triggers.
doing clinical shifts at the psych word. a man who rationalizes his abuse toward his filippino wife. someone he  "met" on this internet websites. moved to the phils with american money. his dollar went a long way. bought him a wife, a house, air conditioning. he was doing her a favor because he didnt try to get her deported even tho she wanted to leave him. she got mixed up in the wrong company. rationalizations. jesus. white supremacy. militarism. third world womyn. the dumping grounds of american military trauma. womyn are bought and sold. marriage is a contract. US visas is a reward. abuse is a bonus. children are an anchor. not being deported is a favor.

a friend tells me of his conversation with a pedophile. survivor of childhood abuse. perpetrator of childhood abuse. 14 year old boy whom this person thinks of as a girl. hidden secrets. shame. trauma reliving regenerating. the cycle doesnt end.

a friend calls me. they had been sexually assaulted. someone i know. this is the 4th one.

anger. rage. desire for resolution. trauma is painful and trauma strikes. people rationalize. trauma embodied and becoming human dehumanizes us.

then israeli attacks on gaza. collateral damage in the form of one year old toddlers, months old babies.

can't even go there.

Migration

I haven't found a writing home for a while. But now, I revived an old blog that had existed way before this one. It reflects more of the mindspace I am in. I find myself unable to write on this blog without thinking of the context in which it began, where I poured so many heartfelt thoughts and angry vents. That context is different now. I no longer work full time as a CNA. I do home care now, and only part time. I am also a nursing student now, and dealing more intimately with the emotional/mental/financial stress of my mother's own medical condition (a product of medical malpractice, so fuck the medical industrial complex and insurance and sickening lawyers. I hate corporate lawyers. Passionately.)

So, I have migrated to a different blog space: www.hojindetroit.wordpress.com. <3 Thanks for reading.

I love travelling. I love the feeling of new worlds placed side by side in my mind. I am the constant that exists, walking down new streets, resting my eyes on the configurations of buildings spread out across varying widths of streets, sitting on bus seats patterned within varying fades of colors. If it makes any sense at all, I watch myself travel. I feel like a character out of Motorcycle Diaries, filming my own adventures in my memory. If one man's travel can be made special, into a film, so can mine. 

I saw an art piece recently, where an undocumented mother holding a child says, "You travelled around Europe and they called  you adventurous. I crossed the border with my child and they called me a criminal."

Adventurous traveller. Criminal. Adventurous traveller. Law breaker. Adventurous traveller.

Such powerful distinctions.

im back.

I feel ready to be back, again. Coming back to the page is the physical and visual expression of me connecting with myself again. I go through waves and cycles of being ready to reflect and be connected. In the past few months, I have felt a new kind of disconnection from myself. It's new because it wasn't something I necessarily lamented, even though it was not easy. There was something inside me that was not able to control myself, and neither did I want to. Sometimes, I go through such phases of disconnection and feel extreme emotions of depression. But this time, things feel like they are floating by. There is sadness, there is death around me. And maybe it's my way of distancing. I don't know. But, in these periods, I appreciate, and miss the moments of connection with myself.
I miss translating thoughts into words, I miss trying to capture how I feel into language, I miss images that come to mind when I try to express myself. I miss writing without being self conscious. I miss a quiet night where all I want to do is to be alone with myself.
Why this doesn't happen more often, I dont know. But one thing I know is I have stopped writing, when thoughts are circular. I remember when I was around 16, and I looked at my diary and realized that each day, I was expressing the same angst. And I felt silly :) And so, I am going to try not to do that when I realize that I am doing it. And I hope my friends can be honest enough with me to tell me when I do too:)
There are some circular thoughts in my mind. I have found myself needing to talk about certain things alot. I have found myself not moving forward. And I think I am not moving forward because I havent changed my perspectives on certain relationships. I am stuck. I want to move on.

