Elizabeth Tai

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  • Pushback against digital gardens?

    Pushback against digital gardens?

    One of the most unexpected things I’ve seen is the pushback I’ve seen against digital gardens.

    I wrote the blog post Digital gardens vs blogging: What’s the difference?. The intention was to demonstrate how these two ways of being on the Internet differ from each other.

    My interpretation, by the way, is not something I came up with but is echoed by some digital garden practitioners such as Joel Hooks: Stop Giving af and Start Writing More.

    I suspect part of the reason I resonated with his article (especially his resentment and irritation about what blogging has become), was because I was a blogger since the dawn of the Internet. I used to build my blog using raw HTML, back when blog wasn’t even called a blog.

    Over the years, I’ve seen blogging morph from online diaries and eccentric websites sharing quirky things to well-polished, SEO-optimised articles promoting brands, businesses, a person’s skills and knowledge via templatised web structures.

    Yes, granted that this is a generalisation of how people blog, but just search for the term “blog” or “blogging” and you’ll get recommendations on how to be a top blog on the search engines, SEO tactics, endless listicles and more.

    Leaving aside those who refuse to comply to these demands*, blogging has been dominated by SEO and marketing forces for a long time.

    (If you belong to this category, really, this article is not speaking about you (nor am I speaking about those who do), I’m not calling you inferior for writing content chronologically! I mean, see how dumb that sentence reads?)

    Besides this article, I remember sharing Maggie Appleton’s digital garden illustration in The Dark Forest and Generative AI, and got a flurry of angry posts from it too.

    People were fixated with her interpretation of the Dark Web. (I suppose describing it as a place of “decomposing morals” didn’t help. It’s nice to know that even the great Digital Gardner Maggie Appleton is not immune to pushback.)

    I can’t help but chuckle about this as I feel what I’m seeing is the human instinct of being tribal and taking sides, happening here. We are all cave men in the end, driven by the instinct to protect our tribes.

    I believe people can be very attached to their way of doing things, whether it be eating, living, commuting, blogging, you name it.

    However, I’d like to emphasise that this post is not to attack the people giving me pushback about digital gardens. The ego may be somewhat dented (mostly because I’m annoyed that my writing wasn’t clear enough but caused misunderstanding), but this is valuable feedback. This is why I wrote the post!

    The feedback made me wonder if there’s anyway to unruffle feathers and re-clarify the concept of digital gardens so that people may be less adversarial towards it.

    It’s not an us vs them issue, truly

    I was perhaps too quick to say that blogging is a promotional activity, though if you’ve worked in media for as long as I have (literally from the dawn of the Internet age), it sure seems like it, especially with the emphasis of using the medium to “build your brand”. Yes, I admit that I hate what blogging has become, saying:

    Marketing has assimilated blogging and I hate it.

    I didn’t think of adding a disclaimer to my article saying that “this is my opinion, and this doesn’t apply to all blogs” was kinda understood, but next time I’ll be sure to add it for clarity!

    I concede that my article’s title, “Digital Gardens vs Blogging”, didn’t help matters, but seriously, I had zero intentions to pit blogging and digital gardening against each other.

    For one, I am still blogging side by side with my digital garden! The category, Journal, is literally my blog, which I still blog about my life, chronologically. And occasionally, I commit the sin of building my personal brand with it!

    My website is actually a hybrid – a digital garden and a blog.

    And that’s the best thing about digital gardening is that your website can look however you want.

    It’s not about which one is better

    At the end of the day the difference between bloggers and digital gardeners is not whether one is better than the other, but in the way they organise and write their content.

    That’s it.

    Let me repeat for clarity:

    From what I understand from reading the many, many articles about digital gardens, the difference between blogging and digital gardening lies in the way content is:

    • organised. Blogs = chronological, digital gardens = not chronological
    • written. Blogs = usually polished and SEO optimised, so that it can be promoted via social media channels. Digital gardens = unfinished copy. The gardener may return to the post/page to update it with more information later.
    • niched. Not necessarily true for all blogs, of course, but it is “common wisdom” that if you want to get more eyeballs, niching is the way to go for blogs. Digital gardeners usually do not write about one topic nor do they angst about niching. Usually.
    • fleeting or evergreen. Blogs, due to their chronological structure is fleeting. Old posts are often buried. Digital gardens are structured in such a way that each post can be evergreen, resurfaced again and again. Often, digital gardens are organised by categories where people can “fall into rabbit holes” where one post can lead to links to many other posts.

