life lessons

Is Your Job Building You? Exploring Time vs. Growth

/ Wen / Leave a comment

A stranger (aka fitness creator) replied to me on Instagram in December 2025.

His account was mostly fitness content, which is probably why I engaged in the first place. We messaged on and off for eight months. Training, work, whatever either of us happened to be doing that week. On 12th August 2026, we found a morning when both of us were free and got on a Google Meet at 9.30.

I went in curious and nothing more. I hadn’t prepared anything, so everything I said that morning was whatever came out first.

He told me his route first. Study, graduate, work. A business that didn’t go the way he hoped. Then fitness, where he did well: trainer, up the ladder, eventually freelance.

That part I understood. He liked the work. He was earning from something he actually cared about.

The problem arrived later. At one point he was training clients eleven hours a day. More clients, more income. More income, less of everything else. If he stopped, it stopped.

His answer was Herbalife. Health and nutrition products, sold through a network rather than one body at a time.

So it was a pitch. I could see it coming for about fifteen minutes before it landed, and I don’t hold that against him.

I’m not going to argue about MLM here. I haven’t worked out what I think about the model, and I’m not the person to tell anyone else what to think about it either.

What stayed with me for the next two weeks wasn’t the compensation plan. It was the eleven hours.

How much of the day is actually mine

I work for a company. On a normal Tuesday, I don’t think about any of this.

Something breaks, I fix it. A project lands; I run it. A process is slow, so I redesign it. A system needs building, so we scope it, build it, test it, then fix the parts nobody anticipated. Operations run. Customers get served. People get managed.

Everyone puts in a piece of their brain, a piece of their experience, and a very large piece of their time. Stack enough of those pieces, and you get a company that works. Stack them well enough, for long enough, and you get a valuable one.

Everyone’s effort. Someone else’s asset.

We spend years giving our time, energy, ideas and effort to help something grow.
But somewhere along the way, we should also ask: what am I building for myself?

I know the counterargument because I’ve used it. Employment isn’t theft. We get paid. We learn things we couldn’t have learned alone, we meet people we wouldn’t have met, and we don’t lie awake working out how payroll gets funded next month. Someone else carries that, and it’s a real trade.

But I’ve started looking at the other half of the ledger.

Say I spend ten years helping an organisation grow. At the end of it the company has more customers, better systems, cleaner processes, stronger IP, higher revenue. All of that is fair. That’s what I was hired for.

The question is what grew on my side over the same ten years. My salary, hopefully. Beyond that, it gets less obvious. Some knowledge. Some savings. A network, if I bothered to maintain it. Or possibly just a very specific expertise in making one particular organisation run, which is worth a great deal inside that building and close to nothing outside it.

Not “am I being exploited.” More like: am I building capability, or just tenure.

The obvious answer is wrong too

The tidy conclusion here would be to stop working for people and go build your own thing.

I don’t believe that. Business owners aren’t automatically free. Plenty of them work longer hours than the people they employ, earn less for years, and carry an anxiety that doesn’t switch off at 7pm. Freedom isn’t waiting behind a resignation letter. It’s a different set of problems with better branding.

What I took from the call was narrower. While I’m building something for someone else, I should also be building something that stays with me.

Not necessarily a company. Expertise that transfers. Savings that compound. Work with my name on it. Enough ability that I’m never fully dependent on one organisation’s decisions about my life.

Something that doesn’t disappear the day my login gets deactivated.

I’m aware this sounds like advice. I’m not convinced I’ve done it particularly well myself, which is part of why I’m writing it down.

What I said when he asked about freedom

At some point he asked what freedom meant to me. No warning, no time to construct something respectable.

Not property. Not a car. Not retiring at 40.

Freedom. Being able to sit somewhere without a running list in my head. Training. Badminton. Travelling occasionally. Working on things that interest me. Being present with people I care about without checking the time.

Mostly: enough control to avoid choosing money over time.

That’s the whole thing. Streamed into Normal Academic, part-time work from seventeen, a master’s, and a job I’m reasonably good at. Eighteen years of working without ever deciding what I wanted to work on, because I needed the money, and that was reason enough. What I actually want now is to stop checking the time.

Which is maybe why the call stuck. Whether the business is for me is a separate decision and I’ll make it separately. But the question underneath the pitch was one I hadn’t put to myself directly in a long time.