So much about me on this post. So many "I"s. Yes, I am curious about myself these days. I am allowing myself to change. It is something I havent done in a while. It is a change that is happening within myself because of the changes that have taken place in my political life in the past 2 years. Not all of this is good. I am trying to figure out how to make the best of this. But I am changing, and I am realizing that. It's a weird feeling. I dont have control, and I am curious. Sometimes hopeful. Sometimes not. I have some people around who ground me. I am thankful for them.

Also, I wanted to recommend this awesome piece. I hope to return to these precious words later:
http://blackgirldangerous.tumblr.com/post/23492833416/10-things-us-queers-and-the-rest-of-yall-can-do

processing, reinspiring

i always keep things inside till they well up and i have no choice but to write
i'm waiting for their swelling of emotions that make it inevitable for me to crack open some of this sadness.
but, maybe that's what makes me so unpredictably emotional. maybe i should learn to be more measured in how i express these intense emotions that i have...

recollecting myself.

i am having a hard time in nursing school.
i just had to admit that to myself.
the discipline is hard, the not working is relaxing, but guilt trippy and stressful, and...the culture is rough.
i'm just not very cut out for passive aggressiveness. and the racism in the school., in its explicit and implicit ways, really affect me.
be tougher, be stronger.
and, just say, fuck em. cos all that matters in the end is that im a good nurse, not them. not these petty peons.

on a positive note, im going home to visit my family w M
i'm excited about that. about the break. about not having to go to school.

i taste the thrill thumping in high school dance halls,
i shrink from the sharp pain racing from my father's tough callous hands
i hear his distance as stress sucks him ever further away
i smell the crisp fresh air of duino, blue, deep, clear, clean
i feel the way my mind is frozen, shocked, sudden, static.

i am searching.
for a way amid this confusion.

Still the diary of a disparaged CNA

its not over.

to have to breath deep,

again, not

giving up and sinking into this

slimy pool of their voices

silencing, drowning mine that is

yelling at the top of my lungs

to 

be heard

acknowledged

and not to be

stifled

snuffed

under

accusations of aggressiveness hysteria and the many stabs

at my righteous rage.

Hello, world

It's been a minute since I wrote on this blog. I think partly it's cos I really disliked the layout of the blog but was too lazy/slow to change it. Blogspot has this "dynamic" option that looks kinda cool, but...actually really confused the fuck out of me. So back to simple option. If thats gonna make me write, it's worth it looking shittier :)

Small things count. I'm learning this in nursing school as well. Small things like how you have to take extra time to gear up in protective wear cos the patient is in isolation, makes it such that you dont go in as often to those rooms..and not surprisingly, that patient in isolation, who actually needs *more* care, actually gets the short end of it. So, need to fight against this instinct to be, yes, lazy, cos it has real impact on someone else's life.

Small things count. Like how it's stressful for me -- in the microaggressions piling up everyday sort of way -- and how I have to talk myself in my head into going to school, being excited, being interested to learn. It's too much minutia and kinda emotionally exhausting for me to revisit all the ways that my awful class mates grind me down, that I won't mention them all here. I get really irritated with myself for being angry. But, that's why I am mentally avoiding school and everything associated with it. Yes -- my other excuse besides just being a lazy bum right now.

On a positive note, I'm trying to channel all this anxiety and isolation in school toward more constructive ends. I'm trying not to be a loner in class -- which I had been for the past 2 quarters partly cos I have been wiped out from the organizing related to Occupy, and also partly cos I have been so annoyed with my classmates. But, those that I dislike don't speak for all of my classmates. There are some decent good people around and I am trying to make the effort to get to know them, to be more social and less, well, judgemental. Also, my friend S and I are going to start some kind of more radical nursing club kinda thing. So even though I have a lot of rage, I am trying to channel it and not let it burn me alive. Let's see how this works out.

I have been meaning to write longer pieces about the readings I have been doing. The Hunger Games (yes!), Fanon, Richard Wright and the like. I am trying to do more internal work and processing. I am missing something. I can't name it yet. But it's a part of me trying to understand what kind of a revolutionary and person I am, and am becoming. It is a humbling feeling.

