*1300 - change

Much as I enjoy the follies of this awesome city of San Francisco, the glorious food, the beautiful people, the entertainment aplenty, the work that I love doing ...

Yep.  Always missing home sweet home.  Ahh.



(Walking along the Singapore River one night.)

Much dramatic change going on in my life right now that's almost too much to handle.  Just almost.  Yet I'm filled with hope for things to start spiraling back upwards.

*1299 - history

Sometimes, it's pretty darn awesome to have a blog.  For me, it has morphed from a weirdly embarrassing narcissistic outlet some ten years ago to a more private personal notebook today.  Private because no one reads this anymore, yes? ;)  Well, the most private of thoughts/feelings never come through explicitly, but it does help jog the memory regardless.

It's often horrifying but enlightening to scroll through your silly immature thoughts of the past, realize on hindsight what terrible decisions you've made in the past, what pointless things occupied your mind, what embarrassingly unimportant events were so important to you, but reflect on how they have ultimately made you who you are today.

Some day I will read this, shake my head, and wonder why I was so pensive and dramatic.  Silly old me.

*1298 - jetlag

Day one: collapsed at 830 pm after a packed day upon landing in SF and no sleep on flights. Woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed and in high spirits. Bounced out of bed into bathroom to get ready for a brand new day, whereupon realizing it was just 1130 pm and I had a whole night ahead of me yet. Dozed intermittently here and there but not really.

Day two: being ambitious and having gone straight from work to an evening dance class, managed to stay up til 1130 pm despite extreme exhaustion. Declared it a safer time to sleep compared to the previous night's 830. Unfortunately have been up since 3 am and am at a loss of what to do with myself at this point.

Well! Honestly not terribly pleased with being back due to many less than desirable circumstances and the fact that I'm missing my family dearly. It is always a difficult parting and adjustment, and I'm not just talking about jetlag.

*1297 - blue and purple

Et voila.  The result of two trips to the hair salon, including two rounds of cutting and coloring, nine hours in a chair, and several hundred dollars later.  This is an extremely deceiving photo that I snapped with my phone in an attempt to show someone quickly what my new hair looked like.  It's only this vibrant if I'm standing by a window with natural light pouring in, my hair arranged just so, and when freshly dyed.

There are two layers of purple+blue hair covered by a shield of jet black for semblance of professionalism when I'm back at work.  One layer rings around the top of my head, and the other layer goes asymmetrically from the top right to the bottom left.  They interwove blue with purple dye throughout so there's a lot of interesting texture.

Absolutely love it!  Much-needed breath of fresh air.

(Only Hairloom will be allowed to do anything drastic to my hair from now on.  Too bad I'll miss them when I'm in SF!)

*1296 - home

I have been home two weeks with one left to go.  I have made my family a heavier priority this time round than before.  Am blessed to be witnessing the milestones in my siblings' lives even though I am usually not present.

So many mixed feelings.  Nightly, I'm pooped and flop into bed early with extreme fatigue from running from appointment to appointment everyday, woozy from sun exposure, headachey from dehydration because I generally suck at drinking enough liquids.  But I lie awake for hours and then stir again in the wee hours of the morning, thoughts churning and preventing me from sleeping or going back to sleep.

One, there is the whole "It's Complicated" thing to worry about.  Two, the stress of finding (a) a roomie and (b) a room in SF.  Three and most poignantly for now, the haunting question every friend and family member asks me for which I cannot find a clear answer in my heart: "so are you coming back to Singapore eventually?"

There are many little pieces to weigh and juggle and inspect and taste, holding up against the light, breathing in deeply or gurgling sips through the teeth or chewing thoughtfully, trying to find matching pieces of the jigsaw to make a whole and coherent picture without having the end goal to refer to.  (That applies to all three.)  The commentary in my head switches sides in the blink of an eye; do I really have to know the answer right now?  (That applies to the last.)

*1295 - international

So completely spot on.

*1294 - whole

As hard as the heart tries to clutch on desperately, ultimately the mind which can look further than just the immediate guides the way.  Mildly at ease but in great turmoil at the same time.  There will be calm once both halves reconcile.

*1293 - home

SF this past week. New Orleans for a long weekend with the girls. Bentonville for the final stretch: 2.5 weeks. As then home for three!

It's been too long, life has been tumultuous, I'm looking forward to the familiar stability of family and old friends.

