Exhaust (ive) fumes

A week ago was my two month milestone at a job where I've explained to people that I run a (cannibalistic) confinement and nursery home.

I get paid a wage which was more of an allowance to play with crabs (the crustacean kind for you, gutter-minds) and water. Work started in a chaotic frame of mind since mostly everything is nearly everything I avoided in school and university - math and chemistry. Even my mediocre knowledge of crabs was the memory of the picture of my crab dissection in my 2nd year.

Last I wrote about was how I hit the ground running with adrenaline.

Now, I'm almost functioning on residual fumes.

To my absolute horror yet partial relief, this is nearly a 9-5 job. Minus the traffic jam since I head the opposite direction....away from the mass congregation of drones. I loathe having a chained-to-desk job but neither do I want to come home stinky and sweaty all the time. So far, it's been a good mix. I do have to run all over the place sometimes which is annoying because running around in a lab coat carrying beakers in thick lined gloves seems ominous. Breaks from desk work to go up and down several and many flights of stairs helps keep the butt expansion under control too.

I don't seem to remember a weekend that I could just while away the time on myself. I have had this on, that on, and before I know it, I'm neglecting the core for subsidiary one-offs such as routine household chores for a tai-chi introduction by a cousin who was back in Penang for a week or so before embarking on a year in London. Such as going for Break The Code games on a Sunday and miss out on a movie with Dad.

It does take a lot of effort to say yes. I made a promise to stop running away from people and saying yes to (almost) everyone is exhausting but saying no was, and is, harder.

Instead of saying no, can I hit the pause button? Ask for a raincheck? Reschedule?

A great fear or mine would be neglecting priorities - Sundays with dad. Evenings with mom and sisters. Time, any time at all with the kareshi. I came back for them but am I there for them?

A month of flooring the pedal

Tomorrow marks the first month of life back home.

I couldn't blog consistently since my first week because I was way too busy. I still haven't had the time to clear my bags, my boxes, my shelves, and my cupboards.

Also, consistent blogging about what's going on will be equivalent to a tweet which I haven't done in yonks and only do so if I have to say something, but can't do so on Facebook which is now not a social media platform for a rebellious, hotheaded, self-important teenager (like many others) to rant and display but a platform for a young adult with important (adult) social connections that shouldn't be introduced to that teenager on a daily basis, forcibly

I haven't been that teenager since I left high school for the second time in 2007. I say second time because after Form 5, I was plenty happy to chuck every single thing related to the public education system into the monsoon drains. Until I was marched back in for Form 6.

Life in my very own Cybertron-Planet Krypton blurred the edges and boundaries of my black and white world. University life in a different country with no friends you can actually trust (at first, because I'm cynical like that) but with the freedom of first world education system was no more a straight path with distance markers. It was a bizarre maze of paths where I have every inch of freedom...well, as long I stay on the cobbled stone and not step on the grass.

This freedom continued into my working life. The difference between here and Sabah is the stability I feel now, surrounded by family and friends, not just the rotating colleagues and associates.

I am now able to start on my NY resolutions and every hour of the day was so full that I have barely time to even read the newspapers. I take 5x longer to read a book but at least I get to buy real books now rather than settling for ebooks because I don't have the opportunity to maintain a bookshelf OTR.

I joined the Penang Fit Challenge (yes, by a Herbalife group but no, I did not buy more of what I already have in store from previous years) and even though I didnt give a crap and a half about the dos and don'ts about diet, I'm feeling better than ever before and I'm very, very glad I have excellent basic training in proper posture. The contagious enthusiasm was fantastic which is the whole point but at least it's really making me do something about my unsavoury bulging and jiggling bits besides bemoaning their existence

I picked up running and found the runner's high to be addictive enough to not shy away from a good session of sadistic-masochistic sweating but not enough to make me choose running over vacuuming the house on some days (I do get quite domestic when I'm nearing the end of my menstrual cycle).

