Meeting Schmeeting

A J2 Comments

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop, which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #1 from the list of prompts.

**********

The word “meeting” still makes my shoulders tense. It’s a trigger, no doubt rooted in my last full-time job during the height of COVID. Back then, physical distancing meant working from home, and meetings, always meetings, were piped through Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

There were meetings every single day. There was scrum – weekly department check-ins, where we’d take turns hosting and announcing our priorities like reluctant game show contestants. Thankfully, those were quick. But then came the sub-department meetings, the inter-department meetings, the meetings that could’ve been an email, and the ones that shouldn’t have existed at all.

But the meeting I despised most was the one held every other month. It involved top-level executives -CEOs and board members – and was always a logistical nightmare. Dates had to be negotiated through a maze of personal assistants, then locked in for the rest of the year. Draft agendas were circulated to every possible attendee, followed by decks (or “slides,” depending on who was pretending not to care), which then had to be reviewed and revised, a multitude of times.

When meeting day arrived, the choreography began. We had to ensure everyone could log in, troubleshoot connections, record the session, and, just in case, record the audio separately on our phones. These meetings often dragged on for three to four hours. I was usually the one sharing the deck, and always the one tasked with writing the transcript after. Every time I finished, I felt like I’d walked through fire though I never volunteered for the flames.

So this Halloween, if you’re aiming to scare me, skip the zombie or the masked killer with a chainsaw. Just lean in and whisper “meeting”, that’s enough to send a chill down my spine.

The Beauty of Handwritten Mail

A J2 Comments

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop, which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #5 from the list of prompts.

**********

I’ve always loved receiving handwritten mail. Years ago, letters from relatives, friends, and pen pals arrived regularly. These days, that quiet joy has faded, replaced by the speed and convenience of emails and digital messages.

When handwritten mail began to fade from my life, I signed up for Postcrossing.com, a site that connects people who still cherish the art of writing and receiving by hand. Through postcards, strangers become gentle correspondents. Since joining in 2014, I’ve received over 400 postcards from 52 countries. Each one is a small, tangible joy. On days when a handwritten postcard appears in my postbox, it feels like the world paused to say hello, those are some of my favourite days.

I know postage prices have gone up, but there’s still something magical about writing pages and pages by hand and sending them off to someone who matters. Let’s bring that back.

Writing Report Card XI

A JLeave a comment

After a slow couple of months of submissions, I stepped it up a little in August and sent out 5 little stories into the world. One found a home at 50-Word Stories, two were gently turned away, and two still linger at the threshold, awaiting their fate.

Not all of the stories I submitted in August fell in the microfiction category. I challenged myself to expand an older piece into something fuller – nearly 700 words! – titled The Glow That Shouldn’t Be. This more fleshed-out version went to the Malaysian Writers Society’s call for submissions for their upcoming anthology “The Lushness of the Sea: A Marine Conservation Anthology“. The closing date for submissions is at the end of the month, so it’ll be a while before I learn if this little story survives the rejection pile.

My 50-Word Story that was published was also selected as Story of the Week, so that made me chuffed for a little while:

Burnt Offerings

A JLeave a comment

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop, which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #3 from the list of prompts. This is my first attempt at a fiction prompt from the Writer’s Workshop weekly list of prompts, and I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out!

**********

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but your relatives just torched a Nokia 3310. Again.”

The other spirits cackled around the incense haze, their spectral forms flickering like bad reception. “What’s next, a fax machine?” one snorted, swirling through the smoke of roasted joss sticks and charred paper effigies.

Poor Uncle Lim drifted sulkily near the altar, clutching his pixelated flip phone. “It still works,” he muttered.

During the Hungry Ghost Festival, offerings were currency. Spirits flaunted their latest iPhone-shaped paper tributes, complete with QR codes to the afterlife’s cloud storage. Uncle Lim’s descendents, bless them, were stuck in 2003.

“Maybe they think I’m nostalgic,” he offered weakly.

“Maybe they think you’re cursed,” whispered a ghost with Bluetooth horns.

But when a child lit a paper cat with glowing eyes and whispered, “For Uncle Lim,” the teasing stopped. Even outdated tech couldn’t compete with love rendered in flame.

Fewer, Closer, Truer

A JLeave a comment

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #3 from the list of prompts.

**********

This meme about how my friendship circle has changed over the years is eerily accurate.

When I was younger, being popular and surrounded by friends felt effortless. Each school year brought new faces, new bonds, and the thrill of easy connection. But sometime around university, the rhythm changed. Making new friends became more deliberate, more layered. I found myself instinctively assessing people, wondering if they were “friend-worthy”, and I’m sure they did the same with me.

When I entered the workforce, making new friends wasn’t the goal, but a few colleagues quietly became long-time friends. At the same time, the friendships I’d carried through years of school began to fade – most were too busy to meet, some were overseas. It was sad, but inevitable.

Now, I find comfort in a smaller circle. Fewer friends, yes, but deeper conversations, quieter loyalty, and the kind of presence that doesn’t need constant noise to feel real.

Writing Report Card X

A J2 Comments

I’ve skipped a few months of writing updates, not because I forgot, but because I was barely crafting new stories during that time. I suspect I was still feeling the afterburn of posting daily throughout April; my creative well had run dry and needed time to refill.

