Golden Hour on the Q Train

My favorite New York ritual wasn’t splurging along Saks Fifth Avenue. Instead, I would wait for sunset and slip onto the Q train bound for Brooklyn. I loved watching the cars rise from the underground, snake onto the bridge, and glide toward their destination. Up-close graffiti, the glimmering river, and even laundry swaying from rooftop lines felt unexpectedly cathartic—like the city was breathing, and I was breathing with it.

A Big Apple Dream

Each time I stood on that platform, I whispered, I will live here one day. I longed to make it big in the Big Apple—because New York has a way of welcoming anyone who arrives with a suitcase of hopes: for fame, for fortune, for love. In my mind, I could see myself strolling down Sixth Avenue in a Burberry trench, Starbucks tumbler in hand, heading into my office across from the Waldorf Astoria. That was my dream: to be a high-powered professional living the American dream in New York.

When Life Edits the Script

But life rarely consults our storyboards. Instead of Fifth Avenue, I now inch down Jalan MH Thamrin, honking and worrying whether I’m driving an odd-numbered plate on an even-numbered day. It might sound like a detour—or a defeat. I choose to see it as a draft in progress. I’m thankful for the dream that once propelled me forward; it taught me to chase a horizon, and it still keeps me searching for a brighter tomorrow.

Why Dreaming Matters

Dreaming is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. It fuels aspiration, sparks innovation, ushers in change, and carries us when the road turns bleak. Life without dreams is a world without adventure, without meaning. I’m grateful I was encouraged to dream big—and to invite others to do the same.

Preparing for an Unpredictable Future

In a world that seems to shift under our feet, the power of imagination is more vital than ever. Our future depends on those who can envision solutions to problems we barely grasp today. How do we prepare our children for a future we can’t foresee? Learning Chinese might help in a changing geopolitical landscape—but in a world with instant translation, is it essential? Teaching kids to code is valuable, but as artificial intelligence advances, software may soon write software. What we must teach, above all, is the ability to imagine the unthinkable—to dream beyond the horizon.

When Children Are Not Told to Dream

Too many children miss something crucial beyond love in their earliest years: no one tells them they’re allowed to dream. Without that compass, early hurt hardens into anger, then rage. We see this in Indonesia—in children born to very young, very poor parents. Their days are spent searching for affection or crying from hunger. Survival becomes their only lesson. When they grow up feeling hopeless and unseen, the cycle continues.

Breaking the Cycle With Care and Imagination

No child should grow up feeling abandoned. They need education, safety, and constant encouragement to dream—because for those who dare to dream, a whole world opens.

A Platform for Hope: (X)SML x Yayasan Peduli Anak

It is my honor to use the 20th (X)SML Anniversary as a stage to introduce Yayasan Peduli Anak and their work supporting abandoned children in Lombok. We at (X)SML are inspired by their dedication and hope to raise as much awareness as possible through our event on August 31, 2017, at 6:30 p.m., at Plaza Indonesia Function Hall, Level 2.

Always,

Jun

The post Dreams on the Q Train: From New York Longing to Nurturing Hope at Home appeared first on XSML Fashion.

The Lure of a New Beginning

In less than a month, I would start my first job at a dream firm in a brand-new city. After more than two decades of syllabi, exams, and late-night deadlines, I was finally free. The road ahead looked seductive and serendipitous. Yet even then, liberation came braided with a thread of sadness. I would be leaving classmates who had seen me stumble through puberty and wrestle with the armor and ache of stereotypes. The future pulled me forward; goodbyes tugged me back.

Why I Leave Fast

I learned something early: when you must leave the place that taught you how to be yourself, leave quickly. I dreaded farewells. Deep down, I knew the moment we say goodbye, the version of us that belonged to that place begins to dissolve. We can visit again, but we cannot live that moment twice. Goodbyes may be one of life’s heaviest rituals, and people move on in the way rivers do—sometimes quiet, sometimes flooding, but always forward. Knowing that, I often chose to leave quietly.

Fifteen Years of Quiet Departures

Fifteen years have passed since that hushed day in the coffee shop, a week after I hurled my cap into the air. I have left quietly many times since. I understood the danger of chasing new horizons and risking the loss of what I had. There were seasons when the only thing I thought I might carry into the future was loneliness. Even so, circumstances pushed me along, and sometimes I pushed myself.

Roots, Roads, and the People We Keep

There is a sorrow particular to meeting extraordinary people and realizing, in the end, that the story was never meant to last. I cut my roots early, leaving home and family when I was ten. Since then, I have been perpetually in transit—always leaving, rarely arriving. I have loved and lost; I have known regret and renewal. Regardless of distance or duration—minutes, years, or decades—the people (and yes, even the objects: the cars, the apartments, the coffee mugs) cling to me like fragments of a mosaic I’ll spend a lifetime assembling. Their impact remains, lingering long after I whisper that small, difficult, two-syllable word.

