Finishing up

With just over a month left to 2006, I've been contemplating how well I've used my year's worth of time. And, of course, hoping I can do a better job in 2007. I have all sorts of lofty plans, but I'd rather commit to just a few and do them well than become the embodiment of one of my mum's favourite Hokkien sayings, which translates literally into:

"Catch dragon, catch phoenix... at the end of the day, not so much as half a dead rat!"

In other words, don't make big plans you can't follow them through. Wise woman, my momma.

Listless? No way!

List.less: Lethargic; lacking energy

That describes me quite well, now that I'm on Day 5 1/2 of my flu. To compensate for my seeming listlessness, here's a list. I know, no connection whatsoever. Isn't English a beautiful language?

1. If nothing else, the benefits of having a bad cold and cough are: being able to sleep all day on a weekday and not feeling guilty; knowing who really cares for me; exploiting the healing properties of ice-cream; being able to eat the Thai fried rice at Section 17 that has eluded me for months because whenever I get there after work, they're already sold out; doing nothing and feeling good about it.
2. One of my fish died this morning. "And then there was one." Requiescat in pace.
   
3. I am sick, sick, sick of the bad English I see in local "English"-language papers. Also sick of being told, "Give [the writers and editors] a break, they're only human." In my book, if you're being paid to do something, you'd better be good at it. Ever told a doctor, "It's ok if you're not that sure how the human body works, you're only human"? I believe in grace as much as anyone. I'm continually on the receiving end of it myself. But I still say, at least look as if you're trying.
   
4. It's true, you can never go home. Or back to your old Latin dance class, wishing it were just as it was five years ago. I don't know which has changed the most: the studio, the class or myself.
5. I am simultaneously reading two biographies (well, Fashion Babylon IS more or less biographical) and I can't help marvelling at how strikingly different people can be. From the guy who gained what he cannot lose to the countless people who seem to be tossing away all their life and energy for what they can't keep. Why?

What makes a day worthwhile?

"Believe me, count as lost each day you have not used in loving God."

— Brother Lawrence (1611-1691)

Thoughts, statements and observations (randomness alert)

1. No, I will not observe a Halloween dress-up code at work, even just for fun.
   
2. There is a family of mice living in my office photocopier-printer-scanner.
3. For some reason, the theme song from the 1980s Cantonese slapstick comedy Teppanyaki floated into my head early this morning and it just won't leave.
4. I need more sleep so my head will stop pounding.
   
5. Cats are adorable but not when they sing to each other outside my bedroom window at 4am.
6. Mouldy bread that has no appearance of mould on the surface, only on the inside once you've bitten it, is not part of the ideal Morning Experience.
   
7. I need more sleep so I don't snore at work and make my colleagues think the mice have morphed into Gremlins.
   
8. I am banned from entering any stationery shop with more than RM5 in my wallet.
9. I wish I could transplant the mice from the office photocopier to outside my bedroom window at home. They could then get the attention of the singing cats and lead them, in an authoritative and stylish manner they learnt from the Pied Piper, far, far away from my home.
10. You can't have your cake and eat it too. But you can get a cookie after the cake.
11. I need more sleep because the deficit is affecting my memory and I keep repeating myself because I can't remember what I've already said.
    

What have I learned over the past few days?

... that it's really best to have my mobile phone battery fully charged before setting off downtown to a place I've never been to. Like Abraham, I went, not knowing where I was going. And like him, I providentially ended up in the right place. Unlike him, it took me a lot of SMS exchanges and 20 minutes going round in circles in the best of KL traffic to reach a place I'd passed three times without seeing.

... how good it feels to run through town in pouring rain.

... that when doing a food review with a team from another publication, one needs to check first that the other team's photographer has snapped a dish before one digs into it.

... that it's not only in the movies that the lights at a whole series of pedestrian crossings turn green for you when you're in a hurry.

... that the tastiest dishes aren't the ones on display.

... just how unhappy my feet are unless they get to dance. And just how much they love Latin.

Slow down, it's time to fast

I realise the previous post may have been a bit ambiguous about my current state of mind. For the sake of clarification, yes, I'm fine and dandy now. "Happy chocolate-fuelled thing" would describe me quite well, most days. Especially now that I've ended the fast from sweet things, although I may soon start another one. Quite apart from the fringe benefit of losing weight, I've found that denying myself the food I enjoy most is really very good for teaching ...

