The Other Half of the Story

Personal Reflection

It all started in 2008, when I was working as a part-time bartender during my college years in Singapore. One evening, I was serving two guests at a champagne brand launching event. After some light conversation, one of them asked if I had “Facebook.” I was puzzled. Back then, even the phrase “social media” wasn’t in use, and I could hardly imagine what it meant. Out of curiosity, I created an account — and I’ve been living with social media ever since.

Seventeen years later, I’ve seen how these platforms evolved their business models and how, as users, our lives and data have been woven into their revenue machines. Many experts have unpacked those dynamics — The Social Dilemma being one example — but my focus here is different.

On social media, people (myself included) usually share their brightest moments, achievements, and filtered lives, leaving struggles and messy realities outside the frame. Over time, that creates a distorted image — one I feel responsible to balance. This page is my attempt to do so.

Here, I want to disclose the failures, mistakes, confusions, and bitter chapters I’ve lived through as a social entrepreneur and change-maker over the years. Some of them were deeply personal — the clarity I failed to achieve, relationships that fractured and choices that carried loss. Some were organizational — the difficult years of starting MILS, the missteps in building teams or partnerships that didn’t hold. Others were systemic — navigating the broken architectures of Myanmar’s food systems and inequalities that no single effort could fix.

Each of these failures left me humbled, sometimes scarred, but also reshaped. They taught me patience when I wanted speed, clarity when I was lost in ambition, and resilience when I doubted whether to continue at all. None of these stories are comfortable to tell, yet they are the compost that has fertilized my journey.

This is not a place of polished narratives or heroic stories, but rather a living archive — a space to metabolize what decayed into and what now sustains me. By opening these stories, I hope to offer something honest: not a performance of perfection, but a record of transformation.

Stay tuned!