You do strange things for love

“It’s time!’

“To do what?”

“For major surgery!”

“OH. Yes yes, let me get my needle.”

A lighter was brandished from bag to sterilise the pin.

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Most definitely. We just need to prick it open and squeeze everything out.”

Probe, squeeze, prick, probe a bit more, prick again, squeeze, harder squeeze, squeeze again.

“Owwwwwwwww… it really hurts…”

“Just a bit more. It’s coming. It’s coming out. It’s out. Wait, I think there is more inside.”

“Has it gone down? You should try from all angles.”

Probe, squeeze, probe a bit more, squeeze again, probe, another squeeze, harder squeeze.

“Ew, it just shot out like a fat curly worm.”

“Where? Where? I can’t see.”

“You’re a genius. I’d never thought of approaching it from all angles.”

“Yes, that’s how I usually do it.”

“Can we check the back now?”

“You mean there is something there that has been bothering you this whole time?”

“Not really…well, yes, sort of but it’s ok… until now. I’m just checking. Please let me have a go at it.”

Probe, squeeze, probe a bit more, squeeze again, another squeeze, harder squeeze.

“Is it out yet?”

“YES, YES, IT’S RISING, GROWING BIGGER AND BIGGER AND YES, YES, IT’S ALL COMING OUT NOW AND IT’S OUT.”

“You mean like a hot air balloon?”

“Yes, and it popped like one too.”

“You should consider doing this as your next job.”

“Mmm… Seeing it popped does give me a sense of satisfaction. But I’m not sure if I can do this full-time.”

Just another thing you do for love on a regular day like Monday.

Liberating the urge to fart

One night late last month after we had one of our legendary awesome dates, we were sleeping in a quaint area somewhere in the city. When we do spend time together, I see her as a delightful companion who makes me laugh and whom I enjoy making her laugh equally as hard as well. The things we do sometimes are so spontaneous and hilarious that no matter how much we plan beforehand, sometimes it’s best if we just go along with the flow because the best things in life are those unexpected.

I am just glad we have modern technology like iPhones and digital cameras to record our journey together so we can relive the funny moments over and over again. And it really makes our day and night re-watching video clips of us doing random things together. We are just that type of fun people, you see.

Now back to that night. The air was cool, the surroundings was peaceful. We were snuggling against each other with my limbs wrapped comfortably around her. She was sleeping on my left shoulder and her body was turned towards me. I had my right arm hugging her back while my right leg was placed over her cute tushy. It was a loving sight. If you were there, I bet you’d go, “Awww” too.

Soon, the morning rays were seeping in slowly and we were starting to drift in and out of our deep sleep. Then a loud hard bubbly “PBROOOOOOOOT’ sound punctured the air so quick and sudden that my eyes shot wide open but my brain was taking a while to process because my body was concentrating on going back to sleep. After that shock of sound, the silence enveloping the room like fog became louder.

Then without moving, I asked quietly, “Did you just fart? On my thigh?”

Silence…

And her body shot right into me like a twisted arrow as she whined loudly into the pillow with embarrassment. It sounded something like, “Eee Awww nuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. Shy shy…shy shy…”

I will never forget the sight of her trying to dig a hole in the bed and avoiding eye contact with me as I started laughing till my sides ached. My baby just let me into her sacred world where previously, only family members have heard her fart.

That sudden expulsion of air is now officially known as, “The Loud Bubbly Fart”.

When we finally calmed down, after much discussion, she reasoned that, “Alcohol makes me gassy.”

I mean she has confessed before to farting under the covers when in bed with me. She even told me she was busy farting in the café when we were having a late lunch later that day. But I haven’t never heard or smelled them so it has never bothered me since I always found that side of her endearing and adorable.

Only last week, she farted again while we were asleep. This time, it was a loud “POOT” without the bubbles. And my hand was cupped over her butt at the precise moment.

We burst out laughing.

She is adamant that alcohol makes her gassy and that whenever her butt feels “liberated”, she can’t control the urge to fart. “It just comes naturally.”

Besides making her laugh and happy, one of my greatest joys is having her make me laugh so hard that I become paralysed from laughing.

No matter how much she tries to pretend that the farts didn’t happen or no matter how much she hopes I will be asleep the next time she farts, we both know that I am officially with a Gassy Baby/Loud Farter.