Time passes either way. Five years, ten, twenty, and most of those hours go to work regardless of who I’m working for. So the goal probably shouldn’t only be how much I can earn or how far up I can get. The quieter question is what I’m accumulating that eventually gives me more say over my own attention.

I don’t have the answer. That’s the reason for the series, not the conclusion of it.

Next I want to start where I keep circling back to: the things I’ve built at work. Systems that run without me now. Processes that outlived the problems they were designed for. All of it works, and none of it is mine. I want to look properly at what an employee actually gets to carry out of the building, and whether “experience” is a real asset or just the word we use when there isn’t one.

For now I’ve got one thing, and it isn’t a resolution.

There’s nothing wrong with spending my time helping something grow. I’d just like to check, occasionally, whether anything is growing on my side of it.

When Life Goes On, but Responsibility Gets Heavier

/ Wen / Leave a comment

Almost half the year is gone. July is coming to an end, August is approaching, and somehow there are only four more months before the year ends. Time has been moving quickly, but the past few months have also felt unusually heavy.

Work has been busy. Family life has been busy too.

My 75-year-old father fell at home and fractured his left hip. He had to undergo hip surgery and stayed in the hospital for almost a month. Thankfully, his rehabilitation went well. The doctors, nurses and therapists took good care of him. My sister, my mother and I took turns visiting him on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Whenever I visited, I brought him Toast Box coffee and curry puffs. Small things, but familiar things. Sometimes, when someone is lying in a hospital bed, familiarity is one of the few comforts you can still give.

He has since returned home and can walk again. I am grateful for that.

My usual mentality is simple:

Life goes on.

Whatever happens, we deal with it and continue moving.

But even after my father came home, the worrying did not completely disappear. He now has several medications to take. Will he remember when to take them? Will he take the correct dosage? What happens when nobody is around to check? It also made me think about ageing in a way that feels much more real now. Living a long life sounds like a blessing, especially when someone remains healthy and independent. But when illness, mobility problems and daily medication become part of that life, longevity can also come with a high cost. Not only for the person ageing, but for the people caring for them.

Caregiving is not just physically demanding. It carries a mental load. You are constantly remembering appointments, medication, meals, safety risks and small changes in the person’s condition. At the same time, you still have to work, earn a living, manage your own responsibilities and somehow continue building your own life.

As someone who is used to a scheduled lifestyle, work and personal activities take up a large part of my routine. I am used to planning my days, following my own rhythm and working towards my own goals.

Caring for another person does not always fit neatly into that schedule.

Of course, taking care of our parents is not a “job” in the formal sense. Nobody gives us proper training, a clear workflow, or fixed working hours. We simply step into the responsibility because they are our parents.

But that does not mean it is easy.

Parents can also be stubborn. Sometimes they believe they know what is best for themselves, while their children are worrying about risks they may not see or may not want to acknowledge. There are moments when I wonder whether they understand that we are not trying to control them. We are trying to keep them safe. At the same time, I also understand why they resist. They have spent most of their lives making their own decisions. Growing older should not mean losing all independence.

That is where the tension lies.

Image generated by ChatGPT to reflect the tension between personal dreams, family responsibility, and the quiet weight of growing older.

How do we care for our parents without making them feel powerless? How do we fulfil our responsibilities as children while still protecting the time, energy and space needed to build our own lives?

I have my own work, dreams and aspirations. There are things I still want to achieve and a future I am still trying to shape. But as my parents grow older, I am becoming more aware that my life may not always move according to the plans I make for myself.

Responsibility does not always arrive at a convenient time. Perhaps adulthood is partly learning how to hold two truths at once: we love our parents and want to be there for them, but we are also human beings with our own limits, obligations, and lives to live.

I do not have a clean answer yet. Sometimes, the feeling is like being a kite that wants to fly freely, but keeps being pulled back by the string of responsibility. The string is not there because there is no love. In fact, it may exist precisely because there is love. But even love can feel heavy when you are trying to move towards your own dreams while making sure the people behind you are safe. Perhaps the real challenge is not choosing between freedom and responsibility. It is learning how to carry both without losing yourself completely.

Maybe adulthood is learning how to fly without cutting the string and without letting it pull you so tightly that you forget where you wanted to go. What do you think?

