Slowly Letters

One of the reasons why I am back writing here in this blog is because I have revived my letter writing in the Slowly app, making me want to write more than just letters.

Slowly is an app that let you write letters to the other Slowly users and the interesting thing about the app is that the further the other person lives, the longer it takes for the letters to arrive, hence the name of the app, Slowly.

The farthest person that I am writing to lives in Puerto Rico and our letters take 49 hours to reach each other! I know...49 hours - that's more than 2 days! Why do that when a text message is just microseconds away?

That's the whole gist of it: going back to snail mail, albeit in a modern way. 

Think about it, when a letter takes 49 hours to reach the other person, you'd put more thought into the letter as you write it, wouldn't you?

I am also using it to practice my Korean and it is quite fun though very challenging, writing a letter entirely in Korean. But I did it and I'm glad to report that though I know it is not perfect, the recipient understood it without any problems. 

And with me being a collector of whatever stuff that interest me--I used to collected mugs and notebooks and cookbooks--I am now collecting Slowly stamps. They are digital but they are attractive.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Every country comes with its own stamp and here's the Malaysian one.

And of course I cannot not get this location-based stamp of the Nasi Lemak being Malaysia's National Dish.

This is my most favourite achievement stamp because I just like being a sloth sometimes LOL

And I got this to mark a special occasion: to move forward and to be happy again.

Other than the sloth, my other favourite animal is the owl and who can beat an owl on vocals?

I have collected a total of 82 stamps I can use to write Slowly letters with and 126 stamps if I include those that I have received.

Check out the app here if you'd like to try it out:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slowlyapp&hl=en_US&gl=US

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slowly-connect-to-the-world/id1199811908

Pearlie

It has been awhile

It was in April 2020 when I last blogged and a long year and a half have passed since then. A whole lot of things have happened and a whole lot of things I have learnt.

I must say that just like my blog here, my life has been in a series of starts and stops, and again just like my blog here, it is going to continue to start and stop. 

Of course, until it all stop and Life starts. 

So here am I again...starting again. 

The reason I am back is because I would like to think and write again. Life has been tough for the last one and a half years making it tough to think and to write. But now I'm back and it's good to be back and I hope this session of a start will last a longer time.

While I restart this, I also thought about the purpose and the direction of my writing. When I started this blog in 2006--oh my, that is like aeons ago--I wanted a space to reflect and express myself, and I think I will fall back to the same purpose. 

And hopefully through my thinking and my figuring out this world, I am am able to provide some hope.

Pearlie

Book Review: How To Take Smart Notes

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking - for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

by Sönke Ahrens

I have spoken a lot about Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes. It is a rare book that have changed the way I read and think.

Its title may sound mundane but mundane it is not. 

Ahrens wrote the book when he found it "too painful to watch others taking notes in the same unproductive ways" he used to take notes himself.

For me, it all started when I was required to sign up for an international HR conference with so many number of sessions that I kinda freaked out.

But I suddenly started thinking - could I listen to these talks and still get the most of out of it? How then can I take better notes? And make the notes work for me?

It was then that I came across Ahrens's book. And again I must say, it has changed a lot of how I now read and think.

How do you take notes?

For me, when I read books, I highlight them in my Kindle and add notes when I have questions and thoughts about it. However, I almost never get back to the highlights or the notes. 

I once remembered one particular item that I needed to refer to. But I couldn't find it. Kindle do not collate all the notes into one place to enable search. I need to know which book first, which I don't. I never found it.

And when I take notes during live talks and especially during sermons preached in church, I would take down notes usually word for word, in phrases. But again, I don't use the notes or refer to them at all.

So why do I take notes to begin with?

It is suppose to help me pay better attention and remember what I read or listen to. But in the end, I don't remember much.

This is where Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten comes into play. 

Zettelkasten is a German word that means slip-box or card index. Ahrens calls is the "gold standard " in taking notes and keeping them organised in an output-orientated way.

What is most important in this note taking method is that you elaborate what you read or listened in your own words by writing in the cards. 

One idea one card. 

