For both years, I used my own Google Sheets template. Recently, a few friends slid into my DMs for a template, so I eventually made a clean one that I can share!

When you click the above link, you'll be redirected to Google Sheets. Make a copy (File → Make a Copy) to save your own template in your Google Drive.

Filling up the spreadsheet

There are multiple tabs for each category: Main (Habits), Food, Entertainment and Spending.

The Data Breakdown tab is where all the data is aggregated based on data you've filled in the Food and Entertainment spreadsheets, so you don't have to fill up anything in the Data Breakdown spreadsheet.

I also filled in dummy data for each spreadsheet to give an example.

In the Main spreadsheet, you can track any stat you want—just change the emojis and make sure you remember what those emojis represent! 😄

There are two lines at the end of each month. The figures in the first line are the number of days you've done a particularly habit, while the figures in the second line are the total number of times you've done the habit (if for example, you did something 2-3 times a day).

So in the example above, assuming that these are my totals for January, you can quickly see:

1. I ate desserts (🍰) 10 out of 31 days
2. Ate 15 servings of desserts
3. That is an average of 0.48/month (count yourself).

And if you decide to fill up the individual items under the Dessert column in the Food spreadsheet, you'll see an aggregation of the data in the Data Breakdown tab for Desserts.

What should you track?

Anything, really. For me, there are 3 aspects:

1. Practical or for life improvement. For example, being active is important to me so tracking exercise habits is a must. I've always been a sucker for desserts or junk food—I track this data so that I can shame myself at the end of each month.

2. Fun. Just a stat which is kinda cool or can be used as a fun tidbit to talk about. Like "Oh, I cooked a total of 203 days in 2022!".

3. Funny aka completely useless. In 2021, I tracked the number of days I have a canker sore, because I just kept getting them and I needed to know. The answer is 64 days. That's about 1/6 of the year! 😭

Why use this spreadsheet and not an app?

1. I want to own the data. With habit, expenditure or food tracker apps, data is contained within the app and I most likely have to pay to export my data into a CSV file... and then I'm stuck with an ugly CSV file. I thought that it was just better with a Excel spreadsheet that I'm happy to see every day.

2. I wanted some flexibility of the type of data I can put in. If I was just tracking one aspect (habits OR food OR music), choosing an app would be sufficient. But I wanted various data and it was easier to create a new spreadsheet for each data that I'd like to track vs manually adding data for 5 different apps.

3. It's much easier for me to catch dirty data input.

4. I'm more of a desktop/laptop person than a phone person.

The only con is if you're trying to create graphs at the end of the month or year, you'd have to manually create them 😄

What works?

1. Anything that can be answered with a yes/no is great with the spreadsheet. Did I do a workout today? Did I work on a hobby? Did I (not) drink caffeine today?

2. Tracking data that have categories. For example, fill out the shows in the Entertainment spreadsheet and the pre-made pivot table in the Data breakdown tab will tell you how many episodes of series or movies you've watched automatically. It'll also tell you what is your preferred genre for the year (not that you won't know yourself 😄).
   
   Similarly, for the Food spreadsheet, I can know the number of times I've eaten out or ordered food delivery, and the type of cuisine I'm partial towards.

What doesn't (really) work

Mood tracking

Mood tracking is a bit tricky, since it's only one mood assigned for the whole day. It can also be quite skewed, especially if I'm filling it up in the beginning of the day. E.g. always sad or jaded before work 🤣

There are mood trackers out there that allow you to either...

1. track your mood multiple times a day for higher accuracy, or
2. give a rating from 1-5 for the day.

I like the latter as you can eventually look back and see how many 1-rated days and explain the reasoning. Either of these methods is also doable with Google Sheet but I did not implement it because I'm not too interested in this stat in general.

Expenditure

Expenditure is sometimes a pain in the ass to fill out. It's also the stat that has the highest probability of missing data. I do try to fill up almost everything but there will always be some that will fall through the cracks.

For example, in my case, my sister pays for some things in advance and takes the money out of a shared fund. I don't usually check the transactions for this fund so there could be an item missing.

You're probably better off getting an expenditure app that you can connect to your bank or something.

Music

I track this data because my listening habit is 'binge listening' i.e. I almost always listen to a whole album of an artist in one go. So my stats show me that I binge-listened to x artist for x days. This won't work if you prefer to listen to playlists or a mix of artists every time.

Sleep

Excel/Google Sheets is just weird with times and dates man, especially when trying to find averages. It could just be my incompetence with Excel but I swear I google like 5 different time/date formulas every time. My advice? Just use a sleep tracking app or invest in a smartwatch that tracks your sleep automatically.

Supplementing with other apps

There are some other apps that I use and they come with their own 'Wrapped' at the end of the year.

Spotify & Last.FM for music

Spotify, who made 'Wrapped' a thing. You get the data at the year, usually with some whimsical copy and them taking a shot at figuring out your personality based on your music tastes 😐 It's always at the end of November though, and I still don't know if that means they count the data from November → November, or just January → November for the year??

Last.FM is great if you use multiple music apps as they integrate with most of them! I only connect my Spotify account but even then, it helps me make sense of Spotify's Wrapped data. Like at least I know how far ahead BTS is against all the other artists in 2021 😆 They also give other fun data like your most active day of the week or time of the day.

And! Unlike Spotify, they give you stats for January → December.

Toggl Track for time tracking

I'm a huge fan of time tracking! I track time for hobbies, sports and personal video calls. At the end of the year, I export an (like I said, ugly) CSV file for all the data tracked for the year... but hey, at least it's free. I'd still need to do some data-crunching myself but they are just simple formulas in Excel.

Not sponsored by Toggl Track. I work there, but the only advantage I have is that I get to whine to colleagues about having to do some data-crunching myself when it could have been included in the report.

Strava for running

You can also track cycling and swimming stats with Strava. I can live peacefully without all this data (I use Strava to share cat photos) but I guess it's pretty cool!

Reddit

This was a surprise and somewhat random. But sure, I guess I don't mind celebrating my scrolling capabilities.

FAQ

Is this time-consuming?
I can promise you that it isn't! It can be a bit awkward to try and get used to the template format for the first few days, but after that, it's a breeze and you'll only need maybe a minute two or three times a day—I do it just before I start work, mid workday and maybe another time at the end of the day.

You can even manage by doing once at the end of the day if you trust your good memory.

I can tell you what is time-consuming as hell though: Creating graphics if you want to showcase them in a specific format.

For example, every year, I choose 5 interesting stats/insights and explain them via Instagram stories for fun.

I still want to create pretty graphs despite your warning. What software do you use?
I use Figma and this Chart plugin (paid). However, you can also create the graphs in Google Sheets itself since the data is already in there. I only chose Figma because I'm very comfortable with it as I use it for work and I needed a more powerful software to create additional graphics for the Insta stories and the blog post.

Isn't this whole thing a waste of time?
That's just like, your opinion man.

I also did this in 2020 but I saw no reason to create a blog post; I did post about it on Twitter though. To be fair, I still find very little reason to write this blog post as the content will not be beneficial to anyone else. But I do think this is something cool to look back on in the future!

Mood/Mental Health

My mental health was completely garbage in 2021 haha.

The best way I can describe is that I felt that my mind was being driven up the wall every day in the first half of 2021. It was a combination of things: slow vaccine rollout in my country and the lack of social activities or outings.

Here, let me show you.

The biggest factor was actually work—it just wasn't enjoyable in terms of workload and responsibility (Hint: it was more JavaScript than I was comfortable with 😂).

When such a big part of your life isn't bringing you much joy, it's pretty difficult to keep spirits up in other aspects. The struggle with work also completely killed my joy for coding, which meant that I had no energy or motivation to work on personal projects after work.

I only did 28 days of coding as a hobby (28!! 😱 blasphemy) vs 92 in 2020 and 104 in 2019.

However, I chose not to make any drastic changes, especially a job change, due to the pandemic. Things did get much, much better in the second half of the year.

I also am cautious that everyone was dealing with the negatives of the pandemic one way or another, so me being an ungrateful piece of shit while still sitting comfortably in my home with a somewhat safe job wasn't a card I was going to play often 😆

At the end of the day, even if my mental health was six feet underground, I am firmly in the "this is such a first world/privileged problem" camp.

Especially during the times when the people in my country flew white flags asking for help or when an unexpected flood hit my state and everyone was scrambling to help save lives and homes... it really makes you stop and think—what was the issue I was whining about again?

Nope, no issues lol.

Entertainment

I watched a total of 1189 episodes of series (731 in 2020—a 62% increase!).

The increase in workload directly caused this. I let shows run in the background when I work, mostly 'mindless' shows like sitcoms (Friends) or shows that I'm rewatching (Bones).

I watched 44 movies. Fun fact: I also watched 44 movies in 2020.

I cannot pinpoint any one movie that I truly recommend. But I can give you a recommendation based on how many tears I shed wtf.

• Shed a lot of tears: Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (I also watched the new anime season—the first 9 episodes is basically the movie—and I still cried a ton so there's that).

• Shed a few tears: Spiderman: No Way Home.

• Shed a tear (like, literally a tear): Soul (Pixar movie), The Eternals.

This is why I keep thinking if I should purchase Disney stocks.