Irony of ironies, I briefly abandoned this post while typing the previous paragraph because... uh... (blushes) my boss offered me a slice of her fantastically delicious birthday cake and I accepted. How could I not?

So, where was I? The fast! Right. The fast. Yes, I think I need to do it again soon. Because, as I was saying, denying myself the food I enjoy most is really very good for teaching me all about discipline, about appreciation of everything I take for granted, and about letting go of the petty things I find important.

Two-year-old writing

This is part of a journal entry that I wrote exactly two years ago, to the day. I was referring to one evening in 2003 when I was lying down on a friend's balcony in Australia, watching shooting stars.

I don't know who you are, but I had the feeling when I reread my old journal that I should put this entry here so that someone who's facing a "night" of his or her own would gain some hope. I don't have much I can give my friends, but I hope this page from my life will help you.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2004:

"In the cold that night... I remember feeling a sense of impernanence, and that I was just a tiny, tiny part of a great big world. I was so hypnotised by the shooting stars, I couldn't get up to go home. Even when there was a long gap in between one star and the next, I would whisper, 'Just one more, please, God,' and wait. And I would wonder: 'If he can bring me another star, won't he also make sure all the more that my life will be fine?' And somehow, though there was a lot more pain to come*, I knew things would be all right.

I would feel it, too, when I went up to Red Hill Lookout** at sunset and watched the blue sky go purple, red, orange, black. Sometimes there would be ribbons of vibrant orange across a velvety blue, almost edible background, and when I turned to face the other way there would be an entirely different picture there. I usually went about 15 minutes before sunset, and the sky would still be blue then; yet, the change from daylight to night was so gradual that I never saw it happen.

Guess my life is like that. Things are constantly changing, forming, reshaping, disappearing, but it's only when each stage is over that I realise how different things are from before. Between last year and now, my life is as different as day is from night. With each fading colour, I cried, sometimes even fought against its dying, got angry and made sure to tell God so. When night finally fell, I wept and stumbled in the ensuing darkness for some time.

Yet I believe that now, I've come to understand that in order for daylight to come once more, I must be willing to accept the darkness of tonight, do what is appropriate for that time, and simply wait for the sunrise. And it will come."

Whoever you are, if it seems that all the light seems to have gone from your life, I hope you have faith that it will come back.

*Just a few months after that night with the shooting stars, I faced the end of a four-year relationship; had to give up my full-time dance studies because of an inexplicable back injury; and left the scenery I loved in Australia to come home.
**A pretty spot 5 minutes away from where I lived in Sydney, where I'd go whenever I needed to be alone.

A plan so fine

I’m glad to know there are more than two people who read this blog. Thanks for the encouragement, you know who you are.

In the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of reason to contemplate life in general. How things that we flippantly said years before can suddenly come true now, making us go “Whoa… now hang on a sec. How?” Or things that were once all that we lived, breathed and dreamed… and now, looking back, there’s nothing else to do but thank God they never came close to happening.

Years ago, I said to my mum one random day, “Wouldn’t it be fun if when I grow up, I work for [her favourite exclusive Japanese cosmetics house] so that you can get free cosmetics?”

I have no idea why I said that. I’ve never had an interest in dermatology or anything remotely connected to the beauty industry. I think I was just being my practical, Hokkien self: considering how much my mum spent on cosmetics, I probably figured that if I could get her sold on the idea of free cosmetics by the time I was 25, she might go easy on them for now and save enough money by the time I was 18 to… buy me a car? Who knows.

Anyway, a few weeks ago as I organised a bunch of cosmetics and skincare I’d taken home to test for work, I suddenly remembered that statement I’d made to my mum.

And realised that the things we speak of, however lightly, always have some chance of coming true. Not necessarily in the way we imagine, but in such a way that even through the fog of intervening years, we can still recognise them. Maybe it’s these small, seemingly unimportant things that serve to remind us that our past and future are never separate from each other, even when all we can see of the present seems to tell us otherwise.

There are times in life when I just can’t imagine what’s ahead and sometimes I forget that whatever it is, it’s good. I’m so thankful for all the people, animals and things around me that constantly help me to remember that while some of the things I say are random, life never is.

What's with the male-bashing?

