rereading some of my old favourites over the Christmas break. Rereading old favourites always bring new discoveries, and one of the things I noticed was that almost all of my favourite fanfics were written by writers in their late teens. In the author’s notes section, there were familiar grumblings about assignments or thesis (and when I looked at my own fanfics from way back, the notes section were filled with similar rants).

One particularly epic fanfic that basically recreated the whole storyline for the main character was written over seven years, hitting over 400,000 words by the end of it. The writer talked about her college applications in the first part of the story, and by the final chapters she was talking about finishing her training to be a veterinarian (she got a Masters’ in something else in between).

I was blown away by her dedication. How many hours has she devoted to the fanfic?

It was amazing because it was a rarity. Far too many fanfics were abandoned, and I stubbornly reread one that I knew had been abandoned for years. It was a well-written story, and the fanfic was abandoned in the third ‘book’ of the series. When I reached the last chapter, I longed for more follow-ups to a well-developed cast of characters.

(Fanfiction.net — A site where I spent a huge chunk of my time in my teens)

I have abandoned my own share of fanfics, of course. I wonder how many other fanfic writers went through the same journey I did — at some point, I realised that I can never ‘publish’ the fanfics I write, and I want to publish my stories. I want to freely share with people that I wrote those stories and be known for it. Fanfics are time-consuming, and it seemed like time was better invested in ‘original’ stories instead. So I stopped, and for a long time I went without writing anything because I didn’t have ideas for an ‘original’ story.

But in rereading the 400,000-word fanfic and another similarly expansive one written over almost the same number of years, I gained a new appreciation for fanfics. Such fanfics are labours of love, and even if their real names will never be famous and the world won’t recognise those writers on the street, they have legions of readers who invest hours and hours reading them. Readers like me, who learned so much about the language and life and how to be brave and more. Gaining more or less the same things as when reading books, basically.

Except books are often more rigid even if they are good — fanfics can afford to be indulgent, and thus are great guilty pleasures. They can examine a minor character who is interesting; flesh out a character’s past that was only hinted at in the original, satisfying the readers’ craving; indulge in fluffy scenes that the original book/show could not include because of pacing; or even try more unconventional, bolder pairings of characters that simply would not ‘sell’ in a mass market.

One may argue that books have higher standards for craft, but I find that in fanfics one can find rather higher standards of art, and of experimentation (with the caveat that, as with books, there are disproportionately more bad fanfics than good ones. I am talking about the good ones, of course).

I respect the writers who commit to writing good fanfics, and stuck to it until the end. Maybe they grow out of it eventually. But for what it’s worth, they’ve touched many lives in between. Readers like myself benefit so much from them, especially since fanfics are far more accessible than actual books.

Rereading my old favourites made me dust off my old fanfics, and I started writing and rewriting them again. It is true that I want to write my own stories, and hope that one day I will have my work and my name out there. But in the meantime, I no longer think that these fanfics are a waste of time.

Maybe it’s self-indulgent. Maybe it’s good practice. Maybe it’s just fun. But maybe, just maybe, it will help another younger girl out there with no money for books and no access to libraries, and help fire her imagination and inspire her to be braver than she thought she could be.

There is a kind of sorrow in being a book lover. Every now and then, you are reminded of the fact that you will never be able to read all the good books in the world.

In trying to get better ideas of how to flesh out a fantasy world, I impulsively borrowed a few copies of my favourite books from the library (my own copies are in my hometown) and reread them. Specifically, I reread Tamora Piere’s Wild Magic, book one of The Immortals series set in Tortall, a fictional universe that I have spent countless hours in (both in the books and in the fan fiction).

It is such a thrilling read still, after all these years. Reading it with more of a writer’s lens this time, it was fascinating to notice things that I didn’t really think about before: how the characters were introduced, how information about the universe itself was explained in a non-intrusive and realistic way, how tightly the plot was weaved together, and how the little moments can endear you to the characters and bring them to life.

It was so much fun that I want to reread all the 18+ books set in this universe. I also want to reread John Scalzi, my favourite sci-fi author. I want to reread all the Harry Potter books. I want to revisit all the places that have inspired me and try to examine them from a writer’s eyes, and learn how to write like them, how to build worlds and bring people on adventures that change how they see the world.

I probably should, with at least a few of them. But what about the countless other good books out there? What about the good books that are yet to be published? What about all the unread books on my shelf? (What about real life?)

I despair sometimes.

But the rest of the time, I relish the simple joy that words on a page can bring. Books have made me laugh and cry, made me realise that I am not alone in feeling a certain way, and gave me both answers and questions to things I didn’t know exist.

I love, love books.

I had a couple of very different experiences in buying books recently, and it was interesting to me how I enjoyed both processes, despite their differences.