I started an attempt at gardening where 12/14 adenium seeds successfully germinated and an adenium rootstock took hold after a couple of weeks. Now I'm on my second attempt on rooting rose stalks.

My new job was like belly flopping into the deep end of the pool and was told to swim like Phelps. I have no background in microbiology but somehow am getting through the 'training' in all things bacterial and some aquaculture but I've yet to find the time to sit and read the academic material like an archaeologist yet to dust off the entire fossilised representation of the Cambrian explosion.

The kareshi told me to 'make some friends' as sort of a goal. He knows how afraid I am of people. But like my fear of cockroaches, I got over it. Hah! I just compared friends to cockroaches. Anyhow, I stopped saying no, I stopped stalling, I stopped running away. Because I promised someone...no, not the kareshi. I promised a priest. Yah! IKR, me, of all people... like wtf happened?

I played board games. Not stupid monopoly where I can keel over from boredom before I even take my start up $$$ from the banker but strategy games like Saboteur and Citadel where 5 hours can pass by without much effort. I laughed more. I began honing my concentration skills which I sorely lack. I took more initiative, became proactive.

This is the beginning of a new life full of new starts and restarts.

I'm still revving. Ready or not, GO!

Betcha bottom dollar

A week ago tomorrow, will be my 550th day as a fresh graduate in Sabah's little world of wildlife conservation.

Sounds like a long, long time but it felt like a few weeks ago that I first landed in Sandakan with a bag still smelling of Australian soil.

I do have some regrets leaving but I was at a point of my life where I'd regret even more for not leaving at the time I did.

The realisation of a quarter-life crisis was all too real. I felt, and knew that I had to not answer soul-searching questions but to ask them instead; but what are the questions in the first place?

I found those during the CHOICE weekend. With the dirt of Sabah still under my fingernails I threw myself into a mind and body draining (but soul reviving) weekend.

My flight from Kota Kinabalu landed in Penang a whopping 15min earlier at 4pm on 9 July. The next day was spent making a decision to commit to a 9yr-long relationship with the bank on a car. It's still in process but I've opted for a manual, yes, manual, Myvi SE 1.3cc. It took me 3/4 of the day and the rest of it was spent meeting the kareshi's colleagues over dinner. On Friday, I was running around for the first half of the day like a headless chicken looking for my things around the house. My attempt in keeping my belongings in boxes was futile. I had stuff lying around hidden in every nook and cranny. All too soon the kareshi was picking me up to go for the CHOICE weekend.

Yesterday and today, I committed myself to a challenge. A weight-loss, fitness challenge with Penang Fit Challenge. I have no idea how I could still sum up the energy to workout after a mentally and spiritually tough weekend but I'm still waiting to fall flat on my face. In between, I met up with a catechism teacher who was keen on introducing me to gardening - he gave me a crash course on grafting adeniums. That, and a post mortem of CHOICE with the kareshi.

I'm going on and on about CHOICE and not explaining much about it...ok here it is: it's a once in a lifetime experience where one explores the meaning(s) of relationships. Wow, how much more detailed could I get without being vague??

It was a promise made on not to divulge details or discuss outcomes for very, very, very good reasons.

With all that in the past week that didn't just fly by but sped through in super sonic speeds that left a ringing in my ears, I'm starting on a new journey tomorrow.

I've prided myself as a zoologist with terrestrial, botanic, and semi-aquatic fieldwork under my belt. This new relationship with microbiology/biotechnology with CEMACS is totally beyond me but at least it isn't a physics or math class. I haven't prepared myself academically for this due to lack of time but hey, I'm born to dive in the deep end.

I'm a mushroom aspiring to be a grape.

Mushrooms love dark, damp corners. 
Grapes thrive in well-drained soil with plenty of sunlight. 
I want to broaden my horizons and push my borders.
I'm at the edge and putting up a hell of a fight. 

Final Countdown for a New Start

ONE MORE WEEK!!

One more week until I'll be home for more than a fortnight in five years!!!