Now she has been asking me when I am ever going to fart in front of her just so we can “even the score”.

How to make money doing what you love

American screenwriter, film producer, and director Kevin Smith shares his secret on being successful in life:

Here’s the “secret” everyone always asks in regards to how I “did it” (whatever “it” is when asked). It doesn’t even take TALENT to do what I did; I’m living proof of that. All you need to do is identify what you love to do and monetize that.

If it never feels like work, it’s NOT work.

Life is mutable; the rigidity of working for someone else doesn’t allow for much flexibility. So create your own ideal universe.

That’s all I’ve been doing now for nearly 20 years.

The secret to a successful life is hardly a secret; it requires you to be 

self-centered as all fuck, is all. So long as it’s not at the expense of others, make yourself the center of your universe. You only get to do this ONCE, so try to take as much stress out of the process as you can.

Why stress out in some office wearing clothes you hate, when the REAL stress lies ahead, as we face an inescapable grave. Doubt I’m gonna go quietly into that good night, so I’ll save the stress for then.

Sadly, as far as I’ve learned, we can do NOTHING to alter death; it’s GONNA happen.

But life? We can shape & change the fuck out of life!

Via @aokarim: What if no one had wanted to pay you do what you love?

Nobody wanted to pay me not to go to my relatives when I didn’t wanna. 


Sometimes, the path isn’t direct.

S’like folks who start movie websites: they just love movies. Not sure what their end-game’s gonna be, but writing about them & hosting trailers is a start, right? For some, the end-game will be to make a film. For some, just having people read what they have to say about a subject they love is good enough. Regardless, the smart ones will always find a way to earn off it. Because 


once you’ve got a taste for working for yourself, doing what you love doing? You’ll work 10x as hard as any brick-layer or paralegal, but you’ll NEVER feel it, never recognize it.

Ignore the flock of Wah-Wahs, focus on what you love to do, and earn off it. And remember: once you get paid to do 


it, doesn’t matter whether someone thinks you’re good at it or not; opinions pay imaginary rents, kids. You get paid to do it, you’re a pro.

Via @MKillustration: But what’s the point if we’re all gonna die?

Because life should be all about making your death as easy as possible.

Via @spidermann: most don’t want to actually work hard for it

The work is long & will take you away from lots of other people & things. But 


you will never know/feel/realize it’s work – not until you look back.

Success is relative. I don’t equate success with money. However, if you’re looking to get me on a technicality to explain why you’re not where you wanna be in life, fine – I’ll give it to you both ways: I’m talking about measuring in personal success, but I’m also talking about financial success.

It’s advice; don’t fight it. Either make something of the advice or simply discard it, but to attempt to argue it with me is daft & wastes all of our precious time. You’re 


talking to the laziest fat-fuck I’ve ever met, who came from a gov’t-cheese-eatin’ lower, lower, LOWER middle-class and still somehow bent the universe to compliment his universe. I built an podcasting playground where even my friends get PAID to simply be themselves. So, again: take the advice or leave it. But when you debate free advice, who’re you fighting – me or you?

This is going into my life plan to succeed in three years’ time. Aw-yeah!

I want to be like Tyler Brûlé in three years

(Photo: Roger Deckker)

Editor, taste-maker, entrepreneur, and mini media mogul. Yes, that’s who I want to be in three years.

Tyler Brûlé is the man who created Wallpaper magazine and he is the founder for Monocle, a ten-times-a-year print journal published in the UK that touches on global affairs, business, culture & design and is the epitome of discerning taste.

“I guess what unifies things for me is a passion for quality,” Brûlé says. “And that has to strike both high and low. I’m on a campaign against cheap veneers and varnishes.”

In many ways, Brûlé, 42, has become the gold standard of what is currently considered modern “good taste,” a Martha Stewart for the global elite (like Stewart, he inspires acolytes and parodists). Just look at what Wallpaper unleashed.

……

He started to dream about a new magazine. “It was a reaction to wanting to live every moment,” he says, “to be a little hedonistic.” He took out a small-business loan and launched Wallpaper in 1996. It quickly got bought up by Time Inc. At that point Brûlé disengaged a bit; the corporate life was not his style.