While in San Francisco, I stumbled into City Lights Bookstore, and spent two glorious hours browsing through and soaking in the atmosphere. The store itself has quite the character. Unlike bookstore chains that are more common in Singapore, this bookstore has a slightly haphazard layout instead of neat grids of shelves. On top of the shelves or entrances, funky quotes and random posters decorated them, all showing love for the written word and freedom of thought.

(Near the bookstore entrance. Aye to that quote!)

It has a basement connected by creaky stairs. Book categories go beyond the typical to include names like ‘class war’, ‘muckracking’ and ‘food lore’.

(A very inviting basement.)

At a room near the back on the ground floor, there was a table and a few chairs in a corner. When I was there, three people were seated there, and it sounded like a writer and an agent were pitching a book (City Lights is also a publishing house). I flipped open a random book to pretend to read and eavesdropped. They were talking about a memoir; the subject is gay and they talked excitedly about how the person changes over the course of the book. I stood there with my face buried in an open book, heart beating wildly at stumbling across a discussion like this — as an aspiring writer, this is like catching a glimpse of the backstage of the publishing process. I dream of having a similar conversation someday with a publisher, and hope that he or she would be as excited with the book I write.

I love that charming little bookstore, and consider it a highlight of my first trip to San Francisco.

Barely weeks later, I went to the Popular BookFest (an annual large-scale book exhibition by one of the biggest bookstore chains in Singapore). It’s an annual ritual for me, and I have always ended up with a giant stack of books. I almost didn’t go this year because I have a ton of unread books, but it feels wrong to miss it.

It was held across multiple halls in a convention centre, and there were hordes of families that make even the giant halls look cramped. Books aside, it has huge stationery, gadgets and even household items sections — things like rice cookers, vacuum cleaners, etc. When I was growing up the chain was more focused on books and stationery, but I assume their thinking was that, since they already have families coming regularly for books and stationery, why not sell the household items to the parents who are paying anyway?

As I waited in the snaking queue with arms that were cramping badly — I did not get a basket in the hope that I would not buy too many, but clearly I was not thinking very straight as I get excited over the great deals I saw — I mused on how much of a contrast this experience was to the City Lights bookstore experience.

This was a giant, highly commercialised book fair where a large proportion of customers likely do not like books just for reading’s sake (despite the queue, I hardly see anyone who bought a lot of actual books like me. Most of them had baskets full of assessment books or stationeries or cookbooks). The halls were lit by glaring fluorescent lights, manned by an army of part-time cashiers and ushers, and salespeople peddling things from juicers to TV screens. It was like a hypermarket with a large book section. It also took me one full hour to make payment, despite having around 150 cashier counters open — the line was that long.

There was none of the charm that City Lights Bookstore had. But when I examined the stack of books in my arms, all of them under SGD10, I was very happy. These were not books that I would have sought out, and it was only because they were in the bargain bin did I pick them up. In other words, these were spontaneous finds that fall outside of my usual picks, and hopefully they will bring me to new places that I have not thought of.

I guess that’s what books are to me — gateways to new, fantastical places; be that a fantasy land, a time long past, or a mind completely different from my own. I often feel like I travel much further with books than on actual planes. Books are magical that way.

Is it just me, or do the years seem to go faster the older one gets?

2017 was full of surprises for me, with changes coming in fast and furious. At work, my team looks very different from the beginning of 2016, and my role has unexpectedly changed as well into something more exciting than I could have hoped for. On the personal front, I traveled to Bali, India and San Francisco for the first time (the latter two for work, but I had some time to explore), and all of them were not planned for at the beginning of the year. I restarted this blog, and exercised some (fiction) writing muscles that I have not used in years.

I did not meet most of the goals I set out to achieve.

I wanted to deepen my technical skills this year, with an eye on finishing a R-focused analytical track in DataCamp. Instead, I got to learn Tableau and how to scale an analysis company-wide. Instead of R, I started learning Python and actually got to deploy some unsupervised machine learning in a project – without actually knowing that what I was doing was considered a form of machine learning (I sought out k-means clustering).

I wanted to join events and meet new people. I joined only a couple of events across the whole year, but I got to know a lot more people than expected at work, be it from different teams or from different parts of the world. It was unexpected but fun, and certainly more than enough for an introvert.

I wanted to develop a ‘creative habit’, thinking mostly in terms of paintings and art. I did sketch and paint a lot more this year, even hosting a small watercolour workshop at work. But what surprised me was the rediscovery of my love for writing. It happened after my one week of doing nothing, and now I can’t imagine going back to a life of not trying to tell stories of my own.

