Hangat-hangat Tahi Ayam

In January 2026, I wrote 12 posts, averaging 2.5 days per post - which is quite normal in my opinion. 1 day to brainstorm and draft, 1 day to edit, 0.5 days to post.

Meanwhile in February...

Okay, I wrote ONE thing. It's not that bad.

It's not that I have nothing to write. I do. I have a list of ideas with pointers like hypothesis, what to search for, history, links to make, conclusions etc. Right now, on my tabs, I have "taste of coffee vs smokers" as my search query because I was interested to find out how smoking affects the taste of coffee - since there is a stereotype that all baristas smoke (or have tattoos).

Just to be clear I neither smoke nor have tattoos, thank you. But then again, I'm not exactly a barista at the moment.

Falling off the enthusiasm train reminded me of the Malay expression: Hangat-hangat tahi ayam. And yes, the translation is as warm as chicken shit. I kid you not. We can get away with writing "shit" in Malay. It's not a bad word! Just a word for excrement.

Hangat-hangat tahi ayam is an expression that denotes enthusiasm that fades rather quickly. I have no idea who goes around touching chicken excrement as it forms and then checking it again later on but... you get the gist.

All those times at the start of the year forming ideas about how to fill my hours, reading books about experimenting with life and taking it back from our corporate overlords, watching countless videos about creating personal curriculum because the internet is vast and I want to learn many things!

The thing is, I had a good excuse to start hobby or learning things and then abandoning them while I was working. Even when I wasn't working full time, I was still commuting and working. I had things going on. I would always try stuff for 3 days and then forgetting about them.

Now that I'm jobless with full reign of my time, I literally have no excuses. Yet here I am, waking up with the day ahead of me, rolling around on the couch and letting the days go by.

I know, toxic productivity or whatever. The worth of a human being is not measured by how much they produce!!!!

But it's not just that. After eliminating A.I., I found that I had another hurdle to tackle: myself. I once told my husband that I felt like a loser. It was humiliating to admit, but I didn't spend all that time studying and cracking my head all the way through higher education to be jobless and to feel worthless like this!!!

(Maybe this could also be a critique about how the Singaporean education system is lacking in raising enterprising children who are resilient and are able to face failure head on - but maybe this is just a personal failure on my part and I have no one to blame but myself.)

I know I have to be kinder to myself because I've just moved across the world and I'm rebuilding my life from scratch and this city is smaller than Singapore but I'm so sad and tired and I know it's going to get better. Right now though, I'm really in the trenches. I hate all the free time I now have because I have no choice but to turn inwards and confront my demons. The good stuff is somewhere deeper, but I have to shed the demons first.

And things will get better - I'll get a job and make some money, rebuild my life, have some savings, start a business (these are my prayers, so say "ameen").

But until then, I'm here in the shits with all my warm chicken shit.

Post-Script: Is there shit that stays warmer for longer? 🤔