    I think part of the problem is that there’s a lot of mystery around the term “digital gardens”. At least for now. So, it’s being promoted as some revolutionary, new-fangled thing.

    Honestly, it isn’t that mysterious or even new. One way to think about digital gardens is that it is simply an individual’s curated wiki on the Internet, a knowledge base.

    Both digital gardens and blogging have the same objective, sharing knowledge.

    So, in conclusion:

    Digital gardening is just a different way to present your thoughts on the Internet.

    You can blog and digital garden at the same time and in the same space like I do.

    Digital gardens give you the freedom to break free of preconceived notions or “best practices” on how to write on the Internet.

    Digital gardens can be freeing. For one, it was one of the main reasons why I am writing more on my website now. Because I realise I don’t have to dance to the algorithm anymore just to be read.

    I write in my digital garden because I want to learn in public.

    I write in my digital garden because I want to clarify my ideas and what I’ve learned. By writing and teaching others about my ideas and learnings, I get to solidify what I’ve learned in my brain.

    The feedback I get, even negative ones, help me reshape my ideas.

    In the end, I write in my digital garden because it makes me happy.

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  • Digital gardens vs blogging: What’s the difference?

    Digital gardens vs blogging: What’s the difference?

    If people want to know what’s the difference between digital gardening and blogging, I’ll just direct them to this quote from the blog post, Stop giving af and start writing more by Joel Hooks:

    The idea of a “blog” needs to get over itself. Everybody is treating writing as a “content marketing strategy” and using it to “build a personal brand” which leads to the fundamental flawed idea that everything you post has to be polished to perfection and ready to be consumed.

    I started blogging in the early 2000s, back when “weblogs” are not about marketing thyself but about recording your life, your quirky thoughts and weird hobbies.

    Now, marketing has invaded blogging, that’s all you see, and I hated what blogging has become.

    Last year or so, I discovered digital gardening, and it’s like having a light bulb go off in a path shrouded by mists. I’ve had this idea to write on the web this way, but I just didn’t know what to call it. Once I got a solidified concept, I grew extremely excited!

    I wrote being an imperfect digital gardener, about daring to put out grammar-addled, spelling-imperfect, half formed thoughts into the void of the Internet. I wrote about the joy of putting the idea “branding myself” to rest, and finally writing without dancing to the algorithm, not caring about SEO-fying my posts, just sharing my wild garden of thoughts and ideas to the world.

    So, my thoughts about how digital gardens differ from blogs:

    Blogs are chronological, often are “niched’ to align to a polished image you want to present to the world, and is about marketing the personality behind the writer. Blogs are tools to show you in the best light; a personal branding tool. Blog posts the most polished and complete version of your thoughts you want to show to the world. The posts that give people the best impression of you. Yet, they are ephemeral and rush past you like leaves on a fast-flowing river. Older posts are often buried and ignored.

    Digital gardens are not chronological, the topics are often not confined to a topic but are a wild mix. The real star of the show is the knowledge being tended in the digital garden. Personal branding is more of an afterglow of the digital garden, a side effect rather than the sole purpose of a digital garden. Digital garden content are often incomplete, works-in-progress, not always polished or even well-written. However, they are like flowers in a garden, inviting you to linger and explore more through a series of posts, links and connections. Older content are resurfaced in newer essays and linked to newer ones. As a result, one can easily get lost in a rabbit hole of thoughts, exploring curiosities in unexpected ways.

    Where to build your garden

    Just recently, I decided to do the wild thing (at least by digital garden standards) to build my digital garden on wordpress.com. Many digital gardeners like to build theirs on static websites because they want to be free of the chronological format imposed by most blog content management systems, but I’m of the ilk who prefer not to spend endless hours building CMSes when there’s a perfectly good one I’m using.

    But will there be a chance I move this website to a static website one day? I have no doubt, but the enterprise will be a humongous one.