I wanted to develop a healthy and active lifestyle. I struggled a lot with this despite having access to great facilities and a flexible work culture. There were weeks where I could keep up with regular work-outs, but months in between where I felt like there was no time. All the traveling did not help, as work tends to bunch up in the week before and after the trips, and there was always the excuse of waiting until ‘things settle down’ before I start again. I know I need more motivation and more exciting stuff to look forward to, so I signed up at a boxing club a few months ago. Haven’t been too regular a student yet, but I definitely want to step this up in the coming year.

But back to these 2017 goals that I did not meet. I guess in some roundabout ways, I did meet most of them in spirit if not to the letter. I wouldn’t ask for it to go differently, either. I’m quite happy with how the year has turned out.

Which brings me to the question, am I just bad at setting goals? Or is there a point in doing this at all, if we can’t anticipate the external changes that are coming? Should I bother with 2018 goals?

If I had learned anything at all this year, it would be this – changes come faster than you can plan for. We need to be ready; ready to adapt, to climb a steep learning curve, to say yes.

Setting goals helps us become ready – even if we don’t meet them in the end, the effort that we put in, and the thoughts and mindshare we invested, will help us become more ready to adapt. If I had not been thinking about deepening my technical skills this year, when the projects that require skills I did not have or did not plan to learn come up, I may have taken a pass. Instead, I was primed for learning and ready to say, why not?

So yes, I will still set goals for next year.

But I will be more wary of the goals I set. Maybe this is just me, but goals have this allure of having this formal structure, one that you can build a nice little plan around. But life is often messy, and plans get thwarted before you know it. For me, I’m more attracted to doing things in nicely organised chunks and setting routines, and this was my problem with fitness goals this year. Whenever there were due dates or travels, I would tell myself that plans do not apply, and I should wait for things to settle down before I get back on track. But things rarely settle down for long, and before I know it, it was year-end and I have fallen way, way off track.

Focus on small wins. That’s what I will tell myself in the coming year. Forget about neat plans or a well-timed start or a perfect season of meeting all the milestones on time. I know now that getting too hung up on those will make it seem like the goal is unachievable when I inevitably miss a few milestones, and it’s that much more tempting to give up entirely.

So yes, set lofty goals if you must, but focus on small wins.

*

2017 has been a good year, and I will cherish the memories I made and the many hard-won lessons. If I don’t sound too chirpy about it, it’s partly because it has been a long year too, and I am tired.

I’m glad that it’s the holidays. I look forward to mid-day naps, getting lost in books, and daydreaming.

Happy Holidays, all.

Now that I have a few hours to think about it after watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I have decided that I’m a fan of Star Wars – the new arc, at least.

Was I not, before this? Well, I like the old movies in the franchise. I watched them multiple times, and wished that lightsabers and Jedis were real. But I don’t feel as strongly about the characters as, say, the characters in the Avengers. Heck, I love the characters in Legends of Tomorrow way more.

I just really, really like space adventures. I love Star Trek in the same way, and there is a reason that my favourite season of Power Rangers when I was young was Power Rangers In Space.

But was I fan of Star Wars in particular? At a recent Star Wars Day celebration in the office (yes, my office is cool that way), there was a Star Wars trivia and I realised I couldn’t answer even one of those, and I didn’t quite care enough to find out who won this battle on that planet. Whatever.

The Last Jedi though, it blew me away, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to love it so much.

I love the tight, edge-of-your-seat plot; I am pleasantly surprised that despite the full cast, none of the major characters were flat, they were all nuanced and fleshed out and flawed (they even made mistakes that almost brought their own downfall! How refreshing); I was caught off-guard by the funny moments, of which there is a surprising number; and wow, was the climax epic and completely unexpected. It is quite hard to be surprising in a movie universe that has 7 instalments before this, and each with their own epic battles using lightsabers and ships. But I did not see the epic twist coming.

And all the juicy themes – letting go of the past, keeping hope, choice and circumstance, etc. I can’t analyse all these well enough, so I will direct you to this review that basically sums up how I feel (spoiler alert!): Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a near-perfect reinvention of the franchise.

What made me a fan, though, is the characters. I love that there was no prophesied chosen one, and that the characters become heroes because they are trying to do the right thing. I love that Rey makes her own choices and fights hard. I love that Poe thinks outside the box and yet was also human enough to make a (huge) misjudgement. I love that Admiral Holdo was not at all what she seems but was heroic all the same.

I love, love, love Rose Tico. As I wasn’t following every news release, I didn’t know that there was going to be an Asian female character being so central to the plot. She wasn’t at all what you’d expect, but she is smart, kind of silly, but heroic and wise.