I've had it up to here with product advertisements featuring any number of attractive female models in some provocative/pseudo-authoritative pose, captioned with a tagline written to hit the male ego where it hurts. I suppose it's meant to amuse the ladies and antagonise the men. I seem to have missed the memo explaining what exactly makes them funny.

What is it with this generation and the people who shape its consciousness? We use our words, as sharp as we can get them (and some of us, myself included, were born with the gift of the jagged tongue, unfortunately), to wound the men around us and make them feel lower than pond scum. They're told, indirectly, that they're there to be conquered, crushed, manipulated, used and seduced. Then, when they turn into jerks who only want to know us in order to conquer, crush, manipulate, use and seduce us, all of a sudden feminine outrage surfaces.

My hands are not clean; I've said some pretty damaging things in the past but thanks to good, old-fashioned empathy and a few reflective moments, I see the error of my ways.

What she left behind

I was sorting through some more of Mummy's jewellery today and thought of the saying that what you leave behind tells a lot about who you were. So as I sorted, I listened: what was in this huge jumble of bracelets, earrings, rings, pendants, chain and bangles?

Cloisonné. Lots of cloisonné. Earrings, bangles, pendants, chokers. My mother loved flowers and this art form, with its floral motifs, always appealed to her. She also loved bright, contrasting colours, especially unusual combinations that surprised you because you wouldn't expect them to look so good. My father travelled a lot throughout their years together so a large part of her collection is from overseas.

Jade. My mother's name meant "Jade Dragon", and I don't know if her liking for the stone arose out of being associated with it from the moment of her birth; or if it was just aesthetically pleasing to her. Her favourite piece was a bangle, like those you'd see on ladies of her generation or older - a circle of cloudy, green-white stone, completely round and smooth. The bangle was special to her because of a transparent dark green spot. Maybe in her heart of hearts, this piece of jewellery represented herself: She was a woman like any other on first appearances, but on closer examination there was a unique beauty that you'd miss if you walked by too fast.

Or maybe it was just a nice piece of jade to her.

Necklaces she made herself. I can still remember her making them. It was about 20 years ago, and my mum and aunts were on a whole DIY jewellery kick. I couldn't get my head around how many crocheted bead necklaces there were in that drawer. And then there are the ones with the big porcelain beads and the Chinese knots. I'm sure if she'd decided to make a living from her jewellery and other crafts she loved, she would've earned more than her desk job paid her. It was a risk she never dared take, and I wish she had. Mummy didn't take many risks, preferring the safe and the known.

Gold. Chinese woman that she was (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way; I'm Chinese, too!), my mum loved gold. To her, it was both adornment and investment. She'd save up to buy herself something new every few years. She wasn't a flamboyant person, so she bought what she could wear every day: things that wouldn't need much maintenance, that weren't overly eye-catching, but that gave her pleasure when she looked at them. When she was hospitalised for the last time and had to take off her jewellery, one of the pieces she was wearing was a gold chain with a locket in the shape of the Chinese character of her surname, Su. She was always proud of her identity and to her, marrying and taking on my father's name didn't diminish who she was or where she'd come from.

Costume jewellery. Of the whole collection, this is the bit I don't understand. For someone who otherwise had exquisitely fine taste in everything, my mum had a lot of really tacky jewellery, too. (I used to tell her this to her face, and we agreed to disagree on this this part of her jewellery collection since I wasn't the one wearing it, anyway. No guilt here!) Some of her costume jewellery is well-made and understated, but some literally made my eyes pop out. Huge dangling earrings with some kind of stones set in them; we're talking about eight mid-sized stones per side, and I don't even know what they're supposed to be because they've gone from clear to dull and I can barely tell the colours apart anymore. A hematite bead choker with pieces so big that if one had fallen onto Mummy's dear pet Whiskey, he'd surely have gone to kitty heaven on the spot.

I'm sure each piece tells a story, and I wish she were still around to tell me. But knowing her and the way her life was before she was diagnosed with cancer, I doubt she would ever have had the time. I miss her more as time passes, as the image of her blurs and the memory of her laughter gets softer in my ears. I wonder what each of us would end up buying if I were to go jewellery shopping today. Would she end up with a pair of plain silver hoops, and would I for some unknown reason decide to go for a chunky faux gold chain with black onyx-like flowers hanging from it? I'll never know, because she's not here. All I have to go by is what she left behind, and there's a lot that it's already told me.