my 20s

I was studying biotechnology that was meant to take me to Pomona California but the 2008 recession hit and I switched to mass communication, the cheapest thing on the menu.

I experimented with theatre. I memorised everyone's lines and never acted in another play ever again.

I worked part-time jobs: food service industry, extra in a local TV show, transcribed for techies, voiceovers.

I photographed events. I always took photos: disposable cameras, the Lomo Fisheye, a digital Panasonic.

I performed poetry in experimental ways to accommodate my stage fright, and won an award for the handmade poetry-music duo EP we recorded with the same person recording Yuna. Alia and I performed in Singapore before disbanding.

I made my first zine out of stolen office supplies.

I was in the newspaper for starting a blog about Malaysians reading in public.

I had a meltdown and failed all my classes in my mid-20s, then moved back home after living in 3 different places.

I interned at my favourite local radio station and was on air.

I graduated after finding a loophole, then I worked in publicity until I was 29 and went to lots of concerts for work.

I travelled alone: to Nepal for two weeks in 2013, to Cambodia for a week in 2014.

I started an instant poetry project that took me to art festivals in KL, Ipoh, and Penang from 2013 to 2015. I wrote a few hundred poems with mostly strangers.

I dated people I met online and offline: two men, three women, and one in between.

I co-founded a radical zine distro to raise funds for trans women and share non-mainstream narratives.

I moved towards documenting movement organising, and found myself amongst other queer feminists from around the world.