*1292 - parsleyed eggs

- I once made a fried egg for a buddy in college some 5 years ago, and put parsley on it
- I typically do not put parsley on my fried eggs, nor do most people (I believe)
- I just found out that he's been putting parsley on his fried eggs ever since

This really cracked me up.

But reminded me of how the tiniest things you encounter in life can change you, or how the tiniest things you may do might affect someone else in a miniscule way--but it can all add up.  Surround ourselves with positive, loving people, and isolate (at least mentally) from negative, harmful ones, because anything can rub off.

*1292 - walls (literally)

There is this one wall in my AR apartment that compells me to do a handstand against it whenever I walk near it.

I was pondering my motivation behind that when I remembered there was this one wall in my Green Meadows room that compelled me to do a scorpion stretch every time I was close to it.

There are worse things to habitually do--in fact, I might have to start training myself feel compelled to do a full body workout routine by the time I walk from one end of the apartment to the other.  Squats by this floor lamp, side splits by that table ...

*1291 - CNY

This year, I did more Chinese New Year-related activities than I have in years.  (I think I plain missed it last year by accident.)

By that, I mean I did two whole things:

Activity 1: Dinner with a table-ful of Chinese people
Honestly felt out of place even though I had a couple of good friends flanking me because the rest of the table was speaking in full out richly accented Chinese and as a result I was understanding 20% of what was going on.  Testament to how you can study Chinese for 12 years but not be able to converse due to lack of real-life application outside of the classroom now and while growing up.  I might have to hire Chinese people to talk to my future babies in Mandarin so they don't get afflicted with this monolingual handicap.  I wish I could re-learn now but I'm too embarrassed; it's a vicious circle because I'm embarrassed that I don't know how to speak Chinese.

Anyway.

Activity 2: Pineapple tarts
I used this recipe: http://rasamalaysia.com/recipe-pineapple-tarts

Most effortful part: cutting up the pineapples.

 

So ugly but delicious:

We made some even uglier open-faced ones--they really do look ugly if you don't use a mould to stamp out the pastry bases!  Homemade pineapple tarts are decadent and delicious but only on Day 2 onwards.  Somehow, they were only just okay freshly baked.

So there you go.  My modest little Chinese New Year!

*1290 - little happy events

I feel like I'm breaking up, with multiple (figurative) boyfriends that represent various facets of my life.  Thankfully the real life version is still awaiting me patiently in SF.  But what a mix of emotions!  Passion, hate, comfort, unease, longing, dread.  Push, pull.  Up, down.

But there are always things in your day to be thankful for, even if it was an otherwise sucky one.  Always, if you try!  It's ok if they're small; it doesn't mean they're insignificant.  Give it a shot.  For me, a few of today's happy moments:

• Got a beast of a survey launched!
• Compliments all around on my outfit, including two men who noticed my shoes; imagine that!  I don't care about their opinion per se, it's just the concept that men, especially those with no history of being particularly fashion-conscious, never notice shoes.  Therefore my shoes must truly be awesome.  Either that or very inappropriate for work, in Bentonville.  Shrug, it is almost synonymous.
• Oreos and milk for breakfast.  Who said that was bad for you?  Then cauliflower for lunch.  I love cauliflower.
• Day 2 of making my way through the four amazingly delicious giant cookie bricks that my Superwoman sent in the mail.  I'm 2/3 way through the first one ... this might take a while.  That is a good thing.
• Overcame severe phobia of drive through's especially after yesterday's failed attempt where I bravely got all the way into the lane, hyperventilated, pulled out of the line, parked, and walked right in to make my order in person.  Today I summed up my courage and tried again at a coffee shop and this time successfully left with a macchiato!!
• Discovered my new favorite expression of excitement: wewp wewp
• Making exciting weekend plans, making exciting following weekend plans, making exciting following following weekend plans, wewp wewp.

And a sudden realization as I come to the end of my list that I've been with my love for three years.  Yes I only just realised as I was typing this list because I'm bad with dates and I always think time periods are so arbitrary anyway.  What is one year, or one month, or one week really?  We would all be celebrating different important events if we had decided a year was 465 days instead.  Anyway we picked "mid-Jan" vaguely because the progression from friend to more was ambiguous at that time.  Well then!  Clearly something to be very thankful for :)

And clearly with someone who thinks along the same lines as I do as his response to my hurried "happy anniversary" text wasn't "asdlkfja;sldkfj I know you forgot"--his response was "cool 3 yrs".  This is why we were meant to be.