Weird. Maybe it's me being paranoid but suddenly I am wondering how much of this vulnerability I am putting out here is going to be traced by the state and by haters. I did just get called a "fucking bitch" by some asshole whom I just flyered to. I grew up watching TV serials on how anti-colonial fighters got tortured by the Japanese imperialists and how comfort women were made of prisoners of war. Makes me pissed thinking about how the state was getting all us young ones paranoid and pumped up about nationalism and the like, when they themselves as such fuckin' collaborators with imperialism all through and through. I remember at a young age thinking through all the scenarios of torture, rape, assault and the like and reminding myself how I need to prepare for such a time and how to react so I won't betray my country. They just messed with my young psyche and emotions! I don't think this is unique to me. Many female bodied people have been taught to censor our bodies and actions fearing such moments. But some days this vulnerability feels stronger than others and I don't feel free. And sometimes I think there's something really wrong with me.

I don't feel free, and small things count. 

There's a lot to be afraid of, and small things turn into big things quickly. The cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin, the refusal of medical treatment for Anna Brown, the shooting of Rekia Boyd by the off duty cop...and then the ongoing assaults on free speech on campus, ease of arrests, secure communities...this is alot. What did Germany look like before rise of the Nazi party? How do we know where we are going? How do we change that course?

What strikes me particularly, is Fanon's last chapter in Wretched of the Earth, where he writes about the mental disorders caused by colonialism. I can't help but think about if Anna Brown had been a rich white woman, she would have been alive and treated with hella respect. But because she was a Black woman who had to be assertive to advocate for herself, she was hauled instead into jail and left to die, and refused care simply because she was profiled as a drug user. And...so drug users are refused medical care now? This kind of oppressive, white supremacist treatment *makes* people adapt to it in ways that warp and distort us.

Fanon's last chapter in Wretched, and the Dying Colonialism have been such powerful pieces. The Dying Colonialism has a powerful way of analyzing how colonialism shapes and warps the practices, culture and traditions of oppressed people. It has such a powerful and tangible way for understanding how struggle and revolutionary change is part of the transformation toward a new culture, new humanity, new being -- that is rooted in the present, that is rooted in change, that is movement. The man has some shitty gender politics but I still gotta say he was super ahead of his time.

I really crave being, in freedom

Grrr....thoughts!

I have a barrage of stuff in my mind. As usual, I need to spill them before they explode in my brain.

1) Joy and comfort from hearing my parents' voice, even from afar.
The knowledge that this may not last forever.

2) Anger, deep anger and resentment of the nursing program.
Specifically, anger about the racism and classism within the program, including the obvious withholding of knowledge from CNAs in nursing homes. 1 quarter of being a nursing student, I feel I have more knowledge of my patients than 2 years of being a CNA. I am resentful. Also pissed about how nursing school is educating a whole generation of nurses to be punked on and to punk on CNAs. Reproducing the hierarchy of white supremacy, division of labor...etc etc

3) Sinking realization that industrialization and capitalist division of labor is primitive and backward. That a generation of industrial capitalists came up with an idea one day and disseminated it wholesale everywhere in a powerful way and this has changed our earth, our living, our bodies in ways unimaginable. In ways that made human life unworthy and equivalent to the products that we handle -- whether it be hogs, or cars, or in the case of caring labor, people with disabilities and the elderly. Industrialization and capitalist law of value dehumanizes in such a complete, unbelievable manner. I can't believe it. I rememeber not being able to believe when I was treated SO MUCH like shit, and again it's that whole feeling of incredulousness...

4) The pace of the movement -- D/OS, alongside being a student, a child to elderly parents, a friend etc - is unsustainable. Needing to rest, as I am right now, but also to figure out an involvement that is more sustainable. Understanding that this, is now, my new reality. Needing to figure out how to absorb this mentally, emotionally so every moment is not a crisis or a dilemma.

5) How to integrate all the energy from D/OS into workplace organizing -- or is workplace organizing obsolete at this point??

