Tammy Yu-Ting Chiang

江鈺婷

Category: year in review

  • I Can’t Even Keep Track of Where I Am: Year in Review 2025

    I Can’t Even Keep Track of Where I Am: Year in Review 2025

    • photo taken in Dahab, Egypt, November 2025

    “Where are you now? Do you really live in Berlin?” People around me probably all have had this question at some point.

    “I can’t keep track of where you are anymore.” Me either, to be very honest.

    This year, my free spirit has probably peaked yet again, so has my P-ness (MBTI, iykyk). The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Qatar, Thailand, Taiwan, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Egypt, and Japan. I’m simply an opportunist and the biggest sucker of spontaneous adventures, and I’ve been loving how it has turned out for me. So no regret at all even if it was the most difficult year ever in my life financially.

    /

    Yes, you read it right – I’ve been the poorest in my life, wallah. Life has been the hardest ever this year. I had zero income for a few months and was seriously anxious. Well, for the record, I’ve been working. Despite less work than before yes, the main problem was that my clients didn’t pay me as they should have. So yeah, this is the reality of a freelancer’s life. Instability.

    But I’m also an optimist. I’ve been nothing but lucky throughout my career and life, thankfully. I believe the universe was trying to create this sense of urgency so as to force me to be brave and make difficult decisions. It burned my bridges, basically. But at the same time, I’m forever grateful for all the angels that have come into my life at the most fitting time, and especially for my German parents’ support as always.

    A friend told me: finding it hard means growth. I might’ve felt lost in the moment at times, but looking back, I know I’ve figured out a whole lot about myself. I’ve been doing so much self-reflection that I almost finished two journal books. Now I know better what I’m yearning and searching for; I know what I lack and what I have. Perhaps, at the end of the day, the one that’s holding the string to my kite is also me. It’s never supposed to be anyone else.

    /

    “Are you running away from anything?” Mom asked me when I told her about my decision to move out of Thailand two years ago. Partially yes, let’s just be very frank. But now I also know: this is what I want at this moment. And I’ve been making it happen mashallah, step by step (zack zack zack).

    I know I’ll still be learning, panicking, struggling and at times questioning myself along the way, but turning 32, I’ve also realized: I can be comfortable with running into the unknown WHILST feeling scared.

    Oh and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this year, and am still practicing, is to allow myself to send out SOS signals and to be helped (not going into the Eldest Daughter Syndrome here).

    /

    I guess, being the most vulnerable ever, the theme for this year would be: ⚓️

    Hopefully my anchor can really fall where it’s meant to be, inshallah.

  • Moving Home: Year in Review 2024

    Moving Home: Year in Review 2024

    • photo taken in Chiangmai, Thailand, March 2024

    Here’s a wrap for 2024 that I’ve been postponing for too long.

    It was a year of transition, a prolonged transition from my beloved sunny and beach-y part of Asia to the long overdue European Girlie Era of mine. It was a year of connection, numerous new serendipitous connections and precious re-connections with old pals despite a few heartbreaking disconnections with important people and places.

    /

    I spent the first half of the year saying goodbye to my Home: Thailand. I never experienced a harder goodbye than this, and the thought of this event and my most wonderful 2.5 years would still get me very emotional now. I don’t know why. Or actually I know why. But at the same time, I felt it very strongly in my gut that it was time to go, to see the world. Home is not a perfect place, nor a place where you have to forever stay. Home is a place that you will always come back to, in reality or in thoughts and dreams.

    /

    And then I found myself stuck in the KVIS-universe. Despite some disheartening interactions with the school authorities, I’ve earned way too many precious friendships from these past couple years. They have accompanied me through ups and downs (special shoutout to the Whatever Group It Is, who were there in many of my core memories in 2024) and brought me to see numerous new things. Most importantly, I feel safe and loved and willing to give all my love and support to these people.

