The Journey & the Journal begins...

Sitting in a café, looking pensive and contemplative.


It is as if everything and everyone in the café have faded into the background, and all that exists is me and the landscape of my thoughts. The vast, openness of my mind is a stark contrast to the confines of what seems to be my life.

I visualise myself as a bird, trapped in a gilded cage. And yet many people, I am sure, would trade their freedom for my gilded cage. Freedom is not valued, because security and comforts in life are the necessities for the living.

I crave the freedom to spread my wings and to test how high I can soar. I do not wish to spend the rest of my life as an over-pampered domesticated pet.

This strong yearning to start a journey in order to find out what I am made of is not motivated by a desire to rebel, nor the intense lack of appreciation of what I have been blessed with.

I have nothing to whine or complain about.

I do have everything that I could possibly need, and then some.

My parents have never denied me of anything, nor were my sisters ever mean to me.

In fact, it is the complete opposite.

I have beautiful sisters who are always there for me.

They are the very foundation I lean on and can count on.

I have wonderful loving parents who have nurtured me with the best that they have.

Especially, my mother.

She is my original Life Teacher and the source of endless inspiration.

She will always be my ultimate greatest hero.

So, from the perspective of someone who has nothing, then yes, I have everything that most people are working hard to achieve.

From the perspective of someone who has everything, then yes, I should just be very pleased with myself and enjoy the fruits laid before me.

Yet, I am still un-fulfilled.

It is not that I am un-happy.

It is not that I had some abusive childhood.

I would just like to really define the meaning of true happiness.

I’ve been on the Queen Mary 2, cruising from England to Cannes to Rome and back.

I’ve stayed at the Four Seasons, Ritz Carltons and Mandarin Orientals all over the world.

I’ve got my share of Chanels, Pradas, Louis Vs, Loewes and Tod’s.

I’ve got my chauffers, maids and helpers left, right and center.

I had my share of Porsche, Range Rover and Harley Davidson.

But I realised that there are just some things money can’t buy.

Money can’t buy respect.

Money can’t buy trust.

Money can’t buy dignity and humility.

Money can’t nurture the spirit and strengthen the faith.

Money can’t teach you compassion.

Money can’t build substance and character.

There are just some things I have to learn from my own experiences.

And I can’t understand until I go out and gain those experiences.

It is not for the sake of winning others’s trust and respect that I go into this journey.

It is not about seeking my parents’ approval or winning my dad’s pride.

It is definitely not about impressing my sisters or anyone else.

And it is certainly NOT because I love my darling only daughter any less.

Izabella is my world, my highest dreams and greatest aspirations.

This is about gaining my own self-respect from myself.

This is about becoming a much better person for everyone I love.

This journey is for me.

The Words That Launched My Journey

These are the actual words of my Guru, H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, to me -


Time is short. Opportunities once lost cannot be gotten back. Friends die. Tsem Rinpoche also dies. Activities are forgotten. Even a memory of us will be totally gone. The only thing that remains is karma and its effects.



You know so many ppl. You have met so many ppl. How do they benefit you and you benefit them? But we have met and my benefit to you is the supreme dharma. Don't seek new dharma or another angle of what I have already spoken, but master and adapt what you have heard already from me. If you do so, you will see your whole being completely change. The reactions from others towards you will totally change...it is beautiful that way. I wish that for you and everyone.


Do your work, complete and must do real dharma work continuously before I am gone.

Then my Guru asked me to do an exercise - to imagine my death, my very last moments on earth and imagine my last breath leaving my body.


Then my Guru asked me to contemplate on these questions -


1) What have I really done with my life?


2) Who have I benefited or helped in any way?


3) What are the things I really wanted to do?


4) Why haven't I done them?


5) What was stopping me?


6) What can I do now?


That day un-ravelled me. Because for the first time in my life, I began to look inside and not outside.


It was the first time I used the eyes in my mind and not the eyes on my face.


So, let's answer some of these questions.


1) What have I really done with my life?


Answer: Nothing much. I have only dreamed about doing the things I wanted to do, talked about them, and even whined about them and complained how others are doing them, but I didn't lift a finger to do anything about them. While many are living out their lives by being authentic to themselves, I have not even begun to live.




2) Who have I benefited or helped anyone in any way?


Answer: I could not even help and benefit myself to begin with, how on earth could I do anything for someone else. I was too pre-occupied with justifying to everyone else why I wasn't doing more, giving more and living an authentic life that was mine.