(Rose and Finn. Btw, Rose works in maintenance)

The fact that the cast is diverse has apparently gotten some backlash among some circles though. I love the fact that the leading character is Rey, a female, but I wasn’t as sensitive to it because it seems like a sign of the times. Recent – and this is talking about recent 5+ years – movies and shows have had strong female characters and casts that were not majority white dudes. There were the Hunger Games franchise, Wonder Woman, Jessica Jones in Defenders, and certainly Sarah Lance in Legends of Tomorrow, among others. (You can probably tell that I’m a superhero shows junkie; these are the examples I know, but I’ve read about similar trends outside of this genre.) I was perhaps unconsciously expecting a diverse cast already. But knowing that it can incite such a strong reaction makes me all the more appreciative that the cast is what it is in The Last Jedi.

But no matter what kind of characters they are, I love the journey they go through in the movie. To squeeze all those character stories, and for a large number of characters, into a tight plot that basically spans out within hours or days is amazing. I know I will rewatch this, and when I write my own stories this will be one of the examples I look to.

To me, Star Wars was about heroes and idols; ‘chosen ones’ in galaxies far, far away that were easy to fantasise about but hard to relate to. But with Rey and Finn and Rose and Poe, I see stories about normal people dragged into things bigger than themselves and trying their best to do the right thing.

This, I can relate to. I’m a fan now. And I will happily trade my Darth Vader stuffed toy for a Rose Tico figurine if any one of you have it, just saying.

I will leave you with my favourite quote from the movie, by Rose:

“This is how you win, silly. Not by destroying what you hate, but by saving what you love.”

I was staring at a tram passing by Market Street that evening, waiting to cross the road, when the passing tram revealed this woman in the middle of the street, dancing.

Her eyes were closed as she danced to some silent disco, no headphones in sight. She was at the divider in the middle of the street, with cars and trams passing by in opposite directions around her. She pumped her hands into the air as she bobbed along. She was black, her long wild hair barely constrained in a fluffy ponytail.

The few people who were waiting beside me were also tourists, and they muttered something about the homeless people, people who were not right in the head.

The pedestrian lights turned white – not green – and I hurried across the road, trying not to stare at her. But still, the image of her, dancing so freely in the middle of the street, replayed itself over and over in my head.

*

I’m very much a city girl. I love exploring cities, I love how predictable cities can be in their functional design – no matter where in the world you are, you know the big blocks that make up a city; the city centre and its activity, the main transport nodes and lines, the availability of Google maps and reliable data connections. To me, it provides a solid counterbalance to the cultural shocks and the uncertainty of being in an alien country.

I loved San Francisco’s grid-like streets. It didn’t matter if I got lost, because I knew I just need to find the next turn and get back to the right grid line. And exploring them in 15 degrees Celcius weather was very enjoyable.

Except for the homeless people on the streets.

People warned me about them, of course. They told me to prepare myself, especially since I live in Singapore and was obviously not used to homeless folks. But I was still caught off-guard by how ubiquitous they are, even at the city centre where my hotel and office were. And there were all kinds of folks: a plump, stoic-looking bearded guy sitting cross-legged at a corner among his belongings; a young looking long-haired punk who radiated pride and resentment; folks who walk with a limp, or a slouch; middle-aged men who yelled and argued with invisible enemies as they walk past; people who held out Big-Gulp cups for change. They were black and white, young and old, male and female.

It is not that I’m not used to seeing homeless people – there are many cities in Asia where you still see them – it just struck me as so weird that they were everywhere in San Francisco, one of the richest cities there is and home to many tech companies. This is a city that so many people across the world aspire to go to and work in, and somehow the mass of homeless people was just incongruent with the image of such a place.

I know about the high property prices and the inflation, of course. I majored in economics, I understand the mechanics of why these happen. But every time I averted eye contact, every time I sped up my pace or dodged sideways, I wondered how they got there. I wonder what their stories were, and whether they got here because they chased their dreams here.

This is the flip side of freedom, I tell myself. You are free to build a start-up and become a millionaire, but you are also free to fail, and free to grab a corner on the street when you do. And when you got there, who says you can’t dance in the middle of the street to the memory of your favourite song?

I am making sweeping generalisations and assumptions here, of course. But in SF I feel like I tasted freedom in its rawest form. Life is what you make of it. You do what you can to thrive, to survive.

It makes a lot of sense, but it still left me cold.

*

I was in SF for a week for work, and I barely had time to really explore. But in the evenings my teammates there brought me and other out-of-town folks out, and I still found it ironic that they brought me to Mexican places and a Chinese dumpling restaurant, and not somewhere more ‘local’. These are the best food in SF, they said.

I was reminded then of how America is a nation of migrants, just like Singapore, Malaysia, and probably hundreds of other countries. And it is always in the biggest cities, the most dynamic commerce centers, that you find a melting pot of cultures. Here, you take the best of each culture and create something better. You stay open-minded because you know how silly it is to insist on staying the same.