    /

    A crazy fact I happened to notice: the number of my followers on instagram (new friends and acquaintances) increased by 100+ over the year. Each symbolizes a new inspiration and sparkle into my life. I’m lucky to have built stronger connections with some of them throughout the year. And I’m eternally grateful for my dear friends who have sheltered me both physically and mentally, and for the new members into the family who care for me more than one could ask for.

    /

    While thanking the universe for treating this lucky little blob so well, I also thank myself for being a go-getter who makes dreams come true: from Doolaylay to Krabi (absolute highlights), from the Lombok surf camp to the Bali trip with Andre to Oktoberfest to Cigarettes After Sex (the major pegs I put down for the shaping of 2024). Now the new chapter has officially started, so the theme for 2025 is: 🇩🇪

  • Life Is But a Dream: Year in Review 2023

    Life Is But a Dream: Year in Review 2023

    • photo taken in Coron, Philippines, October 2023

    人生如夢。

    Life is but a dream.

    /

    I’ve been thinking how to put my 2023 into words. A crazy year, been all over the Great Pacific, taking planes as if they were MRTs. So many things happened, yet they somehow felt so far away from me right away.

    Life just keeps rolling in. One moment I’m still working in the boonieland, the next I’m spending my weekend in Taiwan with my parents. One moment I’m diving around Beqa to see sharks in Fiji, the next I’m doing the Nevis Bungy and freefalling for 134m in New Zealand. One moment I’m experiencing an unprecedented euphoria on Koh Phangan, the next I’m swimming peacefully alongside a dugong in Coron, Palawan. One moment I’m trying to figure out visa for our move-in plan, the next I’m told we shouldn’t be seeing each other again.

    /

    This was also my last year before entering my thirties. “How was your 29?” I like to ask people this. So how was mine? It started off amazingly but had a bizarre, almost surreal turn towards the end. Someone wrote me, “You are like heroin and I’m an addict and I have no sense of self control,” which can almost be the best caption for my 29, too. So really, I believe it’s the universe helping me detox, may it be the tumor found in my right breast or the major source of emotional drainage, aligning with the theme I set for myself over the last new years: 🪬

    Perhaps this year is finally putting an end to my naïvety, my “teenage” state of mind. Looking back to this decade, a lot of things seemed to have lagged on my timeline. I might have enjoyed too long of a “fortune advance” in my early twenties, smooth and free from heartbreaks. Life then took a major plunge in my 26, which surprisingly led me into a dream life that I was almost going to sabotage for whom I thought was everything. That was also when I started to live most freely ever; got piercings and tattoos, learned how to smoke and whatnots, things I’d label as what people do in their teens or early adulthood. That year, I learned about blessing in disguise.

    Then this wide-eyed girl got to see the world on her own. Found a version of herself that she likes the most, and a “home” that she’d miss on the road. In fact, everything in life has been perfect, nothing much to complain about regarding work (let’s just not go into workplace politics), a lot of love wherever I go (and really, I’m grateful for the luxury I have to go wherever I want to go). But I’ve also learned it the hard way: how malicious the world can be to fail your sincerity, how destiny can bring you to something seemingly beautiful but you’re in fact only here to pay the debt you owed from previous lives, and how nightmares can be simply dressed like daydreams. But again, I hardly regret a thing. If I could choose, I would just do it all over again. After all, never try never know, it is what it is (bread bread cheese cheese), and I never for a moment fail my own heart. I’ve also learned a whole lot about myself, what past trauma has caused me and what I want and need in all sorts of relationships.

    /

    So of course I would say, that was yet another happiest year of my life. But Sharky Tammy may have had some very exciting plans for her landmark year already 🤭 I guess we’ll all just stay tuned! Because I don’t know either where life is going to take me 💖 I’ve already started to feel a new level of confidence and empowerment that people told me belongs to the big 30. And I aim to break the myth that everything will suddenly go downhill upon the entry of the club 😆

    So now, cheers to my new decade first 🍻 (spoiler alert? tihi)