Browsing Tag

family

Daily

2020

In 2019, we got a flat!
In 2020, we expected to be picking dates, shortlisting guests, and kicking off our shoes with a dance party.

TOO Easy, I expected too little. 2020 is EVEN MORE AMAZING.

I get to have a legitimate excuse for “When is the wedding/housewarming?”

In 2019, LCube was fully funded and free for schools!
In 2020, I expected to see Clif lugging his game materials and getting a headache from prepubescent screaming.

NO WAY. Instead I get to watch Clif pick up a new skill and learn 3D modeling.. then proceed to create a new platform for teachers who want to create augmented reality content without coding skills, for free.

In 2019, I built a routine teaching schedule!
Err.. In 2020, I expected to carry on.

BUT THAT’S TOO LOW TECH. Instead I get to learn to be more comfortable talking and teaching Pilates to students through a computer. And I get to dedicate more time to my parents’ business.

And we’re only in April?! So much has happened!!

Daily

This hell

“People you may know”, ha! The irony is not lost on me. Were you keeping this account to connect with scantily clad friends, or is this an old account you’ve forgotten the password to? I sleuthed around, and well, I think we know you didn’t forget. I don’t know why I bothered checking. These were things I already knew.

I’d already seen the messages. Your phone was pretty clear. ‘Mahal’ might mean expensive, but in this context it did not. I’d already seen the photos. Your camera was pretty clear. By no means an artistic shot, but the scene as clear as crack. I’d already heard you say it. Our lunch was pretty clear. With arguments as incredulous as Trump’s, I’d already seen your view.

I’d already talked about it, cried about it, wrote about it and moved on from it. So why am I back down here?

Your old flame added me on Facebook recently, which caught me off guard, but also made me curious. Did she want money? Why else would she reconnect, and why now? Did she add you too?

I looked for her on Facebook once, after I saw that incriminating photo of your new conquest. I’d wanted so much to connect with her kids, to ask them if they knew what I knew, to break them and make them hurt. Perhaps I’d get some sweet revenge. But some part of me empathised with her, because I blame you more than I’d ever care about her, and I was never so gutsy. Did she see me as a recommended person she might know because I searched first?

If I’m not going to tell you, I may as well tell everyone. But this crawl space is frustrating and I don’t understand why you’ve put me here. This hell should be yours, it’s not my guilt to bear.

Daily

Things I love Thursday, a Throwback Edition

I remember being so in love with books when I was younger that I’d hide under my blanket covers to read.

Fairytales and Sweet Valley Twins, Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew.

I loved stories about Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. Having a twin sister sounded like the best thing ever, a best friend I could depend on.

My brain doesn’t hold many memories of my childhood, but one good memory I have is one of my brother bringing me to the large Borders bookstore at Wheelock and then telling me to pick one book as a Christmas gift.

I was spoilt for choice.

Sweet Valley Twins - Big for Christmas

Sweet Valley Twins – Big for Christmas

The one I finally picked was Christmas themed, to go along with the spirit of the December season.

I must have read this about twenty times (or more).

You might also be surprised to find out that I still have this book with me.

I realise now that it’s not the coolest thing to talk about, but I was never exposed to Roald Dahl. I think I was probably turned off by the illustration style on the Roald Dahl books, which would have been unappealing to me as a kid.

And as much as I’d like to think I was a bookworm, I was never the Rory Gilmore-type who’d read Moby Dick or Pride and Prejudice.

Trust me, I tried with Anna Karenina.

Wheelock no longer holds a bookstore, and now, I get my books off booksdepository.com.

Latest novels to arrive are the second and third books of Miss Peregine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Daily

Begin again

Two years is not a long time – not in the grand scheme of things. But when I first started work at We Are Social, that felt like a reasonable amount of time to stay. So you can imagine how surprised I was when two good years passed by and I realised I had no pressing need to leave. Still, as the months went by I realised I needed a change of pace. Things had changed, or maybe it was because some things hadn’t changed for me and I really needed to get out and start again. Afresh, anew, again.

Someone once told me that if you want to find joy, do what you love. And it was precisely this that I joined the company, it was this that made me stay for a good two and a half years, and it was also because of this that I eventually decided to leave the best first job anyone can ask for. I’m not exaggerating.

