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truth is you’ve saved me in countless little ways i never said thank you for that i was scared of letting you know how much you mean to me but i probably should you are a great friend.

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I watched you smile until your eyes turned into the crescent shape of the moon, and the whole room began to lit up because your happiness is so contagious. We laughed our deep belly laughs and exchanged glances, and in that moment all the troubles in the world seemed to have fade away. When the night ended, I felt a strange sadness - for I have tasted the joy of you being so gentle with me, but I also know the misery of being your second choice.

Drama Filter

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Sometimes working at my father's means meeting Chinese bosses. It means trying your best to converse in Hokkien with Mr. Teh, and then getting brushed off by him when you assumed he was asking about you. 'No, not you, I don't want to know about you! I was asking about your brother,' he said and laughed.  Attempting to be of good humor, I laughed along. In that moment, I began to lose momentum and I felt terribly small. We continued to talk about my brother and his son. Then I let the conversation go stale, without much guilt.

Work Shenanigans,17th Aug 2017

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europe. july’17.

here I am, at 1:57a sitting on top of the toilet cover because I am wide awake and I don't want to disturb my sister who's asleep.

Travelling now feels a little bit sad to me. We visited Amsterdam, Brussels, Brugge and Barcelona. I've been to all of these cities except Brussels. I felt a distinct sense of longing for the past, when travelling was a time of exploration. Now it feels more like an escape from reality. Away from responsibilities, my 8-5 job and people generally.

I loved Amsterdam except that it smells like weed 24/7. Other than that, I feel safe in the city and had so much CHEESE everyday. Zoku Apartments was a nice experience even though it did not exceed my expectations. The staff were helpful and just generally walking around the city was a treat (though I wished we could've done more). I actually enjoyed Amsterdam more this second time around.

I did not like Brussels too much because the people were not super friendly to us on some occasions. The waitresses were awful on our first night at Marmiton. They did not serve the bread basket to our table and they placed the dishes on our tables hastily as though we were their source of irritation. Then in the chocolate shop (Galler), we were discussing in mandarin whether or not to buy more chocolates, and the sales lady quickly assumed that we were trying to get a discount (bargaining) and told us 'no discount, I can only give you free chocolates'. Stupid Asian stereotype. However, we stayed in Radisson Blu and the hotel staff were 100% the best. Always ready to help, attends to us cheerfully. We had unlimited bottled water, the BEST yoghurt and everything was given to us in excess.

Brugge. Spent less than a day there. Had a 2-hour lunch and walked around the charming town for the rest of the evening until we had to catch the train back to Brussels.

Barcelona. It should be terribly clear to me by now that my family hates historical sites and art museums. So I decided against getting tickets for La Sagrada Familia or Parc Güell or anything like that, since I've already been inside these places. However I did get to know Barcelona better as we strolled through Passeig De Garcia, dined in the fabulous El Nacional, had jars of sangria under the sun while people watching, and let the sightseeing city bus drive us around for half a day (€29 per person!). Only dad would pay for such things, I know I wouldn't and I simply do not have the money for such luxury. The people were relaxed, and warm, as I had remembered from the last visit. Except, some of the hotel staff at breakfast and the lobby were so rude. The lady this morning gave us a dirty look when the 5 of us came down for breakfast (not all at once of course). She checked our room numbers at least four times combined, and called to check with the reception that we were actually a family of 5 and were not trying to steal or sneak one of us into the breakfast room. UGH. Otherwise it was pleasant. My family loved Barcelona, and i always tend to feel happier when my family is enjoying a European city. They tend to have a hard time when it comes to food/ communication/ long walks/ and it's nice that they can enjoy Barcelona properly. So I did not say a good thing about Barcelona to them for the fear of hyping them up with false expectations. It was a relief, the way the feel about this city.

Even so, my favourite city would still be LONDON. And I think it's bias because it's the only city that I knew. I knew where to get the pho that will always warm me up when I feel sad or when it's cold. There's always free artsy museums to see. Beautiful parks. Theatre shows are always playing at west end should I want a magical evening. Concerts. Studying in the ancient Maughan Library. Lots of alone time. Friends to hang out with ( though this is NOT true anymore, for I no longer have anyone to really hang out with in LDN, my friends have all moved from the city).