Colony made me think harder than a zombie movie should

/ Wen / Leave a comment
Screenshot from GV website

I finally watched Colony, the new film from Yeon Sang-ho, the same director behind Train to Busan. The moment I saw his name on another zombie movie, I already knew I had to watch it. His earlier work set such a high bar that I walked in with expectations, maybe unfairly high ones. I was bracing myself for more of those fast, snarling zombies tearing down a train carriage. What I got instead quietly messed with my head, in the best way.


(Heads up: spoilers ahead.)


The zombies in Colony are on a completely different level. They are not just mindless bodies chasing the nearest warm thing. They have some kind of consciousness. They learn. They communicate with each other. There is a genuine intelligence in the way they move as a group, almost like they are thinking as one. Set them next to the zombies in Train to Busan and the difference is night and day. These ones have evolved, and that single idea is what kept me thinking long after the movie ended.


What also worked on me was the setting. Most of the film traps you inside one building, and that claustrophobia does a lot of the heavy lifting. There is no wide-open escape, no running into the sunset. Just walls, corridors, and people slowly realising there is nowhere left to go. A few scenes hit harder than the rest, either emotionally or because they made me sit up and actually think.


The opening: two professors who couldn’t make it work
The film opens at a biotech press conference inside the building, where we meet two professors who used to be married. They have since separated. From what I could tell, the husband simply couldn’t keep up with the way his wife thinks, that standalone, doesn’t-quite-fit-the-mould kind of mind. They are not together anymore, but they still operate side by side like close colleagues. It is a strange dynamic, a little awkward, a little tender, and somehow it works. I liked that the film let them be complicated instead of forcing a tidy backstory on us.


The “vaccine” and the rooftop evacuation route
There is a moment where a policeman gets hold of the so-called “vaccine”, which turns out to be a mastermind rather than a vial. He tries to drag this man up to the excavation roof, and he is so desperate to do it that he shoots one of his own team members along the way. After all that, he still doesn’t make it out. Watching it, one line kept running through my head: when self-interest takes over, people will do whatever it takes (人为了利益 是会不择手段), and their thinking bends to the extreme. It is uncomfortable to watch because it feels true. Strip away the safety nets, and you find out fast what someone is willing to trade.

The wife, the SWAT team, and being believed only once
The professor’s wife heads into the infected building to figure out what is actually going on. Because she is seen as the more influential voice, she is the one sent to speak to the authorities. She tells the SWAT and government teams that if they kill that first person that gets infected, everything will stop. So they hunt him down via CCTV search and kill him. However, it doesn’t stop. It gets worse. Most of the SWAT team ends up infected and turns, right in front of everyone. That scene taught me something blunt about how big organisations work. The moment your call turns out wrong, you only get believed once, never twice. Later, when she insists they have to kill the person carrying the vaccine (which is the mastermind), nobody listens. They have already written her off as someone who lied, and by then everyone is just trying to save their own skin. The tragedy is that she might have been right the second time. It just no longer mattered, because trust had already left the room.

What I took away

A few things stuck with me after the credits rolled.
1. When self-interest is at stake, people will do almost anything, and their thinking slides toward the extreme (为了利益 不择手段). The film keeps showing you this, quietly, until you can’t unsee it.


2. The whole “collective organism” idea is fascinating and unsettling at the same time. If humans could be controlled and merged into one mind, sure, everyone would move in perfect sync. But that is just groupthink with extra steps. The price of all that harmony is the freedom to decide for yourself.


3. If you always follow the crowd and never voice your own opinion, you slowly lose the ability to make your own judgement at all. Use it or lose it, even when it comes to thinking.


4. Which leaves me with the question the whole film kept poking at: is being the one who doesn’t fit in (不合群) actually a flaw? Or is it just having a mind of your own?


For a zombie movie, Colony left me chewing on far more than I expected. And here is the part I love. The Korean title, 군체, literally means “collective body”. Once you know that, the film stops being just a horror flick and turns into a quiet question about how much of yourself you quietly give up, just to belong.

That last question is the one that followed me out of the cinema, because it is one I have lived. I have spent most of my life not quite following the script everyone else seemed to be reading from, and for a long time I assumed that made me the problem, the one who didn’t fit. Colony made me wonder if I had it backwards. Maybe the people who never break from the group aren’t safer, just quieter. And maybe being a little 不合群 was never the flaw I thought it was. Maybe it was just me, holding on to the right to think for myself.

It Felt Too Unbelievable to Be Real

/ Wen / Leave a comment

I want to be upfront about something. I didn’t download the app to find love.

