Where the Hell Were You, Shirley Lee?
latest bio + updates
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Basic Information
Name: Shirley Lee
Age: 24
Nationality: Hong Kong
What I have been doing for fun: tweeting nonsense every three hours, reading (halfway through The Unbearable Lightness of Being, finishing Wait But Why’s latest series and bill wurtz’s question page), watching YouTube videos (Daily Dose of Internet, Outdoor Chef Life, It’s Alive series by Bon Appetit, earwax cleaning videos, toenail removal videos and whatever Casey Neistat uploaded) and Netflix (Street Food), napping, and oversharing my life with people on the Internet
Languages: Cantonese (mother tongue), English (hopefully fluent), Mandarin (It’s gotten worse. I understand some of it when I listen to it, but I can’t form any sentence with more than 5 characters now)
Updates / FAQs / The Part Where I Answer Myself Questions That Nobody Cares About so I Don’t Have to Worry About the Organisation of This Post
So, what’ve you been up to?
Convinced someone to give me a job; worked for another summer job. Had a plan for a Medium post, got too busy with the summer job, then when the summer job ended, got too busy with the actual job and couldn’t think properly in any spare time. Learnt that a respectable figure in my life (a workaholic) had retired, felt weird about it, then felt even weirder when he passed away not soon after. Met a lot of supportive, Grade A colleagues at the actual job. Nonetheless failed the first quality control test of the actual job. Managed to maintain a 60-day streak on Duolingo Japanese.
Oooooookay. Do you have any other words to describe your feelings other than “weird”?
I am not good at expressing my own feelings, so nah.
Alright then, scratch that. What does your daily routine look like now?
Wake up at 6:15 am to go to work; feel like I don’t know what I am doing at work, and later on, don’t even feel a thing at work anymore. If I feel too tired, I bring work home, nap for 2 hours, have dinner, then work till 12:00am; or I feel ok, then I try my best to work at the office till 7:15 pm to catch the latest free shuttle bus home, but lately I usually fail and work till 8, 9 or for a few times, 10 pm. Stare at the phone nonstop to escape negative thoughts and stop myself from falling asleep, cycling through Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, an online forum and local news. I am talking at least 6 hours of phone usage on workdays and 12 hours of phone usage at weekends. Feel like suffocating when I put down my phone to sleep at night. Question why I am doing what I am doing. Wonder what I can do if I don’t work at my current job. Fall asleep. Repeat.
You don’t sound happy.
I’m not.
I felt like you could be happier if you use your phone less.
All work communications are on Whatsapp, so that’d be hard to do. But it’s holidays now and I dropped my phone in the toilet yesterday, so hopefully I am getting those 12 hours back.
When are you updating Chinese Thought Pills?
While writing this post, I read some of my old Chinese Thought Pills posts, and I thought, eh, I am not feeling like the person who would write this. I think the confident, laugh-at-everything Shirley Lee is not dead yet, but I haven’t bumped into her for quite a while.
Plus the Internet was filled with short and “meaningful” life-advice type content, you know? People are writing them for free; even more people are writing them on Medium, and I have no idea why companies are still hiring people to pile up even more wheelbarrows of self-help articles on their blogs. Maybe people on the Internet are busy, and sometimes they’d like those posts like how people like a quick cereal breakfast. Chinese Thought Pills may have been one of the competing cereal brands. And I don’t want to be pouring Chinese-flavoured cornflakes on the overflowing bowl of milk that is the Internet anymore. I want to make proper meals. You know what I mean?
Change your name to Shir-Lee.
No.
Stuff I Wrote That People Still Like And Is Still Relevant
Other Stuff I Wrote That Many People Liked and Why They Are No Longer Relevant
All posts on Clapping on Medium: Medium Partner Program doesn’t count claps anymore.
A creepy post about stalking people on Facebook published three months before Netflix’s You was out: Facebook shut down graph search.