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  • My new productivity workflow using email and Trello

    When it comes to solving productivity problems, I think we go around it the wrong way. We tend to think that an app or a software can help us solve the problem.

    What you need to do to solve your productivity conundrums is to really have clarity what’s stopping you from being productive (diagnosing the problem) and finding a tool that will solve it.

    Recently, my workflows at work changed, and my productivity stumbled. This is the method I used to solve it:

    Diagnosing the problem and the solution I need

    Problem 1: Each time I use the browser-based Jira, I get cognitively drained.

    • I seem to forget why I’m at a tab, especially when I switch tabs.
    • I have too many tabs open and finding the right tab seem to drain me. With each wrong tab opened, I get more muddled.

    Solution: While I can’t completely avoid using browser-based apps, I can reduce the amount of context switching I do. Part of my problem is that I have to transfer information from Jira apps to the Work Log document I created. There’s a lot of context switching in that regard. So, what I did was to reduce this manual work by using special add ons and building a system that avoids too much manual transfer of information.

    Problem 2: When the week starts, I have a hard time picking off what’s happening with my projects. That’s because the information is scattered in many Jira tickets.

    • Getting that information is cumbersome; I have to open a ticket individually to understand the context and last update. It’s rich with information.
    • I created a “work log” document where I detail what’s happening with each project so I can quickly get caught up. It has been very helpful, but it has been getting difficult to update the page as it is now getting too bogged down and buggy due to the amount of information on it. I wish we could use a simple text file instead!

    Solution: I created a Trello board (for myself). While the team continues to use the work log, and I continue to update it, having this Trello board just releases a lot of my stress as I can quickly grasp at a glance the status of each ticket. Somehow, reading a very long document with a lot of text was stressing me out, and I came to dread updating the page due to its bugginess. (I’d type something, and sometimes the page will zip back to the top and I have to restart all over again. Sometimes my cursor would disappear on the screen or the page will freeze. Such a pain!)

    Problem 3: I get inputs from far too many sources: chat, email, meetings, casual conversations. Instead of having a dozen inboxes, I need a good way to funnel them into one inbox.

    Solution: I have turned my work email into the single source inbox. I have also added the Gmail to Trello add-on so that I can turn emails into cards.

    The good thing about Gmail is that it also contains my chat messages, so I really don’t need to context switch so much. I can also send chat items to chat to turn into Trello cards. Although it’s not perfect, it’s helping me a lot and has reduced the amount of context switching I do.

    Methodology

    Here’s how my productivity workflow looks like right now.

    Daily

    1. Morning: Go to my email inbox. Create cards from emails that have tasks for me.
    2. In Trello, add labels to tasks and shift them to the correct column.
    3. 5. Use a notebook to jot down any random task that comes my way.
    4. At the end of each day, check if there are any tasks in notebook or email inbox. Turn them into Trello cards if any.

    Weekly

    1. In Trello, write the tasks in the “what to do this week” column in the notebook at the start of each week.
    2. In the notebook, create a tentative weekly plan and assign the tasks to specific days.
    3. Adjust the plan as the week progresses.

  • Tsunami ghosts, anti-LinkedIn post, digital gardens, Obsidian discoveries, NPCs and more

    A roundup of interesting content I stumbled on recently.

    1. A digital garden on WordPress
    2. Ghostly encounters: The legacy of the 2011 tsunami in Japan
    3. The anti-Linkedin post
    4. If most content on the Internet is cruft, how do we find the original stuff?
    5. Cool software discoveries
    6. Magpies building a nest in a tiny balcony in China
    7. Think before you click.
    8. “My neck hurts”

    A digital garden on WordPress

    Notes on making a digital garden on WordPress

    A lot of times the Digital Garden scene seems dominated by developers. People who exist in in-between places like me feel a bit frustrated that the tools used – the static site generators – are so unfriendly to non-developer minds.

    So, I’m glad that there are some folks who are building digital gardens on WordPress.

    I have plans to use Obsidian and a plugin – probably either Quartz, Eveloppe or digital garden – to generate my static site one day, but this is a good workaround while I plan the possibly very complicated transition.

    I did think about using Astro but the mechanics of it seem so frightening.