I downloaded it the way you’d walk into a store just to browse… No intention of buying anything, just curious about how the whole thing works. I’d been reading about these platforms. How they function, what keeps people hooked, and honestly, whether the scam stories were real. You know the kind of expected flow will be like someone adds you, builds a connection over weeks, then slowly steers the conversation toward some investment opportunity you’ve never heard of. I wanted to see it for myself.

So I went in eyes wide open. Or at least I thought I did.

Around January 2026, someone (known as Park, a fake name) messaged me on the App. She said she had no friends. None. And she was still processing a breakup from a relationship that had lasted thirteen years. I couldn’t relate as I’ve never been in a serious relationship, but I kept the conversation going anyway. Something about her felt real, even if I couldn’t fully explain why. We moved off the app pretty quickly. Exchanged numbers, started chatting on WhatsApp. Not every day at first, but gradually it became that. Little check-ins. “What are you up to?” “Just finished lunch, you?” The kind of messages you don’t overthink.

I kept part of my brain switched on though. Is this a setup? Is the investment pitch coming? I was waiting for it.

It never came.

Instead, we just… talked. About everything and nothing. Work, life, what kind of food we liked, where we wanted to travel. Somewhere in February, she mentioned she felt like she’d healed from her breakup. That she was ready to do things again.

We found out we both love the sea. Blue skies. That kind of peace you only get near water.

So we did something slightly insane, we booked a trip to Malacca. Together. Two people who had never actually met, planning a few days away in April. We each took leave from work.

And then we got busy with life, and somehow we never met before the trip. Not once.

The day (5th April 2026) we left, I was up before 6am. She sent me a photo the night before so I’d recognise her at the bus terminal. I stood there in the early morning with that photo, looking around like I was waiting for someone I’d known for years. Which is a strange feeling when you’re about to see a stranger’s face for the first time. When we spotted each other, it wasn’t awkward. I don’t know how to explain that. It just wasn’t. At first, we just had some silent moments and small talk.

On the bus to Malacca, we talked the whole way. Neither of us touched our phones. She shared stories about past relationships, about how she thinks about work and business, and what kind of life she wants. I shared mine. The conversation moved the way good conversations do: no forced transitions, no running out of things to say. Silence wasn’t awkward; we were enjoying the peaceful breeze by the sea.

We checked into the hotel. Had meals together. Hit the gym. Did our own thing in between, but found our way back to each other for meals, where we’d pick up right where we left off. At night, we had a few drinks (nothing heavy), just relaxed. The kind of chilling that doesn’t need to be planned. We had our favourite fish and chips at 1-Altitude Melaka (Melaka’s highest dining spot).

Here’s the thing I haven’t been able to shake off and can’t stop thinking about why.

I’m not a particularly spiritual person. I don’t tend to read into things. But when I sit with this long enough, I can’t help but wonder if this whole thing was never about romance at all.

She’s 45. She’s lived. She’s loved someone for thirteen years and had to rebuild herself from scratch after that ended. And somehow, out of everyone on that app, she ended up in my chat. Talking to me, someone who has never been in a relationship, who sometimes wonders what direction her life is even heading, who needed to hear exactly the kind of things she was saying without knowing he needed to hear them.

The conversations about business. About how to think. About what kind of person you want to become and what it actually takes to get there. Those weren’t small talk. Looking back, they were the whole point.

I don’t know if I believe in coincidences anymore after this. Because what are the odds that I downloaded an app half-expecting to get scammed, and instead walked away with someone who, without ever trying to, quietly handed me a new way of looking at my own life?

Maybe she was sent. Maybe the universe, or God, or whatever you believe in, has a way of placing people in your path at the exact moment you need them, not always in obvious ways, not always in the form you’d expect. Sometimes it’s a 45-year-old stranger on a dating app who just got over a breakup and needed a friend too.

Or maybe we both needed each other. And that’s enough.

I don’t have a clean answer. I just know that I went looking for nothing, and somehow found something that felt like a light.

And that’s not something I’m willing to call a coincidence.

All I know is this:

Not everything in life needs to be explained immediately.

Some experiences are not meant to be solved.
Just… experienced.

A Private Letter to Myself: End of 2025

/ Wen / Leave a comment

Dear Wen,

2025 was not loud, but it was heavy with meaning.

You didn’t chase visibility. You chose responsibility. And you carried it quietly.

