I was pretty reluctant to write this post but a friend recently suggested that if I want to be understood more clearly then of course I've to be clear to others about myself and what I think.
Over the years I lost my ability to express myself in a more personal fashion and geared towards being opaque in my personal postings to the point that even Robert Langdon cannot decipher. Or to quote Shanice, "too cangih".
My background in blogging/writting was rooted in writing economic and political commentaries/articles in Blog City where I first started writing in 2003. I don't think it was even a blog but more of a net-based current affairs column with the exception that readers can comment and the added intereaction.
I was active in writting back then dishing out my comments and analyses on a regular basis. Each post took me an average of six hours to write and often forgetting about meals in the process. It was a very holistic exercise for me as I really do enjoy writing on current affairs. My activeness peaked when one of my commentaries was published by The Star under my usual pen-name, Benkaiser.
Over time I earned a small base of readers who would give serious and constructive feedbacks.
In hindsight I find it pretty amazing because a couple of posts discussing the possibilities of the future are realities today. One of it was about Air Asia which back then was a major minor peanut in the commercial aviation sector. I wrote about its prospect of surviving in the domestic market and it needs to branch out to regional destinations to survive the onslaught of competitors from Singapore to Thailand.
The wow-part for me was that the strategies I suggested on what Air Asia could do in the regional market is almost an mirror image when it first started venturing out of the borders.
Another wow post for me was about Penang, titled "Reinventing Penang" in which I wrote about the future of the state moving away from manufacturing and increase its reliance on service sectors. This was way back then when both the federal and state governments were comfortable being in that static position of relying Motorola, Intel, Seagate and other manufacturing giants.
Years later, the federal government launched the Northern Corridor project and now the current state government embarking on service-delivery improvements initiatives, which are so crucial to the northern jewel state. Many of these developments are like echoes of what I proposed.
By now, some of you may think I am boasting myself but I am just writing what I feel. That is all.
Moving on I closed down Blog City due to other commitments and moved on to Xanga where I started personal blogging. I found it fun writing about the going-ons of my life and friends in college which most of time I tend to dramatize but keeping to the facts. In a way it was like writing parodies or in the context of a novel. This was when I'd alot of creative licences.
But somehow over time, with the intrusion of personal problems and issues, those creative licences were slowly banned one by one after I migrated to Blogspot. My writing became vague, shorter, irregular and sometimes pure no-brainers. Without realising I actually lost my ability to write about myself, my life.
I was still going strong in serious writing but mostly confined to academic subjects with a lot of focus on hard finance. Slowly but surely my blog became a pariah to many, if not all readers having no idea what I was writing about.
Fast forward to present I started writing more again but mostly work-based. Recently I became a de-facto chief of information and research who is responsible for managing and publishing all the writings for the firm's e-newsletter. It is like being a magazine editor and so I've to do alot of solid research on taxation, accounting, economics, business, politics and other related topics as the articles are targeted at clients and general readers.
I am happy to take the role as way before I joined workforce I entertained the thought of joining business publications like BRW as a business writer or back to university and do a PhD so that I can become a full time researcher and get my research papers published in journals.
This is my journey in writing thus far and if given the chance to have those creative licences back I would be more than happy to have them again so that you-know-who-you-are won't complain so much :p
PS: I've a lil weird liking for writing legal/charter codes like those stuff in the legislation books.
Over the years I lost my ability to express myself in a more personal fashion and geared towards being opaque in my personal postings to the point that even Robert Langdon cannot decipher. Or to quote Shanice, "too cangih".
My background in blogging/writting was rooted in writing economic and political commentaries/articles in Blog City where I first started writing in 2003. I don't think it was even a blog but more of a net-based current affairs column with the exception that readers can comment and the added intereaction.
I was active in writting back then dishing out my comments and analyses on a regular basis. Each post took me an average of six hours to write and often forgetting about meals in the process. It was a very holistic exercise for me as I really do enjoy writing on current affairs. My activeness peaked when one of my commentaries was published by The Star under my usual pen-name, Benkaiser.
Over time I earned a small base of readers who would give serious and constructive feedbacks.
In hindsight I find it pretty amazing because a couple of posts discussing the possibilities of the future are realities today. One of it was about Air Asia which back then was a major minor peanut in the commercial aviation sector. I wrote about its prospect of surviving in the domestic market and it needs to branch out to regional destinations to survive the onslaught of competitors from Singapore to Thailand.
The wow-part for me was that the strategies I suggested on what Air Asia could do in the regional market is almost an mirror image when it first started venturing out of the borders.
Another wow post for me was about Penang, titled "Reinventing Penang" in which I wrote about the future of the state moving away from manufacturing and increase its reliance on service sectors. This was way back then when both the federal and state governments were comfortable being in that static position of relying Motorola, Intel, Seagate and other manufacturing giants.
Years later, the federal government launched the Northern Corridor project and now the current state government embarking on service-delivery improvements initiatives, which are so crucial to the northern jewel state. Many of these developments are like echoes of what I proposed.
By now, some of you may think I am boasting myself but I am just writing what I feel. That is all.
Moving on I closed down Blog City due to other commitments and moved on to Xanga where I started personal blogging. I found it fun writing about the going-ons of my life and friends in college which most of time I tend to dramatize but keeping to the facts. In a way it was like writing parodies or in the context of a novel. This was when I'd alot of creative licences.
But somehow over time, with the intrusion of personal problems and issues, those creative licences were slowly banned one by one after I migrated to Blogspot. My writing became vague, shorter, irregular and sometimes pure no-brainers. Without realising I actually lost my ability to write about myself, my life.
I was still going strong in serious writing but mostly confined to academic subjects with a lot of focus on hard finance. Slowly but surely my blog became a pariah to many, if not all readers having no idea what I was writing about.
Fast forward to present I started writing more again but mostly work-based. Recently I became a de-facto chief of information and research who is responsible for managing and publishing all the writings for the firm's e-newsletter. It is like being a magazine editor and so I've to do alot of solid research on taxation, accounting, economics, business, politics and other related topics as the articles are targeted at clients and general readers.
I am happy to take the role as way before I joined workforce I entertained the thought of joining business publications like BRW as a business writer or back to university and do a PhD so that I can become a full time researcher and get my research papers published in journals.
This is my journey in writing thus far and if given the chance to have those creative licences back I would be more than happy to have them again so that you-know-who-you-are won't complain so much :p
PS: I've a lil weird liking for writing legal/charter codes like those stuff in the legislation books.
