Picking Up My Habit of Writing in 2020

The last blog I penned stopped in 2011, when I was in my first year of tertiary education. It has been 9 years since then.

2020 has been a tough year to human race around the world, where the Homo sapiens are stricken hard by novel virus outbreak - Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). We are forced to stay at home because of the pandemic. Many of us even work from home. Life has been different and this is a new normal that we are adapting to.

I believe this challenging period might have irked some people, but I take it differently. I personally feel that it is a good time for me to sit back and think of what I can do to enrich myself albeit staying at home. One of the things I do is to pick up my writing habit that has long faded away.

Many people do not know that I used to be a good writer a long way back when I was studying at secondary school. I liked to write compositions and I slowly grew to enjoy writing to express my opinions. When I was at Form 5, I sent my first ever letter - "Make it work" to The Star, an English medium press in Malaysia and it was published! For a teenager growing up in a small town, where English was an alien language, it was a triumph and recognition! Since then, I continued to send my letters to The Star whenever I had ideas to express.

I remember an interesting assignment given by my Form 5 English teacher, Mr. Thamlarason, who requested the class to write a journal in weekly basis. I liked it very much because I would not be restricted by a topic and I could write freely. Another interesting part about it was Mr. Thamlarason would write his comment in the journal as a way of interaction with his students. I vividly remember one of his comments in an article that I wrote was he enjoyed reading my journals because the ideas were mature at my age. My interest in writing grew stronger ever since.

When I pursued my Form 6 at the same secondary school in 2008, I had a chance to be appointed as the chief editor of the very first English newsletter, English Language Newsletter (ESN) published at the school. Apart from being involved in the editorial tasks, it gave me another platform to express my ideas through my own column in the newsletter.

There was a time when I went back to my alma mater to visit my teachers after 1 - 2 years working in Singapore. I met Mr. Thamlarason and I would never forget the last question he asked me when he was about to go home, "are you still writing?" I could feel his disappointment when my answer to his question was negative...

As a matter of fact, writing is a complicated cognitive process. It requires continuous effort to structure the sentence, edit, vet and proofread the writing. If you have the interest, you would appreciate the beauty of writing. Each piece of writing is akin to a new product innovation. I think it is a good time for me to pick up the old habit and polish it up!

Photo 1: My first letter to The Star newspaper 

Photo 2: Cover page of ESN (issue No. 2) 

Photo 3: My column in ESN