You built things that now run without you standing beside them. You designed workflows, fixed broken processes, aligned people who didn’t speak the same language, and held systems together when no one saw the seams.

You asked the hard questions, documented the messy parts, and made decisions that reduced friction for others, even when it added weight to you.

You finished what you started. You closed a long academic chapter with discipline and dignity. You defended your thinking, revised your work, and walked away knowing you earned it. Finally graduated with masters.

You climbed Mount Kinabalu alone. Step by step, no shortcuts, endure the cold wind, no audience. Although you did not conquer the peak, on that mountain, you proved something to yourself that no résumé could ever show.

You went to Thailand alone, played badminton with strangers, trusted yourself in unfamiliar spaces, and realised that solitude doesn’t mean loneliness. Sometimes it means freedom.

You chose braces, training, movement, and health, even when it was inconvenient. You showed up for your body the same way you showed up for your work: steadily, without drama.

You did not prioritise any relationship this year. Not because you couldn’t, but because you were building a foundation strong enough to eventually hold one.

You chose depth over distraction. Growth over noise.

If there were moments of doubt, fatigue, or quiet sadness, these were the honest moments. They did not mean you failed. They meant you were doing something real.

So thank you for everything, you made it!

For being consistent when no one was clapping. For choosing progress over comfort. For trusting that this season mattered, even when it felt invisible.

Go into 2026 lighter.

With good health. With more joy.

With the same integrity, but a little more fun.

You don’t need to prove anything anymore.

Just continue becoming and improving.

With respect,

Arete

The Paradox of Purpose: Why We Exist in the First Place

/ Wen / Leave a comment

人活着就是为了死亡

A deep reflection on life, death, and the architecture of meaning

I recently stumbled upon a Chinese TikTok post that said, with startling bluntness: “人活着就是为了死亡” Means “People live to die”.

At first glance, it sounds brutal, almost nihilistic. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized how much clarity hides inside that one sentence. It’s a reminder that life is finite, fragile, and never guaranteed. And perhaps, the very fact that death is inevitable is what gives life its texture, urgency, and depth.

Beyond Titles and Labels

We spend so much of our lives chasing roles and identities: student, employee, manager, parent, achiever. These labels help us navigate society, but they aren’t the essence of living. If all we live for is to stack titles like Lego blocks, then the TikTok line slices through the illusion: none of those will follow us past the grave. So what’s left when you strip away status? Experience. Relationships. Growth. The small, luminous moments like laughter that can’t be faked, a conversation that shifts your perspective, the quiet satisfaction of overcoming something you once thought impossible.

Death as Teacher, Not Enemy

To say “we live to die” is not to glorify despair. It is to acknowledge reality. Death is not a glitch in the system. It is the bookend that frames the story. Without it, our days would blur endlessly, stripped of urgency or meaning. When we accept death as teacher, life becomes a classroom where every experience is both practice and preparation. Preparation not in a grim, fatalistic way, but in the sense of learning how to let go, how to forgive, how to leave things better than we found them.

Purpose as Practice

If life is bound for death, then purpose cannot be a trophy we display. It has to be something we practice daily. Purpose isn’t discovered in a single flash; it’s shaped through rhythm, repetition, and ritual. Saying what matters now instead of waiting for “someday.” Building systems of care: for family, friends, even strangers. Turning empathy into small actions that outlast the moment.

Purpose is less about what you call yourself and more about what you consistently create, even in tiny, almost invisible ways.

The INFJ Lens

As an INFJ, I tend to see patterns beneath the surface. I feel the pull to make sense of contradictions. And here’s the paradox I can’t escape: if we live only to die, then the only sane response is to live fully: to create, connect, and commit. We cannot control the ending. But we can control the narrative arcs in between: the projects we build, the people we touch, the ways we stitch our private reflections into something that quietly serves others.

Living as if It Matters

So perhaps the real purpose of life isn’t some grand cosmic assignment. Maybe it’s as simple and as difficult as this: to live in such a way that your days add up to something you’re not ashamed to leave behind.

We live to die, yes. But in between, we live to love, to learn, to grow, and to design a life that would feel tender to part with.

And that, to me, is enough.

Braces, Extractions, and the Burnt Toast Theory

/ Wen / Leave a comment

There’s a saying floating around the internet called the Burnt Toast Theory. It’s the idea that sometimes life throws us a little inconvenience (like burning our toast in the morning) not to punish us, but to delay or redirect us, keeping us away from something worse down the road. It’s a reminder that what feels like frustration in the moment might actually be protection in disguise.

