What to do in Bugis?

Food and art. Two things we can find around Bugis area. The famous street in Bugis is Haji lane, located at the side of North Bridge Road. If we go to the other side of the road, which is along Victoria Street, we'll pamper our eyes with street art and our tummy with good food.

Walking few hundreds meter from Bugis MRT (exit A), you'll see a grafitti of a girl and a cat.

If we come here before 12pm, especially on the weekend, we'll see people queueing on the right side in front of a cupcake shop named Fluff Bakery. Offering 6 different cupcake flavours @ S$4 such as Nutella Red velvet, Salted Caramel, Explosive Peanut Butter & Grape Yakult Jelly, etc. Less than two hours after opening the shop for the day, it's all sold out! I guess it's worth a try!

Few shops ahead, there is another cake shop which has a very interesting design..

Back to the main road, walk down for about 100 meters, there is Symmetry (café by day, restaurant bar by night) located at jalan Kubor. Perfect place for brunch on Saturday! 

After making the tummy happy, walk about 100 meters down the main road. You'll see a very interesting street art of two kids sitting in the trolley. Childhood memory!

Standing in front of this art, look up...

And look to the left...

Going here without peeking Haji Lane? No. 

Another 9 posts that will get you going again

1. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover. — Mark Twain

2. You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly. — 

7. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. — Mark Twain

4. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. — Joshua J. Marine 

5. Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. — Jamie Paolinetti

6. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. — Farrah Gray

7. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. — Glorian Steinem

8.  Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along. — Rae Smith

9. When something bad happens, you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you or let it strengthen you. — Unknown 

What Should You Expect From Life?

Nothing. 

Don’t expect anything from life. Life is that time where you are free to roam, where you are your senses, and where your senses gather everything that is happening around you. We are born feeling and sensing things, even if we won’t remember them later on. We weren’t brought to life knowing we were going to live, it is the very essence of that moment where we are out and existing, which is the moment of bliss and pure enjoyment, because we do not worry for what hasn’t happened yet, and therefore we won’t be let down for having expectations.

Living in the moment is the best thing you can do; not expecting to know what the future holds is part of what living is. If you dwell on the foreshadowing of what your life will become, you are not living, you are rather, existing. You are worrying about the flood that the seemingly sunny sky has yet not given to you, and possibly won’t for months, or never at all. Expecting things from life means you have to live in the future and lose your present because of your past’s thirst for the unknown.

Life is not something to expect something from, sometimes it will just throw at you the least expected thing and you will somehow need to adjust yourself to it. It will be harder to adjust to it if you had expectations of what it would be. Whereas, with no expectations, you don’t worry about it, therefore you can adjust easier and faster. The expectancy of the future can sometimes mislead you into thinking that everything has to be controlled and orderly arranged, but how will you manage if you were given something you did not expect and then you are let down?

That is why I say life is not something to expect something from. Sometimes the most powerful and wonderful things come from spontaneous expressions such as colors, smells, experiences, sounds, textures, etc. that we know nothing of. Life is a beautiful mystery packed with emotions, and there is no fun in it if you spend it wondering what’s next. 

(ThoughtCatalog)

Quotes That Will Make You Rethink About Life

1. “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” ― Gilda Radner

2. “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” ― John Lennon

3. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” ― George Bernard Shaw

4. “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” ― Arundhati Roy

5. “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” ― Jim Morrison

6. “The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.” ― Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

7. “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…” ―John Lennon

8. “Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.” ― Jon Krakauer

9. “The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.” ― Laura Ingalls Wilder

10. “When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” ―Paulo Coelho

11. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.―Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

12. “Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?” ― Mary Manin Morrissey

13. “Pain is a pesky part of being human, I’ve learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.” ― C. JoyBell C.

14. “Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it…” ― Wilferd Peterson

15. “If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.” ― Mitsugi Saotome

16. “Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” ― Andrew Murray 

Friendship

Found this quote on social media,"If a friendship lasts longer than 7 years, psychologists say it will last a lifetime." I don't know if it's true or false but just believe it."

As we grow up, we realise it is less important to have lots of friends, and more important to have real ones. Those real friends who will always stand by us in good times and bad, to love and to cherish each other (Okay it may sound like a wedding vow but yeah it is). Friendship. The best ship ever. It can bring you through everything, it can calm the storm in your life.

Why do we need at least one real friend? Life's gonna kick you in the butt. That's what it does. But if you gotta put up with this crap, the least you can expect is that your friend will stand by you. I mean, for crying in the night, what else are friends for but to help you make right what isn't right in life?

A friend who understands your tears is much more valuable than a lot of friends who only know your smile! :)

Catching Up

Something that I've been doing recently. It's almost like… I'm a digital designer by day and a manual DIY-er by night. 

Before I die I want to...

Someone said, "Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life." And I can't agree more with it.

Sometimes, we are too busy with our work chased by deadlines and forget how to balancing our life.

There is this project by Candy Chang (www.beforeidie.cc) which can make everyone stop and think about their life. This project started from her thought after she lost her loved one.

"It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget what really matters to you. After I lost someone I loved very much, I thought about death a lot. This helped clarify my life, the people I want to be with, and the things I want to do, but I struggled to maintain perspective. I wondered if other people felt the same way. So with help from old and new friends, I painted the side of an abandoned house in my neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and stenciled it with a grid of the sentence “Before I die I want to _______.” Anyone walking by could pick up a piece of chalk, reflect on their lives, and share their personal aspirations in public space."

Reading the story behind this project, my busy mind stops for a while and think. What do I want to do especially when life is (considered) short?

Life isn't only about having fun and doing unproductive things.
Life isn't what it is but how we create it.
Life isn't always about ourselves.
Life is about others too, how impactful we are and be a blessing for them.

Just my 2 cents ;)