    Ghostly encounters: The legacy of the 2011 tsunami in Japan

    Do I believe in ghosts? I mean, I lived in a haunted house, so…

    The anti-Linkedin post

    I’m happy to announce my retirement from UX.

    Wonder if this guy wants more publicity, but I really appreciated his very, very honest LinkedIn post about retiring from UX. Had a look at his profile, and it looks like he made the transition from teaching to UX, not the easiest transition to make. And definitely not easy to leave due to the sunk cost-ness of it all.

    If most content on the Internet is cruft, how do we find the original stuff?

    “We’re about to drown in a sea of pedestrian takes. An explosion of noise that will drown out any signal. Goodbye to finding original human insights or authentic connections under that pile of cruft.” – The dark forest and generative AI

    Cool software discoveries

    • Obsidian’s digital garden community plug-in – publish your vault online free: https://dg-docs.ole.dev/
    • Obsidian’s Mastodon threading plug-in – Share posts from your Obsidian vault to Mastodon.

    Magpies building a nest in a tiny balcony in China

    Video on xiaohongshu has been taken down, sadly, but it’s here on my Mastodon post.

    If you’re wondering why the balcony is so tiny, if they’re anything like Malaysia (and I find many apartments in China very much like ours), it’s meant for the air conditioning compressor:

    Think before you click.

    “The point: there is so much content on the internet that makes us feel crappy without offering any actual information that can help you make the world a better place. When I’m taking good care of myself, I’m actively working to ignore such garbage.” – Justin Pot in his article, Think before you click

    How I approach Malaysian political news, really. Heck, even world news these days.

    “My neck hurts”

    Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that while our life may suck, it may not suck as badly as an NPC’s.

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  • The return of the sunbirds

    🌱 If you’re following my website via RSS or subscription, please note that this is just a “seedling” or a post where it is a work in progress. Please return to this page to see updates 🙂

    11 March, 2025


    The sunbirds are back building a new nest (far right vine). I hope it will be completed soon! 🥰

    14 March 2025
    So, each time a Sunbird couple’s chick grows up, they leave the nest behind. The last couple left a fully intact nest but over time the vine it was built on withered.

    One day, it fell. I was a little superstitious and it felt like a shame to get rid of it, so I kept it. (Don’t laugh.) Then, a new sunbird couple started building a new nest on a different vine. I thought to myself: Won’t it be nice if they didn’t have to fly so far to gather their supplies and reuse the old nest?

    So, I placed the next on the branches of a shrub near the nest. I noticed that they liked to perch there from time to time, so I hoped that they would notice the old nest and reuse it.

    It worked! They started picking apart the old nest and using the materials to build the new nest. The old nest is now half its size. Nature at work is so beautiful!

    15 March, 2025

    Sunbirds recycle 😆🤭

    I placed an old nest on the shrub and now its just taking it apart to build a new nest. Aren’t they clever?

    Feeling semi proud that I got the idea of placing the old nest in the bush where the current sunbirds couple likes to hang out. Seeing them peck at the old nest and fly the bits that they have from it to the new nest is really satisfying 😆

    Previous visitations

    Their first visitation in 2022: When sunbirds built a nest in my balcony

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  • The COVID-19 lockdown diaries

    This is a guide of my writings on Covid-19.

    I chronicled so much of my life on Twitter during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. I’m currently trying to “rescue” the diaries from my Twitter archive.

    Here are some long-form older essays I wrote about it:

    Other things I wrote about this topic

  • Personal Finance

    Tag: finance

    When I started writing about money, I was overwhelmed, unprepared, and intimidated by the idea of managing it well. Since I think by writing, writing about personal finance was a natural thing to do.

    Over the years, I’ve learned how to build my savings, tackle debt, and strategizing for long-term wealth.

    However, due to the chronological nature of the old-fashioned blog, my personal finance got “lost” in the past.

    This “guide” serves as a map to all the content I’ve written about finance over the years. By the way, this is from a Malaysian perspective, so some of the terms may be unfamiliar to you if you’re not from Malaysia.

    Table of contents

    1. Debt management
    2. Living with money
    3. Investing
    4. Recommended content

    Debt management

    Living with money

    Investing

    Recommended content

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  • My 15-minute city lifestyle in Malaysia!

