All the time I act so brave, I am shaking inside.
Social circle. Recruiting. Dating. Studying. Clubs.
My problem may be that I keep wanting the things I can never lay hand on. Like, keep meeting guys who are unavailable or unattainable. Or that I just met a company that I effing love and had great chatting time – and I can’t even apply for it.
December came and went, wrapping up my final moments of 2017 with a blur of news. When I was writing those words down, I can almost imagine the face that 2016-me would make. I am going to the US in less than 8 months’ time. That’s an interesting turn of event, given the fact that just less than half a year ago, I still swore fealty to Canada. What to say, eh? Time flies, mind changes, and money comes into the picture.
When the hype was over and the news became old, I have to admit that at times fear began to creep into me like the Enchanted river upon Dwalin (not an entirely sensible metaphor, but pardon me as I am currently obsessed with LOTR and very, very high on Elf). Anyway. The idea of uprooting away all that has become my second nature is somewhat scary. Moving across the Atlantic (Pacific?!?) ocean, much further away from my family, is scary. Separating from my best friend, who is most definitely going to another state, is scary. Suddenly remembering that I have to tame my isolation nature is definitely on the Halloween list. Am I afraid that there will be a second NUS experience (still sending a shiver down my spine)? Aye. Am I afraid that I will let winter blues have the better of me? Aye. But the road has taken me that far – one I painted myself with every expectation, every sweat, every tear. And this time, I must believe that I am going in prepared for the risks.
Anyway, I will take the liberty to start welcoming myself to the land of winter. Fingers crossed that I am going to find a rich handsome husband there.
Talking about handsome. Did I mention that I am high on Elf? King Thranduil of the Woodland Realm has officially become my most recent crush and beloved imagined person! I mean, look at this marvel:
not even his best photo.
Who wouldn’t fawn over a fair immortal who happens to be a kind and wise King (defending the entire kingdom against Sauron’s allies with no magic ring but his sheer brain and the strength of his people!) and the father of badass Legolas Greenleaf? I just wish that they made a 6h movie about Thranduil and Legolas rather than that 7.5h of utter nonsense called the Hobbit. My favorite novel and beloved characters ruined with silly love-triangle and stupid plot writing. Sigh. So… instead of finishing (or rather, starting) my essays for round 2, I am burying my head (and heart) in fanfics featuring the King’s love with mortal ladies…
On a not-entirely-unrelated note, recently there have been too many past-life ghosts. Not sure whether it’s time I hired a ghostbuster.
I am sorry too, Gianluigi.
I am sorry that it has to end like this. Unceremoniously. Underservingly.
I am sorry that you have to pay for the fault of others.
What was the thing that they all talked about? The 12 year circle? I had so much hope. I thought we were destined to something in that unfamiliar Russian land. Turned out fate is just a joke. We all were just old, cranky fortune-teller-wannabes, not knowing what to do when all the Tarot cards were dealt.
Funny how when the guy came on the pitch, I was startled. Because he reminded me of them. But he was never them, right.
What else to say? After all, we got what we deserve. It may be a good thing – slapping certain somebody out of their daydream to actually do something for this team, this league, this people. A whole generation, too young for 2006, too old for 2020, has been wasted. Please let there be no more.
I will just keep on waiting, I guess. 2 more years. 4 more years. 12 more years. What are words if you really don’t mean them when you say them. What are words if they’re only for good times then that’s all.
I guess this is a sign. Like, the beginning of this whole shake-up-your-life -and-leave-nothing-behind business, you know.
Let’s say that the shock is still all over me. I have learnt to call this house my home. It is beautiful, it is spacious, and it is warm&cozy at the same time. Like, an all-in-one package that you could ever hope for. There are a thousand lights so you will never be intimidated by the twilight. Those grand windows overlooking the whole green nothingness. Gentle breeze on your hair wherever you sit. The beat-up sofa that looks like it wants to invite you to bed. The huge screen with endless nights of movies. The ever so posh neighborhood and the 5-minute-away cinema. Gosh, I feel like I have grown roots here. No other house is pretty enough, is bright enough, is near enough, is green enough.
Maybe it really is the beginning of the end.
How do you define a desire?
If I tell you right now that my secret fancy is to become a housewife, raise beautiful children and be the pillar at home for my husband, would you laugh? Would you scorn? Would you be confused?
