This is a quick write-up I’ve prepared as a complement to my online “buy a coffee” form – the first ever I’ve made for myself. It’s Brunei-style, for those micro bank transfers we love so much, as an alternative to PayPal and credit/debit card payments. (I’ve also recently opened a Ko-Fi, for those who do have PayPal or credit/debit cards.)

It made me think that the concept of “paying the price of a coffee”, or a “tip jar”, may need to be elaborated.

Why you should pay content creators:

• Making content takes planning and time. Yes, even tweets and threads. Content like memes, jokes, IG posts, IG stories, Tiktok videos, YouTube videos, blog posts, fandom materials, projects, lists and compilations – they all come from someone’s effort.
• Making such content constantly may even mean they’re building up lots of experience and expertise in it. Isn’t that worth a cup of coffee, or several? If 99% of the time you don’t pay to use or look at digital social content, it’s still nice or even helpful to someone if you dropped a tip 1% of the time.

Maybe others could use this “tip jar” system too?

• Micropayments for content creators still seems new in Brunei. I’ve given to my favourite non-Bruneian content creators for years through Patreon or Kickstarter, or by buying their products or merch, or giving one-off PayPal payments.
• I would like to see more Brunei-based creators who are more talented than me, whether artistically or technically inclined (or both), whether directly or indirectly creating output, to be able to earn income from micropayments if it’s harder to secure regular income from employers or clients.

I’d credit Songket Alliance for being the first online content creator I’ve seen in Brunei to create a donation page and to write up their reasons and cost breakdowns.

I will likely need to come back and expand on certain points here. So if anything seems incomplete – I know I’m not particularly defining the categories of content creation, or addressing influencers and sponsored posts – I’m open to feedback and further improvement!

My website theme is over 10 years old.

I kept it because I liked it a lot, even as I saw that the theme was not being updated by its developers – their website was working up to 2014. As the years passed, I customised it heavily with plugins and CSS to make up for the gaps.

It’s been outdated for a while, I know that. Some of the Javascript is broken. It’s not mobile-responsive so I had to set up an AMP version, which I’m also not fond of – it takes away so much of the extra formatting that (I personally believe) adds to personality of the site, as well as the fun bits I squeeze into the sidebar.

At the beginning, I didn’t have the chops to get too deep with the theme code. And I’ve always wanted to customise the post and category templates. But now that I am able to do all that, I don’t have the time.

So… revamp?

Yes, and no. I’ve had a theme sitting on a staging site that I wanted to tweak the hell out of – for two years. It’s clear that I just have to put it up, out-of-the-box, with minimal tweaking. I can always do the adjustments afterwards haha.

So, when the new theme goes up, and however long I leave it looking like a default theme, please know: It is absolutely a reflection of me. It doesn’t reflect my webdev/webdesign skills, I can of course do much better. It does reflect how I deal with my myriad of personal projects, and personal branding.

Happy new year, everyone.

Five years ago, I was part of a local women’s tech seminar and, on stage, had a cringey experience (read: I embarrassed myself). There is a blog post for this that I’ve never managed to finished, haha.

Photo from Syuaib Rahman (GDG Brunei)

Here’s the graphics for the talk, the workshop and the event itself:

Talk: Self-Taught Programmer: An Experience

Group Activity: Networking For People Who Don’t Like Networking

So how did my activities go? Spoiler alert: The cringe was back.

In reflection, and after talking to others,  ‘cringe’ is inevitable  for some of us when we recall our past work. And I cringe when I remember my talk. But I’m glad to say that it was offset by a pretty great experience with the networking activity. *

This is part one! This post will cover my decision (or lack of) on the topics, and some thoughts on my talk “Self-Taught Programmer: An Experience”.

* My networking activity will be covered in a separate post, part two.

Read more…

I sit here – like many others I’m sure – within “stay at home” measures, as we have been officially encouraged (no lockdown in Brunei), privileged to do so while having to adjust to the changes, amidst all the ways in which the COVID-19 has affected our lives. And I remember that I have a blog.

So, books. I had an interesting 2019 when it came to books. My reading record was still awful (I finished 6!). I was pleased to represent our Feminist Book Club, first booth-repping (that ol’ booth life) at YEP’s Thought Festival in September. Then two months later, I was invited by our book club founder Kat (Kathrina) to be a panel moderator (!!) during Heartwrite’s Tiny Lit Fest.

Our booth at the beginning of the day at Thought Festival. The books were later moved to a charming book trolley (from Kat!) and our “Feminism is…” board filled up with answers

Read more…

Some of you have asked me this question about Brunei associations and societies, and what follows is my answer:

Here’s a poll (optional, of course!) for me to better see how I can make this page more useful, especially for those of you doing research 🙂

For the sports societies, you can find the list here:

How about all societies? There used to be an official list, as I wrote in my old project update in 2011, but that website went down a few years ago. (We even had a draft application for B:Read, intended for association registration, but that draft went down with the website :/ )

Screenshot of the ROS website from 2010-2011

In recent years, due to the aforementioned project update post, I’ve gotten a few enquiries from people looking for such a list. Read more…