    My 15-minute city lifestyle in Malaysia!

    When I first told my friends that I wanted to rent an affordable apartment near nature, public transportation, and shops, they said I was dreaming and it couldn’t be done. Most apartments near nature have luxury price tags, and they’re often not near amenities like public transport and shops. (Because, apparently, the monied sniff at such plebeian things near them, apparently.) And apartments that are near town centres are often not near nature.

    But I was determined to find a place that was cheap, walkable, and surrounded by greenery. At first, friends directed me to gorgeous apartments with stunning hill views, but they were far from city centers and completely unwalkable. (Meaning not walking distance to shops.)

    While those places were beautiful, I knew I’d be unhappy there because I love walking. I love being able to do everything I need on foot. Being isolated in a car-dependent area would make me miserable—and I know this from experience.

    A few years ago, I lived in a breathtaking place in Penang. It was near the beach, on top of a hill, with views of the ocean and lush greenery behind me. Monkeys would sometimes visit in the mornings. It was idyllic—at first. But I quickly realized how isolated I was. Without a car, I relied on taxis, but the area was so remote and traffic-prone that getting a ride was often impossible. The nearest shops were 4-5 kilometers away, and I couldn’t walk anywhere. I felt trapped, unable to do things independently. Sure, some people might say, “Just get a car,” but I’m someone who values walkability. I don’t want to depend on a gas-guzzling machine. I knew I’d be happier in a place where I could walk to everything.

    This philosophy was reinforced when I read Happy Cities by Charles Montgomery. The book highlights how people are happier in places with easy access to community. You could live in a fancy skyscraper, but if you’re isolated and unable to connect with others, you’ll feel lonely. For me, the key to happiness is living in a walkable city where it’s easy to connect with people and access amenities.

    That’s why I’m so passionate about my current lifestyle. I live in a walkable part of town, and it’s transformed my life. I’ve lost weight, gotten healthier, and my friends say I have a glow in my cheeks. I’m happier than ever, and yes, I managed to find an affordable apartment. By U.S. standards, I pay just $300 a month for a three-bedroom place. Even by Malaysian standards, it’s a steal at 1,200 Ringgit. I rented it unfurnished during the pandemic when prices were low, and though it was run-down at first, I refurbished it myself. Now, it’s my little oasis.

    My apartment is on a hill, surrounded by nature, with two balconies. One overlooks the city, and during festivals like Chinese New Year, I can watch fireworks light up the horizon. I’m also just 1,500 steps (about 10 minutes) from the nearest light rail transit (LRT) hub. While I usually drive to the LRT to avoid sweating, I love knowing I could walk there if I wanted to.

    The best part of my neighborhood is its walkability. I’m just a few hundred steps away from charming cafes where I can work or read in the morning. If I need groceries, I can walk to the nearest business center. It’s exhausting in Malaysia’s heat and humidity, but it’s a great way to stay active. Sometimes, I’ll walk to the business center for dinner and back, which helps me burn off calories and regulate my blood sugar.

    My neighborhood also has playgrounds with exercise equipment, so I can do outdoor bodyweight workouts when I don’t feel like going to the gym. Living this way has helped me save money, too. I’m not car-dependent, so I spend very little on gas—about 50 Ringgit every two to three months. I grow my own vegetables and cook big meals that last me all week. Life is simple, affordable, and fulfilling.

    I’ve heard some people criticize 15-minute cities as dystopian, but I can’t help but chuckle. My experience has been the opposite. Living in a walkable town has made me healthier, happier, and more connected to my community. And it’s not just a European thing—I live in Malaysia, where there are plenty of walkable towns and neighborhoods.

    If you’re considering a move, I encourage you to think about walkability. Living in a place where you can walk to shops, cafes, and public transit isn’t just convenient—it’s transformative. You’ll save money, stay active, and feel more connected to the world around you. For me, it’s the perfect way to live.

  • How I use social media, and why Mastodon is still No.1 for me

    How I use social media, and why Mastodon is still No.1 for me

    The past few weeks have been overwhelming for me, as I indicated in my post I am social media burned out. With work ramping up again after the Christmas holidays and having to prepare for Chinese New Year, life was not only a whirlwind, but somehow, I became consumed by social media.

