Category: Work & Productivity

Winner of Malaysia for category of Easy Recipes at Gourmand Cookbook Awards 2018

Good news all around!

My cookbook, One-Pot Wonders, is the Winner of Malaysia Gourmand Cookbook Awards 2018 under the category of ‘Easy Recipes’.

Next, this title will compete with all winners in other countries. If we win, our book will be the Best in the World cookbook for this category.

It’s also featured in Jelita’s magazine last month (Jelita means ‘pretty’ in Malay btw).

Why bother painting anymore?

Bosie: I really don’t know why people bother painting portraits anymore. You can get a much better likeness with a photograph..

Robbie: But a photograph is just one moment in time, one gesture, one turn of the head. 

.

Wilde: Yes, portraits are not likenesses Mr. Gray. Painters show the soul of the subject, the essence.

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(Excerpt from Wilde the movie)

Introduction to WordPress & Coding

I believe in continued education and realise the value of being self-sufficient instead relying on people around us (no matter how much skilful they are in comparison).

So my little cousin (who has ambitions to be a programmer) and I took a short four hours WordPress/basic programming class with David Wang. Here’s a list of things I’ve learned that are helpful for maintaining my sites:

1. To maintain a website, you need to constantly update:

  • Theme
  • Plugin
  • WordPress itself

That’ll prevent hacking (hopefully).

2. Html comment
* <! – – Hi There – – >

I was told that I shouldn’t play with html because one small mistake can ruin the whole thing. Solution: always jot down the changes I made within it using Html comment!

3. Check code

  • Command + Option + I = go to inspector
    Command + Option + OPTION + U = go to source itself
  • Shortcuts to check things like the sizing of the fonts on my site, so I can preview it and make changes.

4. Then difference between HTML & CSS

  • HTML = content/data
  • CSS = style

5.Check colour on the web 

  • https://www.webpagefx.com/web-design/random-color-picker/

Useful when choosing colour for my site(s).

6. Using Child theme 

Once WordPress is updated, any changes you’ve made to its still will be lost. Using a child theme means that WordPress updates won’t override the changes.

7. How to check efficiency

  • Gtmetrics.com
  • tools.pingdom.com

8. Creating contact form

David recommended Ninja Form. Though I still can’t do it properly yet because of some mail server issues.

***

There’s so much more to learn! But I think the most important lesson is to know that I can and should do things on my own. If you have any comments on how to improve these sites, please let me know:

Next goal, learn to add a ‘RANDOM’ button to STICKGEEK so that visitors can randomly select a comic.

Live gently

“Every day, your body requires energy to survive, to think, to do well, to be happy. You don’t get infinite energy. One way to replenish energy is to sleep. The other way is to eat well and exercise. But another way to replenish energy is to live a gentle life. As gently as possible. Which means all negotiation need to be smooth else they result in anxiety and fear and guessing…future depletion of energy. And then you die faster than the one who lived gently. Try this. Next time you are in a negotiation, don’t forget to relax your face”

– James Altucher, The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth

Learning Japanese from a lazy egg

Doings things gives me adrenaline rush, which in turns makes me want to do more – it’s almost like a drug. But time is always a limiting factor; so even my leisure time has turned productive (?!). What do I do on Instagram? Learn Japanese from Gudetama, my favourite lazy egg.

What I’ve learned:

  • yaruki (やる気) = motivation
  • yarukinai (やる気ない) = demotivated
  • 気 = Qi
  • Minna o machikane = Everyone waited
  • Kyushoku (給食) = school lunch
  • Jikan de ichi su (時間で一す) = It is time
  • Minna o machi kane kyushoku no jikan de ichi su (みんなおまちかね給食の時間で一す = Everyone, it is time for school lunch everyone’s been waiting for (?)
  • ikiteru (生きてる) = alive
  • kiiroi (黄色い) = yellow
  • Asonjya ikemasen (遊んじゃいけません) = do not play
  • 遊 (yau) = tour

How I plan to write recipes 

“A tenet of journalism is that “the reader knows nothing”. As tenets go, it’s not flattering, but a technical writer can never forget it. You can’t assume that your readers know what you assume everybody knows, or that they still remember what was once explained to them.

The principle of scientific and technical writing applies to all nonfiction writing. It’s the principle of leading readers who know nothing, step by step, to a grasp of subjects they didn’t think they had an aptitude for or were afraid they were too dumb to understand.”

– William Zinsser 

Why it is important to think & plan

A few ideas flooded my mind as I’m sitting down thinking and planning.
 
  1. “Sharpen Your Saw” – Steven Covey
  2. “An unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates
  3. “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”

***

In retrospect, I’ve lost many hours of unnecessary labour because I didn’t put serious thoughts into what I was doing
 
Other times, I feel that ‘thinking & planning’ inhibits the ‘doing’.
 
Now I realise that it’s not enough to do things mindlessly; we must do things with a purpose.