Just kidding. I am not the casalinga type. But does it ever cross your mind that it sounds somehow wrong to harbor a wish of being homemaker? It sure does for me, when I listened to my colleague talking about her aspiration of someday quitting her job, which she does really well, to stay at home so that her husband could become a professor. I felt uneasy, and a little bit pity, and puzzled. I mean, all the things that we are taught and have learnt in this age of transformation go exactly against that notion. We have come to associate homemakers with losers – people with no substance, no intellectuals, and no interests. It must be true, since all books have said so, that all smart women, who have some ounces of self-esteem, must venture into the working world and (preferably, gradually) conquer the universe. We fail to grasp the notion that a college-graduate may choose to live her life differently. Sure she must join the workforce, otherwise, what a waste it must be. We have come, in other words, a long way from our mothers’ generation.
Who dictates our desire? Fifty years ago, young women who chose to work were looked down to like some kind of subversive. Fine girls were groomed from a tender age, studying at prestigious institutions, majoring in arts and history and literature, all to prepare themselves for the role of lady of the house. Remember Emily? Five decades later, we see the exact opposite (Hello, Lorelai). So is our desire truly ours after all? When you say that you want to work, or to stay at home, is it you or is it years of being exposed to the mainstream ideology talking? All the women, including myself, who scream for women to work, who demand women to work, who expect women with education to work – are our minds just the embodiment of what are told to us as right? Am I, after all, just the mockingbird?
That is one problem with certain feminists. To some people there is just one correct way to live life. I have tried with all my mind to not fall into that trap – having absolutely no opinion, and keeping telling myself that the only important thing is choice – that people are given the opportunity to choose their life – but it is always harder than it seems. There is still that tiny piece in my head that puzzles every time.
Anyway, do boys sometimes fancy themselves to be stay-at-home dads? Or are they all about getting out there and making names?
July
Are all deaths imminent?
The suicide of the lead singer in a band I know is the news today.
My buddy back when I was a teenager used to love this band so much. I remember that she could listen to their first 2 albums endlessly, and though I admit that I have never been a fan, I know those 2 albums real well. I used to like the choruses – never the rap part – only that tiny section of chorus in which he changed to singing with his crystal-clear vocals. I used to think that darn, it would be nice if only they could stop talking in their songs. There is this new album that finally achieves that level of “all-singing” that suits me. Still never a fan, but I think their new materials are nice. I am all for pop, remember?
Anyway, he died. His band was a big part of my teenage years – It would be for you too, if you had such a die-hard fan as friend. Those were the days that we argued over who was the best in the world, her LP or my BJ (I realize that it sounds real dirty in initials, but well). Seriously. We made random people on the street listen to their songs and bullied them into giving us a preference (Now come to think about it… I am not sure whether they gave their heart’s answer, or they just wanted to get rid of 2 apparently incurably deranged teenagers). Maybe I still keep that chart around somewhere in my room. Her craziness even reached a level in which we compared LP and HP. Yep, our sacred HP. Compared to a music band. On absolutely no basis. Maybe we were really deranged.
I think every kid born in the 80’s and early 90’s has at least once listened to their songs. Music is powerful. Did their songs heal many souls they touched, just like they healed my buddy’s soul, just like BJ’s healed mine? It would be nice if he knew.
Funny how depression could do to a person.
*
It was never easy, falling into that pit and trying to crawl out of that pit whole. Not a lot of people know that I was shattered when I was in my early 20’s. I had a real strong mentality, and yet I nearly got close to the pit’s opening. I never really fell down, never really tasted the smell of shadow – lucky me – my head kept me moving. But I shudder thinking about those days when I flirted with the demon. Days and days and days. I can’t think back about how many nights I lied crying for reasons I don’t recall. I can’t remember how my self-esteem evaporated to thin air. I can’t remember how so far from calm I was – how readily provoked, easily bruised. All I could remember was that I fought with all my mind to crawl far away from it, bits by bits. In the cozyness of my newfound life now, it is hard to exactly understand what happened, and easy to brush it aside as some kind of left-over drama from my adolescence. But I can only say that it is difficult to know things from the out-looker’s perspective – just as it is difficult for me to recall my own self a few years ago.
Some days it’s easy, some days it gets harder, right?
Wow. I feels like centuries have passed. Happy birthday to me!
Oh my friend we’re older but none the wiser
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same
Do you sometimes feel like a wild rush of wind has brought all of the millions of small pieces together, to make you exactly you today? Do you have regrets, things you wish to amend somehow? Do you have hopes, for the future you never see? Do you have fears, for the darkness and the unsure? I wonder what I would see in the Mirror of Erised?