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thoughts on friendships

so i’m really proud of my friendships. especially people like mm, d, ct, p and cs. i used to have no friends at the beginning of high school, until uni when mm and the moonraker girls came into my life. i think they gave me the greatest gift i’ve ever received - the gift of friendship. they are the ones who showed me that i am worth loving, and worth hanging out with. because i struggled so much with the concept, wondering why people didn’t want to be my friend.

so because of the moonraker girls i became a more well-balanced person. they showed me that friendships are a series of efforts, something you have to pour your time into in order to keep it healthy and alive (haha like a plant!). now i no longer believe that people become friends just because some people are better to hang out with ( i mean yes, we all have our own preferences), but, i still think friendships happen by choice. you can be opposite personalities and then you happen to be working on the same goal, or you happen to need each other (which is a basic human need), and you make the CHOICE to be stuck with each other to do life.

and i’m not talking about people whom you ‘meet up’ with. these are potentials.

i’m talking about people who watch you cranky, people who tolerate your lateness and flakiness, listen to your whining, and somehow still like you for you despite it all. now that’s being truly known and truly loved. you know you can say stupid things and do uninteresting things together and they won’t judge you for it.

back to those potentials. these are blessings too, i find. some meet ups do not satisfy, you see. because people turn up late, do not put effort into making lively conversations, and they are making the meet up awful for everyone who came. with these meet ups however, you will be able to decide which friendships are steadily deepening and which are (er-hem….insert an appropriate word here). i live for those friendships that are steadily deepening. the happy feeling inside my belly when i’m surprised by people who really try. to really meet me on the other side. to make my time worth it.

thank you to my friends and my potentials. I’m happy and honored to do life with you.

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Dad

So this past week I've been travelling, and life is easy here because all I do is eat and walk around pretty European cobbled streets. I feel like as the days pass, my heart is less hardened towards my dad. Maybe it's hard to work in the same company when you have such different worldviews from each other. He said some pretty harsh things to me the week before vacation- the harshest one was when he said he was ashamed of me. I know I'm not an engineer or lawyer, not even an accountant, which is a position that would make myself more useful in his office. And I'd like to think of myself as strong, but all I need is some encouragement from my father when I fail. I am not the brightest person, and I think I'm quite a slow learner when it comes to numbers and sales. I don't think he wants to hurt me. I think he wants to motivate me, as most chinese parents do. They think saying cruel things will make you improve as a person. But I am a sensitive person and it's hard to just snap out of it. I was never confident of his love for me, for the longest time. He never ate dinner with us, and Mum always said we shouldn't take it personally, because of his own family issues and his stressful businesses. But as a young girl I always thought it meant he didn't like us. And I had spent so much energy trying to show him that I'm good and deserving of attention but I was never good enough to gain his affection/time.

Now that I'm a real adult, I learnt that it's quite useless to dwell on whether he loves or doesn't love me. Of course he does. After a week of vacation, I know that all he ever wants is to be a good father. He wants us to have the best food, to sleep inside the best rooms, to buy us whatever we need. I don't think he understood love fully. He didn't know that he was enough. He thought he needed to give us many things. And I can't undo that. I can't teach him to think the way I do. I'm a grown up girl, and I am thankful for the life I have. There's no room for hatred in my heart. I'll spend more time showing him that he's enough, that I will treat his expressions of love as a blessing, not some second-hand love to be mocked or scorned at.

Maybe somedays what he says will not be good for my heart. Maybe somedays what he gives me will not match what I seek to obtain from him. But he is my father. And he will always be. God has given me him. And I will spend my lifetime learning to love and honor him in a way that is good for both of us.

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The fruit of the spirit grows. It is not something that you grab when you need it- [Such as] when you are in the traffic, and you run into the Patience orchard and you just grab it. That is not how it works. Fruit grows. You have to tend it. You have to weave the garden. You have to go in and prune the trees. You have to give yourself to life of patience, so that in those moments, Patience begin to grow out of you.

