居場所

honey & clover の竹本君はｸﾘｽﾏｰｽがきらいな理由はいつもｸﾘｽﾏｰｽの時：’お前は幸せか？居場所あるか？’って感じる。今ｸﾘｽﾏｰｽの季節ではないが私そういう感じがわかる気になる。

ねえ、幸せってなに？なぜ人生の中でいろんな幸せの中から選ぶことにしかならない？

私の場合はいい仕事といい人間関係といい生活の所は全部世界の違う所だ。こうなたらどう選ぶでいいの？自分の居場所がどこか迷いってもどんなに時間かかって考えってもも答えがわからない。どんな道選んでもあと後悔するだろう。

forever missing

This week's Lexington column in the economist is about immigration policy in the US, a topic I read with particular interest because I'm one of many who came here to study and then decided to stay to work. While the column itself was interesting, one particular quote stuck in my mind - the immigrant's lament: "she has spent the past 25 years missing India and will spend the next 25 missing America".

While the countries mentioned and number of years mentioned are different, that one sentence seemed to sum up my future pretty well. It's one of the reasons why I find it so hard to figure out what I'm doing next, much less what I want to do with my life. Here in America, I pine for the food culture of Singapore and the zen lifestyle of Japan amongst many other little unique things about each society. Living in Japan, I missed the open hearted acceptance of the urbanite American cities. You can't have your cake and eat it too, if only because there's no way to physically live in 3 places at one time.

The road is wide open before me but ironically the crossroads are too many to choose between. And having chosen one path, would I forever wonder what was on the others? I always thought that at some point, I was going to move back to Asia, maybe even Singapore, which for 2/3 of my life I had called home and knew no other. But when I think back to how I felt when I was in Singapore, before I knew that there were other ways of living to miss, all I remember was feeling trapped, unable to breathe.

If I were to go back, would I be able to leave again? Is it easier to live in a gilded cage, if the door to that cage were always open? And if one were to live in that cage, and slowly realize one day that the once open door had shut, would the response be panic or contentment?

These are questions I would need to have my own answers to before I would ever think of moving home.

Need.

Whenever I get upset, or my heart is deeply unquiet, I have this abiding need to create. It used to be poetry but my words have long since abandoned my unfocused distracted mind. Right now, I just really want my paints.

However, I am in the office - the source of my need to paint, and therefore have contented myself with looking for an art program online, the better to flesh out my design for my next art project. I am going to paint a dresser.

That may have seemed like it came out of nowhere but where it really came out from was a combination of 3 things. Ikea is relatively cheap. Painted white dresser is already covered with an acrylic base i.e. no need to prime. White is a boring colour anyway.

The design that I have tentatively come up with is going to be called the forest of thorns (not that anybody is going to get that reference). I would come up with a more friendly happy design for something that's going to be placed in my house but I can't bring myself to paint anything that friendly or happy.

In any case, I get to put the cost of this project down to therapy which at $200 an hour, I certainly can't afford.

On Heroes.

For someone who was never a big fan of cartoons - disney or otherwise - growing up, I sure watch a lot of them now.

Not that I'm having some sort of early quarter-life crisis, on the contrary, these cartoons are hardly meant for kids. The cartoons I'm talking about come under the genre of Anime - mostly japanese-made serieses or movies that cover any and every subject matter - predestiny, duty, the meaning of freedom... everything from the nature of life to dealing with death.

Each title is like a story I watch unfold at the artist's pace and for each good story, at the end, I'm left wanting just a little bit more. I want them to tell me the answers to the questions that they are posing and yet I know, that only my own answers can give me any satisfaction. What does it mean to have a soul? Can a machine have real life?... Each time, they leave me to ponder my answers to the questions that they have left unanswered.

But more than that I think, I have finally found heroes in these cartoons that I can identify with, admire and respect.

I have a confession to make... I never liked any of the Disney Princesses. I watched the princess cartoons for the songs. The only one I had some semblance of liking was Belle and that was because of her love for books. Her dream library - that was my dream. I don't think I was ever meant to be a Princess in the way most people dream of being Princesses. Where most people dream of being gracious, kind, beautiful and loved by all... Where most people dream of having beautiful gowns, gorgeous palaces, and a prince to sweep them off their feet... It was all just a little empty to me.

In anime at last, I have found dreams big enough to satisfy me. In Utena I have a heroine that dreamed not of being a princess but of being a prince who can do the rescuing and be strong enough to stay loyal, true and protect those she loves. In Nana, I have someone strong enough to give up love to be able to follow her dream and stand on her own strength. And the best part? There is no Happy Ending. No Happily Ever After with adoration of subjects and a wedding. What there is, is pain, tears, suffering and yet the will to be strong, to do the right thing, and to make your own future.

That's something that I can live with.

The contents of my fridge.

This morning I looked in my fridge and took a mental catalogue of all that was in it.

For someone who lives alone, I have a terrible food habit - I buy lots of food to fill my fridge and cupboards and end up not eating half of it. Perhaps it's the legacy left from growing up in Singapore where food was the symbol of both prosperity and family, but food for me has always seem to symbolize so much more than just a means to survive. An empty fridge is an incredibly lonely thing.