Exercise

Exercise became such a huge part of my life, mainly because there was nothing else to do 😄

I did 103% more workouts compared to 2020—a total of 267 workouts and tracked 260 hours and 42 minutes. My go-to workout channels in 2021 are Madfit, Heather Robertson, Pamela Reif and Caroline Girvan, in order of increasing difficulty.

I started running again this year. I hate it, thanks. But I will never shoot myself in the foot (or maybe I will, so that I can avoid running) as I know the health benefits are more important than my disdain for it. I ran a total of 147km in 2021.

The silver lining is cat photography. I took a total of 65 photos of cats in my neighborhood!

I cannot stress enough how important having a social/community component to make a sport enjoyable. If you want to get into a sport and need help committing, you should ask your friends to tag along or find a good gym/studio that has supportive instructors.

Bouldering

I enjoyed bouldering but when my bouldering buddy left to Germany for new beginnings (#betrayed), I found that I didn't enjoy it at all solo. It is also very difficult to pace myself between climbs without a companion.

Yoga

Yoga was something that I felt very meh about but found the motivation to do it because I really like the instructor. We were doing online classes for a bit and there were two 2-week online programs in August. God knows how I woke up at 7am almost every day for it. I would internally whine with every goddamn sun salutation that I had to do, but shit, I was still waking up every day and doing it.

It was also these 4 weeks that helped me hit a personal record. For the first time ever in my life (and probably the only time), I did more workouts in a month (33) than there are days in said month. It was August.

I was also doing yoga with my sister and a mutual friend. It was very fun to discuss all the poses we could not do during post-yoga brunches so that was an additional social factor.

Pole dancing

The same bouldering buddy who went to Germany was also my pole dancing buddy (#betrayed). I chose to continue on because the instructors are great.

I even bought a pole for my home! I started pole dancing in 2020 but I'm actually still a noob because most of 2020-2021 was spent being in lockdown. Sports/recreational activities would be allowed for a few weeks and when we started to see some progress, the government ordered another lockdown.

So I got a pole and tried to make do with online tutorials so I don't lose whatever progress I made.

Food

I'm just putting this category here because I am embarrassed by the data.

A big reason why I work out so much is so I can consume garbage without shortening my lifespan by too many years. My weakness is definitely desserts.

As per the conversation above, I'm making some effort to reduce it.

Another disgusting data is that I ordered food deliveries a total of 201 times, compared to 49 takeaways and 90 dine-ins. I mean, 75% of the year was basically lockdowns so... it makes sense?

Truthfully, on days when I needed a pick-me-up, I'd order something to make myself feel better, and yeah... there were a lot of those days.

(Abandoned) New hobbies

Latte art

Practiced latte art 77 times. This was a hobby I picked up at the end of 2020, but I ended up not doing much because I dislike self-made instant coffee lattes. Instant coffee? OK. Instant coffee latte? Hell no.

Baking

I picked up baking and I actually quite enjoyed it and even saw significant improvements (I started out bad) after 32 days of practice but I eventually stopped because it was not worth the weight gain.

Plant Parenting

Got a pot of succulents as a gift from friends and I tried keeping them alive with little success. I don't have data of how many days I've spent tending to them (it was every day for a few months) but I do have expenditure data. I spent ~$115 trying to save them (soils, fertilizers, complementary plants, and oh my god, why are pots so expensive??) before I decided to let the universe take them.

Travel

Dubai, UAE 🇦🇪

When cases were pretty low in most parts of the world (the dip between Delta and Omicron), we did a cross-team meetup in Dubai. Although it wasn't my first or fifth choice, it ended up being a good place to go as UAE had the highest vaccination rate at the time of visit.

And despite that, they were still very strict about social distancing and having to wear a mask in public places at all times. I like.

Bentong, Malaysia 🇲🇾

My country finally allowed interstate travel so I went on a vacation with my extended family. 17 humans! It's a staycation of sorts?

Although I wouldn't consider it chill (a bit more like organizing and accommodating the older generation and younger generation—kids. so many kids.), it's the first time we got to spend time together in the past 22 months in a happier setting. Otherwise, the only gathering we'd have had is for a funeral 💀.

Other

Turned 30! Got a tattoo.

These two events are not related in any way 😄 I got a tattoo of gyoza—it's Japanese dumpling... but I love all dumplings. I tell people my favorite cuisine is dumplings. That said, I only ate dumplings 38 times in 2021 (yes, I have this type of data too). Anyway, that number is way too low; I need to fix that this year.

Was a bridesmaid...

... for the first time for one of my best friends. I joked that I passed up the opportunity to attend a BTS concert to attend her wedding. The cutest thing is that when I told her that the dates clash, she said, "You go. I understand." 🤣🥺

Received some PDFs!

As the official Goodbye PDF generator in my company, I never thought I would say this: I got two PDFs this year!

One on my birthday by (mostly) ex-colleagues...

... and another BTS/cat-themed in late December (it's a "New Year PDF") by my colleagues.

This was so lovely aahhh 😍

Final Sentiment

I lost a lot of my soul to work and some days, I think that I may have actually lost all enthusiasm for my career. But I know in a few years, or months even, I'll look back at 2021 and say that I've gained a lot socially. Just getting the chance to build stronger relationships and memories with people whom I love is enough and I hope I can carry this on for life.

To more travels and less desserts in 2022... 🥲

• You're working at a remote company and nobody wants to handle the administrative tasks of collecting money and handling deliveries?
• You're not sure if a physical gift is a good idea?
• A virtual gift is just easier?

Well, consider a Goodbye PDF.

What? What is a Goodbye PDF?

It's not anything fancy, just a PDF document of a compilation of messages from colleagues and photos of memories made during all our meetups.

I am the appointed Goodbye PDF Generator. I got this unpaid gig accidentally; The Marketing team started it first, and then requests continued to pour in for a few long-term colleagues. Over time, almost everyone will get one (as long as the team lead requests for it and I don't dislike the person leaving).

The joke is that I'm the Grim Reaper of the company, sending leavers off to the other side 💀

What do I get out of it?
Intrinsic satisfaction and enough content for a blog post 😆

I have done a total of 24 Goodbye PDFs, and am wrapping up the 25th one this week.

I thought it'd be cute to make a quick list of the ones that I have enjoyed working on... because no lie, I definitely do enjoy working on some more than others.

Criteria of a "fun PDF"

1. A good PDF theme. Each PDF is customized based on the leaver's interests. Some interests can be too specific or too granular that they are difficult to work with. The PDF theme also eventually decides how much time I need to spend on a PDF. My most time-consuming PDFs are the ones where there's a difficult theme to work with.
2. Enough content, in terms of messages and photos. No content, no PDF, period. I'll always take more messages (even if it means more work) over less messages because the PDF might end up looking too sparse with too little content. I have noticed that with time, people were suffering from PDF fatigue wtf and not as many were leaving messages anymore. I eventually implemented a minimum number of messages required before I start working on one.
3. People working together. I don't do it all alone, of course. Someone still needs to compile the photos too. My most memorable PDFs have been the ones where people contributed more than the required messages or photos, such as discussing interests, suggesting theme ideas, and coming up with additional content to supplement the PDF theme.
4. A theme where I can learn a new design skill. You'll see an example later.

Here's the list of my Top 6.

#6. The One for the Shopaholic

This leaver just loves to shop, so what other theme than an ecommerce site!

Features include product features of the human and the messages as reviews.

I take no credit for the design idea. This was 100% the UI of this Blunt Umbrella website.

This one is double-fun because a group of us actually got him a Blunt umbrella as a birthday gift, so the whole PDF was actually an Easter egg. If only the umbrella delivery wasn't delayed for 5 months due to Covid... 🙃

#5. The One for the Scout

The leaver is a scout! How cool is that!? I know nothing about being a scout except my not-so-great attempt at being one in elementary school. I liked the camping aspect, not so much the leeches I met along the way.

Anyway, I didn't have a grand idea related to scouting except scout badges. So I went with a photobook idea. When in doubt, always go with the photobook or sketchbook idea. I got a few team members to list down some of his achievements and made badges for it.

This is one where I get to learn something new! I had to search for a bunch of Photoshop tutorials to learn how to make the badge effect. It's very simple and not too challenging that the project doesn't feel like a burden 😀

#4. The One for the Apple Fan

The leaver is a fan of Apple (among other culture things). Not only that, he left to work for Apple!

One of the ideas contributed was to make it similar to the Apple website, specifically the iPhone product pages. The outcome was hilarious. One of the main feedback was "This [PDF] goes on forever!"... yeah, pretty much just like that Apple page so I guess I nailed it 😂

The cherry on top is that everyone really went to town with his name—Juan. So. many. puns.

#3. The One for the Lego Enthusiast

This leaver likes a whole lot of things—gaming, dogs, coffee, the outdoors, the gym, and is really good at tinkering with devices and equipment. I concluded that if you need a friend, this one is useful to have wtf.

And he also likes Lego!

For some reason, I was very enthusiatic about this idea, despite it just being Lego? I had two PDFs to do this particular week, I thought I was going to die with all the work involved 😂. But do I let that stop me from implementing a very time-consuming idea? Hell no.

You see these little Lego brick men? I thought it would be cool if we made one of the leaver. So I did.

Except that there's no Lego website to customize these things (not that I have found anyway) so I had to illustrate them. I'm not an illustrator, so these took a long ass time.

The execution may not be flawless but it's good enough that you look back and remember the good times fondly. Kind of like coding—you suffer so much but because the end result is good enough and satisfying, you tend to forget the suffering.