A Xmas day note

2011 is coming to an end.
Xmas day doesnt mean much to me except as a landmark. The week before the end of the year, a reminder that some things, tasks or mental notes, need time to wrap up for the new year's welcome.

I believe in new beginnings. Resolutions are a way to initiate them. I have collected lists of resolutions, and kept, only a mere few. Yet a mere few that has meant a lot to me.

The same time last year, I was not good. This same time this year, I am doing better. I would say much better except that I believe in jinxing myself. So, officially, I am doing slightly better :)

I feel like there's a lot in my head that needs to come out. Thats how I process and make real in my head the experiences my body takes me through.

Uncharted terrain

Writing has always brought me back to myself.

Since the Occupy movement has taken off, I have been gradually losing touch of myself. It is an irony, because it is precisely this moment of potential mass upheaval, the expansion of possibilities, that I feel that I, and many others around me, have sprung into, that coincides precisely with me losing a sense of myself. Where every work of creation begins with a work of destruction. It rings too true and I can't handle it.

I am afraid of the power that I simultaneously have and dont have. I am suddenly shocked by how much power this democracy offers me, and people around me. We have the power to make the powers that be, throw down their weight on us. We have the power to smash on their ideas. I have no illusion about the somewhat weak position we still are, and the challenges we confront. But for regular people like me, and everyone else around me, the sudden power we have is both beautiful and somewhat fearsome. I don't know if I have the mental, emotional resilience, stamina, and most importantly, the compassion of heart, to handle these moments.

I have felt myself become patient with emotions because, emotions are rough and tumble unpredictable things that throw me off my rocker. Does it build the revolution? No. It distracts me from the tasks I need to do. I know it's the wrong way to feel. It's a baggage of capitalism, a baggage that I have fought to resist, a baggage that my entire upbringing and schooling has trained me to be. But in moments of stress, I run auto-pilot and distance from that which destabilizes is wise.

And strange.

And strange because it has never been how I have seen myself. Strange because I have always been that emo kid who cried too easily about dolphins and laughed too loudly about inappropriate shits. I don't know. I just feel lost.

Or burned out.

I feel so nervous about the upcoming actions. the last time we organized something big like this, it flopped on us and all the relationships around us burned. Burned to a crisp that tore my heart, lost people whom I thought I loved. So, what now when this fails?

And the voice of the bureaucrats whom I had shut out for a while, relishing the new found joy, freedoms and sense of power that my community and I have struggled for, suddenly came back. Suddenly I heard their voices again that reminded me of  what we slide back into when this movement, if this movement, dies.

I fear my loss of inihibition. I love my loss of inhibition. I love the visions of a new world and I fear losing it and what awaits us if we do.

Days like this I realize that dreaming, actually, as cheesy as it sounds, takes a hell lot of strength, and super super thick skin.

Occupy Seattle...

Occupy Seattle is like a drug that I can't remove myself from even when it hurts.

OCCUPY, to END CAPITALISM

Hey all,
This is a piece that BOC, a group I am a part of, put out today. It was produced in a hurry given that we have all been heavily involved in Occupy Seattle. Check it out:

http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/occupy-to-end-capitalism/

Caring: A labor on stolen time

Care workers, feminists, labor militants, read this and share your thoughts!

You can email the Jennifer Ng here

caring: a labor of stolen time

pages from a CNA's notebook

*                             

The Machine endangers all we have made.

We allow it to rule instead of obey.

To build a house, cut the stone sharp and fast:
the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way.

The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape
and its factories subside into silence.
It thinks it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys.

But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places
we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers
that -- when you feel it -- brings you to your knees.

There are yet words that come near the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own.

Rilke (Translated by Joanna Macy)

                *                             

This piece is dedicated to all nursing home workers, residents and their family members.                                       Be patient with me, as I share our silenced stories.