Exactly 16 years since when I never got the Hogwarts letter, I am 27. Old, but not that old. Young, but oh I am not that bold. Who I am is so different from who I imagined years and years ago. I am too elderly to take any special feeling in that fact though. We will all grow up to be unlike our vision. It is still fascinating, however, to see how time and unexpected experiences could totally alter your previous path, make you turn, or toss you down a twisted road. Isn’t it part of why divination is one of the least precise magic branches?
*
The nightmares I will need to face on my way to a Master has officially started. I am trying, trying really hard to keep all depressing thoughts at bay and feign a positive, go-getter image and desperately mend all the possible holes. It is funny – how business schools milk us out and take our money and we still feel obliged to be grateful for even being admitted.
Jan 17
I was enough for him not long ago
I was his number one, he told me so
And he still means the world to me
Just so you know
Time changes everything, life must go on
And I’m not gonna stand in your way
But I loved him first
And a place in my heart will always be his.
3 Dec
“Offred remembers the pre-Gilead days, when women were not protected: they had to keep their doors closed to strangers and ignore catcalls on the street. Now no one whistles at women as they walk; no one touches them or talks to them. She remembers Aunt Lydia explaining that more than one kind of freedom exists, and that “[i]n the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.””
SparkNotes – on A Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood
Interesting viewpoint. Although the author seems to converge to two closely related, yet distinct notions together in order to present us a faulty idea – beautiful, well-polished, yet specious all the while. ‘Freedom from’ is a false phrase. By definition, ‘freedom’ is the right to choose whether to embark on certain cause/action at one’s own will (thanks my roommate for pointing that out). So, in saying that the women in the fictional dystopian world of Gilead had ‘freedom from’ rape/molest/cat-calls, it implies that those women had the power to ‘choose’ or ‘deny’ being raped/molested in the first place. This is clearly wrong. By extension, it means that there is no such thing as a ‘freedom from something’.
That correct term to use here is “free from”. “Free” from something doesn’t mean that one has the right to choose that stage of “free-ness” – like, free from bugs, free from harassment, but also free from democracy, free from ability to choose. So essentially, the Gilead government is asking its citizen to give up “freedom to”, by providing them “free-ness from” disguised as another type of freedom. In other word, it is still oppression coated by a carrot.
Relevant question: Would you give up your freedom of speech in exchange for a safe environment? At 2 AM walking home alone, I think I would.
***
5 Dec
Once a month, I hate the whole world, if you know what I mean. Arghhh.
9 Dec
Their internal affair, their choice. But let’s cross Indiana and Ohio off the to-go list.
*
12 Dec
We could have had it all. We are at the gateway of the region. We got thousands of years of Chinese mixed with indigenous culture, and tens of years of French and American ones. We could have been so beautiful. Our children could have spoken French and English like a badass. We could have traveled the world.
Instead, we are looking at all the pasts erased one by one. We couldn’t hold on the a single heritage. Why isn’t there anything left? Why do all the good have to disappear? Does it hurt you every time the plane lands? Looking at the streets cleared of trees? Finding yourself struggle to bag another language? Watching the sky turn the color of dust? Growing distrust for your own fellowmen? Finding yourself stranded in a foreign land, just because home is gloomy? Do you see fear in the food you eat, see distress in the eyes of the passengers, see people blaming each other for all that go wrong?
Won’t be a hypocrite. Won’t go back if I could. But it doesn’t stop me from being a part of it. After all, all my family, my childhood, my first 20 years are there.
*
23 Dec
Mi amo. Ti amo. L’amo.
Who was the ‘genius’ who decided that it would be perfectly cool to place direct pronoun before its verb????
Like, you literally have to think about the subject of your action even before thinking about that action. Normal human beings go like “I” -> “love” -> “him” – simple, beautiful, effing straightforward. Italians go like “I’, “him” (one thousand possessive, indirect, direct pronouns in between) -> “love”. Argh.
*
27 Dec
Always imagine myself dancing to the melody on a gazebo under a starry, moonlit sky listening to Careless Whisper.
7 Nov
Have you ever known a real love?
The kind of love that makes you feel, love?
No, this ain’t let’s make a deal, love
It’d make an angel give his wings up
If it makes you guilty ’cause you want more
If it’s a kiss that you would die for
Feels like you’re falling through the stars
If it could break your heart
It’s real love
Oh, how I adore the new album.