Approaching Forty, Searching for Arrival

As I edge toward forty, I count the goodbyes still ahead and feel the increasing weight of beginning again. Starting over has become harder; closing old chapters takes longer. I want to arrive—wherever “there” is. Ironically, home is the place we grow up aching to leave and grow older yearning to return to. After nearly four decades abroad, I have finally circled back to where it all began. And still, the chapters keep turning.

What I Choose to Carry

I intend to keep exposing myself to the astonishments I too often take for granted. I will share what I gather with the people I meet along the way. I will keep loving and grieving, risking and persisting, hoping that someday, when I look back at the road I walked, I’ll feel that I lived a life worth living.

Perhaps that’s what goodbye really is—not an ending, but a quiet promise to keep moving. I may leave fast, but I try to arrive with both hands open. One day, when I finally pause long enough to call a place home, I hope it feels less like stopping and more like becoming.

The post My Life as a Nomad: Why Goodbyes Are Hard and How I Keep Moving appeared first on XSML Fashion.

The Fear of Opening the Heart

When a heart is first touched, its depth feels bottomless—and that’s terrifying. No wonder we hesitate to fall in love. We were never really taught how. Math, science, literature—each has a syllabus. The art of loving? Almost none. Ironically, it might be the single most vital skill for crossing adolescence and making sense of adulthood.

The Missing Curriculum: Where Is Love Education?

Imagine if schools taught love with the same seriousness as sex education and ethics. Many argue that love is natural—let nature do the teaching. But if nature suffices, why can someone build a billion-dollar company, defend a complex theory on stage, write a bestseller, or solve gnarly social problems, yet stumble through a simple dessert date? Why does a commanding CEO freeze when faced with a pair of kind eyes across the table?

Instinct vs. Art: Love Still Needs Craft

The answer is simple: love is instinctive, but it’s also a craft. We train our logic through graduation, yet our emotions rarely receive the care they need. At our first heartbreak, we’re told, “move on.” Few explain how to metabolize grief, rebuild trust, and love wiser next time.

Emotional Mastery: Train, Don’t Suppress

Love is emotion, and managing it is essential. How do we love? Whom should we open our hearts to? These are not trivial questions; the answers can spare us from devastation. I’ve watched marriages unravel—lavish vows crumbling into custody battles and living rooms turning into sparring rings.

Root Causes: Compatibility and Compromise

Many unions fail for a straightforward reason: poor compatibility. The long game requires learning how far two people can compromise. The only person perfectly compatible with us is ourselves. That’s why people say, “to find love is to find yourself.” Once you find yourself, love becomes recognizable. Yet the world is lonely, and self-love doesn’t always warm a cold night. To complicate things, we’re all different—no one matches us exactly. So the cycle repeats: we fall again, half-hopeful, half-blind, praying we chose well.

Between Fortresses and Brave Tenderness

The temptation to build towering walls is strong—anything to avoid another heartbreak or the death of a fairytale ending. But to live is to love, and heartache proves we’re human: hurtable, therefore capable of growth. Yes, love like you’ve never been hurt—yet learn when to open the gates and when to raise the Great Wall.

A Practical Framework: Boundaries With a Conscience

• Clarify core values: list 3–5 non-negotiables. They’re your compass when chemistry fogs your judgment.

• Practice courageous honesty: speak in “I feel…” to keep warmth and reduce blame.

• Test functional compatibility: daily rhythms, money habits, conflict styles—love survives on routines.

• Red flags vs. quirks: tell apart dangerous patterns from endearing oddities.

• Heal on purpose: after hurt, pause; journal, seek therapy if needed. Don’t rebound into a distraction.

• Pre-plan limits: define what “enough” looks like, how you’ll recognize it, and who’s in your support system.

God, teach me to love with an open yet accountable heart; courage to be tender, wisdom to discern, and humility to learn. May I resist building walls from fear, and instead craft a gate I can open and close with awareness—for a fuller life and a more mature love.

The post Oh Lord, Teach Me How to Love: Boundaries, Vulnerability, and the Craft of Compatibility appeared first on XSML Fashion.

The Vanishing Shelf: Why Discovery Feels Different Now

• Personal artifacts once acted as conversation starters and character summaries.

• Digital abundance flattens surprise; algorithms anticipate us before we speak.

• The intimacy of browsing a living room has been swapped for the public showroom of a profile.

I’m an old-school, sentimental type. I miss the stumble-upon. Yet I also suspect nostalgia sometimes masquerades as truth. Maybe serendipity isn’t gone it’s just migrated. Maybe it now lives in the glitch, the mis-swipe, the comment you didn’t mean to read but did.

