Name: Cheng Pei Yun
Click here for Pei Yun's cirriculum vitae
Favourite colour: Blue
Zodiac sign: Taurus
Hobbies: Reading, playing the double bass, sketching, visiting museums, listening to music, walking.
My Favourite Place to be: Somewhere peaceful, with beautiful sceneries, pleasant sounds of nature (birds chirping, gentle waves etc), spacious (I need a lot of space!), with good ventilation.
Places that I would avoid: Noisy and crowded places.
Ways to get to know me better:
One of the best ways to get to know me better is to communicate with me through writing. I tend to express myself more in writing than verbally. Somehow, writing gives me more space to express myself more freely and comfortably. I enjoy being able to see what I have communicated. MSN and ICQ are some good ways to get to know me better. Emails are fine, though I realise I tend to be less spontaneous than I actually am, some of the times.
Face-to-face meetings are fine too, but a little warning, you would probably need to bear with lots of silence many of the times. I'm generally more comfortable when I don't need to talk too much. If I do talk a lot, it's often that I'm putting a lot of effort to talk, or the subject greatly interests me. I enjoy being in the company of good friends even if there isn't much verbal exchange. So please don't mistaken my silence for lack of interest. I am just happy being a quiet company. Silence recharges me.
Then again, I can also get very energised if I were to engage in meaningful in-depth discussion with people, especially in areas of my interests.
How to respond when I'm feeling down:
I think one of the most unhelpful things to do is to give me lots of advice when I didn't even ask for it.
I often find it more helpful for myself to process information (e.g. of a negative event) internally. Processing thoughts, feelings and information internally seems to give me more insights than if I were to talk things out.
I greatly appreciate support, but probably in a different manner. I don't usually find having a listening ear helpful, largely because I find it quite hard, in the first place, to articulate my thoughts and feelings verbally. (So there's practically nothing much for others to listen to!) Somehow, it feels very hard to find the exact words to fully articulate the richness of my thoughts and feelings verbally and outwardly.
In fact, I often dread people (even if I know that they have good intentions) asking me questions (e.g. of how I'm coping). It just feels so unnatural to answer for the sake of answering. I would rather not answer, or simply give a short superficial answer (my way of reciprocating people's genuine concern). I'm just more comfortable and competent in processing things internally than externally.
What I find supportive at those moments when I'm feeling down is simply to have the quiet company of a friend. That gives me the space to process things internally, while feeling supported and accepted as a person.
If advice has to be given, I often find those advice that are visionary and metaphorical in nature to be more useful and better accepted than factual and literal ones.