It'll be an interesting adaptation because in the past five years, I've been setting up to live on my own. I have my own things which I don't (need to) share because I've always been territorial about my things as I had to constantly keep things in good order to pass down to my sisters who promptly tear them up.

No, srsly.

Have you not had to write gingerly with pencils on workbooķs and playbooks and trace out colouring books on scrap paper, proudly pass them onto your younger siblings as they come of age to that colouring/writing level and they got hold of crayons and marker pens and proceeded to annihilate the meaning of preservation?

Until now, I experience traumatic flashbacks when one of them asked to borrow something of mine.

In any case, I'll be extremely glad to feel settled (I feel cosy already!) and would be finally able to celebrate the kareshi's and my birthdays together for the first time, have Christmas and New Year's together for the first time (my grandpa passed away on Xmas eve last year so that didn't, couldn't count.). Yea, after about five years of dating, we don't have those milestones. How tragic.

I missed my parents' big 50s, Jessica's 21st, Juliana's end of public schooling...friends' life events (not mentioning weddings, I'm talking about other friends) and basically, just everything I ever wanted to do like join local events - I'm doing the bloody 10km Penang Bridge this November as a sadistic, belated birthday present to myself.

Hah!

Can't believe it's already July and I'm still not used to 2013. Maybe it's a quarter-life crisis - have I done enough?

But who says that I can't start a wee bit later?

The path taken

Two more weeks and I'll be a twenty-five year old moving back in with her parents. Sort of. My parents haven't been under the same roof for more than a couple of hours in a decade or so.

I'll be a twenty-five year old with no career progress and no stable financials, pretty much like a failure.

I haven't thought about how would it be after I've left. Would I erase it like I did with my life in Form 6? Like how I almost did with my life between the end of Form 6 until the beginning of my degree?

Life in Form 6 started with me literally being dragged into the compounds of SXI. School has already started for nearly a month and I had refused to be let off early from National Service to start because I never had wanted to start. A year and a half later I thought I gained friends for life. And over the next half decade, I lost them.

In between 2007-2009, I barely acknowledge the various part time jobs. I don't remember my life working as an admin in Areca School of Arts. I don't remember much of life as a student doing a twinning degree at INTI. All I remembered was an ignition of love and respect for the classic and jazz arts, and a couple of friends that I still have from a little group that truly kept me sane and alive in INTI.

Then I realise why I don't remember. I shut it all out. The blog posts I wrote about it was deleted. A permanent erasure of nearly three to four years. The following three to four years following my life as a zoologist undergraduate had the same fate not because I hated it, but because they just happened to be in the same blog. I know I wrote the longest post about my experiences as a volunteer with Bronwyn who stumbled across my blog because she set up a GOOGLE alert on anything that mentions 'eastern quoll' and God bless her if she finds this again because she didn't turn it off.

She's been on my mind a lot lately because she is to me, the epitome of what it means to be never too late to do something that you truly love.

I've hit a roadblock in life whilst everyone else is cruising. But I need to see if I've broken down and need dire repair work or is just a hitch between gears and I need to start back up again. For that, I need patience, and the diagnostic time that goes with it. This means I'm too old to just close my eyes and pretend the bad stuff isn't there. Pros and cons, highs and lows, ups and downs, it was the start of a dream came true but what those fairytales didn't warn you is that when dreams that come true in reality, it's never always pretty. It's just another path with the requisite twists and turns but at least a path I chose, a path I aimed for, with all the cracks and uneven surfaces.

I chose this. I walked this far. I will live through it. For this is mine. 

My choice. My consequences. My life.

She wrote what I didn't.

http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Family/Features/2014/06/01/Heart-and-Soul-We-are-a-family/

And she had it easier.

As a family we weren't close. It wasn't habitual nor ritual. It's an obligation. The obligatory greetings and smiles a few times a year...