Elaborating is important. You do not copy and paste. Elaborating it in your own words will show you whether you understand what you have read or listened to.

You can either use physical A6 sized cards, the Zettelkasten PC software, or like me, the Trello app.

Written notes are placed into two boxes:

1. Fleeting Notes - ideas that you thought of yourself 

2. Literature Notes - your elaboration, references included. 

After a day a two, you are to look into these two boxes and convert, link, combine, or rewrite them to be placed in the Permanent Notes box.

Notes are numbered and indexed.

This is done to help you build a latticework of thinking and ideas of your brain. 

Our mental latticework is the breadth and depth of all our elaborated thinking. It helps us link our past knowledge with new learning. With it, we will continually learn as we space the retrieval of our ideas at different times. We will vary our ideas as we look at it in different contexts. And we will benefit from it as we remember necessary things by chance.

All because we have done more elaborated thinking than before.

And as Luhmann has said, "One cannot think without writing."

I used to say that my phone is my extended brain. Now I say that both my phone and my Slip Box are my extended brains. The phone as the processor and the Slip Box holds my thoughts.

It is as simple as that. It boils down to whether you would put effort into making it work for you.

pearlie

Take Notes to Think Well: Apps you can use

I am still reading Sören Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes and this topic has been filling my mind these few days. 

I have shared it with my colleagues and friends and some of them are looking forward for me share insights from my study, which I will definitely post a review here soon, when I'm done with the reading, note-taking and thinking.

But one thing that I also find interesting is the many apps and platforms out there for us to use for note taking and journalling. 

And I use quite a few of them. You would think that I should just settle on one but I found that using different note and journal apps for different purposes serves me rather well.

Here are the ones I use and I highly recommend them.

Evernote

I used Notes in my iPhone when I was using my Apple gadgets but when I went full-on Android, Evernote is my choice for all my notes. I store them in separate Notepads for easy reference. I even take photos of my pen-and-paper notes and store them here for easy access. The only problem is since I did not pay for it, I can no longer send notes in via email as much as I like. 

Journey

I use this as a prayer and journaling app. I was using Diaro before but when I travelled to Seoul in December last year, I wanted to use a different app as my travel journal but ended up just sticking to one. Journey and Diaro is somewhat similar but I prefer the feel and user interface of Journey. I write in my personal thoughts and my prayers here. It is also very useful when I need to vent and when I need to sort out my thoughts and emotions. 

Diarium

I started using this a learning journal to note down one thing I learn every day. It started off well but soon I found myself forcing the daily learning points and so I stopped. But I stuck on with the photo calendar. I can view all the days in all the months in thumbnails and it does give me a big picture of how I spent my days. And with just a glance, I can see the significance of every single day. I like the feel that I have spent my days well. Well, some days at least!

Trello

This is what I am excited about now - Trello. It all started when I needed to sign up for an online conference next month that will last for 4 days with a crazy number of podcasts to listen to. I started to Google for smarter ways to take notes which was when I found Trello, which was also when I found Sönke Ahrens's book on How to Take Smart Notes. I have started to practice using the Slip Box in Trello and so far so good. If you want to know how a Slip Box work, wait for my blogpost on it. But in the meantime, do check out Trello. While the other note and journaling apps are straightforward linear ones, Trello is nothing but. You can create boards and lists and cards, and move them all around, which work perfectly well for a Slip Box. And if you check it out online, you will also see people using it for Scrum and sprints. It's quite powerful.

And here I must quote Niklas Luhmann (again), who created the Slip Box: one cannot think without writing. 

So we all do need to write, to take notes, to journal. It's the only way we can think good and think well. 

pearlie

Started another book: How to Take Smart Notes

I know. I know.

I am already reading 4 books currently and I started on another one bringing it to 5.

But this is a good one.

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking - for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

by Sönke Ahrens

I have only read the introduction and I am in full agreement with it. 

He begins by quoting Luhmann, "One cannot think without writing."

Ah...Niklas Luhmann is very well-known in his circle of community and the book is based on his way of note taking: the slip box.

