A Simple Place Blog: Where I am in my life

I have just started this blog, and its purpose is to update my family & friends as to what I am doing in my life. I will share what I am interested in at the moment and hopefully improve my writing and blogging skills. So alright, I will just start sharing.

I really want to improve my writing skills. As some people may know, I did a writing course last year. I learnt how to write stories, and it taught me how to frame a story, how to elaborate upon the story to make it more alive, how to figure out what genre to use, how to read books of fiction writers in order to learn about writing .... and of course.... how NOT to write badly. I guess I am more aware of fiction writing now because of the course. But I still have a long way to go.

Yesterday my friend sent me a short prose essay about her struggles with life. She asked me to proofread it for her. So I gave my comments and proofread it. I actually typed it all up and sent it back to her. I hope I didn't change it too much and I hope I didn't take meaning away from it. Guess it's more difficult to edit than I thought. People write something and it's like all in their own words, conveying all their own meaning even though the grammar may be incorrect. What I did is just objectively correct the grammar, and tried to express things more clearly. Although I didn't go as far as to re-write certain parts to emphasise points and improve on the writing. Hope she can still use it.

I am currently into a few ideas. Firstly, I am on a Paleo diet since middle of Chinese New Year. Before this I was a flexi-vegetarian for 1 and a half years. I ate meat sometimes but around 85% of my diet was plant based. It was for environmental as well as health reasons (meat uses more land, water and energy than any other industry) and it drove my mom crazy trying to cook for me. Now that I am Paleo, I can eat animal protein so I just can't eat rice at meal times. I can eat most of the dishes my mom cooks. Paleos follow the human Paleolithic diet... the diet of our cavemen ancestors, so fruit and vegetables are ok, meat is ok; but grains, added sugar and processed food are not.

My mom is an awesome cook and hopefully I will be able to share here some of the dishes she cooks, and baked goods. Maybe I can share some recipes too as maybe some people can get value out of that.

Another idea I am into is minimalism. I have cleared out a lot of my belongings. I gave some to my friend Sheera and some to my relatives. The remainder we put at a recycling collection point in Leisure Mall. They have a recycle bin at the entrance at the LG carpark. It would go to charity or get recycled. Omg it is sickening how much stuff I got rid of. Now that I have purged my items, I feel lighter and I will be more intentional about the new items I bring into my life. I will hopefully assess a few questions before buying:

Yup, so I guess I will stop impulse buying. It's difficult since I used to be addicted to shopping and buying things. I would buy gifts for everyone during Christmas, I would impulse buy things at the counter at Forever 21, I would buy household items just because it looked good and I thought I would use it but didn't and I would buy things in bargain bins just because they were cheap. No wonder I accumulated so much stuff! I have to wean myself off materialism from now on.