And here, both success and failure are exaggerated. You can bump into a millionaire on the street or another homeless person. And between the two extremes, you have a large sea of people who are trying hard to come up top.

One sign of how hard they try is the insane commutes. Many of them have to live in adjacent cities to keep living costs down, and endure two-hour commutes one-way each day to get to work. This is not new to me at all; I have, after all, sworn to never do daily commutes from JB – my hometown and a city next to Singapore – after seeing the toll it took on my parents. Knowing that people do that in SF just made me appreciate how lucky I am to be able to afford this choice.

For those who work in the HQ of the big tech companies, it could be worse. The giant campuses of these companies are not in SF at all but at neighbouring towns or cities. There is, I found out, a complex network of shuttle buses and train options to get from SF to those campuses. The companies also provide varying transport subsidies or programs.

My company conducts a very comprehensive survey about employee commutes every year. For someone who works in Singapore, with its efficient transport system, I never understood why they asked so many questions about commute and feedback. Now I could finally appreciate how they use the results.

On one of the mornings, my team had to get to Sunnyvale for a series of morning meetings. We had to meet at a random street corner at 6.30am to catch the company bus. We almost got on the bus to the wrong tech company HQ because there are just so many of these buses ferrying employees around, and all of them low-profile with no company logos on the bus itself. When we got on, the teammate who was local got us the wifi passwords for the bus’ network, and I noticed that quite a number of the people on the bus were working on their laptops. I was too drowsy to be shocked then, and just slept for most of the hour-long journey.

(From the bus ride to Sunnyvale, probably around 7am. Sprawling houses everywhere)

*

Two weeks on, I still think about that woman dancing in the street, and I still think about what it means to be free. Whatever her circumstances, she seemed to be enjoying herself at that moment in time. She seemed free.

As for myself and the other tourists who judged her – how free were we, chasing our dreams to San Francisco, drawn here by stories of others?

It’s Thanksgiving, and it’s a time to count our blessings. I am very thankful for the people who have given me opportunities, those who have said ‘yes’ to me; but at the same time I am very grateful to those who have said ‘no’ to me, too, because they have changed my life in ways that I never expected.

Thank you to my parents, who said no to me when I wanted to enter a Chinese high school when I was 12. Because they refused, I went to a school where English was more heavily used and which allowed me to improve my command of the language. At the same time, I was able to navigate the then nascent World-Wide-Web much better with better English, becoming a digital native before that term was even coined.

Thank you to the scholarship organizations who rejected my applications and squashed my dreams of studying in the UK when I was 18. I wanted the prestige and glamour of a UK education, but instead I received 4 wonderful years of education at Nanyang Technological University, where I learned about the drive, ambition and resourcefulness of young people from Asia. I also became an exchange student in Europe, traveling through old German towns and dog-sledding across a frozen lake in Norway – an adventure that I did not even dream of when I started university.

(Dog-sledding in Tromso, Norway in 2011 towards the end of my exchange semester)

Thank you to the over 20 banks and over 10 non-bank companies who rejected my job applications when I was graduating from university. Joining a bank was the conventional route for an Economics graduate, and most of my class and thousands more applied for Management Associate or Graduate Trainee roles in banks and the big-name companies. I went through dozens of interviews but none went through. But it was because of this that I stumbled into market research and analytics, giving me the basic training that I need for my role as a data analyst in LinkedIn.

Thank you to the pharmaceutical companies who said no to me when I tried to go the ‘client side’ route after a stint on the ‘agency’ side. While I have always been interested in the tech industry, I wasn’t confident enough or bold enough to actually make the leap, so applying to ‘client side’ was a safer road. But I was rejected multiple times, and eventually LinkedIn said ‘yes’ to me.

Looking back, I have received countless rejections over my life so far, and certainly many of them were at major turning points that have a big impact on the path my life would take. But every single major rejection I faced had forced me to think beyond the safe, conventional options, and they have broadened my horizons in ways I never expected. My imagination and aspirations are never as good as what life can throw at me, it seems.

So thank you to all those who have said ‘no’ to me in the past; it was because of them that I can eventually say ‘yes’ to the things that turn out to be much better than I could imagine. If you have recently faced a big rejection, take heart and have faith that there is something better down the line.

Happy Thanksgiving!

When you want to learn a new skill, do you think of looking up a course and hoping that it will teach you? Does ‘learning on the job’ sound like a cop-out to you, like companies just want to save cost?

Last week, I wrote a post about how my skill set became outdated in a year. Some of my friends have asked me how to learn something new while holding down a full-time job. This is something that I still struggle with to this day, but along the way I have learned some hard-won lessons, and I want to share them with you.