Here are some more of what I found in the introduction that so interesting that I'm looking forward to digging in further over the weekend:

Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work. And maybe that is the reason why we rarely think about this writing, the everyday writing, the note-taking and draft-making. Like breathing, it is vital to what we do, but because we do it constantly, it escapes our attention.

Just having it all in your head is not enough, as getting it down on paper is the hard bit. That is why good, productive writing is based on good note-taking. Getting something that is already written into another written piece is incomparably easier than assembling everything in your mind and then trying to retrieve it from there.

The quality of a paper and the ease with which it is written depends more than anything on what you have done in writing before you even made a decision on the topic.

pearlie

The elusive writing bug

I have not been writing for a long while now and I must say I miss doing it.

So let me just try to kickstart it again and see where it goes. I do hope I get back into the bug of writing.

For reasons unknown, at least to me, some photos in my blog have disappeared. It was frustrating and it did hamper my motivation to write but finally I got to it and managed to replace one, just one.

But then one entire post disappeared on me! I must have accidentally clicked something by mistake.

So that post about gamifying your daily life is gone forever. I can't even remember what I wrote in order to recreate it. I can probably write a fresh new piece from a new perspective after about a year gamifying my daily life.

Surprisingly a few people I met did ask me why am I no longer writing and blogging. I was encouraged (thanks guys!) and even though it is taking me awhile but let's hope this work.

Let's hope my writing bug is back and here to stay.

pearlie

Keep blogging Pearlie. Don’t give up

I have not caught up with my blog for one whole week, from last Monday till today Monday. 

And I almost gave it up. 

I thought I’d take a week off and not write anything but knowing myself, it would then spell the end of my blog. 

I will never come back. 

So I without another thought, I just started writing and writing and writing. I just kept writing. 

And now I am all caught up. 

It’s a good thing I keep short notes for each of the days, so that I have an idea what to write about and what’s so special about the day that I want to remember. 

So the thing is to just write even if you don’t feel like writing. 

One decision I am going to make however, is to keep away from Facebook for awhile, if not for ever. 

I find Facebook isn’t good for me, in many counts and in many ways. 

I do get updates about people I don’t meet anymore and even updates on news and deals, but it comes far and between. I think I will lay it off for a month and see if my life will improve as a result. 

I don’t use that much time on Facebook but it’s still quite substantial by my standards. I’d find better things to fill that time with. 

And I’d like to reiterate why I blog—it’s so I can mull and think things through, about life’s lessons for the day and stuff that God would want me to take note. It’s so I can remember important stuff that happens to me. It’s also so that I can see when I am really dry and need watering. 

Keep blogging Pearlie. Don’t give up. 

pearlie

An Empty Cup

I hold in my hands an empty cup

I hadn’t known it to be so

But it was empty it was such 

Though I thought it overflowed

But nay it was empty still 

I looked and there was nothing

I thought I had it filled

It had to at least with something

The cup was once not empty it was not

It was full and it was brimming

With stuff so good I always thought

I’d always have it coming 

But alas it’s all drained out now

I hold on my hands an empty cup

I have to do something but how

What should I do to fill it up

I now see I have filled it with stuff

I thought will amount to something

But these stuff are all but fluff

It goes into the cup and becomes nothing

I thought they’d be good

I thought they’d be fine

I was wrong I was so wrong

I was totally out of line

I really need to do something

I have in my hands an empty cup

I need it filled with good things

I need it to fill it up

I need to go back to the good things

The stuff that I love so much 

The mulling, the thinking, the reading

To go back to them now I must

I have in my hands an empty cup

I now need to fill it up

Copyright © 2018 Pearlie Ng

How I made friends across the globe over the years

I had several pen-pals back in my childhood days. Those were the times of aerogrammes and postmen. 

I remember back then when I got back from school every day, I'd wait by the doorway anticipating the ring of the postmen bicycle bell, which of course didn't happen very often. 

I'd probably get a reply once every month or two. But thinking back, it does feel like I had a lot of time. 

Life wasn't in a hurry. 

When I started working, I still made pen-pals but this time, it was the email. I had some disposable income then and we even exchanged gifts by mail. 