And then you go back to coding the next day.

Long story short, I tried to make one for most of the ones leaving messages too.

#2. The One for the Comic Artist

The leaver is a very skilled comic artist. In fact, you might have seen some of the Toggl comics, either from your tech friend sharing it with you while bitching about software development, on Reddit, or as Facebook ads (I ran those ads, sorry).

So a comic-themed PDF is in order! I also converted his 'comic handwriting' into a real font for the messages and that is probably one of my favorite decisions for a PDF.

#1. The One for the Foodie

The leaver is a foodie so of course he gets a menu/cookbook-like PDF.

Features include a recipe titled "How to Make a [Leaver's Name]", where the ingredients are a list of his positive characteristics and cooking instructions are a bunch of inside jokes you wouldn't understand.

The idea is very simple but this one takes the Number 1 spot because a good number of people contributed to the additional content. It was spearheaded by a project manager who collected data from the rest of the team. This is proof that you need a good PM for a project lol. The whole project was just very pleasant thoroughout.

Special mentions:

1. For the one who loves ice-cream. We converted all names into ice-cream puns. By 'we', I mean I asked people to come up with their own if they can, and then voluntold 2 other colleagues who are much better with words to fill in the blanks later.

2. For the one who loves Avatar: The Legend of Korra, where we went with an Avatar farewell book? I have no idea what I'm talking about, I just know there are elemental things involved. So I converted programming language logos into 'elements'.

The execution is terrible 😂 I was in a rush and you know, totally not an artist. But the leaver 'got' the idea even said, "I WANNA TATTOO THAT CUTE GOPHER" (caps and all) so this was a win. Fingers crossed the tattoo artist will do a much better job though.

I'll conclude this blog post with some time data!

By now, perhaps you have already figured out that I just wanted to make this blog post for fun and not actually convince you to make a Goodbye PDF for your colleagues 🙉

That said, if you're really thinking about doing something like this as a gift but wondering if it's too much effort, here's some data for you. I had tracked the time for 23 PDFs done and total time taken is 105 hours and 38 minutes. Average time per PDF is 4 hours and 35 minutes.

This is pretty cost-effective imo. Of course, this is just designing the PDF and does not include time spent chasing people to write messages and compiling photos. However, if everyone is willing, this should be easy-peasy.

You can even save more time by cutting down the customization aspect and just use a Google Slides presentation or Canva. I personally believe that even if the customization aspect is very cool, the heart of the PDF is really the farewell messages.

Some colleagues have asked me what kept me going in making all those PDFs (for free, and usually on my own time too, not company time). I see this as a personal gift to the leaver. In 10 years, the leaver's time at the company will just be a distant memory. But if they so happen to stumble upon this PDF in the Downloads folder some day, I am 100% sure that the messages in the PDF will make their day. That is enough for me.

And maybe that is enough for you too 🙂

Just a word of advice though: Seriously do try to get a Project Manager on board.

As I finish my 10th CSS Grid pen* (my 10th pen-niversary, if you will), I figure I might as well pen (ha!) some thoughts down.

Maybe the notes can help someone else along the way?

* I procrastinated so much finishing this, I released 3 more CSS Grid pens in the meantime 🤦‍♀️

Getting Started

I get intimidated easily to take the first step to try something out, especially if it's something really big. I think this happens to junior developers quite a bit (cough not that I am a developer cough).

CSS Grid got so much hype (as it deserves); I keep hearing about how awesome it's going to be that it ended up painting a certain, scary impression for me. I thought that it would be really complicated to implement, and just assumed that my lack of experience in coding will inhibit me from understanding or utilizing the concepts correctly.

So when CSS Grid was rolled out, it wasn't even on my radar to actually try it.

Until one day, I had an idea that I was very excited to try. I knew that the only way I could force myself to do something is just to dive in and figure it out along the way.

Something like throwing your kid into the pool to force them to learn swimming. Don't do this - it's scary and may traumatize your kid - but I suppose it is an acceptable metaphor for fun coding projects.

So armed with a CSS Grid guide, my journey began!

1. OK, Getting Started, For Real

The 3 properties are pretty much...

display: grid
grid-template-columns: 300px 200px;
grid-template-rows: repeat(4, 1fr);

Bonus grid-gap property for the gaps.

grid-gap: 10px;

If you lay down the grid track with these declarations, all the immediate child elements will just flow accordingly, in order.

A simple example is this bingo card here...

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

... with this grid track:

display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(5, 1fr);
grid-template-rows: 100px repeat(5,80px);

Honestly, that's really it. As long as you put your child elements in the right order, you don't need any more grid-related CSS.

This is my very first CSS Grid experiment, which is slightly more complicated than the example above but still very simple:

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

... which uses this grid track:

display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(9, 100px);
grid-template-rows: repeat(4, 100px);
grid-gap: 10px;

Additional useful information:

1. repeat(x, y) is just an easier way to write the code. So, grid-template-rows: 200px 200px 200px auto; can be written as grid-template-rows: repeat(3, 200px) auto;.

2. fr is the newest unit on the block. 1fr is one part of the available space. So if the width of the div is 500px, repeat(5, 1fr) means that 500px will be divided into 5 equal parts of 100px.

3. The values of grid-template-rows and grid-template-columns are pretty much limitless*. You can put grid-template-rows: 200px 100px 200px 100px 300px 250px 150px; and keep going 🤔

* Not actually tested, but I did try this:

2. Properties for the Child Elements

Next up is properties for the child elements.

Two important things you can control is setting a) the position and b) size of the elements.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

To get the long column where the lava lamp resides, the properties are:

grid-row-start: 2;
grid-row-end: 3;

... for the child element.

Which means that you want the element to take up rows 2 to 3. This can also be rewritten as grid-row: 2 / span 2 where the first part is the row where the element begins, and the second part is the number of cells you'd want the element to span across.

Works exactly the same for columns!

3. Discovering Other Cool Things Along the Way

Using grid-auto-flow: dense, which forces child elements to fill in gaps if they can fit.

A quick demo here (keep clicking the black button):

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

This is my favorite property! You don't have to painstakingly specify the placement for each child element; very handy for portfolio items or photo galleries.

Overlapping child elements

I found out this feature very late in the journey 🙈, which then inspired my 10th pen. You can overlap elements and specify the order with z-index.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Overlapped the calendar events using z-index here.

Moarrr complicated grid tracks with grid-templates-areas

You can specify the grid track using names instead!

For example, this pen here:

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

The parent element has this property:

.parent-element {
   grid-template-columns: 60px 700px 300px;
   grid-template-rows: auto 70px;
   grid-template-areas: 
	  "title pie-recipe pie-image" 
      "context context pie-image";
}

Repeating the name means the child element will span across the cells.

In this example, element named context will take up two column cells and have a width of (60px + 700px). The element named pie-image will take up two row cells and have a height of (300px + 70px).

You 'name' the child elements by using the grid-area property:

.child-element-for-pie-image {
   grid-area: pie-image;
}

Sounds complicated? This very comprehensive guide will help clarify things and they explain things a lot better than I do.

A tip for complicated grid tracks:

To get layouts done quicker, I always put a plain-colored background in each child element and play around until I get the layout right.

This is almost always the start of complicated grid tracks for me.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

After

Special Mention

Special mention to not attempt something like this. 😂

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

This was so much work 😭 The greatest thing about CSS Grid is flexibility and I absolutely love using values like minmax or auto for layouts.

But to use this approach for what I consider an illustration... let's just say I spend more than 2 hours trying to get things to align properly and to get each pixel right exactly where I want it to be.

Lesson learned: Think twice before using CSS Grid for illustrations.

Ok to be fair, I didn't really plan things properly. So I guess the advice here is plan first before executing.

How You Can Get Started Too!

Find inspiration from all around you and code it out! A lot of things can actually be transformed into a CSS Grid experiment.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Inspired by bathrooms

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

I look at spreadsheets for my job every day

But instead of me just saying, here's a list of things you can try:

1. Easy: Chess board, comic book layout
2. Medium: Restaurant menus, food nutrition label, tshirt labels, magazine layouts, a parking lot 😂
3. Hard: Receipts, newspapers, dashboards, keyboards (both the instrument and the one you type on)

Don't be too alarmed about the items in the Hard list; they are not necessarily hard, they just have more components that require you to think or plan a little more when laying down the grid track.

I love doing unconventional use cases for experimentation purposes and seeing these ideas come to life... so yeah, I'm pretty much outsourcing my ideas because I don't have time to do them all.

Please try them 😂 and share your pens with me on Twitter!

They are usually StackOverflow tabs for very specific questions, but I know that there are a few sites which I always refer to.

Since February, I started taking note of the guides and cheatsheets I frequently use (I needed a few months because I don't always use all the of 'em at once and I want to collect as many as possible).

Let's start!

CSS Grid

As you know from my previous post, I rely on two solid guides for CSS Grid.

I actually don't use this guide anymore as I can kinda remember all the basic properties by now. But if you're looking to start with CSS Grid and you learn better visually, I would totally recommend this.

This is the guide I rely on now, particularly for the thorough explanation of grid-template-areas and examples of grid shorthands.

This is actually a new generator which was released by Sarah Drasner a few days ago. I played with it for a bit and found it quite useful if you want to quickly envision how your grid layout will look (tho, with limitations - e.g. you can't remove a div if you want to).