July brought a shift, though. I felt more at ease with writing again, and so this latest edition of my writing report card covers my writing journey through May, June, and July.

Throughout those 3 months, I submitted my writing a mere four times and was published twice. The first was for Paragraph Planet, a microfiction inspired by a prompt from #vss365.

The other story found its home on the Friday Flash Fiction site –

Even during those quieter months, I made an effort to post microfiction in response to the #vss365 prompts on X. It wasn’t daily, but it was consistent enough to feel like I was flexing my writing muscle again, stirring it from dormancy.

My Adventurous Drive to Kroger

A J4 Comments

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #1 from the list of prompts.

**********

The first time I drove in the US was during a visit to my sister in Houston. About a week in, her family left for a pre-planned trip to Las Vegas. I told them to go ahead without me – I’d babysit the cat. After crossing half the world to get here, all I wanted was to stay put whenever I could.

Being left alone for a few days meant that if I needed anything, I would have to drive to the grocery store myself. “No, I’ll do it myself,” I told my sister when she suggested that I could call one of her friends to drive me. I didn’t want to depend on a virtual stranger just to get groceries.

It was Christmas-time and my sister had the pantry and fridge well-stocked, but I wanted to surprise her family with a special meal, so that’s when I convinced myself that I had to go to Kroger to get the ingredients I needed. So I climbed into the driver’s seat – wrong side at first – and repeated my brother-in-law’s reminder – Drive on the right side of the street, drive on the right side of the street and Make sure you do a full stop at cross-sections!

Then, my journey began.

Nervous? Of course. Who wouldn’t be, when every car that passed came from the opposite direction – and the driver was practically next to you? The first time it happened, I flinched. My instincts were still wired to Malaysian lanes; reflexes don’t migrate on demand.

Eventually, after the longest 15 minutes of my life, I arrived at Kroger, just 4 miles away. At that time, I hoped my return trip would be uneventful and it was, phew.

Thunder as a Soundtrack

A JLeave a comment

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #5 from the list of prompts.

**********

We’ve been enduring a horrid bout of haze lately, thick with smoke from multiple peatland and forest fires in Sumatra. With no rain for over a week and barely a whisper of wind, the air turned stagnant, heavy with the acrid scent of burning. It was an unpleasant, suffocating stretch. Then, earlier this week, I heard thunder. Within the hour, torrential rain swept through the city like a long-awaited exhale. The relief was immediate, even though the air initially smelled of wet smoke.

Aside from the brief reprieve it gave from the haze that day, I welcomed the rain wholeheartedly. A good thunderstorm has always stirred something in me, an electric kind of energy. The moment I hear thunder rumbling in the distance, I perk up, just as I did when I was a little girl. It’s always been that way.

When a thunderstorm rolls in, I tend to swing between bursts of productivity and quiet retreat. Sometimes I’ll potter around the house with thunder as my soundtrack, ticking off chores I’ve postponed for days. Other times, I’ll simply sit and read, letting the storm wrap around the world while I stay tucked inside its hush.

It’s strange how something so loud and wild can make everything inside me feel calm. Thunderstorms have always felt like home.

Applied Geometry for Pantry Organisation

A J2 Comments

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #4 from the list of prompts.

**********

Before diving into geometry and how it’s become a more frequent visitor in my daily life than I ever planned, I have a small confession: I hoard glass jars. Not in the urgent, survivalist way, but in the quietly optimistic belief that someday, somehow, they’d prove useful. Recently, they did. While reorganising my pantry, I stumbled upon a variety of loose dried herbs I’d forgotten about, all waiting for a home. The jars, patient as ever, were ready.

When I first studied geometry in my early teens, I often questioned its relevance wondering when, if ever, I’d need those abstract formulas outside the classroom. These days, I find myself drawing on that very knowledge to determine whether my mismatched collection of glass jars can house the tangled assortment of dried herbs I’ve amassed.

Sure, I could’ve just checked the volume printed neatly on the labels. But those were long ago peeled off and discarded with the confidence of someone who believed they’d remember. I once thought geometry would never follow me into adulthood, but here it is, measuring jars and mapping shelf symmetry like an old friend I finally understand.

Their Quiet Presence

A J2 Comments

This post is based on a prompt from the Writer’s Workshop which can be found here. This week, I chose prompt #5 from the list of prompts.

**********

This photo was taken on the 30th of May 2006 and will be 20 years old next year.

The shirtless man on the left, perched on a sawn-out log with what was likely a warm can of Stella Artois resting at his feet, was my grandfather, my Babai. Beside him sat Uncle Jethro, my mother’s cousin. Both are no longer with us, but in this photo, they’re quietly present, seated by the belimbing buluh tree, where their parangs hang in the midday sun. On the far right is the outdoor barbecue pit, one of Babai’s proudest constructions from his more agile days. Babai always kept a fire going to scare off the mosquitoes, so he said, but also as a kind of quiet ritual. Now, whenever I catch a scent of wood smoke, it feels like Babai stopped by to say hello.

I remember that day, just enough to wish I remembered more. Funny how some memories only become precious after they’ve started to fade