I remember once coming home to a box on the floor just outside the door. The errant postmen just threw it in and the chocolate in it were mostly reduced to a melted mess. But they still tasted so good. 

Next came the blog. 

I made many more friends through blogging. The exchange wasn't as long as letters or emails but they were current and relevant. But blogging soon took a dive and weren't as active anymore. 

Life has gone into a much faster pace and ironically, there is now not as much time as we had before. There is just not enough of it. 

Now? It's messaging. 

I made several good friends recently via italki in my pursuit of learning new languages. And the messaging apps that I use almost every day are WeChat with my Chinese and Taiwanese friends, and Kakao with my Korean friends. 

It is real-time and it is really like they are there with me, sometimes yakking away way into the night. 

What's next? Holograms?

pearlie

Shall I stop blogging?

I know I have thought about this many, many times over and blogged about it many times as well but I was seriously contemplating to stop blogging today.   

This is because I recently felt that writing a blogpost every day has become a very difficult thing to do. I find that I am struggling to find things to talk and blog about.  But why am I feeling that way?   

This one thing I know: I am spending less and less time thinking these days and I am not as introspective as before, and it is not a good thing.   

Therefore, it is good that I came across this article: Why You Should Blogging (Again)  

The writer of the article holds the opinion that: 

1. blogging facilitate powerful introspection 

2. blogging crystallizes thoughts and thought processes 

3. blogging improves your ability to express yourself 

4. people will enjoy your creation  

I fully agree with the first three points and with that I am more encouraged to persist to continue to blog daily. I also know that I will regret it if I stop, because I know it will be even more difficult for me to start blogging again. I have stopped before and it took me 5 years to get back to daily blogging! If I stop again this time, I can almost guarantee I will never get back to blogging.  

I am not too sure about the fourth point though, since I tend to ramble a lot these days.  

So there - I will still stick to it...for now.  

pearlie

From aerogrammes to messaging apps

 

In my project to learn a new language and to improve my dismal command of the Chinese language, I made some friends in italki.com today and chatted with them on and off for the whole day yesterday. 

It was good to connect and make friends to speak the languages we want to learn and from whom we are free to ask questions.

But I just realized something interesting that only people my age would understand. This in comparison to my childhood days when I was writing letters on aerogrammes with pen pals from the other sides of the world is just amazing. 

We now can have conversations with anyone anywhere in real time. No more composing of long letters, no more travelling to the post office, no more waiting for a reply. 

How things have changed. 

pearlie

Should I stop blogging?

 

I have seriously thought about stopping my blogging several times now. And I thought about doing it over the past few days. 

It's about security issues, about having nothing important to say, about the times when I struggle to find the time and the mood to write. 

But I'm still on it. 

I have stopped blogging in 2009, only doing it sporadically.  It took me 5 years to get back into a daily blogging in 2014. 

The reason I'm still sticking to it is because I know I will never get back to it if I quit. And I still think it is a good thing to blog, albeit about stuff that does not really matter to anyone but me. 

It helps me think, it forces me to reflect my days and I will have a log of what mattered to me everyday over the years. 

But I know I will still think about stopping as I go on. Maybe I should stop thinking so much. But that will even be a tougher thing to do. 

pearlie 

Writing and Thinking

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

~ Bill Wheeler

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. 

~ Benjamin Franklin

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

~ Joan Didion 

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better. 

~ Herman Hesse 

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book. 

~ Shereen El Feki

Wiring is the most fun you can have my yourself. 

~ Terry Pratchet 

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. 

~ Isaac Asimov 

pearlie

Nostalgic Find

My parents were packing and clearing their stuff when my dad found the typewriter he thought he sold off.