***
9 Nov 16
Am I witnessing the turn of history? Would it be the beginning of an economic reform, the one where American economy will pull the world economy up and above? Or am I the very first generation of the new World War?
We have officially entered uncharted territory. There is nothing to indicate, apart from the similar rise of popularism in the mid-20th century. But I am not a historian, and though history tends to repeat itself, what are we to do but hope? We go about minding our business, making plans, drawing dreams, living our small life, and all the while hope that governments would have some sense, and tomorrow will actually be alright.
After all, tomorrow wasn’t build to last.
A left-leaning me actually felt quite sad to see republicans seizing the Senate, the House and the Presidency like that. All the progresses about abortion rights, and freedom of marriage, and what not. But hey, it is their life who voted right?
Would I look back in my 50s, and laugh at myself for being so scared? Or would I look back and dream about the good ol’ past? Or would I even exist at all?
One thing for sure, any immigrant would have to double their effort from now on.
***
14 Nov
A friend of mine asked me to try to understand where the opposing ideas are coming from, and why people have them and stand by them.
Well, I do not, and will never deny that people are entitled to their opinions. Although I admit that at times I am baffled, I am not in any position to tell other people what they should think.
Well, then neither should they.
There is a reason why adultery is legally acceptable. To pass one’s religious/moral standing as law is just not right.
I am not Catholic, or Protestant, or Christian, or in any religion for that matters. So why should I think that gay marriage is against God’s will? Why should I think that life begins the moment egg meets sperm (seriously)?
Law is for everybody, regardless of religions or moral standings. Law is harsh and absolute. It represents the right of the people, be it Latinos, gay, single moms, Catholics, free-thinkers, or aliens. The right of the people should not be dictated by the understanding of a group of people who try to pass it off to all other people.
Religious beliefs are individual. Moral standing is even more so. That is why law should create a choice for people to follow their beliefs, if their beliefs do not hurt the society or other individuals physically/financially.
A law should not state that it bans gay marriage on the sole ground that it is against God’s will. It should create a choice: if you believe in your religion, fine, you live your life as you wish – you love only people of the opposite sex, you teach your children so, you only hang out with people of your same understandings. But hey, who are you to outlaw other people’s life when it does not hurt you?
And I know, abortion right is always a sticky subject. But no, when egg meets sperm (!), the cell is not a human. Period. The cell needs to divide, develop, divide again, time and time, before it can be barely recognised. If anyone wants to out-law late term (3rd trimester) abortion, fine – it would be dangerous to the mother anyway. But early term? It may ruffle lots of feathers, but early-term embryo is not a functioning human. Women do not even know they are pregnant until at least a month later, in many cases.
And just so if I try to understand it, even if the embryo was a human. There is no law requiring a person to donate to another person an organ so that the other person can survive. It is never illegal for me to keep the kidney that you need. Then why would it be illegal for the woman to refuse to ‘donate’ the resources that an embryo needs?
Anyway, why do people think that those who would really want an abortion would stop? They can, and will, go to underground clinics, which will result in a much more horrible tragedy. And forcing mother (and father) to raise a kid when they are not mentally, financially, socially prepared will just be cruel for both kid and parents alike. Anyway, the impact is always much heavier on the mother.
Many who voted on the law are men, who do not, and cannot know the extent of pregnancy and the pains it may bring to the mother. Heck, they do not even know how it would be like to have period pain. We are not asking for any thing extreme. All we are asking is to be given a choice – the freedom to choose what we should do. For those who would like to deliver and raise the child – bravo. For those who are not prepared enough – give them a safe option to go to.
A choice, such a luxurious demand.
*
15 Nov
New Year. No matter what, no matter where, you go home.
*
Every social issue is an economic issue.
I do not say that as long as we are rich, we will automatically become racially harmonic, or religiously tolerant, or genderly equal. No, that is a long, difficult battle the world will have to continue fighting.
People, however, would be willing to open to societal changes when their food source is secure. When you are barely meeting ends’ need, there will be no time for social causes or all that bullshit. All that people see is them losing their jobs to people of another race/country/class, that their life is upside down, and that somehow, amidst this hell of a crisis, those snobbish, elite politicians still managed to not give a damn. Central to almost all social movements or counter-movements is the same question again and again. Where is my job? Where did my money go?
Economic hardship will put people under survival mode. It put them in the “us vs. them” battle that nobody wins.