You can even copy the code, although I advise against it if you're trying to learn, it's better to painstakingly type it all out, trust me.

Cubic-bezier/easing functions for animations

When I am not in the mood for ease or ease-in-out (which amounts up to 2 out of 10 times), this is my go-to site to get me some cubic-bezier functions. Good visual examples and the first site that got me to understand what cubic-bezier actually is back then.

Turns out, I don't really need to read the math stuff (graphs just don't turn me on, sorry); I just needed to see how the easings worked, pick whichever I needed, and copy-paste the code.

Fun fact: I use the same easing function 95% of the time, which is easeOutBack 😂

If you want to make your own cubic-beziers. Move the pink and blue dots on the graph and preview the easing on the right (the pink box, not the blue one). I rarely use this (easings.net has been enough) but this has been used once or twice!

Colors!

My biggest weakness when it comes to designing. Also my favorite because I'm a masochist.

If it's a colored background, it's gonna be a gradient, amirite? Because everyone in Dribbble is doing it 🤷‍♀️

There recently was a pen called "5-way Gradient Generator" which blew my mind. This is what you should use when you want to be totally extra with your gradients.

A very popular tool. I use this to help me pick a set of colors that I almost always not use in the end. Why? Because I have to choose my own colors, and I usually end up hating my palette even though I spent 30 minutes trying to perfect it.

But, I use it a lot to get different shades of a color... and the names.

For when I'm really lazy or frustrated. I just randomly pick a color here.

I recently attended a conference where Steve Schoger, the author of Refactoring UI, spoke about choosing color palettes. The direct quote was "I can show you how I pick my colors, it's really easy - I just copy them."

Usually I get colors from Dribbble, but recently, I've been "branching out" and started looking at other sites.

This is my most-used resource so far!

Box Shadows, Borders, or Both

I try to remember a lot of CSS properties and values that I use often, but this is one which I don't remember any values at all.

If I ever need a 'one-side only' box shadow, I will have to Google it.

CSS Tricks: Box Shadow for box shadows. And cool hacks for multiple borders here.

Text Things

Text shadows! Anything fancier than my default text-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.15) (👈 I remember this by heart), I refer to this guide.

Used very rarely but super fun to play around.

Shapes

I've been referring to this article for years now 😂 I always go back for the triangle shape for my tooltips lol. But the other shapes are useful too!

Other weird shapes, background-gradient amazingness and hacks

A genius at work! All of the projects here are done with just a single div, which means there's a lot of background gradient and box-shadow craziness going on. I've started to really cut down on my div usage, so I will refer to her work and try to reverse-engineer it.

I certainly have learned a lot by just looking at her code.

... aannndddd, there's also plenty of times when I don't really know what she's doing anyway even after staring at the code for 2 minutes because my brain does not comprehend 😂😭

nth-childishness

I can almost remember the simple ones by now, but it's always good to check!

This one is amazing to use if you need to test a large number of divs. One of my pens had >50 divs and it was so easy to check with this tool.

If you notice, most of my pens are very simple and straightforward, so the guides or tools are also very simple and straightforward. Or maybe it's just because I'm terrible at remembering the simple things 😂

Anyway, that's it! There are more for sure, but they aren't used enough for me include them here.

Tell me your favorite guide, cheatsheet or tool!

Codepen projects are my first choice for personal projects (you'll see why later). I've done 26 pens and have spent more than 135 hours on them. I have spent an additional 36 hours on secret side projects that I tell no one about. These are the numbers for 2019 only.

And my main takeaway from all this is...

Being constantly productive and motivated is hard.

I have always struggled with motivation so while doing these side projects, I've taken on a mission to try different methods to find out how to keep my motivation level consistent.

Here are a few tips I've discovered along the way but I guess they have also become my personal mantra.

Be honest about my own shortcomings

When it comes to personal projects, I'm an excellent starter, but a terrible finisher.

At this point of writing, I have a total of 7 abandoned coding and illustration projects. The worst part is that they will forever be an undeleted folder in my computer.

Because "what if?".

On the same topic, I've discovered a lot of flaws that I've come to terms with:

1. Hard goals don't work for me.

If I set a goal such as "A pen a week, 52 pens a year". Do you know what will happen when I hit 52 pens in September? I'll probably stop working for the year 🙈

On the other spectrum, if I miss a week, I will be sad because I failed to hit my goal 😞 There are a lot of things in this world to be sad about, I've decided to not add another one on the list.

I've pretty much set my goal to be: "Let's just try to work on one pen a week". Fuck yeah, soft goals!

2. If I take on a larger project, I'll burn out fast.

The 7 abandoned projects? Big projects which will require commitment of at least 50 hours. If a person who works on long-term big side projects is a slow-burning candle, I'm definitely a really short matchstick.

This is actually the reason why I chose to do pens; I only spend about 5-15 hours on each pen and the workload is very manageable.

3. If I work continuously every day for a long period of time, I will also burn out fast.

At one point, I was putting aside 2 hours almost each day for side projects. That lasted for 12 amazing days.

After that, I spent 2 weeks doing almost nothing. The problem here is that I did too much, too quickly and had a minor burnout.

Not to mention, I sometimes do not follow through the "2 hours" rule. I have a weird quirk (another flaw perhaps) of finishing what I've started on the same day/session. So sometimes, that "2 hours" is actually 6 hours.

I decided to try a different style. I would take longer hours, but less days in a week.

Before this, I would work (as in, real work that I get paid for) between 6-8 hours a day. Now, I would spend about 10-12 hours for work for one day a week and then about 4 hours the next.

This then allows me to spend 8 hours a day coding away and finish a project on the same day*.

*The good news is that having coding as a hobby means that I'm online all the time and can get to Slack messages and work requests swiftly, so I'm technically partially working. I'm not sure if this concept can be applied to offline hobbies. Sorry :(

So, how does this apply to you?

Find out what works best for you. If you find that setting aside an hour every day works better, capitalize on that. If you find that the best motivation is setting goals, go for it!

I must stress that it's a bit of trial-and-error to get it right, so don't be demotivated if you haven't found what works for you on your first try. It took months for me to get the wheels running.

Setting strict time limits

The only reason I started tracking time spent on each project is because I thought it would be cool to have lots of data that nobody asked for. I get a nice-looking report with a graph too.

It didn't take me long to realize that I could really use it to help me pace myself with projects, which became very essential to prevent burnouts.

Another flaw I found out about myself was that I would spend hours on details that don't really matter for each project. A very clear example I remember is this pen.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

I remember looking at the timer running at 4 hours+ and I was almost done with it (or so I thought). My total time spent ended up being 7.5 hours.

It was also while working on this pen that this conversation happened:    

Me: Which looks better? This or this?

Friend: Olivia, there's no difference.

Me:

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Another example. Total time taken: 10.5 hours. 1 hour to code the layout, 9.5 hours to tweak design details 😂

"Yeah, I'll do only a few minor tweaks." - said no obsessive designer, ever.

So? New rule!

I started implementing a cut-off time of 6 hours. At 4 hours, I'll start to wrap things up, even if it means that I don't get to do items which I've set out to do.

The first 'feature' I usually cut off is responsiveness as that is usually the most time-consuming feature*. Yes, it's a conscious decision to endure Twitter comments saying a pen should be responsive.

* I'm not condoning doing this for production/real-world things. It's 2019 guys; responsive is a must.

Bonus: I also set strict break days. If I do spend almost a full day of coding, no projects for the next two days. Maximum rest!

Speaking of breaks...

Breaks are very ok

On this note, I've decided that procrastination is okay too.

There's no reason to force myself to do something when I'm not up for it. The caveat is that I use the break or procrastination time to do something that could potentially contribute to the projects.

Some acceptable ones include browsing design sites like dribbble for inspiration, reading tutorials and watching cat and dog videos for feel-good vibes.  

I succeed doing this about 50% of the time. Most of the time, I'm just fucking about on Reddit. I'm fine with this 😁

Discover & do what you enjoy

Like I said previously, no reason to force yourself to do something you do not enjoy.

People enjoy different components of web design/web development. Some love to make things cross-browser compatible and some enjoy optimizing site performance (bless you amazing souls out there, my potato iphone 4 thanks you*).

* No longer alive. Died on me.

For me, it's coming up with an idea in my head and seeing it come to life. The weirder the idea, the better. If I think a concept cannot be done with code, I try to prove myself wrong by trying it.

For this reason, there's always something 'wrong' with the pen. If I were to critic my own work, I'd say that the code isn't the best, the code structure can be tidier, the user experience is sub-par, and I probably shouldn't use so many hacks... and a lot more I critic myself harshly for. The accessibility advocates also have a lot of things to say about my code 😂

Despite all of this, at the end when I'm showing off something I've built, I feel really happy and I want to do more.

All of my pens- if I were to revisit them, they still make me smile or laugh in some way. To be fair, I have a terribly low humor threshold. If you need someone to laugh at your dad jokes, my laugh rate is 100%.

I digress. The point is, find what you enjoy doing and ride on that train to the end.

In my opinion, if you're doing personal projects, be personal. Make yourself happy. Do the Marie Kondo test- does what you are doing spark joy in your life? If not, thank it and trash it.

A quick conclusion, in gifs!

Kitchen Talks are fun!

Also very anxiety-inducing if you're the one presenting - but we don't talk about the negatives.

