(Untitled)

Can’t think of any title for what I’m about to write so I guess I’m leaving it as it is for now.

I’ve been busy the past month and like the past many months, writing somehow isn’t my priority anymore. It is a sad thing as I feel that there might be a day in future where I wake up and don’t feel like writing anymore. There’s so much distractions in the world that I find it harder and harder to remain focus and do one thing at a time. As a result, I tend to prefer doing paired activities that allow me to “multi-task” (e.g. crocheting while watching netflix, crocheting while listening to audio books, surfing social media while watching local tv) as the desire to do 2 things at once gives me a hidden ‘achievement’ of productivity – which we all know is just a facade. In reality, when we multi-task, we just end up doing poorly in both activities. Can I blame it on social media which made my attention span so short? Or perhaps I can only blame myself for not being disciplined enough. The thing about writing/blogging is that I am not able to multi-task this with anything else, which makes this activity less attractive and as I type, I find myself having the urge to check my phone. I don’t appreciate my behaviour but somehow I just can’t control it ><

Updates with my life? I will be traveling quite a bit in the next few weeks which of course, I hope to write about my travels if I come across anything interesting. I really miss the days when I had the focus to write often and I believe that I blogged about every single trip, no matter how short it was. Now, I don’t see the value of my written content anymore as everyone is moving on to social media/video and I’m not really sure who still have the interest and attention span to read long-form content. So everything that I write now will probably be something that my future self will read when I’m much older, retired or perhaps when I’m bored (which is quite often).

[and yep, i can’t even focus beyond these 2 paragraphs, I’ve digressed twice to WhatsApp to reply to a chat notification from a friend..]

I actually did think of a topic for today’s blog entry cause there’s something I had been obsessed with this year, and the event kind of just happened over the weekend so for me to get it out of my mind (and stop thinking about it, cause I think it is taking too much of conscious mind), I guess it would be good to pen it down so hopefully I can get ‘over it’ for now. I think it was back in Feb, that I decided to watch the Netflix show ‘Drive to Survive’ – a somewhat ‘behind the scenes’ feature on the f1 drivers and season. It was a pretty long run – having 6 seasons so far – and the 7th being released next Feb/Mar. At that point in time, I thought that it would make ‘watching races’ fun if I do have a team/driver to support so I made myself pick a favourite driver after watching all 6 seasons, and before the race calendar started in 2024.

Looking back at the whatsapp conversation ‘search history’ I had with my friend, I had an inclination towards a particular driver from Season 3 where I said “I like humble and loyal drivers.” and somehow that “one pick” stayed with me throughout all seasons and now, in the 2024 race season that started in March, he is the driver that I support and I find myself watching every single match ‘live’ if it is of a reasonable timing. (I think I pretty much watched every single race live, apart from the US/Canada ones as it would be crazy hours in my timezone.) I have not been so dedicated to any sport in a really long time, apart from the seasonal world/euro cup that only lasts for 1.5 months. When I was younger, I used to watch soccer matches with my brother when we were all still living in the same house. For me to ‘commit’ to watching f1 races for the past 18 weekends (across 6 months) is quite an amazing consistent hobby for me to persist in.

The Singapore GP race happened over the weekend and I was lucky and free enough to be there for all 4 days – from the ‘pitlane experience’, to the ‘practice sessions’ and then the ‘qualifying race’, followed by the actual race which was a very happy affair as my favourite driver won by a huge lead. Things have been going crazy for him this year as their team suddenly had fast cars (they were mid-tier teams, hardly ever the top 3) and as of last week (before Singapore race), they overtook Red Bull and are currently number one on the constructors table. I’ve been telling the whole world (or perhaps everyone who asked, or anyone who showed any bit of interest in the race) how happy I was that my favourite won. On the contrast, casual fans lamented on how ‘boring’ the race had been as there wasn’t any ‘crash’ or safety car, unlike all other editions in Singapore. Singapore races are known to be very accident-prone and humans always enjoy drama more than anything else.

(Continuing this post few days later as I got distracted that night and didn’t continue the post.)