All names have been changed to protect the identities of my coworkers and residents

*                             

I work in a place of death. People come here to die, and my coworkers and I care for them as they make their journeys.Sometimes these transitions take years or months. Other times they take weeks or some short days. I count the time in shifts, in scheduled state visits, in the sham monthly meetings I never attend, in the announcements of the “Employee of the Month” (code word for best ass-kisser of the month), in the yearly pay increment of 20 cents, and in the number of times I get called into the Human Resources office, counting down to the last one that would get me fired.

The nursing home residents also have their own rhythms. Their time is tracked by scheduled hospital visits; by the times when loved ones drop by to share a meal, to announce the arrival of a new grandchild, or to anxiously wait at their bedsides for heart-wrenching moments to pass.  Their time is measured by transitions from mechanical food to pureed food, textures that match their increasing susceptibility to dysphagia, their appetite changing with the decreasing sensitivity of their taste buds. Their transitions are also measured by the changes from underwear to pull ups and then to diapers. Even more than the loss of mobility, the use of diapers is often the most fearsome adaptation. For many people, lack of control over urinary functions and timing is the definitive, undoubted mark of the loss of independence to dementia.  

Many of the elderly I have worked with are, at least initially, aware of the transitions they undergo, and respond with a myriad of emotions such as shame, anger, depression, anxiety and fear. Theirs was the generation that survived the great depression, armed with fervent missions of world war. Aging, that mundane human process, was an anti-climatic twist to the purported grandeur and tumultuousness of their early 20th century youth.   

“I am afraid to die. I don’t know where I will go, Jennifer,” a resident named Lara once said to me, fear dilating her eyes.

“Lara, you will go to heaven. You will be happy.” I reply, holding the spoonful of pureed spinach to her lips.

“Tell me about your son, Tobias.”

And so Lara begins, the same story of Tobias, his obedience and intelligence, which I have heard over and over again for the past year.  The son whom she loves, whose teenage portrait stands by her bedside. The son who has never visited. The son whom I have never met, but whose name and memory calms Lara down.

*

Continue here

"Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us"

"The body had to die,

 so labor power could live"

Silvia Federici 

Caliban and the Witch (141)

I am strongly influenced by Silvia Federici's "Caliban and the Witch." I read that book alongside Maryse Conde's "I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem." Conde's book is also really amazing, and Federici's historical and theoretical ideas give another layer of meaning to the depth that is already there. I hope to do a more detailed write up of these books sometime down the road.

In the meantime, I want to share a talk that Federici recently gave in Philadelphia, entitled, "Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us." The organizer has kindly uploaded the audio recording. Check it out. It's super helpful. I especially like the distinction between "sacrifice" and "suffering." The Buddhist instincts in me really like her acknowledgement and acceptance of aspects of life as suffering.

It's making me think alot about the importance of organization in helping maintain sustainable political lives. The 10% we can offer to political work while also studying, working, caring for family, self care, is small when it is alone. In fact, it becomes a small droplet that gets lost in the midst of a gazillion other things. But when many people pool their 10%, 5% - s together, then our joint (small) forces become bigger and more meaningful political activities.

I have been to meetings where people spend the only 2 hours of the week they have to spare, nearly dozing off because the work is not engaging or meaningful. Being present at a political meeting does not mean we are growing and engaging meaningfully. We need to have organizations that channel the only 2 hours of spare time someone can offer, into meaningful, inspiring, challenging work that helps us grow. For that, we need structure and political content.

We need to build that! Or we won't win against the capitalist scum bags that overwhelm us! We need to build that, so we dont burn out! Also so we won't conflate all forms of "sustainability" with self care that takes us AWAY from political work.  I believe it is possible to be sustainable and be engaged politically. I also do think there is need to take time away sometimes, but that cannot be the only way we conceptualize sustainability.

Family...

I feel a little silly that I can't sleep tonight cos I am excited for the first day of school tomorrow :P
I mean, I guess I'm kinda really excited to start (and finish! *fingers crossed*) nursing school. I had been preparing for this since...2007! O-M-G that's right! Pre-reqs!!! I hate you. Pre-reqs that expire? I hate you even more!