3) What are the things I really wanted to do?


Answer: Now, this stumped me. I seriously did not know the answer to this question for many years. To give an example of how little I knew myself back then - I didn't even know how I like my eggs done for breakfast. So, after that 'defining' session with my Guru, I decided to find out exactly how do I like my eggs for breakfast. For one whole week, I ate all kinds of different brekkies, only to come to the conclusion that I really love Eggs Benedict but minus the bacon because I have just turned vegetarian since October 2009. See how lost I was. But one thing remained clear to this day, I knew what I didn't want to do. And that is, to remain that over-pampered, over-fed domesticated fat brat who was only famous for her volcanic temper and her bitchy sound bites.




4) Why haven't I done them?


Answer: Here, I can share a long list of whys - Lazy to the core, Cowardly, rather have things easy, bolt at the sight of trouble or challenges, no conviction in oneself, hence can't bring myself to believe in anyone or anything else, was completely clueless as to what I was good at and could be good at, was too gifted at making excuses rather than doing the actual deeds, didn't have the resolve to even clean up my own mess, and it can go on and on.
I was dwelling in self-pity so that I could feel sorry for myself and perpetuate the cycle of 'delusions' of grandeur and vicious barking.


5) What was stopping me?


Answer: Me, Myself and I. There are no other culprits and no enemies - only those that reside in my head. And I have allowed them to rule over me so that I can continue in my self-piteous state and pretend that I am not responsible for all of them. Now I know better. If we truly believe in something and want to do something, if we are deeply rooted in our conviction, nothing and no one can stand in our way, let alone, stop us. Challenges and adversity become our fuel, because we will use them to propel us further and not allow them to kill our dreams off. This is the huge difference between dreamers and achievers. Achievers are dreamers who act on their dreams. However, dreamers remain in their dreams.


6) What can I do now?


Answer: Whatever that I have been doing in the past, I'll do the opposite now. Because I have literally done nothing back then. Now I work thrice as hard to do everything I can. As long as I am still breathing, as long as the last breath is not leaving my body as yet, while I still can, I am fully commited in doing everything I can for something much more important than me.


I am un-important. I am not significant. Because it is everyone else who is truly everything.


I want to be worthy of this human race and this beautiful space called earth.


It is for these reasons and more that I undertake this journey.


I would like to give the best of me to those I love and care before it is too late.


And so, yes, I believe this journey will bring out the best of me and make me into a much better person – one I could never become if I continued living within the confines of my gilded cage, one I could never become on my own.


I have complete trust in my Guru. And my Guru says, do media. Go all the way, my Guru says.
So, media is where I am now.


In the process of doing media, I realised that I am deeply passionate about reaching out to the youth.


Hence, I started to create programs that are aimed at getting the message out to the youth in a fun, engaging and creative manner.


I WILL NOT REST UNTIL I HAVE COME TO DO WHAT IT IS THAT I MUST DO.


AND WHEN I AM DONE, I WILL GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT, FOR THE FUTURE LIES WITH THE YOUNG.


This media is my gift to them. Perhaps it would become my final gift as it will take me to the rest of my life.


I gave my Guru my word. I am going all the way.


THE YOUTH IS OUR FUTURE LEADERS. AND THEY WILL DO A BETTER JOB THAN WE EVER COULD. THEY WILL BE THE LEADERS WE COULD ONLY DREAM OF BEING.


And when the time comes for the last breath to leave my body, I can smile and say, I did try all my best, I did do something for others and not myself. I will be glad to close my eyes then.

The Vomit of Society

Yes, that is the name I gave the old Shirley before I smashed her head into pieces and buried her under a bed of white daisies.

I placed a tombstone out of respect and carved the words, "Here lies Redgrave".

Her funeral was simple and elegant - something she would not have approved. But she is not around to whine and gripe anymore.

The Vomit of Society - you might say it is too harsh? Well, if you only knew the truth. Then you would say that I was being kind on her.

How shall I paint this picture without making anyone barf?

The Old Shirley was born into a really good family, who gave her more than what she needed to start in life.

Few people would have that kind of luck or luxury.

Where people strive each day to make a living. She drove her parents crazy with her wild ways of enjoying life. As if she was just milking it for everything it had, sparing no one and nothing.

What else would you call a person who is blessed with so much, and yet continued to use her abundance to feed her own excesses and self-indulgences?