    From January 1st until now, I’ve been glued to my phone. It started with Weibo, catching up on drama surrounding a couple of actors, and then it spiraled into the red note migration—Little Red Book. I couldn’t tear myself away.

    I actually wrote about this in my Substack. (I’ve been so busy I just didn’t copy my newsletter over to the blog as usual. Apologies, my friends!)

    I tried to focus on work, but it was impossible. Social media just pulled me in and wouldn’t let go. It’s frustrating to feel so out of control, knowing full well that this isn’t good for me. I’ve been stuck in this cycle of endless scrolling, switching apps, and I can only tentatively say I’m emerging from my stupor only now.

    Anyway, this time gave me another push to evaluate my usage of social media. By the way, I’m not one of those people who want to eliminate social media use altogether. It’s not sustainable to be 100% off social media.

    Instead, I hope to get a more balanced way to interact with them.

    English social media

    One positive factor stands out for me: I do not use Meta products like Facebook, Instagram, or Threads. That’s like a lion’s share of commercial social media already.

    This isn’t due to some grand ideological stance against billionaires or their companies. Malaysians are practical people—we use what serves us, and I’m the same. But the blunt truth is Meta platforms are useless, toxic and don’t serve me at all.

    Facebook feels like a giant soap opera I didn’t sign up for. It bombards me with updates about acquaintances’ lives. Acquaintances that, if I were to be honest, I’m not particularly interested to know about, and who overshares way too much.

    If Facebook was functional, there’d be an RSS feed for only the people or groups I actually care about. But no, it’s a mess of private lives, poorly moderated content, ugly ads. It takes precious cognitive power to sift through what really matters to me.

    But in general, the whole point of the app is lost on me due to my personality. I don’t really want to know about other people’s lives. I’d much rather meet a friend over coffee than scroll through updates on their daily lives.

    As for Instagram and Threads, I never found the appeal. Instagram’s visual bombardment overwhelms me, and Threads felt like just another platform throwing vile content my way. I’m only on Instagram to send one friend cat videos.

    X? Well, I scroll my favourite follows since they’re still stubbornly there, but I barely am there because its toxicity is insane.

    Tiktok? Never had an account. The brainrot content there destroys my brain and people whinge too much over there.

    Reddit. Honestly, if I wasn’t the moderator of a subreddit, I would’ve been off that site ages ago. It’s incredibly toxic, full of racism and other awfulness. And as a moderator, while members are benefiting from my moderation, I get exposed to the worst of the worst. Trolls that harass you in DMs, spread rumours and cause trouble in the sub. I can’t wait for retirement.

    I don’t interact with many subreddits. At most three at a time, and they are incredibly boring, geeky subs like r/ObsidianMD where the hottest ‘argument’ would be a discussion about folders vs no folders. Needless to say, I stay away from all political subs.

    Substack Notes started off as a tolerable space, but now my “for you page” is filled with negativity, doomerism and far too many Americans complaining about everything. (It’s a very America-dominated platform and their favourite past time there is to rail against something I guess.) However, if you get off Notes and just dwell in the comment spaces of newsletters you follow, it gets better.

    All in all, Substack remains a mixed bag. Sometimes, I find inspiring content. Other times, the feed floods me with mean-spirited posts, especially those filled racist, anti-China sentiments. (Sigh, the algorithm thinks that since I like content about China, sinophobic content is just fine.)

    The biggest issue I have with all the commercial social media is that I can’t control the feed, and that lack of control makes it harder to fully enjoy.

    There’s something inherently combative about Western social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The people there often seem mean-spirited, and the overall experience feels hostile. Whether it’s endless complaints or offensive posts, English-speaking social media feels like it thrives on conflict.

    Chinese social media


    Xiao Hong Shu (Little Red Book) appeals to me with its focus on art, inspiration, and beauty. I also enjoy the occasional robust discussions between Americans and Chinese people since the migration happened. But there’s still toxicity. Despite what Americans think, not all Chinese people are nice, and some will make that known. But the good thing about XHS is that it has robust moderation (when you report someone for bad behaviour, they do take action. Also, the agorithm is very responsive.)

