Last Night in Bintulu

And an eventful one it is. Tonight I met one guy who has been happily married for two years and another guy who is unhappily about to be married.

The first one keeps a video of his wedding on his mobile and shows it to us like it's any other event in his life, such as his last fishing trip. I kind of liked that - apart from the gloss of being supposedly "the" event of your life, it was also one of the things he liked enough to share on an everyday basis.

The other guy just got registered for marriage today, and somewhere between one and too many drinks asked me, if there was anything wrong with marrying one person, but loving another. I just gave him a reproachful look, but in hindsight I think I should've told him that I didn't think he should get married at all.

But really, I wasn't sure. At first you think you have all the right answers about these things, but who's to say video guy won't stop being happy tomorrow, and soon-to-be-married guy won't start?

Anyhow. Bintulu. It's been an interesting time - the place has its unexpected charms, we made some friends and there were some firsts - open sea fishing with a bunch of divers being one of them. If you think about it, it's actually quite safe. Afterall, since the greatest danger is really that of drowning, what's the worry since you have a boat to pick you up and an oxygen tank if you need one?

Maybe Angels

The Catholics – they have angels. Beings that watch over you, because God is so great that sometimes human beings can’t really ‘see’ and communicate with Him.

Mine sits with me. He looks somewhat like Billy Crudup, and he sits on the side on the bath tub while I lean against the door and bawl my eyes out. I give him a look which says it all, and he gives me a look which says that he understands.

I come and sit next to him. I tell him I am defeated and I am tired. He says, “That’s ok”. It helps to know that it’s ok to be defeated and tired. We sit for awhile more.

Dear Charles and Poh Suan, congratulations and God bless. May the angels be watching over you too.

Soy sauce, television and fair skin

Apparently these are things which make husbands and children of Asian, Chinese in particular women want to come home to them.

In one particular soy sauce advertisement, a woman manages to get her eating-out husband to come home for dinner by switching to a more delicious soy sauce brand. Same with the ad selling TVs, where a lonely mum and wife upgrades to a bigger screen to entice her son and husband back to the house. And in a Taiwanese ad, a precocious 6-year old actually tells his mum that she's not good-looking because her skin is dark! Upon which she purchases a Dr Bai skin whitening cream and it all ends happily ever after.

Why does this kind of idiocy still exist, unfortunately more predominantly in the Asian culture? And why is it husbands and mostly sons, not daughters?

I do hope that these manufacturers are wrong. About the number of Chinese men AND women who buy into these concepts. Yes I think it'd be nice to be able to cook a good meal, and yes MiCasa SuCasa may translate into having a 41" for some but really, in the end I hope that my husband or children will come home to me simply because I'm me. And God grant me the strength to not buy some stupid condiment or night cream to measure my self-worth by.

Hermit crabbing

We have hermit crabs. From the beach of Similajau National Park of Bintulu, Sarawak.

My colleague RL had this epiphany while on the beach that we should pick up some crabs which are apparently sold for like RM20 each in KL and keep them as pets.

So now in our hotel room in a takeaway box (which www.hermit-crabs.com/ tells me is not quite the right crabitat but we'll figure something out), we have about 15 active crustaceans and a clam, which frankly quite shocked us by turning out to be alive.

We feed them all a diet of drinking water and Quaker oats which they seem to enjoy, and these guys have really been quite entertaining with their daily clambering and digging, and more clambering and more digging - it's incredibly peaceful yet intriguing to watch.

Some trivia, correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that hermit crabs:

1. Move backwards or sideways but never forward

2. Move their legs in circular breast-strokes, which sort of explains how they form those sandballs on the beach

3. Like standing on each other alot

4. Have one big and one small claw..

...and we're still learning.

I managed to cajole the hotel's housekeeping guy to feed the boys (we like to believe they are boys) over the long Labour Day / Wesak weekend. Apart from being slightly worried they might get out of the box and under the sheets, he's pretty game. Have I mentioned how great these Everly people are?

Reality bites..more like chomps away savagely at your guts

When I was a young-er person, I made several vows, if you like to myself i.e.

1. To always do what I think is God's work, and
2. To never forget what it feels like to be a child

Now these, while having served me well have also landed me in a fair bit of trouble. Trouble meaning?

Meaning believing unrealistically in the fundamental good of people, and expecting again unrealistically, that people should act a certain way because of how you treat them. And believe in them. And try for them. And of course the older and wiser will rightly expect, this has ended up in SO many disappointments to-date in this disgusting period of my 20s, where apart from crash landing on the hard tarmac of real life you're also supposed to find your place on it.

It's 12.45am and no time to be politically correct.

There is fundamental good in people. It's just that together with it there is fear, weakness, self-preservation instincts, priorities, whatever!else that push come to shove makes them act...differently from how you thought they would. And like a child, each time it happens I am still surprised - why would someone do that to me?

Work has helped. 4 years have helped me separate responsibility from commitment, and the understanding of how to meld the two again if I want to. It has made me see that sometimes there is a need to make bad decisions for some people in order to make a good decision for more in the end. More importantly, just because someone or something is the centre of your world does not mean you are the centre of theirs. And vice-versa.

So now....while I still think it's bloody hard to do God's work I do think that praying for clarity shows me the path to do what is right, objectively by everyone involved, and usually that is pretty much the best decision there is. And the other part of the pact? I'll take the wonderment, and but with some armory involved. You need it to keep it.

Back in Bintulu

for another month or so. Here;

1. The stars are really bright at night

2. There's a surprising amount of seamstresses around town - under staircases, in houses, near supermarkets, upstairs of shoplots - I've appointed a particular Shirley myself, whom I am currently overwhelming with bales of Japanese-inspired-Indonesian fabric and Project Runway dreams

3. Fruits are beautiful, wild and strange - thorny longans, pink starfruits, snakeskin fruit, sappy dates called dabai, and the list goes on.

Gray's Anatomy Season 3! is on tv - gotta go.

Wounded, Pruned, Shaken, Threshed, Sifted, Ground and Kneaded

On 24 March my two-years-and-a-week-shy-of-7 months relationship ended.

While this is one of the most private things to have happened, I feel that I should say something about it here since this is supposed to be about things that happen to me when they do, for better or worse right?

So.

A week ago I might've wrote something different. I might've tried to tell you what happened or at least what I thought happened. I might've tried to explain what it's like to not know what to think or feel about something that you thought you knew most about. I wanted to tell you about how somehow through this break-up I found myself again in the hearts of friends and family, who whether they knew it or not, nothing short of reached in and literally saved me. I am fine, because they tell me I will be.

But today I am going to tell you that it is a wound. A big festering thing for the past three weeks that, in a way exploded last Saturday night amidst too much Heineken and bloody Westlife. :).

Just like a gash on your head you dread each time you remember it's there, knowing that it will hurt to the touch. When you do accidentally brush against it - you wince and can't really believe it - then you remember in a rush of blurry pain how it got there in the first place.

I literally walk around like an injured person, my feet drag and my mind is semi-focused on just getting through the day. I pace myself because I have only myself to get through this with- this hurt which is ironically caused by the one person who was simply, my sanctuary in other times of pain.

But just like other wounds, i'm thinking the sides will start to dry out, the scab will grow and one day the centre - the red, bloody pulsating middle which just when you think will never heal, will.

Someday...I will be Saturday night. I just hope that when I do it will not take as much as I think it will to make me really smile again.