It has been a week since the Singapore GP race ended and I still find myself scrolling social media and enjoying the happy moments of the f1 race. I’m a little fearful of sinking in too deep with the f1 obsession and risk spending all my future vacation and money chasing the races across the years. I’m trying to be more conscious on my thoughts and actions but let’s try to practice some self control here. The thing about obsession/chasing celebrities and idols is something that I have been doing a large portion of my life, but it is something I hardly write about because I don’t know if I like that aspect of me. My first celebrity interest (to the best of my memory) was for this boyband called a1 and I think I was 10/11 at that time. I remember that I printed the lyrics of their songs out to sing in the school bus and I attempted to ‘practice’ their dance in front of the mirror with limited visual memory from watching their MV on MTV channel. Back then, there was no YouTube and the only way for me to watch their MV was to keep MTV channel on all the time and hope they get nominated for the top 10 charts. Back then, I listened to the local radio a lot and I think I even sent in a ‘fan mail’ to the radio station to ‘dedicate their song’ in an attempt to win something (not sure if it was an album or premium or perhaps nothing of much value) but right now, I’m not certain if I did send it out but I didn’t win anything for sure. Anyway, a1 disbanded shortly after their third album (which I bought their album with my saved allowance). Can’t recall the exact date but ‘punk rock’ was a thing back then and I fell in love with ‘I’m just a kid’ from the first time I saw their MV on MTV channel. My friend keeps insisting that I fell for the lead singer’s spikey hair but I would think that I really love their music. I recall buying magazines just to read their interviews and tear out the pages as ‘posters’ to keep in my box files for school. Their music kind of resonated with me back in those days with hits like ‘Welcome to my life’ and ‘Untitled’ and ‘Perfect’ and they did gain mainstream popularity too. I was very proud to be an ‘early listener’ of their music. Guess what – these 2 groups that I supported in my younger days are still active and performing. In fact, I’ve seen a1 3 times since then (after I can finally afford to pay for concert tickets) and Simple Plan once – all in Singapore.

After this phase, I was into the ‘mandopop’ era and the first group that I took notice of was ‘5566’, who kind of debuted from the popularity of a basketball drama called ‘My MVP Valentine’. It wasn’t really an obsession but I did list one guy ‘xu meng zhe’ as my favourite. Then came the group ‘farenheit’ that captured the hearts of many teenage girls. Taiwan was pretty creative with doing the ‘debut a group’ together with a ‘ou xiang ju’ idol drama concept and even though most of them can’t exactly sing or act, they still gain popularity for their good looks. The two groups didn’t last very long and the later even quarelled and things got into a pretty ugly state I heard – to the point where reunion is impossible. It’s funny because whenever I meet people who are ‘fan girls’ these days, I always ask them if they were at the crazy IMM autograph session for ‘Fahrenheit’ which had been a messy chaos. So far, 90% of the people I asked (who are current fan girls) were there at that nightmare venue – but we just didn’t know each other back then! As a student with limited allowances, there was nothing much we could do to ‘support’ our favourite celebrities/idols apart from buying magazines with their features and buying random printed photos from this store called ‘Comics Connection’. Looking back now, it feels funny on how we used to spend so much time in the shop trying to flip through the photos to find our ‘bias’. Today, with the possession of internet and smart phones, a photo is just a search away. I recall even buying some poker cards with idol’s faces for my friend for her birthday. I wonder where the deck of cards is right now.. In my ‘mandopop’ era, I also enjoyed Jay Chou’s music a lot. His concert was the first one that I attended from the earnings of my part-time during the school holidays. While friends were playing and enjoying the holidays, I was working at a japanese restaurant earning $5/hour and then I moved on to an ice cream shop which paid $6/hour. To be honest, I really enjoyed earning money more than studying.. I’m not sure which year did I start but I recall buying Jay Chou albums – even to the extent of doing the pre-order nonsense to get the extra freebies – for many years, until I starting to not enjoy his song anymore. His songs used to be great but it just got weird in the later years and I decided to stop buying and.. gosh with spotify – I don’t even need to buy anything now. Some time later, I got to know of this singer from a competition/elimination show – yoga lin – and that was when things started to get more serious – because I was no longer studying and had all the time in the world. At that point in time, I had a 8 months gap before my university started which meant that I had a lot of free time which resulted in me spending nights on a fan forum. It was fun but tiring at the same time as conversing in traditional chinese was really difficult for me. It was from that forum where I got to know some fans from taiwan, malaysia, hong kong and some of which we still kind of keep in touch on social media. In fact, one of my closer friends today was from this fan forum and we have gone beyond meeting just for celebrities/idols. I said it was dangerous and it saw me flying to Taiwan (my first trip overseas without my parents/school) to watch a music award show as a ‘by the way’ activity kind of a trip. For the first time, I had to match faces to their online nicknames and thankfully I was somewhat extroverted back then, so it didn’t feel that awkward. Across the years, I did meet up with another HK girl (also from the fan forum) and we kept in close contact a few years thereafter but life caught up and now we are just ‘following’ each other social accounts, with no more conversations. Such is life, we all move on. Recently, I chanced upon some photos of some fan-friends attending each other’s wedding in taiwan where 2 girls from malaysia flew down to attend. It’s amazing how such friendships can last for such a long time (at least 10 to 15 years I believe) and grow beyond the same interest of a particular idol/celebrity. Aww. Well, similar to most my my idols/favs, yoga is still active in the music industry and he was just in Singapore last month for a concert which I attended with my fellow Singapore fan/friends. It was nice to reminisce his growth over the years and seeing him move on with the life stages and he is now married with two kids, but still a splendid performer on stage. His concert also won some design award which was really a feast to the eyes with all those artistic elements.