When I left on 30 June 2009 for another country I was elated. To finally be free and not-quite-but-still independant...and weirdly enough my severe animosity towards my youngest sister started to dissipate. I could hold a more coherent conservation with my parents, even though through text messaging instead of face to face because I tend to yell instead of throwing my phone (at something soft) to diffuse any tension.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Har har har.

My life as an undergraduate was admittedly a seclusive one. I avoided people as much as I could. I probably spent the most time, voluntarily, with Bronwyn Fancourt who could talk for the both of us as I absorbed everything like a newborn. Other than the occasional chit chat before, during, and after classes, I texted the kareshi a hell of a lot. He was my silent, unseen companion throughout those 3.5 years.

If I kept my eyes and ears open, and swallowed my pride in asking and buried my dignity in ruthless pursuit, I might have gotten far in realising that Steve Irwin-David Attenborough-NatGeo dream. But there's one thing that holds me back in pursuing the moon and it's one thing I find that I cannot give up for anything else.

Oh believe me, I tried...twice.
And both times it broke my heart.

It may rile a few feminist feathers to think I gave up a potentially high-flying career for a man. Especially when the relationship was 90% texting, chatting online and a few emails.Yes. We barely have facetime as a couple. Hell...the way I was going, we may never have facetime for more than a couple of weeks for the next few dozen years. Then what? Will we still be together? We tried going our separate ways but that just caused more misery.

So I took the risqué step of leaving DGFC to plonk myself back into the uncertainty in terms of a job/career just to have a normal relationship where the kareshi and I are not separated by more than a 45min drive in bad traffic. There aren't any confirmed commitments  but I feel this is a step to something more stable. True,  I'm deathly afraid that it may not work out but this is definitely, definitely, definitely, a worthwhile risk to find out because what we have is worth more than a fear of losing a race un-run.

Give me the scars of a past to build upon than whispers of what-ifs.

Continuation...

So apparently not only my last blog post potong stim.. but I missed out on some details...

Like learning how to throw a fishing net. And drive a boat. Very important on resumè. Jack of all trades, I am. Master at none, I am. If I were a flatworm I could split myself and do all the exciting things but alas, evolution made me so unlike my ancestor (yes, I'm Catholic, yes I believe in evolution, shut up again, gawd you criticise too much) that we only share bilateral symmetry.

Actually, I take that back. My ears are wonky...ask my optometrist. My legs are wonky...ask my pilates instructor. My boobs are wonky...ask my bras.

There is one main wonkiness about me: I'm too shy to ask if I don't know something. Not from fear of being ridiculed over a stupid question ( they tell you there's no such thing as a stupid question BUT THEY FUCKING LIE. Just sit quietly,  write a note to self and google it later. Google doesn't judge but fair warning,  it will remind you how stupid you were) but the trauma from being ridiculed. I have a VCR tape somewhere to prove how loud and strong-willed (and bull-headed) a child I was (and still am..albeit also a scatterbrain).

I've been told that I sit back and watch a lot instead of being all gung ho and hands on immediately. I've been told I read too much too. All those blasted women's magazines and Jodi Picoult have made me wary about things that seem to be or may be something else. Despite the influence of 'budaya barat', Asian mentality and the Malaysian school system has ingrained into me that One Must Never Fail. Everything must be done perfectly right the first time around so no energy or cost is wasted. Eat all your food, some African kid is starving. Don't run all over the place, some Cambodian kid has no legs.

So I sat back and watched. Hung back and observed. Very bad for a person whose job description is to LEAD fieldwork. To MAKE DECISIONS in the field on the spot (which puts me in a spot). But I get there eventually.

Btw, just to put it out there, if I want to bitch about someone, I'll never name names. I'll just write a very thorough description of you until your own mother won't realise she missed that birthmark between your toes when she was busy kissing each and every stubby one and I didn't. I won't (for now) be that kind of blogger because this is a public blog.

 

And despite the blog title, this isn't the continuation of the previous post. You have been fooled. HAR HAR HAR!!!