Elizabeth Tai's Blog, page 17

10 things that made me happier in 2017

Photo by Roman Kraft

Can you believe it'll be 2018 soon? I can't even imagine writing the numbers down: 2018.

2017 has been a calmer, more settled year for me. Happiness, I realise, isn't always the result of massive changes - instead, small things, habits or actions can improve your life a whole lot. Here are the things that have made me a happier person in 2017: 

1. Bullet journal

I don't track my water intake. I don't record the weather. I don't doodle works of art in my notebook. My "bujo"...

Merry Christmas! And a brief hiatus

Photo by rawpixel.com

Merry Christmas, everyone! Can you believe it's nearly 2018? I hope you're enjoying some turkey with friends and family right now. We didn't have turkey (kinda expensive in Malaysia), but my family and I just opened our presents, ate a lot of cake! So, no explosive, thought-provoking post today :P

I'll be taking a brief hiatus this week and hope to unveil a new design for 2018. I'll also be blogging in a new, and hopefully, more organised way next year, with content that...

How I paid off my six-figure debt

Photo by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

I remember it well. The heavy weight on my soul as I neared the end of the month and I ran out of money for food or gas. The painful sensation of running my credit card down that slot in the machine, knowing that it'll only make the debt situation worse the next month. The fear I have when I read news about people being laid off, wondering how I was going to survive with no savings and a 6-figure debt. It seemed as if every ringgit I earned was going to eve...

Justice League, the dumbing down of Thor and the sad sameness of supehero flicks

It could've been so much better ... but the desire for profit dictated its vision in the end.

So, Justice League. I can't say that I was surprised by the way it turned out. After the terrible reviews of Batman v Superman, something's gotta give. I'm sure the WB suits were in panic mode when the movie received such a huge battering from critics. "Marvel-ise it! Now!" I could almost hear them screech.

So they hired Joss Whedon to "fix it" when Zach Snyder had to bow out, but even Whedon couldn'...

Justice League, the dumbing down of Thor and the sad sameness supehero flicks

It could've been so much better ... but the desire for profit dictated its vision in the end.

So, Justice League. I can't say that I was surprised by the way it turned out. After the terrible reviews of Batman v Superman, something's gotta give. I'm sure the WB suits were in panic mode when the movie received such a huge battering from critics. "Marvel-ise it! Now!" I could almost hear them screech.

So they hired Joss Whedon to "fix it" when Zach Snyder had to bow out, but even Whedon couldn'...

What I learned from Nanowrimo 2017

Nanowrimo. When writers around the globe battle to finish a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. 

Have you finished your novel? How was Nano for you this year?

I've only joined Nano three times, the first in 2013, then 2015 and now 2017. All have been successful attempts, only because I'm a terribly competitive person and hate to lose any challenge.

While I think it's great to write a novel in a month and all, unless you do it with a goal in mind, Nano can be a pointless exercise.

I learn something...

Reading Xian Xia novels

Once Upon A Time, the movie version of Tang Qi's novel, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (or To The Sky Kingdom, its title in English.)

I was just lamenting to my reading group recently about how the West only gets to see a certain type of fiction from the East. What I jokingly call "sad stories of Asian people" lit. I detest those, not because of its sad endings, but because they only show one side of our culture. I have deep suspicions of WHY they are the preferred lit that the West wants to se...

How Elizabeth Spann Craig used Wattpad to gain new readers

Wattpad's users are young, so if you write fiction aimed at older readers, you might as well not try. Or so goes the logic. But Elizabeth Spann Craig, who writes cosy mysteries and whose protagonist is an octogenarian, begs to differ.

I wrote about Elizabeth in my Wattpad feature for The Star,  but couldn't include the many other wonderful things she said. Here's a full transcript of interview:

What attracted you to Wattpad? 
There was an interesting study done by Nielsen in 2014 that found tha...

Interview with Talent Corp about returning to Malaysia

A few weeks ago, Talent Corp, a government agency trying to encourage expats to return home, interviewed me about my decision to leave Australia and come back to Malaysia. I gave my thoughts about the matter. 

I'm not the only one who chose to return. There's Mei Chu who lived in New Zealand for a while and Idzwan, who was in the uK.

PS: If you wonder why I look a tad different (okay, I was overweight!) compared to the picture on the right ... that's because I lost nearly 17kg since that video...

How I lost weight with intermittent fasting

I've had a weight problem all my life. I never ever, ever thought I'd ever get a handle on my weight. I could never understand why I balooned so much. I ate and exercised the same like the thin folks. In fact, I would work out six times a week, doing RPM (spinning classes) and the weight would not budge.

Around 2012, I began researching aggressively about why weight loss wasn't happening for me despite implementing all the 'right advice'. At that time I was at my worst -- nearly 95kg in...