These are by no means universal rules that apply to every situation, but they are what I’ve discovered over the years as I picked up Excel, SQL and Tableau, and will continue to guide me as I learn Python, Presto and Hive/Pig for my job as a data analyst in LinkedIn.

Learning on the job, I’ve discovered, is very different from learning in an academic setting. And having been skilled at academic learning and taking exams, I struggled to adapt when I first started working. I used to request for company sponsorship of course fees, and resent the mantra about ‘learning on the job’, because I thought it is a cop-out by employers who did not want to invest the money to train their employees. Now I realised that it is much more nuanced than that, and that learning on the job can be very efficient and satisfying.

So how do you learn fast on the job?

1. Understand your own learning style – but adapt to your lifestyle too!

Every one of us have our own learning style, and what this means is that we don’t learn the same way. What works best for someone may not work for you no matter how hard you try. My learning style is visual and read/write; this means that I like drawing out concepts and flow charts, and I love reading. The traditional academic model of lecture slides and reading lists work fantastically for me.

But now that I work as an analyst and I work with code, charts and emails the whole day, it is very hard to summon the will to do extra reading online or practice code in the evenings after work. Learning the same way I did in university was challenging and unsustainable, and so was practicing code in the evenings.

What works for me is to work around my lifestyle – I watch course videos in the evenings because the input is more auditory, and it was easier to stick to it because it doesn’t tax the same muscles as my day job does. And if the coding language is not something I am using at work, I reserve the practice to a couple of hours on the weekend to space out the coding from work and learning.

Leverage the style you learn best in, but work around your lifestyle to make it sustainable.

2. Build your own learning ‘stack’ – yes, you need a stack

The ‘tech stack’ is a common jargon in the tech industry; it basically refers to the building blocks that one uses to build a product or provide a certain function. For example, a very popular stack for web development is the ‘LAMP stack‘, which refers to Linux operating system, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), and the PHP programming language.

You need a ‘stack’ too when learning on the job. I used to look for the best (and free/cheap) course online and sign up, hoping to become proficient by completing the course. But simply completing courses and assignments without actual long-term application doesn’t work very well. I took some courses in R, but because I didn’t have many reasons to use it, it never really stuck.

What worked for me was a stack of resources that covers the foundational concepts, gives me the chance to practice, allows me to poke beyond the ‘curriculum’ and ask questions about how it affects my work downstream. For example, my current stack for learning Python includes:

• LinkedIn Learning courses on Python – for on-demand conceptual explanations, exploring other techniques without committing to a full course
• Datacamp – to practice code and get instant feedback on what is wrong
• A project or use-case at work that uses Python – a sufficiently complex project that lets me go beyond the basics
• Internal Python wikis and knowledge base – for practical tips like how to plug into the internal database, a list of use-cases in other areas, and more
• Colleagues who work with Python – a god-send who answer random questions and also stimulate new ideas
• Stackoverflow or just Google – for random questions when I get stuck

You see that only the first two items are what people typically think of when they think about learning new skills. They are necessary but not sufficient. If you want to learn fast, you need a stack to help you absorb, apply and push your limits.

3. Copy, prod and poke before you build

The value of reverse-engineering is underrated. Very often, courses will urge you to write your own code and build something. That is necessary and fun, but again, if you want to learn fast it is much easier to do so by getting your hands on a complex end-product and reverse-engineer it.

When I had to rebuild an internal Tableau dashboard, I learned a lot quickly by just poking under the hood of the existing dashboard and dragging things around to see what are affected. It gave me answers to questions I didn’t know to ask. Likewise, when I first saw the full script that powers the LinkedIn Recruiter Index (LRI), I was blown away by what scalable code looks like. I learned more from reading through the LRI code than months of SQL practice.

Even if you don’t have examples at work, you will surely find some online. Explore Github, Tableau public galleries, blogs, or just google for examples. Then poke under the hood.

4. Find a community of mentors and fellow learners

I mentioned ‘colleagues’ as part of my learning stack, and they are an essential component. Being able to talk to people who are experienced helps provide more than answers; the tangents and side-tracks in the conversations can give you new ideas and ways of thinking. I am lucky that I work with a bunch of very talented folks in LinkedIn, and I benefit by just hanging out with them.

Sometimes they are mentors, but often they are also fellow learners on the same journey. Having fellow learners help speed up learning too – when you try to explain things to each other, it forces you to crystallise your thinking and articulate them, and this makes the learning stick better.

If you don’t have such a community at work, find one outside. It could be LinkedIn Groups, Meetups.com, or just the forums at the courses you sign up at. Sites like Stackoverflow has good communities too, though part of the benefit I derive from a community is the ideas from spontaneous interactions, and these are easier to cultivate on a face-to-face setting.