We are lucky. I mean, I am lucky to be on the winning side of globalisation (for now). We are the immigrants, the new work force pouring into richer countries. We are the university-educated, white-collar professionals. We are the mobilisers. We are the ones screaming for open-border.
It is hard, being one the wrong side of the trend. Globalisation is expensive; and some expenses can only be measured by blood. Will the Greater Good be great still, if it brings goodness to the society and the world as a whole, but punishes many individuals in the process? Will the answer be to let natural selection do its job; or to go inward and try to reverse the damages done to the left-outs? We all know the textbook solution: to create programs to re-educate and re-locate the workforce. However, textbook is rarely real life.
I was walking around, just a face in the crowd
Trying to keep myself out of the rain
Saw a vagabond king wear a styrofoam crown
Wondered if I might end up the same
There’s a man out on the corner
Singing old songs about change
Everybody got their cross to bare, these days
These days – the stars seem out of reach
But these days – there ain’t a ladder on the streets
These days are fast, nothing lasts in this graceless age
Even innocence has caught the midnight train
And there ain’t nobody left but us these days
***
28 Nov
I think they have a word for people like me. Map Trotting.
For I am the hybrid of a traveler and a tourist. Sometimes it is cool. Sometimes it is hard to fit in this delicate hole. A lot of times it is about trade-offs.
I always have a questionable uneasiness towards being tourist in a true sense of tourist. You take on an organized tour, you stay in hotel chain, you check-in at landmarks. Is it me? Surely I must not be that lame? Every time. Not hard to find me looking at a couple going on honeymoon on tourbus sympathetically (how difficult it is to navigate in Bangkok that you have to pay people to do so for you??). Passionately hate letting professionals take care of my itinerary. Or pre-set timing and determined-upon destinations (lots of them include shopping). Or the stupid caps/team T-shirts.
On the other hand, never have enough courage to travel in the true sense of travelling. I like things convenient – which means my favourite next destination should be somewhere modern and easy enough. Somewhere with established transportation system, and safe, and relatively wealthy. I like things clean – which means going full nature or into remote, toilet-free, hot shower-free countryside is unthinkable. Ever wonder why I go back to EU so often? Or why Japan and the US are much higher in my list than, say, Cambodia and all of its rustic beauty? Or why I officially passed the phase of sleeping in hostels?
I am a half-hearted traveller who likes Airbnb so much (the upper part of Airbnb with cleanliness grade above 8, by the way), who checks on toilet condition religiously before booking, who shivers at the idea of a 7-day train ride, who prefers plane than overnight bus, who chooses restaurants over a street food cart.
I am a snobbish tourist who shuns the idea of going on a tour bus with 30 people, who thinks she is better at organizing the trip herself, who takes pride in navigating an unknown place, who once in a while tries to go out of the big cities.
Somehow it works. Sometimes beautifully; sometimes frustratingly. But it works and I just keep rolling and rolling and rolling (to established locations, big cities, landmarks, civilised societies. anyway).
***
30 Nov
Sometimes when I happen to stumble upon a piece of newspaper depicting some criminal trials against pregnant women for ending their pregnancy intentionally, or even unintentionally, it hurts. Well, but their country, their choice, right.
*
Imagine the next man on the street that you see. He doesn’t work. He drinks and/or does drug. He is a burden of the welfare system. In other word, he takes your hard-earned tax money while paying nothing himself. But he has a birth-right, right? That somehow he was lucky to be born in your country. That he chose the correct parental nationality.
Now imagine the immigrant in your office. He came to your country, paid full money enroll in a university – the amount of which is worth multiples of your education fee; and of which is used to refurbish your school so that all of you will have a better environment to thrive in. He works in your company, being admitted there after fair-and-square interviews, after overcoming the myriads of regulations favoring native job seekers. He pays tax equally – no discrimination on that one!! His hard-earned tax money goes into funding the roads you drive, the public schools and hospitals you use. In the meantime, he receives nothing – his children’s school fee, his family’s medical bill will be way, way higher than yours. Because he is just a foreigner. Right? Because he is here to steal your job and your place, to be a “burden” of your society. So he must pay dearly to live in a place where he actually contributes something into.
Think about it. Who is the real burden? Why as an immigrant, I should receive less and be in a worse place than the worst of your country?
Globalisation, like anything else, works on large scale only. It all comes down to whether the losers of the trend scream loud enough.
IhpAb's 