Where We Go

Because I took this job for its travelling, I guess it is only apt that I do not forget what I did it for. So, in somewhat chronological order, I close my eyes and I see...

Hong Kong

1. Victoria Harbour and the skycraper skyline at night, most beautiful at night, from some cab speeding towards Causeway Bay from the office.

2. Me, standing outside Sogo on the corner of Queensway, holding out an outstretched palm, and literally feeling the current of the crowd run through it.

3. Me, trotting down the terminal gangway toward the Star Ferry, with a big grin on the inside - it's an institution! For HKD2.20 a ride.

4. Junk boats in the evening, with their red sails, which could not have been anything but as stately during the days of fisher people and straw hats.

5. My cousin, who said he would meet me on the Mid-Levels escalator. Where? Where I'll see him coming down and he'll see me coming up. And uncharacteristically whimsically, we did.

6. Dinner, with my sister at the wonderful M at the Fringe, amidst falling petals and the heady scent of flowers.

More for another day. Also to come - before I forget - Korea, Indonesia, Switzerland, Philippines, Australia. Cities, not the whole whopping country obviously, but it just makes for easier reference. And also as always, Malaysia.

Driving

I cup my chin in my palm
And prop my elbow
On the smile of the wheel
And wait for the lights to turn

I cross my legs
With a foot on the pedal
And it’s pretty fun
To drive like this

I sing, and I rock it out
Like I’m in a club
To Alanis Morisette’s “Thank You”
Which goes down like cold lemonade
On a balmy day

I relish this
Accelerated mobility
Silence and independence
When on the road

Just me
And my little black car
Troopers – the both of us.

Places

I would love to see:

- Elephants in Sri Lanka
- Icebergs in Greenland
- Bhutan
- the Greek islands with those white houses and that turquoise sea

What about you?

Quiet time

Is:
- Cushioney
- Audible
- A place in the middle of the stairs

Today, it pays me a visit in the office. After much talking and listening to people talking, I am savouring it like a hot peppermint tea.

A Little Malaysian Goes A Long Way

A Vietnamese meal and a bottle of wine were the beginning and the end.

The long and short of it was that I dropped my driver’s license, unknowingly, somewhere in the dark streets of Richmond, Melbourne one night in my search of the perfect bowl of Vietnamese noodles. About a week later, a lady working in Kampung Pandan, Kuala Lumpur sends a letter to my home, saying her brother in Melbourne picked my license up and would I like to have it sent, or collected somehow.

She had sent the letter twice, after having it returned the first time due to some postcode mix-up. I call her up, then her brother, who turns out to be a cook in Tien Tien, an Asian restaurant in St. Kilda’s. He says he came home one night, and there it was on his doorstep. Probably a neighbour had picked it off the street and thought it was his, or some relative’s.

I collect the fateful document at the restaurant, which is charming, and return a few days later with a bottle of wine as a gift. He takes it after much back and forth, then proceeds to cook dinner for me and a friend, and refuses to let us pay for it. Because we are all Malaysians, he says, and have “yuen fen”, to meet each another.

Kinship, across borders with people you have never met. I am inspired, and so comforted to have encountered this – simple yet amazing bond among us. Good things in life are hardly free, but you know, evil is banal as good is simple.

Thanks again Kee Weng! I am a lucky girl.

Good quote

...Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...Do not...seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will...gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter No. 4


Without a doubt, for better or worse, this has somehow often been the case.

Thanking Distracted by Shiny Object, whose blog is on Blogs of Note today for the quote. Nice pages you got there.

1st quarter and selective feeding

February gave me the slip. Today is March 1, before you know it the first quarter will be over.

Where am I? Where have I been? Well the year started sickly, literally. I was hospitalized for the first time in my life, for mild typhoid supposedly contracted from Indonesia. Then I went to Hong Kong. Then Manila. Then home for the Chinese New Year. Then Manila, and Hong Kong and Manila again. 3 weeks home, 6 weeks away. 7 weekends home, and 2 weekends away. Time measured in expense claim statements.

Well. I suppose that it just where I have physically been. In my mind, the hospital is far away and so much has happened since. It is true what they say - we race ahead. A month apart can mean many different things. It may not seem that way in hindsight when you are 50, but hey even 50 is getting redefined. I wouldn’t even use it as a benchmark of old people anymore.

An interesting quote picked up over the weekend:

“Ï guess that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares, Martin, we've got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive.”

Yes we have time to feed. Yet we have a disproportionately larger amount of what do you call them? Things, to supply. Living the so-called corporate life half the time, and trying to make a life out of the other half means these "things" are called challenges, priorities, ideals, realities, emotions, surprises, disappointments, realizations, learnings, rubbish, egos, fatigue, hunger, adventures, reflections, appreciation, recuperation etc.

Getting lost. And finding your way, defining the way. Sometimes uncontrollably yet necessarily veering off it, redefining it, and staying on it. All take time.

But then, this entry is already longer than it should be. Because simply, there are only a few appetites that one should indulge at a time, and the trick is to have a handle on which.

It’s like finding the Optimal Feeding Pattern to Optimize Results of Life. I bet some management consultants would love to work on this one.