5. Expect to feel stupid, frustrated and uncomfortable

Most people emphasise the cool new things that you will learn because they want to encourage you. That is all well and good. However, if you start your journey expecting only to learn cool new things, then at some point you will crash, and you will crash hard.

Learning new things involve, by definition, doing things we have never done before. This can make us feel pretty stupid. When we were students this was easier to accept because people didn’t expect us to know much. But once we become working adults, and particularly as we become more experienced and good at what we do, suddenly becoming a beginner again, suddenly feeling stupid, can be hard to swallow.

This often makes the learning journey an emotional roller coaster, like this:

You start with an eagerness to learn, and you feel great when you begin to master the basics (which are by definition easy). But when you move beyond the basics, inevitably you struggle to understand new material or to apply them. You will likely become frustrated and may feel uncomfortable or stupid, as if you are a failure for not getting it.

You need to manage your expectations and your emotions, or you may end up giving up. By expecting this up front, you can change your self-talk from, “This is too hard. I have no talent in this, I’m never getting it.”

To something more sensible: “Oh, I feel stupid now because I don’t know how to do this. But this means I am about to really learn something new. This is normal. I can do this.”

I don’t think people talk about this emotional journey enough, but it is crucial if you are learning something completely new. Manage your own expectations and take care of your emotions.

Learning on the job is different from learning in school

Most of us unconsciously associate learning new things with a classroom-like setting, and we think in terms of courses, assignments or getting certified. If you need certification for a promotion or job switch, then by all means yes, focus on learning strategies that help you ace a course and get you certified.

However, often you need to pick up something quickly to do your job better, and you need to do it while holding down a full-time job. What I shared above are what I learned from my struggles to adapt from a good student in school to a fast learner on the job:

• Know your learning style but adapt your plan to suit your lifestyle
• Build your own learning stack to help you absorb, apply and push boundaries fast
• Copy, prod & poke before you build via reverse-engineering
• Find your own community of mentors and fellow learners
• Manage your expectations – expect to feel stupid, frustrated and uncomfortable

What was your experience with learning on the job? I’m very curious to learn what other strategies are out there! Feel free to share in the comments section!

I joined LinkedIn in October 2016, and have recently passed the one-year mark. Looking back, it was amazing how much things have changed. I expected a fast pace of change when I joined the tech industry, but even so, I was surprised at how ‘fast’ fast can get.

Half my team have changed roles, with more headcount added beyond that. Multiple projects were started, iterated on, abandoned, or pivoted into something else. Countless new product features or updates have been released and the assorted pre- and post-sales narratives changed and iterated upon. My business line itself has launched into a new narrative.

Most importantly, the skill set I joined LinkedIn with had become hopelessly outdated.

I spent my first couple of weeks in LinkedIn furiously trying to pick up SQL. But soon after I found myself picking up Tableau and rebuilding an automated internal dashboard for our sales teams, learning not just about building a dashboard but also about how to scale up data processing and analysis.

Recently, Presto was introduced and it is expected to become the mainstay for my team moving forward. With the coming enforcement of a new EU data protection regulation, GDPR, I find myself needing to learn some Pig/Hive to plug some of the back-end compliance requirements. These aside, I have recently picked up Python for a project, learning how to code as I went along.

I can hardly believe that just a year ago, the only data processing/ analysis I did professionally was with Excel (I learned a bit of R but never got to use it in my job). Perhaps it was just my timing that coincided with internal upgrades and external regulatory changes. But I have a feeling that such rapid changes is more of the norm rather than the exception.

Technical skills aside, I find myself challenged as well in terms of mindset and thinking.

Scale is a highly valued attribute in the company and my team; one of the first piece of constructive feedback I received from my manager was that I wasn’t thinking big enough. I want you to think bigger, to think bolder, he said.

To think that before I joined LinkedIn, I used to be told that I was too ambitious, that I bite off more than I can chew. And yet here I was, being told that I wasn’t ambitious enough. That was a rather surreal day that made me realise how differently things work in a tech company.

I won’t lie and say that I am not intimidated. I am intimidated – by the sheer speed and scale of how fast things change, and by the endless list of things I need to learn to keep up.

But I am also thrilled. Thrilled that I am learning so many new things in such a short period of time; that I am challenged to deploy new tools and techniques to drive the biggest possible impact on the business; that the organization is flat and open enough that innovation is not confined to HQ but rather demanded of in all parts of the world, and if your idea works, it will go global. It was hard to imagine driving global impact from Asia in many other companies, but here I was given that opportunity.

It also helps tremendously that as an organization, there are plenty of resources to learn new things – we have full access to LinkedIn Learning, which has a rich library of courses on a wide variety of subjects; there are internal wikis, mailing lists, office hours, learning sessions over VCs, weekly tips, etc. Sitting next to very talented folks also help a whole lot.