The hardest thing is usually coming up with a topic. Luckily, one of my colleagues had already figured it out for me. I showed a few of my pens during one of our meetups back in South Korea.

Next thing I know, the suggestion was in the "Kitchen Talk Suggestions box". I ran with it. Heck, I didn't even bother to come up with a better title. The title suggested was literally "Codepen Designs: Why She's Made Them and What She's Made." To clarify- it's not really Codepen "designs", but rather Codepen "projects".

Anyway, naturally, I love to make things more challenging so I decided to make a quick pen for my presentation slides.

"Quick".

I've made the talk in Codepen pen form, presented it, and now this is the talk in Codepen post form. We've gone full circle. Also, here's the pen!

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

View at 0.5x! As I've only optimized the pen for my presentation, it has to be slightly zoomed out -- I also use Codepen at 75% zoom and :pikachuface: every time I set it back to normal.

Introduction

At the start of the presentation, I explained what Codepen is about and who uses Codepen. I showed a couple of examples as well, just to give them a better idea.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

The second example I showed. I think there are a lot of better pens out there but I showed this one because this was actually a snippet from one of our company fun projects.

The animations for our project back then were done with After Effects & JavaScript but I wanted to try it out with CSS Animations, hence, this pen was created. I just wanted to show them something familiar 😄

Why Codepen?

No brainer here that I do Codepen projects to practice coding and definitely, absolutely for fun. I had to point out the fact that a lot of Codepen projects I do are kind of useless concepts that can't be used in the real world.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

I mean, really? Whatever though, they are super fun to me and that's all that matters 😂

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Another fun pen. This pen has about 80% success rate for me every time I show it off - it usually sorts me into Slytherin 🐍 - but when I showed it during this talk, it sorted me into Ravenclaw 🐦. TWICE, ffs. 😭

For the point on "small-scale projects", I actually wrote a blog post explaining more in detail, but the gist of it is that I have trouble motivating myself to do big projects. So I stick to Codepen, which will usually take me about 5-15 hours.

The Process

I then talk a little bit about my process.

It always starts with an idea. I jump into building it, usually with no planning. Halfway through, I start to negotiate with myself what feature I can cut down because I've already spent too much time on a pen and I should just wrap it up.

When I decide that a pen is done, believe me, I'm SO DONE. As in, I will ship it, tweet about it... and I don't want to see it anymore 😂

The good news about this process is that, if I ever choose to go back and work on an old pen, there are lots of things to improve on. Silver lining, amirite?  

Data

Used a very buggy bubbly chart to show this data (size is sort of relative to time spent; 3.5 hours = 35px width and height).

Also showcased the pen that took me the longest.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

It's because the shapes are all CSS instead of SVG

Inspiration

I then talk a bit about how I get the inspiration for my pens. I have too many pens to showcase and I couldn't choose so I built a little random generator.  

  Everyday: Everyday items in my life

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Like how I use Excel spreadsheets a lot for work

Favorites: My Favorites

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Inspired by my favorite musical called Waitress. They had funny pie names 🥧

Concepts: Serious UI things or certain CSS concepts I want to test out.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Playing with hover effects

Jokes: Things I find funny or inside jokes with people in my life.

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Lol

Questions

Every talk must have a Q&A session, of course. I tried to grab all the questions that were asked.

Do you play dota? (I showcased a Dota-inspired pen)

Not anymore. Used to play but it was too time-consuming.

"I'm starting to suspect Olivia likes harry potter"

I know this is not a question, but yes.

Olivia, I need you to build me a Rainbow Six Operators hard counter relation grid.

Trusty Slackbot answered this for me :D

So, when are you joining the frontend team?

I really dislike cross-browser compatibility fixes, and it's going to be a no as long as we still support IE11.

What are some challenges while working on projects?

Unsolicited advice 😛 Especially by people who take things a lot seriously than I do for my fun pens.

I talked a bit about how you can receive 30 positive comments and one negative comment... and it's the negative one that keeps you awake at night. I know that this comes with the territory of sharing content online, but it will take some time for me to get used to it.

Ultimately, I try to remind myself that I really do all these pens for myself.

What is your favorite pen?

I'm so glad this question was asked!! Because of the random pen generator, I basically put my faith into RNG and JavaScript that it would choose my favorite pen. If it didn't choose it, I would show it as a "closing pen". But I forgot to do so because when you're presenting, all your plans/thoughts kinda go haywire.

But I got to show it in the end because the moderator asked <3

See the Pen by Olivia Ng (@oliviale) on CodePen.

Hands-down my favoritest pen for forever

- End presentation. Finito. -

Overall Thoughts

Boy, am I glad my colleague came up with this topic. It was a topic which I'm very comfortable with, so it was just easy storytelling on my end.

Do I regret using a pen as my slides?

Oo, tough one. I guess, I do not? I definitely spent too much time on this pen. I was supposed to present on a different date but when the moderator asked me if I could present it a week earlier, I jumped on the chance because I know I would spend even more time.

But I think it's really cool to use a pen, given the topic.

Would I do it again though?

Oh, hell yeah.

Here are a few honest tips I’ve learned throughout the week.

Some basic terminology:

• Matinee shows = 2 PM shows.
• Evening shows = 7 PM or 8 PM shows.
• There will be 2 days in a week where there are matinee shows, usually Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mondays are usually rest days, but schedules vary for each show so always Google first!
• I will use the words “show” and “musical” interchangeably. I mean the same thing.

First and foremost – Should I buy musical tickets online? Should I buy them beforehand?

Noooooo. If you can wait and buy tickets from the box office, this is a better option as you get to save on transaction fees. The only time I would advise to buy online is if it is a popular musical and you really, really, really want to watch it.

If you do decide to buy tickets online, do not purchase from broadway.com (they charge ridiculous fees).

Visit sites like Broadway Box for discounted tickets – I relied on this site a lot to check availability of the shows as well. Even if you buy in-person at the box office, showing the discount page of the site will net you the same-price ticket (and you save $10 on transaction fees, score!).

Another resource which I did not use but was recommended to me was the Playbill website. Get on the newsletter so you get alerts for discounted tickets if you wish.

Ok gotcha, now how can I get cheap Broadway tickets?

I would advise to work in this order.

1. Visit broadwayforbrokepeople.com

This, imo, is the best resource to start with. The site lists down all the information and links to general rush queue tickets, lottery tickets and special discount tickets (e.g. For the Mean Girls musical, they sell tickets for cheap if you wear a pink item on Wednesdays!)

Sidenote: The showtimes can be quite outdated so you have to double-check. I relied on this and tried my luck at the box office and was told that the show started half an hour ago 😛.

2. Enter the lottery

You can get the links to the lottery from the broadwayforbrokepeople.com site or just google “[Musical Name] Broadway Lottery”. Most musicals have digital lotteries.

Caveat: Only 2 tickets per person! Seats are assigned, although most sites do tell you what seats you’ll get.

Some sites (e.g. Luckyseat) will have lottery entries for multiple musicals so you should just visit that site and enter for multiple shows. Some musicals are so huge, they have an app for it!

The main tip if you are not picky about the musicals you want to watch: Enter as many shows as you can, at whatever showtimes.

Chances are you won’t win 😂

I entered the lottery more than 50 times (many different musicals for every show for 7 days) and I didn’t get a single one.

If you do win the lottery – JUMP ON THE CHANCE.

Most lottery results are announced the day before so even if you don’t get it, there’s plenty of time to get tickets for other shows (if you’re not picky about the shows itself and seats).

If you want the old-school experience, you can also enter in-person lotteries. Not many musicals do this anymore, but the Wicked musical – a very good musical, I must add – still do them. Basically, you go to the box office 2.5 hours before the show opens to put in your name, wait 30 minutes for the lottery results and pay on the spot when you get them!

Annnddd…. you didn’t win the lottery (bummer). Now what?

3. Line up for general rush tickets!

General/Rush/General rush queue started off as a way to allow poorer people 🙋‍♀️ to afford watching musicals. Basically, on the day of the show, you line up at the box office, and you can get tickets for cheap until sold out.

Caveat: Maximum 2 tickets per person.

Here is a mini Q&A.

How much are rush tickets?

Usually between $30-50, so a discount of about 50% or more of the original price.

What kind of seats will I get for general rush?

Rush tickets could be any seating assigned by the box office attendant.

Some musicals also let you know the types of seats given out on the official show. A lot of musicals actually give out orchestra seats (section nearest to the stage). Sounds like a good deal? Maybe.

For some production sets, orchestra seats could also mean that it is partial view because you are too front and can’t see the whole stage comfortably. I have gotten excellent seats and some not-so-good ones – it’s all luck.

The silver lining is when you sit in the orchestra section, you get to see the facial expressions of the cast very clearly. I know this is important for some people. If you are one of them, this is a higher incentive for you to go for rush tickets!

What time should I start lining up for general rush queue?

The most annoying answer – it depends.

a) If the show has been around for a while and you see discounted tickets are available online (check broadwaybox.com!)… You can go a bit later. All box office opens at 10 AM every day, 12 PM on Sundays. “A little later” is about 1 hour before the box office opens, so 9 AM.

b) If there are 2 shows for the day… You can also go a little later, as the ticket purchases are split between 2 shows so there is a higher chance you can get a ticket for either show even if the queue is longer.

