Agalia Tan
@agaaalia
Senior Strategist at We Are Social
RADAR Chapter Lead for Singapore
Agalia Tan
bio.site
"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light."
- Nothing Personal, James Baldwin
We participate in our own surveillance by signalling our preferences so publicly.
— Filterworld, pg. 134
Stop Ignoring All the Mundane Miracles in Your Life
nytimes.com
things you should remember and what "living life to the fullest" looks like
Phones, with their ability to transport you to other worlds, want to convince you that the one you’re stuck in doesn’t have anything worth paying attention to. But through my journaling, I realized something: We’re shoulder to shoulder with many universes; countless lives, hopes, dreams and fears as complicated as our own, all clustered in the same crowded shops, train cars and sidewalks. Why ignore all that?
The agency model as we know it is broken — good work often sits static, collecting dust on client shelves; value is extracted, much more than its exchanged; communal spirit is claimed while old power dynamics remain; and it's far too easy to feel like we’re not doing anything. As a result, waves and waves of brilliant, curious folks have burnt out ... See more
“The shortest distance between two people is a story.” ― Patti Digh
The "culture" of a society isn't a blob of random human activity, but an orderly ecosystem arising from the interactions between particular subunits. To maintain ecosystem health, we must reject the cynical “poptimist” framing of culture as a mere vehicle for entertainment and commerce and instead promote the benefits of constant cultural refresh.
Culture: An Owner's Manual • Culture Is an Ecosystem: A Manifesto Towards a New Cultural Criticism
At T-minus seven minutes to the meeting, I rushed my laptop up a flight of stairs to the desk of a secretary and huffed out a desperate plea: Please print this for me, seven copies. She looked up at what surely was a normal speed, but which I perceived as the pace of a snail emerging from a shell, and said,
“Just give me a second, dear.” She smiled.
... See more
“Just give me a second, dear.” She smiled.
... See more
I Felt Important
it’s always a matter of perspective, and unless you’re saving lives, nothing is that urgent