Vintage Typewriter - Royal Li 

He passed it on to me of which I gladly receive. It brings back good memories of me using it in my school days. When I tried typing something, I'm surprised I remembered what to with the levers and buttons. And a really nice feel and sound as well!

pearlie

I've reached the 10th year mark today

I started blogging on 1 Mar 2006 and so it is 10 years today. Number of posts 2525. Number of page views 288,062. I've enjoyed writing it though it is hard sometimes to find what to write about when the day is just the norm: wake up, go to work, work, go home, go to bed. But I found that as long as I start thinking and reflecting about the day, however normal it was, I will find something worthy of a post. And when I don't, a picture will convey the mood for the day. I thank my Father in heaven for his providence and his grace all these years. 

pearlie

7 years in Facebook but...

I'm not a social butterfly and so social media didn't really appeal much to me. I got into Facebook in year 2007 but I was not active. I have even considered deleting my account recently but decided against it because it still remains as the only line of connection to my friends whom I've reconnected through Facebook.

But I have recently connected my blog to it. I know I have to move on with the times. Blogging has already lost its momentum but I still like to write. Therefore, I thought I had better linked them both up so to at least bring some life to my blog. And so far it has been good. Thanks to y'all who have been visiting me here at my blog. 

The more interesting thing is this: I have suddenly become quite active in Facebook. And I can see how it can really be so addictive. I like the variety of stuff and information that gets posted. I like that I can keep abreast with my friends. 

Of course I know all this before. It's just that I didn't want to spend my time to get stuck in it. But now that my daily blog posts get automatically posted in Facebook, I got sucked in as a result. 

I won't say it's a bad thing though. But I do need to be doing it only in moderation. 

pearlie 

Writing Social Science Field Notes

I learnt something useful today. I used to take notes about happenings with people around me but I wasn't doing it very well and it soon turned out to my my venting journal and so I stopped it. But I found this website today about writing social studies field notes.

Scientist often write fields notes and and we should emulate them. For example, these are field notes by a biologist studying birds:


I must learn the skills of writing field notes and more objectively. The guide is found here.

pearlie

Vanity of vanities

I like writing poetry and as much as I am so bad at it, I still do it. But how I wish I could write it like this one on the vanity of life.

Grass
by Carl Sandburg
 
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.

pearlie

Lazy Thinking

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
~ Albert Einstein

I wonder if I have fallen into this category of people. I was checking my blog on the topic of heaven that I thought I might have written about, and I found two of it, one in 2008 and one in 2014. The one in 2008 was more well thought of than the one in 2014, and today, I had thought of writing about heaven in the same line of thought but looking back, my writing today wouldn't have been so thought out.

I don't think reading too much is bad. It's just that I know I've grown lazy in my thinking.

However, trust my CG-mates to tease me for reading so much. They labeled me with this word: bibliobibuli.


"They wander in this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."

Oh dear. Oh no. Really?

pearlie

Lessons from C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

I have not kept up with my reading on C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia series. I read them (the first two volumes) as children's novels and did not read it deep enough to see any messages in them; which is why when Christian writers draw lessons from them, I always end up in awe.

Raymond Ortlund did just that with this scene in The Silver Chair in his book, Isaiah: God Saves Sinner under the Preaching the Word series.

He wrote about "God's Surprising Strategies" on Isaiah 44:24-54:25. The lesson he drew from the passage was that God is bigger than we can ever imagine, though we more than often box him in our limitations. But God is great and he alone has the right to be God. God's will for us is better than we think and he invites us to turn to him and be saved, all the ends of the earth. But we are arrogant and we accuse him of bungling our lives, though we are far beneath God as clay is beneath a potter. However, God still invites us to rethink our lives and graciously receives us when we come to him. In his salvation strategies for us, he is both perplexing and faithful, because he is God. And we need to accept that.

Ortlund drove it home by ending the chapter with this:

C. S. Lewis wrote a series of children’s stories in which the Christ figure is a lion. In one scene a girl named Jill bursts into an opening in a forest. She’s thirsty. She spies a stream not far away, but she doesn’t rush forward to throw her face into its refreshing current. Instead she freezes in fear because a lion is resting in the sun right beside the stream.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh, dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

Wow...see what I mean? What an amazing close to the message.

pearlie
Source: Raymond C. Ortlund, Isaiah: God Saves Sinners, Preaching the Word, quoting C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: Collier Books, 1970 reprint), pp. 16, 17.