Example: I went at 9.20 AM earlier on a Wednesday to purchase a ticket for a matinee show. I got one just fine. On Sundays, you may want to go slightly earlier as well. I stupidly thought the box office opens at 10 AM, so I started lining up at 8.30 AM and people were already lining up!

My face when I found out box office opens at 12 PM on Sundays:

That said, the queue wasn’t that long even at 10AM on this Sunday.

c) If the show is famous/won many Tony awards… I would go at least 2-4 hours before box office opens.

d) If the show is closing soon… Yikes. I heard at one point, during the closing weeks of Anastasia, people started lining up as early as 4 AM. I personally wouldn’t do this unless you have excellent entertainment devices to keep you occupied for a lot of hours.

How many rush tickets are sold every day? What is the guarantee I will get a rush ticket?

Subject to availability, and the information of number of tickets being sold is not available anywhere!

You can’t even gauge if you’re gonna get a ticket based on the number of people in line because you don’t know how many are on sale that day.

I was freezing my ass off in a queue for a show and was the 8th person – pretty confident that I would get a ticket. 20 minutes before box office opens, a woman comes out and said there are no rush tickets for the day.

Is it worth it?

You broke? You trying to save money? You will love the show wherever you sit anyway? Hell yes.

The show I want to see doesn’t do general rush tickets. I love lining up in queues. Any other option?

4. Line up at the TKTS Booth

This is another option but warning: I did not do this because I have planned to watch shows with general rush so I can only give tips based on what I’ve read online.

TKTS booth gives you discounted tickets for same-day shows. They also open at 10AM, and you must also go early. The good news is that even if the queue is long, you may still have a chance to get tickets for the shows that you want because they sell tickets for every show.

Also obsessively check this page for real-time listings of all the shows that are on sale at the TKTS booth.

5. Use the TodayTix app

You can also use this for discounted tickets, but I see that they are similar to broadwaybox.com in terms of discounts offered.

You can buy discounted tickets, and use their Concierge service, where you will buy the ticket through the app ($10 transaction fee included), meet someone 30 minutes before the show begins and they will hand you the ticket.

100% reliable – I did this and didn’t get scammed 👌

But I’m also recommending this app because some musicals have a Mobile Rush option via this app.

At 10 AM when box office show opens, you can purchase the tickets for ~$30-50 on the app. It is difficult though, I’ve tried multiple times and I always get the “All tickets are in someone else’s basket right now, suck it!” response.*

* Not the exact phrasing, but it sure felt like it.

You’ve tried everything and didn’t get rush tickets. Now what?

6. Buy tickets at the box office itself

Save up to $10-15 per show of transaction fees! Believe me, when you’re watching 10 shows, the savings do add up!

If you are lucky and if the box office attendant feels nice for the day, they might hook you up with cheaper tickets. I heard an attendant discussing with another attendant, saying “Well, can we give her this seat for just $69? She’s looking for the cheapest seat.”

Now I don’t know for sure if the seat really is better, but I like to think that I got better tickets so… please let me believe this 😄

What kind of seats should you get?

The cheapest non-partial-view seat is your best bet!

Tip: If it’s an extra $10 or $20 for a much better seat, don’t skimp. You will regret it. (I’m cheap, so I settled for a slightly cheaper ticket… yeap, I regretted it).

What are standing room tickets (SRO)?

When a performance is sold out, a limited number standing room tickets are available for purchase. You stand the whole show. It’s a single line, so you’re not going to be behind someone super tall.

Caveat: Limited to 2 tickets per person.

Also note that if you are short, sometimes the barrier can be quite tall. You need to ask the box office attendant how tall it is. I did and the box office attendant let me into the theatre just to make sure I could watch comfortably.

I got advice that I should get a SRO ticket for a shorter show (the Come From Away musical is only 100 minutes with no intermission)… superb advice! When you’re enjoying the show, it doesn’t feel that long anyway.

For another show, I sat on the very last row. There was a couple of tall people in front of me who pretty much blocked out my entire view. Halfway through the performance, I just stood up to watch (no one directly behind me). The SRO line stood behind my row; it was honestly just better/cheaper for me to just get an SRO ticket.

What about partial view seats? It’s always the cheapest!

Oooo, risky! For productions which utilize the full stage, don’t. You will get a sub-par experience. Partial views could mean:

a) Some set items will block your view if you are too far right/left of the theatre.

I sat in the 3rd row, far right. Not only do those large set items blocked my view, they also had digital projections (for the icy effects) and I couldn’t really see the whole spectacle as I was way too close.

b) There is a pole if you’re in the back sections (mezzanine/balcony)

The good news is if the theatre has balcony seats, it is a huge theatre and chances of them selling out the whole show is low. That means that you can move to other seats if you know for sure it is not occupied.

For this show, the usher told us that we are free to move to better seats upfront. I did move two seats away to get the annoying pole out of my view.

How do I know which partial views are okay?

Google! Google “[Show name] broadway partial view” and you will most likely get links to Reddit or https://www.broadwayworld.com where people discuss extensively about shows and seats.

The advice given is very helpful! You will read feedback such as “I was at seat G10 and I didn’t miss much” or “A lot of scenes happening in far right of the stage. If you get partial view tickets, sit on the left hand side of the theatre.”

7. Try broadwayroulette.com

This site here is for the ones who like risks. I personally did not use this option, but basically, you pay less than $60 and you will get tickets to a random musical chosen for you.

I didn’t do this as I have too many shows I did not want to watch. But if you are a free-spirit and wouldn’t mind any musical, this could be a really cheap option.

8. All out of luck? Watch an off-broadway show!

Sometimes shows run off-broadway as a market test to see whether they are popular enough to be on Broadway. So you might get lucky and get to watch a really good show. I would personally Google reviews though.

That’s all the tips I have for you today. Now…

What did I personally do?

This post is getting quite long, so I wrote about my personal experience in another blog post instead. You can check it out here, or if you have a specific question, comment below or drop me a message on Twitter. I’m not an expert by any means, but I never not give my two cents 😁

It was so good, they won an Emmy award for this performance

At timestamp 5:31, he says “See, on Broadway, we don’t need extreme closeups to prove we’re singing live. We sing live 8 shows a week, check it!”

… and then I thought, you know what would be cool? If I manage to watch 8 shows a week.

AND SO I DID. It took me about 6 years, but I got here in the end.

The rules:

• Buy tickets for the shows which I definitely want to watch for a stress-free experience.
• At least 8 musicals. (You can see that I managed to watch 10 shows in total, thanks to different schedules for ‘rest’ and ‘matinee’ days)
• Of the 8 musicals watched, 4 of them must be ones I have not heard the full Broadway recording/do not know all the lyrics to.
• The remaining 4 musicals can be anything/whatever that is “cheaper”/affordable.
• Try sitting at different sections, wherever possible for the “experience”.

I broke Rule #1 right off the bat 🙈

The thing is, I could not buy them in advance because they were too expensive. 5 shows at a standard $99 would set me back $495, not including online “convenience” fees (at least $15 per transaction + I can’t buy them altogether in one purchase, which is ridiculous to me).

So the entire trip turned into a spontaneous money-saving trip and I had to start researching about getting cheaper tickets.

I learned so much, I actually put all the tips into a guide on how to get cheaper Broadway tickets.

The guide is more formal. This post is a photo diary of some sort.

The Strategy

I arrived in NYC on Monday afternoon with only a ticket to one show on Tuesday night.

I entered every single lottery out there from Monday to Sunday, except for that Tuesday.

As each day passes (and I get the result that I did not win for the day/next day performance), I’ll buy tickets to either… a) the musicals which I really, really want to watch or, b) the ones that do not have lotteries (because it would really suck if I would buy tickets for a show and then win the lottery later during the week).

If I happen to win tickets to Hamilton, even if I already did have a ticket to a show on the same time, I would choose Hamilton. Because Hamilton.

Monday: Head to the box office to see if there are rush tickets still available.

No lottery win. My game plan was straightforward. Mondays are “rest days” for most musicals, with only 3 shows which I’m interested in.

I already have the 3 shows in my mind. How? Because I’ve made a freaking list of course!

I settled on watching Tootsie. It’s got good reviews online and it’s a “fun” musical. I always prefer a stress-free musical. My least favorite musical is Les Misérables because all the songs are depressing AF.

I digress.

It was fun, indeed! Wouldn’t say it changed my life in any way, and I didn’t walk out humming any of the songs. The cast is great, for sure. No stage-dooring today!

Tuesday is a Stress-free Day

Other than the sadness of not winning more lotteries.

I paid some good money for Dear Evan Hansen. I bought tickets online beforehand because it was one of my favorite musicals. They also do not have general rush and I just thought that tickets are more likely to sell out.

One of my most disappointing shows for the week. Background music was so much louder than the singing. Acting was just so-so.

I was so disappointed, I decided not to wait at the stage door as well.

Wednesday, Hectic Day! Despite Wednesday being the day for two shows for almost every musical, I could only watch one as I had dinner plans with a friend.

I decided to try to queue up for Waitress, my most favorite musical ever and I knew my brain wouldn’t shut up about it if I waited till the end of the week. They also do not do lotteries so this was a no-brainer.

While waiting in line, I was very conflicted. Favoritest musical ever– shouldn’t I fork up some money to at least get some good seats? I didn’t know what seats I would get with general rush.