A noncompete clause in his contract meant he couldn’t publish another magazine for two and a half years, so he focused his attention on a branding and advertising agency he’d started called Winkreative, which he still runs and which has counted among its clients companies like Toto, the high-end Japanese toilet manufacturer.

Brûlé also lived out his noncompete by going back to a series of binders he’d filled, over the past twenty years, with his favorite clippings from all sorts of magazines: a column by the Village Voice’s Michael Musto here, a shoot from German Vogue there. One day, toward the end of his noncompete, a Spanish branding client asked him why he had so many empty desks, and he explained that he was planning to launch a magazine when he was again able. The client, the matriarch of a wealthy family, offered to invest, but only if the other investors were in similar situations. And so Brûlé assembled a group of five family foundations, each from a different country, to finance the project—in combination with the income generated by Monocle shops selling the harder-to-find items from the pages of the magazine (ecofriendly Lebanese stationery, a perfect Korean tote bag, a limited-edition Finnish milking stool). In addition to the store here, there are outposts in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong (“in Bo Fung Mansion! How great is that?”), and they also sell such things as Monocle-branded bags from Porter. Eventually, he’d like to have shops all over the world, with foreign bureaus in the back.

Yes, that’s where I want to be – staying in designer boutique hotels, drinking posh bottled water, jet-setting from Rio to Seoul, among other cities, on business. In my mini media empire, I will have a print magazine, radio show, retail outlets and eventually, a TV programme.

First, I shall start by wearing suits from now on.

Ring in the new year happy

This is the fourth day of the new year and I am having a bout of the dreadful “Back to School” feeling. I start work again tomorrow after a two-week break. Have I mentioned that it’s dreadful?

I bet I will have a sleepless night later – tossing and turning, wondering what to wear, what to eat for lunch and if I should go into the office early to start clearing the tons of work that has been piling up since 22 Dec and set a good example to my team. I am also mentally practising typing 2011 in my head.

I remember back in school when we have to write with 2B pencils and blue ballpoint pens, I always had difficulties adjusting my hand to write the correct year on my daily homework. I’d get the day and the month right but fail at filling in the right year. It takes me about a week or so to finally get into the routine. Ah-HA! But not this time, suckers! My mind has somehow accepted that this year will be an awesome year and therefore we are going to embrace it accordingly. Aw-yeah!

Plus, reading articles dripping with positivity and self-love always help. Barbara Hayes, author of “Beware of Dogs: How to Avoid Dating Disasters”, has some great advice for any of us still sulking about 2010 via CNN.

The new year is a great time to think about what we truly want, to look at ourselves in a new light. We can start training for a triathlon (well, you can), learning Italian (in case we ever meet Andrea Bocelli — sigh), painting delicate watercolors, or lounging in comfy sweats on a lazy day without anyone making cutting comments.

So, start the year by making big goals that you can achieve in baby steps taken every week. If you falter, do not think of it as failure, think of it as a temporary setback, a learning experience.

Research shows that reframing our “mistakes” in that way makes the difference between ultimate success and failure. Reward yourself for every tiny successful step. Keep it all in perspective: At the end of a week, a month, and so on, look back and acknowledge the small but significant changes that you have made.

If it made me smile, you will definitely smile after reading this last bit.

Then, smile! Research also shows that smiling sends a signal to your brain that you feel happy, which causes you to smile more, which causes you to feel even happier, and so the cycle perpetuates itself.

Which brings us to losing the holiday weight I’ve most unwillingly gained. I have been searching high and low online for a way to speed up my metabolism after the non-stop feasting I had days ago. Apparently, this is the “best way to jump-start your metabolism after a plateau“. I’m sure it’s useful. Just that it lost me after I realise I have to keep a food journal and that I have to do challenging exercises. I might revisit the article again.

Where on earth will I find myself in 2011?

I certainly hope it’s New York, listed as CNN’s top destination to be in 2011, or somewhere equally unforgettable before this year ends.

1. New York

A huge tourist destination in any year, the city will be especially unforgettable as it marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks next year.

Visitors who have been flocking to ground zero are finally expected to get a chance to pay their respects to the victims at the National September 11 Memorial, which is scheduled to open in time for the anniversary.

Visitors also shouldn’t miss the High Line, once an abandoned elevated railway track that’s been turned into a popular park.

Remember, your new year will be a great adventure because you will make it one. And SMILE!