Cool.

*1289 - helpless

Pit in tummy,
Physically feeling ill from a purely psychological worry,
Helplessness,
Knowing you potentially screwed up royally.

It's intriguing how the mind and the body link up so directly like that.

But the only thing I can do is distract myself from my mistake because I cannot undo it.

alkldsfhal;;lkajflal;gasaa.

Work woes.

*1288 - i surprise me

Today, I managed to give myself a dinner surprise.  I set out meaning to make fried rice with sauteed chicken on the side--simple.  A sudden twist in events midway through as I was setting my freshly cooked plain rice aside and stirring chicken and veggies in a pan resulted in me suddenly finding myself with a steaming pot of chicken noodle soup that really hits the spot on this cold wintry day.  And now I have spare brown rice in the freezer ready for use in future.

Sometimes you just gotta follow the tummy and not the mind when cooking!

*1287 - small world

What are the odds that childhood best friends (my first real best friend--we were the original 6 y/o versions of the mean girls, true terrors, ask anyone in our class) date (or marry, in her case) boys who graduated from the same college and class at UVA, and manage to somehow cross paths at a moment's notice in a little deli in Charlottesville because we happened to all be within hours of each other one Monday in December?  Slim, we venture.  The world is getting smaller and smaller, and I for one think that's fabulous.

*1286 - nocciola

In Italy, whenever my tummy managed to free up space amid the constant flow of pasta, pizza, cheese, meats, and wine, we would get gelato's from little corner stores.  I tried many flavors but my favorite was the classic nocciola, hazelnut.  I tried sharing at first but eventually realised that I needed a cone to myself each time.  Which as everyone knows is okay because even though it's all creamy and rich (because little air is incorporated), it has lower fat content than its fluffy American counterpart.  Yep.

*1285 - two observations from rogers, arkansas

1. A key difference, among many, between grocery shopping in SF vs. grocery shopping in Arkansas is that not producing a reusable bag (bright orange, covered with little paler orange kitties no less) in the former would induce the death stare and result in great embarrassment, while producing a reusable bag in the latter results in great confusion ("You wha...? You mean you want me to put your eggs in that ...?").

2. I have somehow accummulated close to 30 pairs of shoes here, and I don't even live here for reals and it's been only three months tops.  I can't remember how that happened, but I'm not sure how I'm going to move all this stuff back to SF.

*1284 - boston

Back in Boston for my annual holiday party pilgrimage.  Can you believe that this would be my FOURTH?  The number of people I actually know has dwindled dramatically since I moved from Boston to SF, and much less the number of people I consider to be a close buddy outside of work.  People here come and go so much; if you can imagine it, I would consider myself one of a handful of oldies remaining from the good ole days. 

Sitting in the cab and watching familiar streets and restaurants and gas stations whiz by; felt a pang of nostalgia as this one year in Boston was formative in my life.  My first days in the first job out of college, my first project and my first awesome project team, my first actual apartment, my first car and my first time getting stuck on ice, my first days of true financial independence--no turning back, bring on the bills, it feels so good, not sarcastic--my first hello to D--okay, I actually don't remember it at all, I was too overwhelmed with meeting 80 new people in half an hour--but my first date with D--that one I remember.  A recent cabbie helped me figure out why it is I still feel like I was in Boston much longer than I've had been in SF though the reverse is true.  It's because Boston represented a gigantic milestone in my life consisting of many important big life milestones.  Sure, many milestones were formed in SF too but at that point, life situations were more stable and things were less like night and day.  And of course SF is so super cool that you never finish exploring it or fully get to know it.

Tomorrow's going to be an interesting day, meeting people I work with/yell at/sob to virtually all the time but have never met in person.  Such is the life of a person who works in a satellite office.

And the day after tomorrow will be an interesting day as well because our holiday parties are generally epic and I can't wait to see what unfolds this year.

*1283 - tipping point

Mind over matter.  Sometimes that is all it takes--a big bludgeon that makes your head swim, knees collapse, and eyes water, and then picking yourself up and seeing things from a different perspective.  That bludgeon didn't make sense, it wasn't fair, whatever, put it behind you and figure out the strategy that gives you the most peace.  I've found my peace, I'm not doing anything differently outwardly, but it's all about how you process it in your mind.  You can look at it as a debilitating strike or you can look at it as an opportunity.

*1282 - croissant vs. tiramisu