Well, eff that. I got Orchestra seats (the front seats), and not partial view! If I was any more emotional that day, I would honestly find a corner and quietly sob in happiness.

I think it was sort of partial view, but because the show uses mainly the center of the stage, you can see most of the show. I would love to see more of the props though (3rd row = you’re looking up towards the stage = you can’t see the items on a table. It’s a musical about baking- there are a lot of items on the table). But I can’t complain, 3rd row for $42!

It was so good, I spent the next few days contemplating if I should watch it again with better seats. I’ve watched this musical a lot of times (cough don’t ask me how). I know the lyrics to all the songs, I know the scenes, I know the script, and it still managed to awe me.

Of course I would stage-door. I was most excited for Jeremy Jordan (Broadway superstar) but he was on vacation. That being said, absolutely adored this cast.

My dinner plans ended at 7.40PM. Most shows start at 8:00PM. Should I try to watch a musical? YES I SHOULD.

I tried Come From Away as it was also one of my must-watch but the box office attendant told me the show started at 7PM (oops). I just about gave up, because I thought the ROI of walking to every single theatre wasn’t that great.

On the way back to my hostel, I passed by the theatre for the musical The Prom.

I just walked into the box office and asked if they had any tickets.

I was seated in the theatre 8 minutes later.

It was another fun show! I didn’t really like the pacing of the story (because you can sing away homophobia with only one song, amirite?), but the songs and cast were great. This was one of the few musicals that I actually made the effort to listen to the songs again.

Rush queue for Thursday’s show!

I failed to get a rush queue ticket for Come From Away as I was quite far behind the queue but settled for a standing room ticket, which was great!

The show was only 100 minutes, so standing the whole show wasn’t too terrible.

I was so glad when I saw a lot of the original cast! It’s been 2 years since the opening of this show, and usually I don’t expect to see the original cast. But holy shit!!

Friday was just frustrating as I ran out of musicals that I was passionate about so everything is a 50/50 shot.

Also, all shows left on the list now have lotteries and I was still holding onto some hope that I would win any.

In the end, I chose to go for general rush for Kiss Me Kate. 20 minutes before the box office opens, the attendant came out and told us no rush tickets today. I knew I was already too late to get in line for another general rush queue.

So I opened the TodayTix app and looked for shows with discounts.

Settled for Book of Mormon. I heard a lot of mixed reactions about this show. I did enjoy it though – also another musical where I looked up the songs after. One of the songs was stuck in my head for forever 🙄

Saturday is just me hoping general rush doesn’t fail on me again.

I chose to stand in line for Be More Chill, mainly because Will Roland is playing the main lead.

In the mean time, I was on the TodayTix app trying to get mobile rush tickets for Kiss Me, Kate, mainly because Corbin Bleu is playing one of the mains 😂

Well, mobile rush is about as good as entering the lottery – I keep getting error messages throughout.

So I got my Be More Chill ticket and had to throw a dart and choose a show. I decided on Frozen as I heard it was a good show, production wise.

I walked into the box office and asked for the cheapest ticket for the Saturday matinee show for Frozen.

The box office attendant said cheapest is $79 for partial view, but he could get me really good seats for $99. Here is where my cheap ass failed me.

I chose the $79 and pretty much missed a lot of scenes because of the partial view. I didn’t think that the soundtrack or show was that great either. The plot is nothing new, so there’s no extra factor.

I also got partial view for Be More Chill, so I missed a good number of scenes as well. The songs are a bit of a hit and miss. Only a few people in the cast really stood out, George Salazar (in picture above) was one of them.

Because of Frozen, I hesitated to watch Mean Girls for Sunday.

I just thought that musicals aren’t as interesting if I already knew the plot. That being said, I took a chance anyway and stood in line for general rush.

In the mean time, I was still trying my luck for mobile rush for Kiss Me, Kate‘s 3 PM show. No luck.

So after getting my ticket for the evening show for Mean Girls, I walked to Kiss Me, Kate‘s box office and bought an expensive ass ticket for the 3PM show.

I’m 50/50 on Kiss Me, Kate. The story was kind of slow, and the songs go on forever. The cast is absolutely gorgeous though. Look at the perfection that is Kelli O’Hara and Stephanie Styles. 😍

So, if you’re keeping count, I wasn’t really satisfied with the last 3 shows I’ve watched. I was totally unenthusiastic about the last show.

In a different circumstance (where I didn’t just watch 9 shows in a row, perhaps), I would probably be able to appreciate the shows more.

But the more shows I watched, the higher my expectations were.

The good news: Mean Girls was surprisingly good and enjoyable! The cast is excellent, the jokes are funny, songs are good, and they used the set well.

I’m glad I closed the week with this show.

And this concludes my very eventful week!

The Cost

If you want to do this too, I suppose. Here goes:

Please don’t take the food expense seriously, I was pretty much eating less than 2 meals a day (sometimes 1) + my friend bought me a meal when we met up. If you want a realistic food expense, please double or triple the amount.

Annnnd, that’s it!

If you’ve seen a picture of thousands of lanterns in the sky, it is most probably taken during the Yee Peng Lantern Festival held in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Like the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in Taiwan, it is pretty much the lantern scene in the Disney Movie, Tangled.

When is the Yee Peng Lantern Festival?

The dates change every year. Do not be mistaken though! There are two festivals going on in Thailand at the same time: The Loy Krathong Festival and the Yee Peng Festival.

The Loy Krathong Festival goes on for a week, where people release banana-leaf boats decorated with flowers and incense sticks into the river. You can also catch performances in the Chiang Mai Old City throughout the week.

Yee Peng Festival is usually at the end of Loy Krathong week. This is when people release floating lanterns into the sky. This is the one that you’re Googling to research more about should this post has insufficient information.

For 2022, Yee Peng Festival is on November 8-9, 2022.

How can I participate in the massive lantern release?

The massive lantern releases are organized events at locations outside the city center. You would need to reserve your spot online and yes- you have to pay in advance.

I know of two well-known private events.

Yee Peng Lanna Festival at Mae Jo

This event used to be free in early 2010’s, but due to its popularity, it is now a private event that costs at least USD $100. This was initially the biggest event with more than 4,000 lanterns released.

Last year, the event size was reduced and there were “only” 3,000 lanterns. This event sold out in early September in 2018 (2 months before the event).

Yee Peng Doi Saket

Another event which also costs at least USD $100 with 3,000 lanterns. There were still tickets on sale when we bought them in mid September, but standard tickets were sold out. We had to buy VIP tickets (USD $150).

There are also two other events – one near Mae Ping River and another at Mae Rim, according to this source.

Where can I purchase tickets to the Yee Peng Lantern Festival?

You can purchase your tickets here: https://yeepenglanternfestival.com.

The site looks quite dodgy (more like overly simple for such a big event), but it is completely legit – we bought ours through the site! You pay via PayPal and will receive a confirmation email upon purchasing.

A few weeks before the event, they will send you another email with more information.

You should also follow this Facebook page. They have constant updates about ticket availability for both events and the vendors who sell them. They responded to my inquiries quite quickly.

What happens during the Yee Peng Festival?

Because there isn’t much to guide through, this post will not be a complete guide, more like a quick recap of my experience.

We were asked to gather at a preset location at 4:00 PM. It was at Prasert Land in the Nimman area, walking distance from our apartment so that’s a nice plus!

There was a special lane for VIP ticket holders. We got registered, received our wristbands and in the comfy van we go! The non-VIPs get on the buses instead.

It took about an hour to get to Doi Saket.

The VIP area is closest to the stage, although I personally don’t think VIP seats are any better as you’ll see a ton of lanterns wherever you look.

If anything, I think it’s better to sit further back because performances are loud and you’re nearer to the speakers.

Regardless of VIP or not, you get a specific chair based on the number on your ticket and you can’t switch.

And then, we wait!

We had about 2 hours to kill. The event is actually at Doi Saket Hot Springs, so there are you know, hot springs and a canal that you can dip your feet into.

Do I really want to dip my feet in a canal of questionable cleanliness though? 🙃

Here are a few things that you can do while waiting.

Get your Instagram shots!

There is a rice paddy field that will give you some gorgeous shots. Heels are not recommended – there is a muddy patch you’d need to walk through to get to it.

Release your Krathong at the nearby river.

Each person gets a free Krathong!

Watch performances.

And the real deal finally begins!

15 minutes before the synchronized release of lanterns, they will show a demonstration video on how to light up and release the lanterns safely. They will tell you a million times to not light up the lantern in 4 different languages – it is purely a demonstration video – we will all release lanterns at 8:00 PM.

It is at this point in time that you realize some people are incapable of listening to instructions and release their lanterns prematurely anyway.

And at 8:00 PM, we release the lanterns together. It is not really, fully synchronized, as some lanterns take longer than others to be filled with hot air to float properly.

But with thousands of them, you get this view regardless…

And within a minute, you get this…

Tip: The first two to three minutes is the best time to take photos as there are a heck tons of lanterns. Any later, people are lighting up the rest of their lanterns at their own pace, so there aren’t as many lanterns in one photo.

Oh and there are fireworks too!

After taking a lot of photos, back to work again…

I’ll have you know that if you’re a professional photographer with amazing photo editing skills, you can get something like this…

… but for the rest of us, this is the best we can do.

Still fucking amazing, though!

Annnnd, you head home with a happy memory!

Wait, what about toilets?

There are portable toilets. There aren’t many though, and the queue is always quite long.