She created the original cess pool of only thinking of herself and only what she wanted, with no regards for what others would need or how they would feel.

As long as she was happy and got what she wanted, the rest can rot into the background.

This was the same person who proclaimed that she would only drink champagne, and good champagne, mind you - like Dom, Krug and Cristal. If you gave her a Verve Cliquot or Moet, she would pour it down infront of your face for insulting her delicate palette and proceed to ask for a Perrier with a slice of lemon.

She also proudly announced that she would only eat desserts first and then move onto starters because she had no time for inter-courses.

She could paralyse you in 5 words or less and strip you of your self-esteem for all to see. And if she was in a particularly good mood, she would even shred your self-worth in 8 words or less.

Can anything be more horrific than a woman who is armed with some intelligence and the gift of the gab, but use them all to belittle others? It seemed that her only justification for living was to make others feel totally inadequate.

And that is just for starters -

I would say that she does not look too shabby in her heydays. Especially when she cleaned up and made the extra effort to dress appropriately. She used to turn a number of heads and not to mention, string them in a row like a trophy of sorts.

Everything about her was crafted so that she looked as if she was someone truly important and significant. Hence, she bought herself all those cars like Porsche, Range Rover and a Harley Davidson's Fat Boy. She even had the disc brakes installed and the bike lowered so that her short legs could swing over them. But the running joke was that she could not even ride a bike. And if you had the gall to point out that fact to her, she would dismiss you in her casual haughty stance and say, "Because I can".

 Her most favourite past time was to make life a living hell for those who served her - from those who had the utter bad luck to wait on her in restaurants, bars and cafes to her own maids in her house. I often wondered if she had a heart at all.

Living with her was like kissing death every morning. I think one of her ex-boyfriends might have actually said that exact same words.

On the surface, she was the embodiment of all the things we love to hate and would truly have to try hard NOT to hate. Well she just made it so darn easy for people to really dislike her.

But on a deeper level, this was one lost chick - one very lonely, empty lost chick.

She never had the courage to use any of her talents or gifts for greater good. Even to just donate her used fancy branded clothes or shoes for charity, she would rather burn them so that no one would ever lay their hands on "her things". Everything was either hers or not hers and thereby should not be enjoyed by anyone else too, for that matter. And if something is not about her, then it should not even be discussed in the first place. A complete waste of good conversation, she would say.

She used to have dreams of becoming an artist, even a fashion designer. And she did win her fair share of awards, without bribing the judges or coercing them, mind you. But she never worked at it.

I always saw her as an over-pampered spoilt brattish pet. She made hell looked like heaven on heels. And I was not even referring to her famous short-fused temper. That is another horror story altogether. Gives me chills just thinking about it.

There was only one thing I liked about the old Shirley - she could write some killer poetry. But even that, she did not pursue to perfect her art of writing or using words. She just refused to work at anything.

In a sentence, she was lazy to the core.

So, are you not starting to agree with me now? My name for the old Shirley will always be "The Vomit of Society".

Yes, she may have been always afraid that she would fail if she went after something or worked hard for something. Yes, she even had a low self-esteem deep down inside because she always believed that she was just the beneficiary of her parents's hard work, blood, sweat and tears. She could never respect herself because she always felt so useless.

In any case, despite it all, her actions and speech have caused the most damage to herself and to those around her. When she refused to face the truth about herself and find the courage to do something positive about them, to change her situation - she became a liability and pain to herself and others around her.

People in various walks of life, are burdened with multitude of responsbilities, problems and issues. Some receive a larger magnitude of those problems more than others. Yet we always have a choice. We can always choose to make those problems worse for ourselves and even become a problem to others - or we can exercise the choice to work hard at resolving those problems and even become a solution for others. That is the most amazing thing about the human spirit. It is boundless and borderless.

However, when someone who is already blessed with so much does so little, or worse, does nothing, then I am very sorry to say, but sympathy for such a person would be lacking from others. And that is the truth about life and people.

We would find it hard to sympathize with people who just keep repeating the same mistakes, and who keep launching the same assaults on us. They just wear us down - they deplete us of our patience, understanding, tolerance and eventually, love.

So, I had a very tough decision to make. It is either old Shirley's life or a completely new life - one that is full of possibilities and that promises a better result. Because old Shirley's ending was just too painful to watch, let alone, bear.

If I don't kill her, who would?

