So, that WittyCulus mind of mine went into creative overdrive during the past few days đ Totally without warning!
A flurry of fun ideas, witty thoughts and activities like online research, dictionary flipping and gym workouts — a bit on that last one later — filled a good part of those days. With inspiration at a real high, I pushed myself hard to work on something new: writing Chinese poems!
Chinese Language and Me
Now, the Chinese language is not exactly my forte. In fact, I had scored only a B4 grade in the ‘O’ Levels.
I showed little interest in this second language, which made it hard for my teacher to improve my results. But I do remember clearly winning her praise every now and then with unique opening lines for my Chinese composition writing. And sometimes an unexpected or odd theme.
Thus, a quick conclusion would have been I was really no good at Chinese. A fairer one would be I’m a late bloomer whom our education system doesn’t quite accommodate.
Sweet Distractions
At that time, I was more interested in computer programming, dabbling in writing BASIC programs, coding in Z80 machine language and devouring whatever (limited) books I could get on such topics.
Yes, this was me at 14 years of age, doing cool stuff which wasn’t commonplace in Singapore during the late ’70s. Ok, ok, geeky stuff, you’d say…
(A shout-out goes to the gang: William, Jeffrey, Bernard, Lock Tong and Hoon Chiat. We were often seen hanging around that OG Dept Store which also happened to be selling the neat Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputers.)
Never Too Late
However, my attitude of “掻ć°èćŠć°è” has served me well, as I continued to learn on my own till this day. After all, in the Internet era, there’s no real excuse not to learn, what with free online info and easy instant access.
But I digressed.
Unusual Creative Outputs, Nevertheless
Well, what came out as a result? I crafted 2 poems in three days: a punny one about eating and a more serious one which tends towards the “chim” (Chinese dialect for “æ·±”) literary side. Incredible by my own standards!
Both were posted on Facebook (here and here) as soon as they were ready. There was even an English poem which carried the essence of its Chinese counterpart.
Will this feat be bettered any time soon? I think not, if the premise is Chinese-only content.
The brain had been working whenever it got the bandwidth. Even when I was brisk walking on the treadmill, I found capacity to churn and solidify my ideas as I listened to my favourite songs.
Maybe I’d found a little trick: give that machine up there a task, and it’ll definitely get to it. That’s been how I sometimes overcome tougher challenges.
Fan Page or Blog First?
Having a FB fan page is handy for debuting my creative outbursts, with our fans being the first to know. (You can become a fan here.) And it’s really easy to share my work with a larger audience.
Plus, posts get time-stamped for future reference — either I’ll write more about them on this blog, like what I’m doing now; or I simply don’t bother, knowing full well my ideas had been captured, shared and can be recalled when needed.
But — and of course — I still enjoy writing on my WittyCulus blog.
Publishing here means you can read fuller stories, share my cranky ideas, peek into my thought process and be a party to my on-and-off rants. Lol for that last part. But seriously…
On this blog, you get to see variegated content on top of the usual word-play and language-fun stuff. Until I start a personal blog in my namesake, this is where I’ll be posting my best — intellectual, witty, fun, what-have-you — stuff.
Just because you can’t stop me from being WittyCulus. And neither can I!
Enjoy the poems đ