Anyway. I fill up my time by getting emo. I recently had a little conversion experience. I don't know how long it will last. I'm hoping it's not a temporary thing.

I realize how much I love my family!
My quirky, weird, atypical, problematic family! (which family isn't?)

My parents are not perfect. My mom has issues of internalized colonialism being from Taiwan and loving, absolutely adoring everything Japanese. Taiwan was a former colony of Japan. Japanese colonialism had different policies for Korea and Taiwan. Where they deprived Korea of any industrialization or technological transfer etc, they fawned over Taiwan and developed it as their lil model colony. It was the bad cop stick vs. the good cop carrot game they played.

My mom's racism is probably the hardest for me to accept about my family.

Growing up in Singapore/Malaysia, and seeing my mom despise all the people around me because they were "Nanyang" Chinese, or Malay, or Indian, was really poisonous. Because being a mixture of all this was how I grew up -- language, food, friends, education. Even with Singapore's racist anti-Malay, anti-Indian, Chinese supremacist education system, we still had an illusion that we were a multiracial society in my childhood years. Hell, I even *look* like a SEAsian Chinese! And it was never good enough. Where in school we learned about Japanese colonialism of SEAsia and all the degenerate racist things the Japanese military did under the name of "pan-asian unity," in my phase of deep nationalism and patroitism, my mom would simply squash all that by hushing me up. Shaking her head furiously and yelling madly, exactly showing how my young heart seeking a history to call home, was shattering her denial of how hers had merely been at another's mercy. I didn't understand why. And I despised her for it.

I have tried rejecting her. It succeeded for some years. But I think I am ready for some fresh memories.

I am ready to remember my mom's voice, not as echoes of memory from my childhood and teenage years. I want to hear her voice again, before it ends.

Somehow, having worked in a nursing home and interacting with all these elderly who have so many contradictions, and feeling this need to distinguish between their degenerate ideology and their humanity, because I need to reclaim parts of my own humanity, is, strangely, doing something to me in a deeper way.

I know women and many oppressed people have resisted historically by killing their oppressors. I will not condemn the right to self-defense, and related to that, the rage that emerges from years of pent-up oppression. But I guess I wanna say, that this form of resistance, as legitimate as they often are, is dehumanizing to us all, even if at times necessary. This system dehumanizes all of us, and so I am not positing an ideal humanity that is being disrupted by acts of violent self defense. It's not that. It's a deeper thing, a possibly deeper, tragic thing. Something I feel unqualified to talk about because I havent been in that position yet.

Anyway, I suddenly really wanna genuinely care for my parents. My mom who has lost her kidneys to a money-grubbing capitalist medical system. My dad, who has not found what he really wants and has illusions of grandeur, of believing that persistence and inspiration alone can help transform his village high school credentials into a Einstein/John Nash genius at age 66. Maybe so, most likely not. Regardless, I love them.
I never want them in a nursing home.

"Poetry" - A film about Alzheimers, Poetry, and Gender

I don't see a lot of films where elderly women are the center of the stories. "Poetry" by Lee Chang Hoon, is one of the few films that beautifully, sensitively, gently accomplish this. This film is about a woman who has Alzheimers, whose realization of the illness (and impending death) shapes the way she interacts with the world, shapes the way she acutely understands her gendered experiences and her empathy with other women (particularly a young deceased rape victim and her mother), but who does so in a very gentle and yet passionate and strong manner. She seeks poetry as a defined, tangible "poetic aspiration," and yet doesnt realize that as she wanders through the last leg of her life, she is experiencing and speaking poetry at every turn.