A Birthday, Three Astrologers, and a Phone

At a friend’s 40th birthday dinner, I found myself across the table from three people who read Ba Zi Chinese astrology grounded in the Four Pillars of Destiny: year, month, day, and hour of birth. Eight characters, four pillars, an ancient map of potential. I usually leave my future to God’s astonishing plan AMEN to that but peer pressure is a persuasive friend. A few birth details later, smartphones appeared, thumbs flew, and my fate began loading.

The Reading: A Mirror I Didn’t Expect

To my surprise, the personality analysis landed with unnerving accuracy. I wanted more. Would my business find its rhythm? Would my career settle into smoother seas? And the big one: would I get married? According to the app, a “dark circle” clouds my love life a fussy translation that boils down to this: if I refuse to change, I’ll stay stuck. But if I loosen my grip and adapt to the realities of dating in a digital world, the “One” could arrive next year. Imagine that love finding even a skeptic.

The logic behind Ba Zi, as it was explained, isn’t fatalistic. It’s diagnostic. You identify where to tune your life so you don’t spend your days wishing for a do-over. Change yourself, change your fate if Ba Zi were a company, that would be the slogan etched on the lobby wall.

The Fear Behind the Door of Change

Here’s where the overthinker in me pulls the alarm. When you’ve been single for a long time, the idea of someone new entering your orbit can feel more claustrophobic than romantic. I prize my freedom. I know love demands calendars to bend, habits to soften, and hearts to risk with no warranty. Heartbreak is not theoretical; it is a sledgehammer. No wonder so many people decide romance is frivolous, irrational, fleeting something best left to the young or the reckless.

Still, we are wired for love. It hunts us. We tumble, we shatter, we heal, we climb back up. Even with our defenses on high alert, we find ourselves staring at the door again, hand on the knob, terrified and turning it anyway.

Two Roads: Drift with Fate or Swipe with Intention

• Letting life introduce you to someone through coincidence and community.

• Meeting the moment head-on: download the app, update the photos, swipe with humility and discernment.

Neither path guarantees a softer landing. Both require courage. If you’re like me half skeptic, half hopeful maybe the work is less about where we search and more about how we show up: curious, open, and willing to be surprised.

A Practice for the Digital Romantic

• Refresh your definition of serendipity: curate less, reveal more. Leave room for the off-script.

• Date like a scientist: form hypotheses, run small experiments, learn, iterate, keep your heart humane.

• Protect your freedom with boundaries, not walls. Make space without making distance.

• Use the tools, don’t be used: choose apps that align with your values; disable features that fray your peace.

• Ground the future in faith: pray, reflect, seek counsel let hope be disciplined, not naive.

So, Is There Love in This Digital Age?

Yes if we let serendipity evolve and allow ourselves to evolve with it. Whether your guide is Ba Zi, the Holy Spirit, a trusted therapist, or your own clear-eyed intuition, the principle holds: small internal shifts create surprising external openings. Maybe I’ll even hold the app store in one hand and my faith in the other, and try again open-hearted, not unguarded; curious, not compulsive.

If you find yourself in the same paradox longing for connection while clutching your independence pull up a chair. Singletons always welcome. We can practice the art of modern discovery together.

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The Glow And The Fade

But the world’s gaze shifts. As a child, futures are luminous; the horizon is yours. Then adolescence arrives and, with it, a bold conviction that destiny will kneel before your originality. Over time, the crowd thins. You realize you are not immune to the ordinary. You look around and discover that life’s terrain doesn’t always match the bright map you drew when you were young.

Losing My Thread

There came a season when I lost myself. My studio—once a sacred laboratory—was strewn with aging bolts of fabric and tired machines. The air carried the scent of a bright, hopeful girl I could barely recognize. I had drifted off the seam of my own path. It took time to hear my inner voice again. Fashion had always been my refuge and my language—the way I interpret the world, translate feelings into form, and make meaning visible and wearable. My parents’ counsel rang in my ears: never grow stale; push boundaries; reinvent; be free. Be the sailor chasing the horizon, the chef with a cauldron of ideas, choosing ingredients with care and technique with courage. I was overwhelmed then. Now, I am ready to dream again—for myself and for others.

When Magic Met the Feed

Fashion used to feel like alchemy—impeccable craft, visionary daring, iconic myths. Technology did not steal that magic, but it changed its speed and its stage. Trends now sprint. What once lived in salons and showrooms touches billions of screens in seconds. I remember audiences watching my runway through their phones—present, yet somewhere else. Once an image is posted, a silhouette can be copied almost instantly.

The Fleeting And The Forever

I understand the joy of instant sharing; I also grieve its erasures. Architects and painters leave monuments to endure. Museums cradle canvases against time. Fashion demands the same sweat and soul, yet vanishes between scrolls. The crescendo after a show can lift your heart; then, with a click, an entire collection is reduced to a grid and relegated to yesterday. Exposure has become an arena—designers constantly measured, tastes turning with ever-quickening rhythms.