Recently, I lived through my own “burnt toast moment” while preparing for braces.

Two Teeth, Two Stories

To make space for my braces, I needed two top molars removed. On the left, the extraction was quick and clean. I almost felt smug, it was over so fast.

The right side, though? That was a different story. The dentist had to stop three times. The tooth had a stubborn curved root, and he eventually had to shave it down bit by bit before pulling it out. I received four local anesthesia injections on my gum (left & right), and while I didn’t feel pain during the procedure, the aftereffects were obvious. My left side of the face and lip felt puffy, numb, and swollen. I left the clinic with a prescription for strong ibuprofen and a face that looked slightly uneven, like I’d been through a small battle.

Where the Burnt Toast Comes In

It would be easy to label this as “bad luck” or a dental horror story. But when I think about the Burnt Toast Theory, I see it differently. Maybe the difficult extraction and the swelling are just part of my body’s way of slowing me down, forcing me to rest, heal, and respect the process.

If everything had gone smoothly and I’d bounced out of the clinic carefree, I might have rushed back into my usual routines, not giving myself the recovery time I need. That struggle in the chair, the puffiness afterward, even the inconvenience of soft foods, all of that might be protecting me in ways I can’t see yet.

Beyond the Teeth

Getting braces isn’t just about aesthetics for me. It’s about addressing jaw pain and misalignment. That tough extraction became symbolic: sometimes the most stubborn problems in life require extra patience, multiple attempts, and even shaving down parts that no longer serve us.

The Burnt Toast Theory reminds me that detours and discomforts don’t necessarily mean failure. They might just be setting me up for something better aligned, something healthier, something necessary.

The Bigger Picture

So as I ice my swollen cheek and wait for the braces journey to truly begin, I hold onto this: the difficult parts aren’t roadblocks, they’re redirections. My burnt toast moment just happened to look like a curved tooth root and a puffy face.

And maybe, years from now, when my jaw feels better and my teeth align, I’ll look back and realize this was never just about braces, it was about trusting the timing of my own healing, burnt toast and all.

Everyday Reflections

In everyday life, we all face our own “extractions”. Moments that are messy, inconvenient, or painful to endure. Whether it’s a delay on the way to work, a project that doesn’t go as planned, or a relationship that ends sooner than expected, it often feels unfair in the moment. Yet, like burnt toast or a stubborn tooth, these interruptions may be protecting us, teaching us, or redirecting us toward something we can’t yet see.

The Burnt Toast Theory reminds us that life isn’t about everything unfolding perfectly. It’s about finding meaning in the imperfections. Sometimes the pause, the struggle, or the swelling afterward is exactly what we need to reset and realign.

And just like my braces journey, the uncomfortable steps we take today might very well be the foundation for a healthier, more balanced tomorrow.

The Utilisation Principle: What My Solo Hike to Mount Kinabalu Taught Me About Real Strength

/ Wen / Leave a comment

There’s a moment on every climb when your body screams to stop and your mind whispers that you’re not strong enough. I met that moment on Mount Kinabalu, alone, exhausted, and questioning why I even tried. I thought hiking solo would prove my resilience, that pushing through on my own would make me feel unstoppable. But somewhere on that steep, endless trail, I discovered something I didn’t expect.

Being alone, no matter how capable or determined I was, came with limits. Not just physical limits but emotional and mental ones. I had the willpower, but I didn’t have unlimited capacity or resources. And in that realisation, something shifted. I understood that the narrative of “doing it all alone” is not only unsustainable. It’s incomplete.

This is where the utilisation principle stopped being just a strategy and became survival wisdom. Stressors, challenges, and unexpected events will never disappear. Life doesn’t promise a smooth climb. It promises weather, detours, and steep drops. What changes everything is how well we utilise what’s within and around us to adapt and keep moving.

For so long, I’ve worn independence like armor. I believed that asking for help meant weakness, and that my worth was measured by how much I could endure without relying on anyone. But the mountain revealed a hard truth: strength isn’t about carrying everything alone. Strength is knowing when to let others in, when to lean on available resources, and when to rest rather than break.

As I descended the mountain, I realised how this mirrored the rest of my life. Stressful events and challenges are constants. They won’t vanish just because I’ve learned how to push harder. If I insist on taking everything on my shoulders, I’ll eventually collapse under the weight. Real wisdom is not about avoiding stress. It’s about turning it into momentum by using the tools, people, and opportunities around me.