I like this film in part because the main character, Yang Mija, is seeking words at the same time that her body is losing them. Yet her body transcends language, and her physical presence in the world, her accidental encounters and experiences with other people in her town, embody what poetry is. In the end, the poetry she writes transcends language and time and body -- she and the deceased girl become one in the reciting. It is this merger of time and space that is the essence of poetry, at death. The gendered experiences of patriarchy in the film are subtle, but very present. Mija is a single grandmother, who brings up her daughter's child, Wook. Her daughter had left the town to find work after her divorce, in Busan. It is not a coincidence, that Busan is the 2nd largest city in South Korea, and Mija's daughter's move seems to be a larger picture of urban migration. Mija meets with the fathers of Wook's friends who are discussing how to cover up their childrens' involvement in the months-long rape of the recently deceased girl. Mija is the only woman present, in shock upon hearing the news, but also from the men's callous attitudes about the girl's death. She finds out later, to her surprise, how widespread this callousness is, both in her own grandson, as well as in the man for whom she cares for as part of her maid-job.

Anyway, watch this film. It's on Netflix! Here's the poem at the end of the film. It's beautiful, so it's here, but if you hate spoilers, don't scroll down below the trailer:)



Agnes' Song
How is it over there?
How lonely is it?
Is it still glowing red at sunset?
Are the birds still singing on
The way to the forest?
Can you receive the letter
I dared not send?
Can I convey the confession
I dared not make?
Will time pass and roses fade?
Now it’s time to say goodbye
Like the wind that lingers
And then goes, just like shadows.
To promises that never came,
To the love sealed till the end,
To the grass kissing my weary ankles,
And to the tiny footsteps following me,
It’s time to say goodbye.

Continued here

我不再潇洒了！：）

我爸说我这次回家，变得比较消沉，跟过去比起来，是比较“不潇洒” 了：）
挺搞笑的。我说“成熟”，“稳定”，他说“没威风”。。。

我想这过去一年所经历的哀愁，情绪的极端上下，锻炼出来的我，毕竟有些沉重。这也是岁月与人生经验所创造的，是无可避开的。虽然多年不见，父亲仍能观察到我的变化，也是挺不错的。

说起“潇洒”， 也让我想起叶倩文的 《潇洒走一会》。这首歌是那么地表征了九时年代的风各。我觉得父亲过去也非常喜欢这首歌。

video是有点过时。。。：）
  *warning: cheesy 90s Chinese video* :)

Hot pot goodness

I am not a photo person...so here's something jacked from the internet.

This past visit home, I got to celebrate the Mid Autumn Festival. This was the first time in 10 years that I was able to celebrate this festival with my family. It meant a lot to me to be enjoying hot pot with my brother, my new sister-in-law, her parents, and of course, my parents. Mooncakes, shrimps, noodles, fish, vegetables...wow. It was a feast. Everything is round on the table, the hot pot itself, the table, the seating arrangements, and the people! Round and full with this yummy food!

My mum gave me the hot pot stove, to bring back here to Seatown, and I put it right to use! I had a lovely Mid Autumn Festival Round 2! with cherished people in my life. Shopping, preparing and eating with friends was a labor of love and made me so happy and light headed -- with barely no alcohol!!

Also wanted to share a piece I wrote a long time ago now. It's about my life, my parents, and this myth that's been associated with this festival. Those were some angsty days.

