On the first day of November, I moved into my new temporary home in a new city. Kuala Lumpur – city of mud, rivers, skyscrapers – confluencing and converging into one. I settled into the satellite town of Subang Jaya, and started my contract role as Projects Book Editor at Acts Church. Adjusting to life in KL took a bit of time, as I made efforts to don my little room on a ninth floor apartment. I had to learn the roads of this new town, adjust to numerous highways, toll gates and exits.
Moving to a new city made me miss the UK suddenly. I had binge sessions watching Pride & Prejudice and Starter for 10, looking and living out places that are no longer available to me. I met up with friends from high school and university – we reminisced a lot. I ate lots of good food – mostly fish noodles and beef noodles, as I needed to keep a healthy diet. I made new friends and re-connected with ones from different parts of my life.
I worked very hard throughout November, juggling a full-time job together with two regular clients from abroad. In total, I wrote six fully-researched articles for tech companies and one full travel article for an in-flight magazine. On top of that, I had a new client from Greece, and almost didn’t know when to stop by applying for other freelance roles. I ended up dropping an existing client and declining two others, due to the heavy year-end workload.
During my down time ie. non-working times, I finished reading six books! Two were Christian non-fiction: ‘Miracles’ by C.S. Lewis and ‘True Grit’ by Deborah Meroff, while the four were fiction: ‘Floating Petals’ by Leela Devi Panikar, ‘Yesterday’ by Felicia Yap, ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by E.B. White and ‘Selected Stories’ by Alexandre Dumas. I also went through an Ezra Miller phase, watching ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’.
The only bit of fiction writing I did was in my Coursera course. In Week 2, I practiced the ABDCE structure by writing a story called ‘This Morning’. In Week 3, I practiced writing scenes in a story called ‘The Mechanic’. In Week 4, I practiced a full story with structure, scenes and rising action with ‘Bell-Shaped Apple’. In the fiction world, I also proofread a Glimmer Train submission for a Penang writer.
In other happy news, I bought myself a new pair of Nikes, saw my creative non-fiction ‘Slowly, Slowly into the Night’ finally published by Gerakbudaya, had a sabrage event feature published by Robb Report and saw an award entry I wrote for a tech figure win at the ARN Women in ICT Awards 2017. Hooray!
Wan Phing Lim 