Most just assume the portable toilets are the only option. However, Doi Saket Hot Springs actually has clean restrooms after the feet-dipping canal at the end of the road. They are clean, at least when I went during the beginning of the event.

Should I get the VIP Ticket?

Here’s a comparison of a VIP vs Standard Ticket.

In my opinion, the only good thing was that we could immediately leave the venue after the event. 2 sky lanterns was a plus, but in between all the posing and photo-taking, we took a while to release all 4 lanterns.

The staff even approached us thinking we needed help as we took our sweet time releasing the lanterns. I would have been happy even if we were given one lantern per person.

Premium Souvenir? Ehhhh. Tea leaves and a bag.

The dinner provided was pretty basic. There are food stalls for you to purchase food and drinks for standard ticket holders. I do enjoy Thai food and it made me wish I didn’t have the free dinner so I could buy myself a serving of Pad Thai. First world problems 😩

They do give a shit ton of drinks as well – bottles of water, orange juice and coffee… and free tea served at the staff tables. Enough for the night and your breakfast the next morning.

Bottom line, is the VIP ticket worth it? Not really, but if time === money for you and USD $40 is an acceptable expense, you should get it for the priority to return first.

This private event is too expensive. Are there other options?

If you just want to experience releasing a sky lantern, you can purchase a sky lantern at some places (the area between Tha Pae Gate and the Mae Ping River is quite popular) in the Old City for about 80 THB (USD $2.50).

Note that there are no organized events; hence, no synchronized lantern releases. Perhaps gather a bunch of friends (a lot of them) and hold a synchronized event yourself? 😬

I’m on the fence. Is this really worth the money?

Yes, unfortunately for your wallet, this event really is quite spectacular.

If you have been to a festival before where there are at least one thousand sky lanterns released, perhaps you can skip this.

But if this is your first time, this festival. is. it.

Think about a small scale version of the Tangled movie. The date varies every year, like every other Chinese festival out there.

It’s held during the first full moon of the Lunar New Year, but who’s looking at a Lunar Calendar? Essentially though, it’s around February or March each year.

For 2020, The Pingxi Sky Lantern festival is on February 8.

If you are looking to look into other lantern festivals, you could also consider the much bigger Yee Peng Lantern Festival held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in November.

Where is the Pingxi Festival held and how do I get there?

It is held in the town of Shifen, an hour away from Taipei city.

There are two ways to get to Shifen.

1. You can take the train

The train is usually quite crowded – even during non-Pingxi season. But should you choose this mode, you should take the train from Taipei Main Station to Ruifang Station, then take the train on the Pingxi Line from Ruifang station to Shifen station.

2. Take the bus shuttle.

This is what I would recommend. Shuttle buses may sound like the less appealing option, but I hear that some roads are closed to allow for a smoother route and there really are a lot of buses provided to/from Taipei city and nearby towns.

Here is the bus shuttle timetable to and from Shifen.

You pay the fare for the trip to Shifen, and do not have to pay during the trip back.

Should I stay at Shifen?

You can stay at Shifen, but it is a very small town with limited accommodation choices. I expect the accommodation to be booked up pretty quickly and if you’re anything like me and my travel buddy who pretty much book things at the absolute last minute, you’re going to run out of luck.

You should totally stay at any of the towns where they provide the free shuttle bus. We chose to stay at Keelung as it is closer, less touristy and we think that there will be a smaller crowd for the bus. It was true- we got on the first bus to Shifen and there were a grand total of 10 of us on the bus!

I don’t have any experience with the bus from Taipei to compare with, but I will probably pick to stay at Keelung should I go again.

Important tips for the Pingxi Festival!

How do I know where the buses depart?

You should just go where the crowd is or where people are queuing up!

Or just ask around (yes they do understand some English, or will understand when you say the word Pingxi – pronounced ping-si).

Absolute 10/10 advice here 😂

However, we chose Keelung = less people. When we arrived at the station,

1. We arrived on the other end of the station where we did not see any humans, and
2. There wasn’t any huge queue in sight as it was an early bus at 9:20 AM, and we were #4 to jump in line – dude, we started the queue!!

So here’s a tip. There will be posters around, unfortunately, it’s all in Chinese and what baffled me was the lack of lanterns on a poster of a lantern festival 🤨. I hope they change this in the coming years, though.

I can read a little Chinese, so I identified what the posters were for right away. In any case, you should save a picture of this.

These are the literal words. Basically, if there is the first character where it looks like a human putting his hands up \[^_^]/, you are most likely looking at a Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival poster and you should follow it.

Do I really need to go so early? I hate mornings.

Nope! There are 2 groups of people. First, you need to decide if you want to be part of the group to release a lantern or just watch the lanterns being released.

I want to release a lantern.

Then yes, go early. We took the second shuttle and by the time we reached Shifen (around 10AM), there were already quite long queues for tickets to release the lanterns.

There are a total of 8 releases, starting at 5:00 PM up until the last one at 8:30 PM – one every half hour. There is a limited amount of tickets for each release.

Nobody goes for the 5:00 PM one as it’s still quite bright – good for pictures though if you have a potato camera like mine that can’t take night pictures well. Releases #4 – #6 go out the first as those are the optimal times.

Important: If you got there as early as we did and you hear an official say that there are no more tickets, STAY IN LINE. We got in line and halfway through, an official said no more tickets and they were wrong!

It was probably miscommunication – maybe they meant to say there are no more tickets for certain releases and information was omitted while they were playing "Pass the Message".

Bottom line: there were indeed a lot of tickets left when we got ours at 11:01 AM.

Unless you see the line completely dispersing, stay at your spot.

I only want to watch lanterns being released.

Good news, you can sleep in!

We started seeing a lot more people stroll in with their own portable chairs, umbrellas (important!) and big ass professional cameras about 2:00 PM onward – so I’d say that is the time that you should aim for when arriving at Shifen.

These people are the legit deal though. They choose the best spots, sit there and just wait for hours until the lantern releases.

What should I bring?

We actually did not do meticulous planning, so we didn’t bring anything else other than an umbrella.

But here’s what I would suggest-

• A portable chair or a mat to sit on
• An umbrella or poncho, just in case the weather gets terrible.
• Snacks & water – but you can buy food in Shifen and try the amazing food Taiwan has to offer!
• A laptop or tablet 😁 – time would pass a lot faster if we had a movie to watch or a book to read

Ok, now, what do I do throughout the day?

Honestly, a lot of waiting 😥 But, you can also explore Shifen!

Shifen is an amazing town itself… albeit small, a little too crowded and not enough to do if you’re there for 6 hours. Here’s a small list of things you can do at Shifen – but there are many guides out there so this will be a quick one.

• Release a sky lantern – this is the town to do it.
• See Shifen Waterfall. They say this is the Little Niagara of Taiwan. It is nice, but guys- I’ve lived in Buffalo, NY, 20 minutes away from Niagara Falls. To say this is anything like Niagara Falls is really optimistic.
• Shifen Old Town – Take pictures when the train passes by the old town. Eat street food. Try bubble tea (drink with tapioca balls)! Play with stray dogs!
• Endless possibilities.

We actually visited Shifen before, so there was nothing new for us.

Which was why we ended up sitting at a cafe for hours just for the wifi (we both didn’t have data connection either! 😭), wishing that we had brought our laptops with us.

Any tips for the lantern releases itself?

The lantern release area is not in the center of the town of Shifen itself, it’s actually at the far end of town.

There is a main stage where you can watch performances and also listen to the emcees brag about how amazing Taipei City is about 10 times (they’re doing it because the minister is here 🙄).

If you’re not releasing the lantern and just watching + taking photos…

Go early, bring snacks, find a spot, stay there. Bring a friend so you guys can take turns to go to the restroom + take care of your spot.

Where is a good spot? Wherever all the people with the big ass cameras are standing. They do this every year.

From personal experience, we were part of release #7 which means that we could watch releases #1 through #5.

We actually showed up at the viewing area just before the first release – was crowded, lots of people, but also not impossible to get a decent spot.

At the end of the day though, the lanterns float up and you can take some pictures no matter how short you are.

If you’re releasing the lantern...

Go on time. The ticket will have a time letting you know when you should meet up at the back of the main stage.

You’ll know where to go just from looking at the official staff. Big crowds will clear paths for you as you proudly wave your ticket in hand and walk towards the staff screaming at people to hurry up + guide them to the correct location.

Our lantern release was at 8:00 PM, the ticket instructed us to go to the waiting area at 7:10 PM. From then on, listen to the guides and they will efficiently guide you from the waiting area, to the release area, and to your specific lantern.

You will have a lantern-releasing assistant which will do everything for you – tells you when to start writing your wish on the lantern, tells you how to hold the lantern, lights up the lantern for you, shows you how to step on the base of the lantern, tells you when to release it.

Really, you can’t go wrong here.

Can I see some photos of the lantern release?

Though you’d never ask. Warning though, no professional-looking photos here.

Any last tips?

By the time everything is done, you just really want to get home. Walk very quickly to where you were dropped off, the shuttle will depart from there.

As you get into queue, there are actually two lines – the sitting line (for people who wants a seat on the bus) and the standing line (you, well, stand on the bus). Make sure you’re in the standing line – you’ll get on the bus a lot quicker.

Thaaat’s it! Have fun and enjoy – it really is a sight to remember 😍