I met people I love here; the best kind of people. The ones who’d keep pushing you to be better, the ones who’d be there when you’d trip, then tell you how much they believed in you so they’d fall right alongside, then lift you up and dust the dirt off your jeans. The ones who you’d call family.

And of course, it’s time to move out of the family home for a new adventure.

wasgrouphuga

Daily

Well, fuck.

I don’t think my mother understands the gravity of the word ‘fuck’. And it’s weird, you know? Hearing your Asian parent use the profanity with such lightness. It’s kinda ugly.

Like hearing an ah lian being vulgar with so much ease and simplicity that it becomes really unpleasant? Like seeing teenager holding a cigarette like it’s just super cool?

Don’t get me wrong, there are some people that look good holding a cigarette. But those people belong in classic magazines and Mad Men, where the word ‘fuck’ is beautiful, and the idea of a cigarette seem to hold some complexity.

Profanity can be sophisticated. Just look at the diamond industry, make your vulgarity worth more. Although..in an era of wrecking balls, I’m not so sure. Am I crazy?

Daily

2012, please be kind

2011 was the year that Death came to warn us. It was the year you fell ill, my strong pillar of support, my luckless keeper. Finding out about it felt surreal. Too dramatic, and too scary. I tried not to beg in my prayers, I made no bargains with God. I only prayed for it to disappear. You were strong even then. I felt alone in my misery and helplessness, but you fought bravely and never showed your pain. None of us could imagine life without you, and we will live in fear everyday of losing you.

2011 was also the year I lost my best friend. It was the year we realised our differences, and the year you finally walked out on me. I would eventually come to thank you, for everything you’ve ever done, but the sadness washes over me when I remember how things used to be, when I remember the plans and promises that never followed through.

2011 was the year that went by too fast. It was the year I graduated from university, although I hardly remember doing anything worth noting, and I hardly remember feeling anything but loneliness.

Daily

Expiration date

March 2nd – My mother has cancer. Stage 3/4 colorectal. Doctor said it looks ‘messy’.

March 3rd – Barely woke up for school. Went to student services and asked about deferring my studies. Spoke to Cheryl about it. Consulted Eugenie.

March 4th – Booked my flight to Singapore. Confusion when my entire family opposed to me coming back.

March 5th – Flight postponed. So lonely, and terrified.

Writing

Wounded

There are some things that can change your life forever. Some news, that once heard, cannot be unheard. It fills you up completely, and it becomes all you think about; nothing else comes through. The worst part? It feels unreal. But that doesn’t make it untrue. It sounds like another story about another person; a common and ordinary circumstance, foreign in your world. Until it isn’t.

It hits you like a silent bullet. A speeding train in the distance but you don’t hear it. You start to think of all the possibilities, all the impossibilities, of everything that will never be the same again; because of that one piece of information.

Waves of sadness, anger, confusion, and a dull sense of dread. It’s hard to breathe. You feel silly and dramatic, so you hide it. You suppress your emotion with new facts and information, you want to be prepared. You are strong and focused, you are okay.

But night falls and you sink. And you don’t even feel it until you are on the ground, broken.

Daily

It’s the thought that counts, right?

When I was 14 years old, the adults in my family decided that shopping for presents for the kids was too difficult and all together just too exhausting.

Gift-shopping with my mom was a part of Christmas I looked forward to when I was a kid, but since then, I’ve never taken up the habit of giving anybody gifts on Christmas.

Not my parents, nor my brother and his wife.

Not that Christmas should be about gifts and presents, but my Christmases were hardly exciting after that.

I finally decided that this year, on my 20th Christmas, I’ll be taking up this daunting task of gift-giving. Gifts for my family, gifts for my closest friends.

One gift once a year shouldn’t be so hard. A present that says thanks for being there, and hey, here’s to all the laughs, and I hope you know that I appreciate you being there.

This past week was tiring to say the least. Shopping is tough when you have a list and when you have less than enough money for yourself. Also, how do you decide if someone in your life deserves a gift or not?

More shopping to be done..Gift-giving is hard.