Craft Versus Clock

For a while, I felt defeated. How could success depend less on vision and more on velocity? To me, a dress is a world: a vision that resists convention; an artisan’s hand shaping fabric, linings, threads, buttons, zippers, trims, and collars; a style that partners with a wearer’s body and amplifies her presence. Every garment carries a story, and stories take time. No true maker should trade soul for speed—or so I thought. Today I hold a more nuanced truth: the clock is part of our craft. I can defend depth while designing with tempo. I can honor ritual while moving with the times.

Bending Without Breaking

Disruption arrives like a storm—some days as a drizzle of updates, other days as a lightning strike. It wasn’t mine alone to weather; every designer I admire has felt its jolt. Self-pity is a luxury I can’t afford. Instead, I keep listening inward and refining my hand. My work still has bite and grace. I still draw from nature’s flow and movement. People still seek timelessness, universality, and ease—and I can deliver pieces that feel relevant, comfortable, and, most of all, liberating.

The Practice of Renewal

Nostalgia is tempting—a soft-focus lens that begs the world to pause. But change is the only constant. I miss the simplicity of the past, yes, yet I also sense a fast-approaching tide. Technology won’t wait; neither can I. So I return to the simplest ritual I know: sketching. Line by line, muses gather. Collection by collection, I look for the soul of that brave young girl still here, still drawing breath through cloth.

Conclusion: A Designer’s Promise

I will keep learning to dance with the present without abandoning the poetry of craft. I will build garments that hold both urgency and eternity. And whenever the world scrolls past, I’ll meet it with my pencil, my scissors, and my steady, stubborn love for the art of fashion.

The post From Darling to Designer: Finding My Voice in a Fast-Moving Fashion World appeared first on XSML Fashion.

Seasons and the Shock of Mortality

But time waits for no one. It drifts like clouds, compressing weeks into days. Summer bows to fall, winter yields to spring, and suddenly we notice fine lines like penciled maps of where we’ve been. The aftertaste of mortality is unmistakable: we will not be here forever. Life can feel like a flashlight flicker in a vast dark—brief, bright, gone.

Owning Our Days

If time won’t stop, the only strategy is to own our days—one by one. Houses can crumble, companies can vanish, partners can leave, children can drift away, and savings can disappear with a single mistake. What remains is the question of legacy: not only what we make, but how we carry ourselves. What trace of character and kindness will outlast our names?

Hope, Reality, and the Myth of Greatness

Here’s a hard truth: only a tiny sliver of humanity is remembered by the world at large. As a valedictorian, I once delivered a speech flooded with youthful optimism about the futures awaiting us. If I could speak again, I’d tell a kinder truth: many of us will not go as far as we imagined, and that’s okay. Lowering expectations can protect the heart. Others will go further—steady job, marriage, children—picturesque from a distance. But who will paint the next Mona Lisa, cure a stubborn disease, or land on the moon again? Perhaps no one. And among us, how many will find a love that is both true and enduring? Maybe a few.

The Quiet Majority

For the rest of us—the vast majority—life is about playing the hand we’re dealt as well as we can. First jobs become second and third until we lose count, not from ingratitude, but because the feeling of “this is it” proves elusive. First loves feel precious until a hairline crack widens into a parting. We revise the script, try again, break, rebuild. Some of us eventually marry for fear of being alone, not because we’ve truly found home.

Envying Children, Learning Honesty

At this stage, I envy children. They rarely think about the future; their freedom is born from tender unknowing. The day we begin worrying about tomorrow is the day childhood quietly packs its bags. I miss the courage to ask, like Alice to the Cheshire Cat, “Which way should I go?” Because now I know—every path demands its consequence, and adulthood can be a thorny maze when we misstep.

Rereading Myself, Befriending Paradox

When I first read The Catcher in the Rye, Holden felt foreign to me. I wanted escape—some far‑off world beyond anyone’s reach. Two decades later, I understand him more. Adulthood sands away innocence, and life often plays like a satire—ironic, bittersweet, stubbornly human. It’s messy. It’s also in motion.

Small Practices for Moving Forward

• Choose three priorities each day; let them lead the rest.

• Keep simple habits: consistent sleep, daily movement, five minutes of journaling.

• Accept “good enough” for the non‑essential; save perfectionism for what truly matters.

• Tend relationships: reach out to one meaningful person each week.

• Measure progress, not perfection: 1% better daily beats occasional leaps.

Conclusion

Life will keep moving, regardless. Our task isn’t to stop time but to dance with it. If tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, then today deserves our full presence. We might never etch our names into history, but we can arrange our small corner of the world with sincerity. Sometimes, that is more than enough—for us, and for those we love.

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