Looking back, it has been quite a year. There were many moments of self-doubt, incredulity, and frustration, but just as many moments of pride, sense of accomplishment and pleasure at learning something new. The wonderful people I work with are worth another post by itself, but suffice to say that they make coming to work every day fun and inviting.

In the end, I am happy that my skill set became outdated, and that I acquired another new set of skills in the same year. I wonder what things will look like, a year from now?

“You need to come closer,” Miyue said, beckoning her first love, whom she had not seen in years. They are all so much older now. “I can’t see you clearly.”

Zixie hesitated, keeping his face neutral. “You can see me clearly even in your sleep.”

Miyue smiled uncertainly. “I don’t think I can even see myself clearly these days.”

That was one of the many moments in the Legend of Miyue show that laid bare life’s many truths; growing up changes you. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes you’re caught off guard by the person you’ve become.

I’ve finally finished watching all 81 episodes, and like all good stories, it leaves you breathless, changed, and looking at the world in a new light. I can go on and on about the brilliant characterisation, the beautiful sets, the intricate plot and many other things to try to convince you that it is a good show that is worth your time. But I’ve done enough of that, and it’s time to look back on the journey the show has brought me on.

(Spoiler alert!)

On Boldness

For once, ‘epic’ is not an exaggeration. The story began before Miyue was born, and it ended with the legacy she’s left behind – a much stronger Qin state that was the foundation for the first emperor of China to unite all states decades later.

Miyue’s defining character trait was her insistence to take life into her own hands; no matter what society says about people born into her station, or about what women should or should not do, she worked to live the way she wanted to, and did it without compromising her integrity and values. I admire her sense of agency, but what was more inspiring was how this made her a brilliant political tactician – her moves were unexpected and bold because she was not constrained by the need to conform.

“You are indeed smarter than me, but you cannot best me,” Miyue told Chulizi, the most senior and respected official in court, “because I can stake my life on a bet, and I can endure suffering.

“Even if I was born into a royal household, I was always bullied and grew up with nothing. I do not conform, and I do not hold bias. I can bet everything on one move, and I can forgive and forget with one smile. These, you cannot do.”

Her boldness came from her experience with failure and destitute, from knowing what could and could not be lost – material things could be lost and regained, intangible things like discipline, values and self-respect could never be lost. It reminded me of JK Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech, where she talked about how ‘rock bottom became the solid foundation’ on which she rebuilt her life:

“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. … The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.”

It’s one of the ironies in life that you are more well-positioned to win when you start by losing, because it makes you unafraid. I am very cautious by nature, and I am afraid of many things. But fear holds you back – and I am tired of it. Miyue’s boldness and courage inspire me, and I want to be more like her.

On Ambition

Another irony in Miyue’s life is that her only wish was to have a happy family, and yet she ended up achieving things that the most ambitious men of her era could only dream of. While married to the King of Qin, she became inspired by a greater purpose – a quest to unite the people across the warring states and to bring about peace. To that end, she sacrificed many easy ways out, many chances to have the simple family life that she longed for.

At one point in the story, she had to choose between her first love, who had stayed single for her all these while and had promised her a home in her motherland; and going back into danger to risk everything to fix a broken nation-state, to help fulfill the dream of uniting the land.

I knew what she would choose, of course. But it doesn’t make the choice less relatable – it feels like a choice that many of us have to make at some point in life, and for women in particular. A career is perhaps not quite comparable to a larger than life purpose such as uniting the land, but I can’t help drawing the parallel. Having achievements and a body of work to call your own outside of family is important to me, and even more so is the chance to become part of something bigger.

It is a very personal choice, but I cheered when she made the choice to go back to serve a larger purpose. If I ever need to make that choice, I wish only to have her courage.

On Family

Family is a complex concept in this show about royal families. So many of those ties are in name only, and so many of the bonds were between people who had no blood relations. But it was very clearly Miyue’s priority, and it was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. Her kindness and caring forged very strong bonds that saved her life time and again, but it also led to choices that undo her hard work and broke her heart.

Her family also often wanted different things – her brilliant mind often led her to choices that others could not understand or accept, and she often had to persuade them in different ways, or tried to marshal loyalty. She did it compassionately and without being manipulative, and it was enlightening and educational to watch.

Life is often about compromise, but it doesn’t always have to be. Like her favorite refrain,

“If you don’t try, how would you know?”

If

I haven’t been this inspired by a story in a while. It has been a brilliant ride – and one day I will build a story like this.

In the mean time, Miyue reminded me of a poem from my school days – ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. She may be a woman, but she has certainly embodied the spirit of this poem – and I can only work harder to do the same:

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!