This isn’t just about hiking. It’s about life and work.

In life, I’ve often believed that my worth was tied to my ability to “handle everything” on my own. But what if true resilience isn’t about isolating yourself in your strength, but building connections that magnify your capacity? Trusting others doesn’t make me weaker; it allows me to go further than I ever could alone.

In work, the same truth applies. You can be competent, efficient, and determined , but if you don’t utilise your team, your tools, and your environment, you’re operating at a fraction of your potential. The most successful leaders aren’t the ones who do everything themselves. They are the ones who orchestrate, delegate, and build systems that scale their impact.

I think back to that moment on the trail when the wind grew fierce, and I had to turn back near the summit. At first, it felt like failure. But now, I see it as a turning point. It wasn’t about reaching the top. It was about learning how to climb smarter, not harder. The mountain taught me that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop, reassess, and lean on what’s around you.

Stress will always exist. Mountains (literal and metaphorical) will always stand tall. The challenge is not to remove them but to navigate them with grace, strategy, and the courage to admit we can’t do it all alone.

Climbing Mount Kinabalu taught me more than endurance; it taught me perspective. True strength is not measured by how much weight you can carry alone but by how wisely you utilise the support, opportunities, and inner resources you already have. It’s about knowing when to fight, when to adapt, and when to trust that letting others walk beside you doesn’t make you less. It makes you unstoppable.

My First Solo Hike: Kinabalu, You’ve Changed Me

/ Wen / Leave a comment

Day 1, July 22: The Ascent Begins

My first solo hiking trip.

I remember standing at the Timpohon Gate, holding my hiking pole in one hand and nerves in the other. There was no turning back. Alone, I began my journey upwards to Panalaban Base Camp.

Surprisingly, the hike up wasn’t the monster I had imagined. My legs kept up. My breath found rhythm. The lush green and crisp air were comforting, and every step forward felt like proof that I had prepared, physically, at least. I reached Panalaban in about 5 hours and 10minst, feeling proud but quiet. There’s a stillness when you hike alone that no playlist or camera can fill. It’s just you, the weight on your back, and thoughts that grow louder the higher you go.

Reaching the base camp after about 5 hours of hiking.

Day 2, July 23, 2:00 AM: Into the Dark

The summit push.

I layered up in silence, clipped on my headlamp, and joined the line of hikers, strangers with the same ambition, marching into complete darkness. It was pitch black except for the narrow beam of my light. The wind whispered louder than anyone spoke.

And then, came the solitude.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like hiking alone in that kind of darkness. It’s not just your body you have to fight. It’s the voice in your head. Mine was relentless.

“You’re alone. You’re not strong enough. Why are you torturing yourself?”

And then came the physical toll.

As I was making my way up toward the summit, I vomited. Twice. Once, in the middle of pushing forward. Again, just before reaching Sayat-Sayat checkpoint. It wasn’t just exhaustion. It was altitude, nerves, fear, dehydration, all swirling into a kind of inner collapse.

Still, I pressed on. Step by trembling step. My hands froze. My breath shortened.

But I kept going…

Sayat-Sayat Checkpoint: The Turning Point

I made it to Sayat-Sayat, the final checkpoint before the summit. Just 1km more. Just a little more.

But the wind didn’t let up. It howled at around 17km/h, growing stronger, meaner. The rangers deemed it unsafe to continue. We had to turn back.

I stood there frozen, more from disbelief than cold.

So close. So unfinished.

Internally, I wanted to cry. I really did. After all the effort, training, and solitude… the summit slipped out of reach. I felt like I failed.

But then another voice rose inside me, quieter and kinder. “You showed up. You fought. The mountain didn’t defeat you. It just said, ‘Not today.’”

7:45 AM – The Descent

After resting and collecting my thoughts at Panalaban, I began my descent at 7:45 AM. My knees felt each downward step. My feet, ankles & quads screamed. But strangely, I kept going.

I even vomited once more on the way down. I had almost no solid food left in my body. Just some water and energy gels. And yet, my body still moved. It amazed me. My body had more fight in it than I ever thought possible.

And yet, something inside me had shifted. I wasn’t walking down with disappointment. I was walking down with a strange sense of respect. For the mountain. For myself. For what it means to fight alone and still keep walking.