Today I have - yoghurt (both the drinkable and the little cup kinds)
eggs
dried scallops (sent from home almost a year ago now, good thing they last forever)
chopped up cabbage (ingredient for okonomiyaki later this week)
bacon (I made the most delicious carbonara the other day)
cream (not sure what I'm going to do with this yet.. perhaps a stew?)
green onions
been sprouts (made pad thai yesterday)
gouda cheese (good snack)
shredded parmesan cheese (maybe another batch of carbonara?)
brie cheese (I used this to make pear, bacon and brie sandwiches)
leftover herbal chinese chicken soup
barley tea (I make big pitchers of these and stick them in the fridge)
coconut milk (I made curry last weekend, maybe I'll make nasi lemak)
chrysanthemum tea
black tea
white and mint tea (yes I have a lot of tea, love love love iced tea)
flour tortillas

As much as I miss the food back home, looking at my fridge I wonder if moving home would converesely make me miss other kinds of food. Like good bread, a plentiful variety of good cheese, and ironically Japanese homestyle food. As much as Singapore has amazing food in restaurants, I really think that the everyday grocery stores in Singapore leave much to desire. Grocery store food in Singapore is both not quite fresh enough and kind of boring. Or perhaps I only feel that way because I'm spoiled here by being able to buy what I desire without thinking of the cost. If I were to shop at gourmet supermarkets in Singapore, perhaps I'd feel differently.

I wonder what my life would be like if I were home. It'd be incredibly hard to move back to living wtih my family again after having had the glorious freedom of being my own person here. Worst, I'd have to give up my kitchen. One of my favourite books in the world is Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. I understand the narrator perfectly in that story because giving up my kitchen would be one of the hardest things in the world for me to do.

If I ever had to move home, having my own kitchen would be the best consolation. I've never been able to cook in Singapore because my mum won't let anybody use "her" kitchen. If I had my own kitchen however, in return for the sacrifice of good cheese, amazing fresh vegetables, and exciting ingredients to play with I'd get to experiment with old and new ingredients and ways to use them in Singapore.

Akemashite Omedetou

new years are for new resolutions. new resolutions are however, for people who intend (if only for an hour or a day) to keep them.

Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

Breaking the long silence.

I have my life back.

For the last few months, I've been working incesstantly due to an urgent deadline. I got my monthly utilization report yesterday and let's just say the numbers ain't pretty. As a consequence, I pretty much put life on hold as I was working through this deadline - I haven't touched my GMAT book in months. My house was a mess. I hadn't cooked or eaten home in a month (I'm sure I have health issues from that). I saw people outside of work only a handful of times in the last few months. I haven't shopped in ages.

But all that's over now, at least for a bit. Yesterday, I had my first day off in ages. I slept, cleaned, played FF12 lots and basicially did not think about work or feel guilty about not thinking about work. It was fantastic. My goal for this week is to cut back on starbucks and coffee, eat home cooked food, play games, buy clothes and basically breathe. My goal for this month is to reduce my utilization down to 100%.

I would say 80% but I know myself too well. Somewhere between high-school and college, I somehow developed a work ethic. I used to be the kid whose parent teacher meetings usually went like this "Your daughter could be doing so much better if she would only work harder. You know she has the potential to be topping the class" and whose parents usually ended up yelling some place close to the exams "You can't be done studying, you've only spent half an hour on your books so far". If those teachers had seen me in college....

I don't know what happened exactly. I think that I don't respond well to nagging and have a very short attention span. If I'm allowed to manage my own time, I usually do much better and provide much better discipline on myself than when I'm being managed. But now that I'm out in the real world, in a job where I do most of my own time management, I'm somehow putting in an effort. I wouldn't say my best effort yet because I know somewhere in me there are resources I haven't drawn on yet and haven't needed to draw on. Nor.. I think does anybody want/need me to draw on those. The consequence of working at 200% is frequently burnout.

For now, I think, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this month and the spend the hiatus putting my life back together again.

Obsessions

For those of you who don't know yet, where I would probably fall under the category of geek is in video games and anime. It is now November. The significance of which is that FF12 is now out in stores and has been out in stores for a whole 5 days. Have I bought it? No. Have I even seen it? No. Why? Because I'm currently working 24 (-8 for sleeping) hours a day.

I want to.. no... NEED to get my hands on that game. However, I also need to for the next few weeks, work, eat and sleep, which would not happen if I did get my hands on that game. I even have to work over Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, absence is not just making my heart fonder but also more obsessed.

If I should one day burst into the office dressed in flowing clothes and carved metal designed boots brandishing a broadsword and screaming "Give me my chocobos and moogles!"... you'll know why.

Work Weekend

So far my weekend has been work-filled but somehow I'm still in a good mood. There's something about being in the office on Sunday morning in jeans and a sweatshirt with no one else around and just being able to turn on the nostalgic Singapore chinese radio through the internet and work while staring out of the window at newbury street.

Now all I need is a mug of steaming hot coffee... think I'll go remedy that right now.

College parties

This weekend I was persuaded to attend a party that i should have never gone to. Despite the fact that we were all out of college, this was very much a college party, complete with the loud music, and copious amounts of beer. There were some changes though. The beer pong was changed to water pong - not that it stopped everybody from getting really drunk. And there was no random hooking up in various rooms (guess we're all too old, and if everybody was a friend of a friend, too wise for that).

As I was hiding upstairs together with a few of my friends, unable to go home because we had one friend actually enjoying herself (also the person we were staying with and therefore key to us being able to get home), I remembered why I had avoided most of the parties in college.

In some ways I miss the days before we all had money and ways in which to spend it. Going out with friends now invariably involves going to bars and playing darts or going to bars and drinking or dancing. There was a time ten years ago, with people I still remember fondly when we'd meet for dinner one night all of us from different schools and because we had no money, we'd sit out and watch the stars come out and talk about our hopes, our dreams and our lives. There are some things that money can't buy and unfortunately some things that money just doesn't seem to help.