Melissa Helser

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People who notice the details in their surroundings are the best kind of people I know. They're full of light because once they enter the room, all they see is people: Someone needs a seat. Someone is acting a bit different from their usual self tonight. We need a longer table. Someone is feeling uncomfortable sitting at that side of the room. We need to make space, a kid is trying to walk through the door. Someone needs help with their order. And then they would go out of their way to make sure these needs are met and that everyone can enjoy themselves. I aspire to be that kind of person. I really do.

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Sometimes, even with a film I really love, I cannot tell the story precisely. Sometimes I cannot even tell what happened chronologically. But I’ll have flashes of some things. Sometimes it looks almost like a still. What I know, what I can remember is the emotion I felt. I know I loved a film because I remember feeling good in the film or feeling odd when I came out, either in tears or touched or mad.

Agnès Varda, from “an interview with Melissa Anderson, 2001,″ Agnès Varda: Interviews, edited by  T. Jefferson Kline (University Press of Mississippi, 2015)

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spilled ink #2

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”   - Plato

I have a bad habit of latching onto sadness. The world has been really dark and sick lately. The constant shootings. Terrorist attacks, especially the one at Medina on the day before Eid. The Stanford victim, and her heart-wrenching letter. So much that I cannot understand. I imagine coming home and finding my family and friends dead- No. What an ugly scene.

I also see the cracks that break into the mundane day-to-day life. Imperfect Love not making enough time for their lover, twisting words, questioning one to the point of madness, withholding affection, and sometimes clutching too tightly, because of fear . . . because Real Love is too intimidating, too much effort. Sometimes I just want to play pretend, to unsee certain things. And I realise I have been busy heaping these heartaches upon myself, that I no longer notice the good things around me. How odd to find comfort in prolonging sadness, to excuse myself to be indifferent and passive to all things.

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If you don’t ask for something to be done and then explain how you’d like it accomplished, I’m no good to you. help me help you.

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About: Speaking English

This year I spent a lot of time missing. Missing people, missing places, and most of all, missing the person that I used to be a year ago. I miss speaking the language very much. I miss it because it is the language that has helped me make friends when I have none, the language that I used when writing some of the most challenging essays in my life. . . this is the language that has collected some of my best memories. Now I am so determined to let this language go. For the first few months, I have tried to prevent ‘how are you’ from slipping out of my tongue when seeing people because this is simply not a way to begin your conversation anymore. I had to think of something better to say (which is a strange new territory). Well-meaning friends laughed when I place a food order, teasing and pointing out that a certain accent had escaped from my mouth, because I was not wary enough to notice it. (Sometimes I do it because I actually have something to say, but in English specifically. Weird.) I have always cringed at those snobby people with an accent, so I would really hate to sound like one of them. But I do not hate the way I speak English. In fact, I loved that I sound more confident, can convey my thoughts more clearly, and the fact that I swallow my words less when I speak in that (picked up) British accent. For a second, that timid girl in high school was gone. Really gone. I get to be the person that I grow to become. But I feel sad when that creates a barrier between me and other people. Worse, I could not undo this, because my default is not Malaysian English. My default is Mandarin; years and years of Mandarin in Chinese schools before I attended university. So this year I am trying to get accustomed to English at home, which sometimes still feels foreign in my mouth. It is mainly the ache of saying goodbye to a language that feels like second skin. It is the ache of not being able to use Malaysian English to express myself freely, and the ache of  feeling stuck.

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‪You become a people pleaser when you can't be accepted by the very people who are supposed to love you no matter what. ‬

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in a merry conversation, x tells us how her temper rises quickly but recedes just as quickly. I stayed on topic by admitting nonchalantly that I get super angry easily too. y chimed in to say 'yeah I know you do' and we all laughed, because her statement was supposed to demonstrate that she knows me well enough, that I do not have to hide things like my bad temper from her. But it was a kind of half-hearted laugh because deep down I felt judged. I mean, years of friendship shows me that y will never give up on me . . . Even so it makes me think about how we have a great need for people to see us as more than what we are. It is so silly but you know you feel great when you admit a flaw and your friends tell you (even when they have seen your stupid tendencies) that they do not see you that way, and still mean what they say. I hope this year I will judge less, and learn to see people as more than what they are. Because that is real love.

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