    Weibo: China’s Twitter. Also toxic. Only saving grace is that I don’t have to endure Sinophobia and the moderation is stricter than the dumpster fire that is Twitter (or whatever it’s calling itself these days).

    However, if you want to watch a mass of people (and bots) spreading rumours, cyber bullying and destroying careers and lives (and celebrating the aftermath) – it’s a great place to be!

    But there’s no denying that Weibo is a great place to be if you want to see Chinese perspectives about international or Chinese news. The only way to manage Weibo healthily is to carefully curate your feed and follow the most civil content creators. (Though no guarantee the comments don’t get mean. They almost always do.)

    I usually just use Weibo to see what’s trending in China (news). I avoid the Entertainment tab because this is where the most cyberbullying happens.

    Social media that works and is good for your mental health

    Mastodon
    There’s Mastodon—my one saving grace in the chaotic world of social media. It’s peaceful, sane, and manageable—all because I can carefully cultivate my feed due to a series of filters to avoid content I consider toxic and to mute/block people that are hostile. The people I interact with are rational, and the small, curated community I’ve built brings me genuine joy.

    I don’t care about having thousands of followers. For me, it’s about quality. The 20 or so people I follow are enough. Mastodon allows me to block or mute negativity effortlessly. It’s a haven where I feel in control.

    This blog
    Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about retreating to my blog. I look at bloggers like Todd Tyrtle and Scalzi, who’ve turned their websites into their base of operations, and it inspires me. Mastodon makes it easy to blurt out thoughts, but there’s something satisfying about compiling those thoughts into structured blog posts where I can keep forever.

    Maybe I can find a balance—posting spontaneously on Mastodon but revisiting and expanding those ideas on my blog, like I described in the blog post about the PESOS method of content management.

    The only problem with blogs is that it’s very difficult for me to get people to really engage with me. Fortunately, wordpress.com has Mastodon connectivity, so there’s two-way communication.

    Also thanks to dominance of content marketing blogs, blogs like mine are just hard to find. So until this changes, I’d have to continue ‘pushing’ my content to social media.

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  • Public transportation in my neighbourhood and I have electric car envy

    Public transportation in my neighbourhood and I have electric car envy

    One of the biggest reasons why I love my neighbourhood is that it’s one of the most public transport-connected neighbourhoods in Malaysia. I can easily walk from my apartment to the nearest light rail transit station (I actually have a choice of two stations to walk to) and take an LRT to visit my parents a few kms away. I can even hop on a train to the KL Sentral station where I can travel to other states via train, or to the airport.

    I’m probably a rare Malaysian in the sense that I love using public transport. Due to Malaysia’s hot weather, many just prefer not to walk, so I can’t blame them. Yet, as I walked back to the LRT station via this scenic elevated walkway, I feel so grateful that I can live in a neighborhood that is so well-connected by public transportation.

    Fun story: Decades ago, when people heard out about the plan to build elvated walkway that snaked around my town, people protested that it wouldn’t be useful because it’s far too hot to walk for long distances. A part of me wished that the plan had gone ahead anyway, because I adore walking and it’s not as if these walkways won’t but shaded.

    As a concession, this walkway now snakes around the neighbourhood of Sunway, and I really like the fact that you can use it to get from one place to another (besides the mall, you can walk to hospitals and colleges) without having to endure car traffic.

    I realize living this way makes me happy, because I love living in a way where I’m not car-dependent. I hardly ever use my car, to be honest, and if I do use my car, it’s usually because I’m feeling lazy or trying to avoid the heat, which is almost a constant in Malaysia. (I spend about RM50 – about US$12 – on fuel for my car every two months!)

    I hope that Malaysia will become less car dependent one day, but that’s probably unrealistic. Will it at least transition to affordable electric vehicles like China, perhaps? (I’m super jealous of China for being able to pull this off, by the way.)

    As for myself, I don’t see an electric car in my future, but maybe an electric bicycle. I’m such a homebody. I don’t travel great distances. And if I do, I prefer to take public transport instead of drive. (I think anyone driving during peak festival periods is insane, for one.)

    However, if electric bikes are going to be my future one day, the only hope I have is for Malaysian roads to become safer for because right now, it’s suicidal to use a bicycle – electric or not – on our roads.

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