There are days when you realise you’ve become someone you never quite chose—just slowly drifted into, like stepping onto a current you didn’t notice was moving. How much of who you are now is something you’ve let yourself be carried into, rather than decided?
In the Middle
Audrey Desmond (Marketing Lead)
Drift suggests movement and change, yet I see it differently: clinging to the status quo, unchanging routines—feels like the real drift. It’s a quiet stagnation, not the vitality of a life moving through seasons of change, challenges, and triumphs. To stay afloat in that “relentless current,” we sacrifice parts of ourselves: dreams deferred, curiosities sidelined. These compromises pull us further from our true intent. I ponder: how can we flow toward our intent while still staying afloat?
Video by SHVETS production
Gently down the stream…
Charlene Lim (Admin Executive)
I want to believe that who I am is the result of choices—small, deliberate steps that built into something I can call my own. That if I had chosen differently, I would have become someone else entirely. There’s comfort in that kind of ownership, in thinking I’ve had a hand in shaping myself.
And yet, there are times when I step back and wonder if I’ve mistaken movement for control. What if I didn’t so much choose my path as follow the one that unfolded most easily? The habits I slipped into, the beliefs I inherited without question, the paths I followed simply because they were already in front of me.
It leaves me to wonder: in one’s lifetime, does the self exert free will or do we just think we do? Can we only drift downstream, regardless of the path we take?
My own image in Australia (5519)
Film – Boyhood (2014)
Ricky Sim (Artistic Director)
Watching Boyhood feels like sitting inside time as it passes. Nothing dramatic insists on attention, yet everything quietly shapes who Mason becomes. There is no clear moment of change. It gathers, almost unnoticed.
It leaves me wondering how much of my own life has formed this way. Not through decisions I consciously made, but through what I allowed, what I repeated, what I left unexamined. The people around me, a car ride, a passing interest that stayed longer than expected. These small moments do not announce themselves, yet they accumulate into something I eventually call a self.
What stays with me is a shift in attention. The in between moments no longer feel empty. They are where life is actually taking shape. It asks for a quieter kind of responsibility. Not to force direction, but to stay aware of what is gently becoming through me.
Perhaps gratitude begins there. In noticing that even the most ordinary passage of time is already forming a life I am still learning to inhabit.
Written and directed by Richard Linklater
Ferns & Herbs
Matthew Goh (Company Dancer)
My recent love for gardening has prompted me to slow down, observe and appreciate. Growing plants takes patience, understanding them takes time and seeing them bloom brings a quiet feeling of joy.
It has been a surprise to encounter this experience! As I work my hands into the soil, prune the plants and silently “speak” to them. It feels as though we are sharing a collective presence of time, breathing and living.
“The truth is, nature doesn’t speak in words — it teaches through presence, patience, and quiet observation.”
– Mathees Asinsha
Source: Medium.com
Faint Lines, Lingering Light
Esther Ong (Company Manager)
What remains is not the path itself, but the feeling of it. A subtle shift in how space might be entered, how attention might be held. Long after it is gone, the impression persists, soft, unresolved and difficult to name.
This is how Hideo Kobayashi’s photographic works linger in my memory. The light in his work does not follow a predictable path. It bends and drifts around what it meets. Watching it, the world feels slightly altered, as if the space itself remembers the line that once passed through. It leaves no fixed route, yet it edges quietly into perception, shaping how we move, notice and hold a moment in mind.
I notice my own traces in the spaces I pass through: the glow that lingers on pavement after a streetlight flickers off in my neighbourhood, the brief reflection along a windowpane, the way sunlight shifts quietly across a clearing. These fleeting marks may never form a road, yet they linger in subtle ways, shaping the landscapes around me and the moments I touch without knowing.
“Interrupted Place/trace” Emon Photo Gallery, Tokyo Filming “Streetlight”