Mooncake Festival

Tonight is the Moon cake festival. The bright full moon sat comfortably like an egg yolk, beaming in the cool darkness of night. There, legend has it that Chang-er sits with her rabbit after she took the elixir of immortality four thousand years ago, to prevent her evil husband, Hou Yi, from ruling eternally over all heaven and earth. Four thousand years ago, Hou Yi was a good man who shot down nine out of ten suns to save heaven and earth from being scorched by the blasting heat of the ten suns combined. Chang-er watched as power and time tweaked him beyond recognition. Four thousand years ago, Chang-er exchanged brimming material luxury for eternal solitude to save heaven and earth from being ruled by one evil man, her husband, Hou Yi. She is so beautiful like a glowing gem hanging in the sky. Yet she is so alone in the vast vacuum of the soundless universe. What were the thoughts that ran through Chang-er's mind when she popped the elixir of immortality into her mouth? Was she nervous, frantically popping the pill in her mouth, in fear of Hou Yi's sudden arrival into her room? Did she in her frenzy, grab the nearest thing next to her when swallowing the globular object and did it happen to be the rabbit? Was she nervous and afraid was she not sure what would happen next was she suddenly a moon first and then flew up to the sky or did she first fly up and then become a moon? Was she as bright from the beginning and how did she feel about the choice she made? Could she have regretted and it was too late to regret because there was no choice but to go through with her choice? And how much choice was there, really, if the stakes for not doing it, were so high? He could have turned on her and killed her too because he was so evil… Did he beat her, was she abused, and any escape would have been a good reason to get away from the man who once was kind to her? Did she just happen to save heaven and earth? Or did she really intend to give up all to save heaven and earth? When Papa sat by me and Nin's bed on those nights when he was not traveling to those far away countries, I relished the stories he would tell. Running out of new bedtime stories, he repeated them one after another. There would be the story of Chang-er, and then sometimes there would be the story of Momo Taro, the little peach boy who grew up so quickly that his elderly foster parents couldn't believe it for all that their old eyes were worth. When narrating these stories, Papa's eyes danced with the fiery heat of the nine suns that Hou Yi had shot down, his voice suddenly trembling, suddenly angry with the angst and hatred of the villagers who felt betrayed by Hou Yi's deception. The five-syllable "Elixir of Immortality" that he would utter, was like a consonant-cluttered conundrum with a pronunciation that my early years could only recognize but not repeat, with a mysterious significance I could only imagine but not empathize. What could be so exciting about staying young and juvenile, when age and maturity was all that my young body was craving? Chang-er was a symbol of strength and resilience as I sometimes filled my little bolster with clothing to escape from home because the noise was too much and Nin was too annoying and I didn't think Mama and Papa loved me because she loved her business more and he loved the far-away countries more. Especially those nights when the sounds of vases and plates breaking, and Mama's cries mixed in with all that were a little too much cacophony for comprehension. Knelt knees with caps cutting coarse ground, salt-stung eyeballs staring into far away distance, I wanted to grow old instantaneously so I could be big and strong to protect Mama. Those nights I would be Chang-er, who would leave home and fly to the streets and seek out an adventure by venturing into the city where excitement and adventure burst through the colorful sidewalks onto the roaring asphalt roads… I would say bye bye to Papa…to Mama…to Nin… We will meet in our next life and thank you very much for the care that you have bestowed unto me while I have lived and sometime somewhere I will express my gratitude and repay your kindness…. How did Chang-er feel when she flew to the moon? Did she feel like Papa did when he left home to find work as a construction worker in the jungles of Brunei at age 18? Perhaps with that tinge of desperation that inevitably transforms itself into anticipation and excitement because one cannot live in downtrodden conditions without venturing onto new grounds? Or, did she feel like Mama did when she scrubbed toilets of the ritzy and the glamorous and felt her dreams disappear into the sewage of waste water and poop? I mean, did Chang-er feel for a moment that the moon could potentially be a very wet and dirty place where she could easily slide and slip into potholes and crevices if she just was just careless for a moment? Or, did she feel like me? Like me, when I attempted to sneak out of the house in the wee hours of the night with my clothes-filled, toothbrush and toothpaste-packed, walk-man and cassette tape equipped, ramen noodles-stuffed bolster? In other words, was she prepared for the unknown like I was when trying to launch an escape into the unknown streets of a scary and suspicious night? Tonight, Chang-er lives again as I share moon-cakes whilst drinking fragrant jasmine tea on a warm night. Tonight, the fog shades the bright moon glow into a cloudy orange. Her distance made painfully clear as the mist carelessly hides her on the night we pay tribute to her sacrifice. Chang-er, how does it feel like to watch us live our lives? Do you wish you had never left? Do you ever regret your decision and do thoughts of the people you saved from Hou Yi's terror help you get through your occasional loneliness? Tonight, I am 21 hours and 10 000 miles away from family. Sometimes, vestiges of home float slickly above new surroundings, like oil that never mixes with water. Moments of loneliness tickle memory into an unlived utopia, knowingly deceiving yet comfortably nostalgic.