Ologies

I stumbled upon Ologies on Spotify today while looking for something to keep myself awake in office. Oligies is a podcast hosted by Alie Ward, an actress / writer / artist and a wholesome human being. Each episode looks into a particular -ology (for example, entomophagy anthropology), in which Alie interviews an expert from the field and we get to know them and their field of expertise.

I was immediately captivated from the first episode. Alie leads her interviews with a delightful sense of wonder and curiosity and humour. The conversations seem to wander and carry you with it but still contained neatly within its topic. The podcast reminds me so much of my university time, sipping wine and having long thoughtful conversations with my housemates late into the night.

Yet Ologies is so informative and full of interesting thoughts and ideas that I actually took notes. Below are some notes of (in my opinion) important things I scribbled down from the podcast.

Entomophagy Anthropology

Professor to his student who is struggling to find a specialism:

“You’re interested in everything but you don’t know what you want to do – let’s throw everything at you and see what sticks.”

Ornithology (Birds)

Find and watch a video of a horned screamer bird.

Mixology

Ratio for a good cocktail – 2 (alcohol) : 1 (sweet) : 1 (sour)

Ratio for perfect party punch – 4 (hard liquor) : 4 (soft drinks) : 1 (sweet) : 1 (sour)

There’s no such thing as 2 drinks that do not mix well. Everything goes together as long as they are balanced.

Fallingfruits.org – A world map of where you can find trees with edible fruits.

Note to self – must try Seedlip.

——————

I highly recommend Ologies to every curious minds out there. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

The little book of Hygge – the Danish way to live well

It’s been a long break from blogging. I recently re-read my old posts and realised how important it is to record down memories and thoughts because of my tendency to forget things, even those really worth remembering. The past year just whizzed by so fast and I was always in such a hurry that I barely had time to sit down and think about what it all meant.

Among other things that I managed to check off my list in the past year, I’m particularly pleased that I surpassed my Goodreads reading challenge (24 books, 4 more than the goal I set for myself). Sadly, I was not able to retain much from those 24 books due to the afore-mentioned forgetfulness. Thus I’m making a comeback on the blog and will try to make it a habit to record down my thoughts every time I finish a book. This is for my own reference and who knows, maybe it can grow into something more?

I’m starting the year off with an easy one: The little book of hygge – the Danish way to live well. I finished this book within 1 day and in the most “hyggelit” setting. My day was the definition of hygge:

• Cold and gloomy London winter day
• Brunch in a small cosy cafe having avocado toast and poached eggs
• Afternoon in with friends, wrapped in a thick blanket re-watching Scrubs and sipping rose tea (while reading)
• Friends made roast meat and vegetables for dinner, we ate in the living room while watching some old school Goku Super Saiyan movie
• After dinner lazing about the living room talking about Harry Potter while watching each other play Wii
• Friends made pizza for supper
• All in all a warm cosy day with good company and simple comfort food and wandering conversations

It was the perfect day and perfect setting to read about Hygge, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It is no wonder that the Danes are the happiest people in the world as hygge is so well embedded in their culture. Yet I feel it is only in Denmark that people are able to lead such a lifestyle. I can hardly imagine myself doing the same in Singapore, or anywhere else for that matter. I simply can’t afford to and can’t see myself living so slowly for such a great part of my day.

Nonetheless, this book reminded me to at least inject more hygge time into my life. As of right now, I’m thinking about chilling in cafes with friends more and going to the beach more often. I hope to have more chill days like today, more warm tea and more wandering conversations in the coming year.

And I hope you, too, will have a year full of hygge ahead!

Cheers,

Thu

Language crisis

I have been dealing with internship applications lately, and every time, there will always be a Language section. I often get to choose a language in which I am a “native” speaker, and another one which I am fluent at. Even though I always tick Vietnamese as my native language and English as the language I can read and write fluently, I often feel like I am not completely honest.

Technically, my choices logically fulfils the requirements, but deep down, I feel that something is not quite right.

It’s true that I qualify as a native Vietnamese speaker, but I find it rather difficult these days to hold a conversation in Vietnamese without using an English word once in a while, out of convenience and habit. In fact, 4 years in Singapore have given me a unique set of vocabulary that just cannot be translated directly into Vietnamese (or probably any other language for that matter), for example the word ‘kiasu’ (roughly means ‘afraid to lose’). I have to admit, I overuse English sometimes. Quite often, English words just comes to my head faster, making it difficult for me to talk to a non-English speaking Vietnamese. Once I had to pause 3 seconds to try and remember the equivalence for ‘museum’ in Vietnamese. 3 seconds!

The fact that I am writing this blog in English instead of Vietnamese is enough to prove that I am more comfortable expressing myself in English. This is NOT to say that my English is good, it just means that writing in English is easier for me. This has to do with the fact that I left Vietnam early and my Vietnamese writing education stopped at secondary school level (which was mostly “describe a tree/a water bottle” or at best “tell a story about someone that means a lot to you”). I literally just learned how to communicate professionally in Vietnamese during my summer internship last year. It was sad how I had to keep an English balance sheet next to me as reference in order for me to understand a Vietnamese balance sheet.

Still, it wasn’t a complete disaster, I got a hang of the terminologies after a couple of weeks and was functioning like any other Vietnamese university undergraduate. My point is, language is sometimes not as simple as native and fluent, even for basic business requirements. There are always in-betweeners (like me) not belonging in any category. I’m sure any bi-lingual person could relate.

That’s all the ranting I have got for today. Have a great first day of summer (20 March)!