At 1:10 PM, I finally reached Timpohon Gate. Exhausted. Weather-beaten. But alive. Changed.

What the Summit Couldn’t Teach Me

I didn’t get the colored certificate. I didn’t get the summit photo.

But I got something else.

I received a black and white certificate, a symbol that I hiked, I climbed, and I reached as far as the conditions would allow. I didn’t expect to receive anything, honestly. But when they handed it to me, I smiled. A soft, “you-did-your-best” kind of smile.

It was my first solo hike.

It was daring.

It was scary.

And it was healing.

The Summit Within: A Conversation With the Dark

The real summit wasn’t the top of Kinabalu.

It was that moment, in the pitch black, when I stood alone, scared, “sick” (probably AMS sets in), and still kept moving.

Not every hike is about reaching the top.

Some hikes are about finally hearing the voice inside your head, and choosing to believe the one that says:

“You’re enough. Even now. Even here.”

My Final Reflection

“Sometimes, the most powerful hikes are the ones where we don’t seek to reach the summit, but to heal our souls.”

This journey wasn’t just about Kinabalu. It was about learning how to sit with fear, with failure, and with the version of myself I usually keep hidden.

And that, to me, is the summit I’ll carry forever.

It seems so relatable to real life.

There are moments in life when we pour everything in like our time, energy, heart, only to fall just short of the “summit” we envisioned. We don’t always get the happy ending, the recognition, or the outcome we fought so hard for. But that doesn’t mean we failed.

Sometimes, the lesson is in the climb. In choosing to keep going when your body says stop. In learning to sit with discomfort, fear, and disappointment without turning away.

That Kinabalu trail reminded me: not all victories come with fanfare. Some arrive quietly, in the form of resilience, grace, and growth. Some show up as a single step forward, when everything in you wants to give up.

And maybe… that’s just life.

Not everything we want will be ours, no matter how hard we try.

The summit doesn’t always belong to the strongest or the most prepared. Sometimes, it’s simply not the right day. Not the right conditions. Not the right timing. But what we do in those moments, how we respond to the “almosts” and the “not-quites” so that’s what defines human.

And if we can learn to carry ourselves back down with courage, with humility, with heart, then maybe we’ve already climbed something far greater.

The Art of Deception: A Reflection After Watching ‘Con Mom’

/ Wen / Leave a comment

Today’s experience left me stunned, a blend of unexpected timing, eerie coincidence, and a sobering wake-up call.

I had a therapy session earlier, and something my therapist said struck me deeply: “The world is no longer what it used to be. Trust is rare, and people are not always what they seem.” At the time, I nodded, half-aware of the weight in her words. It wasn’t until later, when I found myself watching the Netflix documentary “Con Mom,” that her words echoed back, louder, clearer, and sharper.

Image generated by ChatGPT 4o

This documentary is not just about a scam. It’s about the level of psychological mastery, the emotional manipulation, the chilling way someone can read you, identify your voids, your soft spots, and weaponize them against you. I was horrified… not just by the scammer, but by how easy it is to fall into such a trap when your mind is not clear and your soul is in need.

What shook me most was the realization that what feels real… can be so fake. It’s almost poetic in a tragic way. When you’re missing something in your life, whether love, affirmation, purpose or stability, that emptiness becomes a signal. A signal only the wrong people know how to tune into. They listen, they learn, and then they strike, not with force, but with familiarity. And just like that, you’re pulled into a fantasy spun so well it feels like truth.

This isn’t just about being scammed out of money. It’s a deeper con. It’s the betrayal of your own intuition. It’s the hijack of your mind. And this documentary taught me something I won’t forget:

Never broadcast what you lack.

Because the moment someone knows your vulnerabilities, what you’re craving, what you’re aching for, they can wear the mask of what you’ve always wanted. They play therapist, friend, parent, lover, savior… but it’s all just a script. A performance designed to unlock your trust and steal your agency.

What this entire experience taught me, from therapy to the documentary, is the importance of self-awareness and self-protection. Not paranoia, not coldness, but wisdom. Know yourself enough so no one else can tell you who you are. Heal your own wounds so they don’t become maps for others to exploit.

The real scam is not just the con itself. It’s the illusion that connection can replace discernment.

And so I end this reflection not in fear, but in clarity:

Guard your mind, guard your heart, and don’t let your emptiness echo too loudly.

Because someone, somewhere, is always listening.