No one would love us enough to stand by all our worst, our ugliness and our atrocities, and yet still remain sane or standing.

We have to clean up our own mess and start the path to redemption all on our own.

So, her death freed me.

I have much to thank her for, actually.

Now, I have no one else to blame but myself. Because my life is finally in my own hands.

From here, I have to work even harder than before, because regaining trust and restoring friendship demand that I must be consistent.

I used to think that freedom was all about doing whatever I want, when I want and how I want and with whom I want. But I realised that was really indiscipline, unaccountability and irresponsibility.

When we really care for the people we claim to care, or if we truly care for ourselves, we will never be so careless and casual about what we must do. To be there for the people we love, to be reliable even for ourselves and to be someone who can be entrusted with greatness, we must rise above our own issues.

This is real control.

I am changing the definition and description of old Shirley, version 2002.

Now, I am working hard to unveil the new Shirley Maya Tan, version 2010.

Some day I know even old Shirley will thank from her grave.

I have re-defined who she really is and what she is made of.

And look how pretty the flowers have grown on top of her since her funeral. There are yellow daffodils, delicate ylang-ylangs and purple hydrangaes.

I might even say that it has become a beautiful garden.

Good bye, old Shirley and hello, Shirley Maya.

Realization came, but a little too late...

So, it took me a long while to walk this path.

Fear had ruled over me for as long as I can remember.

Imagine wasting more than half of my life on being afraid. So afraid that I did not allow myself to go after the things I truly wanted, to try the things that could have opened up my mind or enriched my life, say the things I should have said and the list goes on.

Imagine living with fear and nothing else. Believing that I am safe because I will not tread beyond my own comfort zones and step across the yellow lines of false security.

So much inner dialogue I had to uphold in order to maintain the status quo and even more so, to convince myself that it is the best thing for me right now.

How many of us have deprived ourselves from living the life we should have led and denying the person we could have become?

In actual fact, we become someone else entirely so far remote from the person we are meant to be. Hence, we dwell in an existance of lies and we do not even realise it.

We build fortresses of delusions and facades to hide our own deception.

Isn't it funny that we tend to lie to ourselves more than anyone else has ever deceived us in our entire lives?

To see the fallacy of it all, one has to desire living out the truth in the first place.

To have the desire to live in all honesty requires one to be the seeker of truth and not an escapist of truth.

So, in the last few years, I had to find the courage inside me to face myself.

Surrendering demands that I don't just bare all. But I must also own up to my flaws, delusions, lies, weaknesses, faults and mistakes. It meant that I should stop running away, hiding and play cover-ups.

It was about coming into the light and seeing the real me for the very first time.

Most people would not approve and would not be able to endure. For no one likes to think that they have any traces of "bad" in them, or that they are somehow responsible for everything that has gone wrong in their lives. No, their first and natural instinct is always to blame someone else or something outside of them.

And I cannot help but ask myself - why?

Who created this concept that we should not be held responsible for the bad things in our life, but only take credit for the good stuff?

Who instilled the idea that we are not capable of healing ourselves in the first place?

Why must saving ourselves always come from the outside, or become someone else's task and responsibility?

At the end of the day, if we do not save ourselves, who would?

If we do not work hard at lifting ourselves from our own misery and pain, who could?

Why can't we even commit to helping ourselves on a daily basis? Is it any wonder then, no one can also commit to us? Is this not what this society has become - a community of commitment-phobics, masters of disguise and lies, escapists of truth, valour and values...

Is this what humanity has evolved into after years of civilisation and advancement?

Sometimes it seems that the more advanced we seem to get, the more degraded our behaviour becomes. Especially, the health of our mind.

So, I asked myself, why should I continue in this way when it has not fulfilled me in the least.

What has any of my old ways done for me but dig a hole with a tombstone ready on the side?

Am I not worth something more? Do I not deserve the opportunity to rise and become the best of me, instead of living life as a lesser me?

So, I stood up that day and said to myself, I want a different life for myself.

I imagined that I can have a much more meaningful life and I was prepared to work at it, seek it out and find the answers to all my riddles. Even if in the beginning, I know it would be hard, volatile and unstable.

I just did not want to keep running or denying.

So, the first thing I did was find myself a Guru.

I did not want to start a new path without a real spiritual guide.

I wanted to reconcile my body, heart and mind.

I wanted all three of them to be in sync.

Thus began my life, at long last and the adventure never ends.