So now, I am currently in the ‘Kpop’ phase which started off when I discovered Kangta back in 2007 when he did a collab with Vanness (from the OG f4). It was funny because for the first time ever, I’m actually listening to songs with lyrics I don’t understand but it was also then, when I realise that music has no boundaries. Even if I don’t understand the lyrics, I can still feel the song from the emotions of the voice. It was quite sad as by the time I discovered his existence, he was about to go for the mandatory 2-year army. With the existence of YouTube, I went down the rabbit hole and watched his videos from like 10 years ago and started listening to the really OG kpop. And then.. the next rabbit hole ‘opened up’ after I accompanied my friend to the airport to see an idol group that she was interested in back then, SHINee. At that point in time when I accompanied her to the airport, I did not know who they were or what songs they sang, just that they were from the same company as ‘Kangta’. Fast forward to many years later (like 14 years), I’m still supporting them and their activities till today as they are still very active in the industry. Throughout the years, I have attempted to learn korean but somehow the level of my korean knowledge cannot progress beyond ‘beginner’. However, technology has improved so much such that content gets transcribed and translated at a much faster pace and they even hire translators to translate on live performances (at times) plus twitter (aka X) also have a lot of fan translators that are so quick to translate any sort of content to english, for the benefit of the non-korean speaking/listening ones like myself. The industry has really progressed so much and the idols have so much more work on their plate. A singer does not just sing they have to attend variety shows, radio shows to publicize their new music. They also appear as guests on popular youtube channels as an attempt to gain as much exposure as possible plus they need to do ‘meet and greet’, attend festivals and events plus do magazine photoshoots, have their own fan meets and concerts and even fan interaction via having an active social media account, together with that messaging channel with fans (bubble; fromm). It is so tiring for me to even try to recall the numerous things they have to do and all these are on top of their usual singing/vocal/dance lessons and practices/rehearsals plus beauty/fitness regime. It is so tough being a singer/celebrity now – the world just expects a lot from you and any mistake/scandal can just wipe out your past successes entirely. I just sincerely hope that they remain mentally and physically healthy.

Now that I’m done with the ‘music’ category, I do have a favourite soccer player too – fernando torres. Even though my favourite football cub (since historic times) is Manchester United, I didn’t have a favourite player. I mean Beckham was good but the whole world loves him and I don’t like being mainstream so nope, he was not my fav. Fernando Torres caught my attention during the Euro Cup 2004 while playing for Spain and sadly, he didn’t end up playing in my fav EPL club so the best weekend I have would be Man Utd winning the game (against Liverpool), but Torres scoring some goals (so he gets his success from being a forward). Unfortunately, his ‘form’ did not last as he grew older and he did fall behind from his fellow stars of his time (e.g. CR7 but this guy is one in a billion), and retired a lot earlier. I still follow his social media but given that his main language is Spanish, I don’t really catch up with much of his updates except that he has opened a gym or fitness or something along that line. And now, with this crazy f1 obsession that I am having, Lando Norris is officially my favourite f1 driver I guess. I don’t know how long this phase will last and will it ever end but I guess it is always nice to chase over the next biggest and younger star =/ I am so close to buying his merch but thankfully orange is a colour that I don’t exactly like as clothes so there’s still a huge barrier against me making the first purchase. I don’t know why I wrote an entire post just to conclude that I now have a favourite f1 driver. Can’t exactly figure out what goes on in my brain sometimes. There was an interview that he did recently that really made me quite emotional for a moment as to how tough life is for such high profile people. He had his first podium win in Miami this year where he was so super happy. I mean coming in number one is of course a happy thing. And then, he had his second win and when the interviewers ask him how would he rate his happiness he said definitely not as happy as the first time as the second win only meant additional stress as he was now in good chances to overtake Max and win his first championship title. He had been mid-tier his entire five years and suddenly now his car was fast enough to put him in a position of chasing to be no.1 which also means that he is going to have to win every single race (8 more) till the end, of which Max needs to come in lower than second. I don’t know how that is going to change him because the stress is real. Having learnt more about the competion from the netflix show, every positioning meant money for the team and you’re not just thinking of yourself, but for the entire hundreds of people working for your car. It’s crazy to think that despite all that high ticket prices you pay to watch the race, f1 still depends on a lot of sponsorship money to keep the wheels moving. It is really one of (or perhaps the most) expensive sport in the world and the stakes are.. really high.

That’s all I have to share tonight and I’m sorry if you had to read through a topic which might not be of interest for you. Thanks for staying till the end and I hope you can keep warm wherever you are in the world. Happy Sunday ^^