Castaway

I made a long arduous journey to West Wales yesterday to check out an Activity Centre we want to use for our youth camp in December. Once again it took me the best part of the day to get to and from the place on the train and bus. Some parts of my journey were scenic, especially when I was travelling along the coast. But the weather was so cold and the skies so grey and I really wished I was in the office rather than out and about.

I didn’t have time to eat lunch till 4pm when I bought a sandwich on the train back and ate it while I shivered. The air-conditioning instead of the heating was on but I was too tired to tell the conductor. I fell asleep with my scarf and coat on, with my gloved hands tucked into my pockets. It was raining, dark and windy outside and not particularly warm inside.

But during that 20 minutes I napped, I felt warm, safe and contented.

Don’t worry, be happy

We are going through a difficult time at home recently and it hasn’t been easy for R and I. I’ll share more details when the time is right.

But today someone reminded me I must remember to look after myself and I think she is quite right. I constantly feel very anxious, tensed and on edge but that is very unhealthy for me.

Afterall, although we all have problems, we must always remember to focus on happy things in our lives to keep us going. So I made myself come up with three things to be cheerful about.

1)The orchid plant which the girls got me for my birthday last year is thriving! It has gone blooming crazy this autumn and now has 20 new buds on three new branches. It’s quite a sight and needless to say, it is absolutely stunning.

2) We received our first postcard from the free postcard collection we laid out at the wedding reception! It was from Dan, who wrote to us to say how much he enjoyed our wedding and also to update us about his work and prices of mooncakes after the Mid-Autumn Festival. It really made my day when I read it.

3) I got a big tax refund from Inland Revenue for overpaid tax last year! So now I am £700 richer.

I’m trying to put my blinkers so I can overlook all my worries and focus on taking a day at a time.

“But I love him.”

“So love him.”

“But I miss him.”

“So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it. You’re just afraid to let go out the last bits of David because then you’ll really be alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if she’s really alone. But here’s what you gotta understand, Groceries. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you’re using right now to obsess about this guy, you’ll have a vacuum there, an open spot - a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in- God will rush in- and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.”

p. 158

Prayer is a relationship. half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can’t even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I’m aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don’t have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert, they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift. So now I take the time every morning to search myself for specificity about what I am truly asking for. I kneel there in the temple with my face on that cold marble for as long as it takes me to formulate an authentic prayer. If I don’t feel sincere then I will stay there on the floor until I do.

p. 186

Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert.

On the go

I had such a long day on Monday. I started the day at 0615 and didn’t get home till 1945. Half that time was spent travelling- 3 hours each way to mid-Wales for a conference we organised. Going there was the fun part. My colleague drove and part of our journey involved going up and down through the mountains, dazzling in rich autumnal gold at this time of the year. The views at the top, overlooking the valleys, were especially stunning. Pity about the sheep though – there weren’t really any to be seen. Plus, it was bloody freezing.

Conversation with R

You have mascara on your eyelids.

It’s OK.

No it’s not. You always have that smeared on your eyes. Everytime.

Nobody can see.

Of course they can. I can see two black dots on your eyelids.

Oh never mind.

You need to be aware of that.

$£%$%£@$

Happy Halloween!

11.30am. Sawed off the top of the pumpkin to get inside.

11.45am. Scooping out the flesh in the pumpkin to make soup later.

12.00pm. Drawing the face and carving the pumpkin.

6.00pm. Pumpkin sitting at the entrance of our house, attracting some local kids.

8.00pm. Enjoying pumpkin soup with naan bread and sundried tomatoes.

Chicken nuggets

The first time I went to R’s house was in summer 2007, when I came to the UK to attend my graduation ceremony. We had broken up for two months just before that. Then that afternoon, when we saw each other again, we both realised how much we didn’t want to let go.

He showed me around his little bungalow, we went for a walk around the fields, and we came back to the house to have dinner. All he had in the fridge were some chicken nuggets and soup. So the first meal  I had as a guest at his house was, chicken nuggets with ketchup.

You know how some men who live on junk food and takeaways would actually try to whip up a gourmet meal if a girl was coming around, just to impress her? Er, not my husband. Alright, to be fair he did suggest we go to the supermarket to buy some fresh ingredients but I was really quite contented with the chicken nuggets.

But this has now become our private joke. The other night I was rooting through the freezer for something I could have for dinner and I found some… chicken nuggets! So I said in a thick American accent, “I think I’m going to have chicken nuggets tonight. Just like the very first meal I had at your house. All you could offer me was chicken nuggets!” We both burst out laughing.

But I do like chicken nuggets. They have a very special place in my heart.

Remnants of Vietnam

On my first night at Hanoi’s Intercontinental I slept very poorly. I woke up in the middle of the night and started worrying about… terrorists. I remembered having an exceptionally clear logical train of thoughts despite that time of the night.

I remembered thinking – We were staying in a luxurious international hotel chain. A lot of white people were staying here. Quite a lot of them were very rich and have high-flying jobs. The hotel’s layout was unique and perfect for ambush and kidnap. The buildings were spread out across the lake and security was pretty lax.

Anyone could walk around the hotel grounds without being checked or having to go through electronically locked access points. I laid on the bed while R slept, thinking about the horrible incidences in Indonesia, India and Egypt, how terrorists stormed 5-star hotels and held the tourists hostage. I was overcome by fear. I was tempted to wake R and tell him how scared I was. But I didn’t and slowly drifted to sleep.

I don’t think I ever want to stay at a prestigious hotel chain again.

——————————

We stumbled across Dong Xuan Market on our first day of sightseeing. It was a large indoor market on several floors, selling clothes, accessories, trinkets, you name it.

It was something like People’s Park Complex but on a larger, busier scale. Stalls jam-packed with a million different products, girls hauling piles of stock across the building, people bustling about in a small confined space.

It was simply too overwhelming to do any real shopping, we were there just to look for the loo. We did find it, on the top floor, squat toilets with no doors.

In the midst of all this chaos and clutter, I spotted a brown freckled hen. Not running about but sitting quietly or rather resignedly on the floor. Its entire body was contained in a blue plastic bag, with only its head sticking out from a cut-out hole.

At the end of a busy, tiring day, someone was gonna take it home and have it, for his dinner.

I was with Luca the first time I tried eating the intestines of a newborn lamb. This is a Roman specialty. Food-wise, Rome is actually a pretty rough town, know for its coarse traditional fare like guts and togues – all the parts of the animal rich people up north throw away.

My lamb intestines tasted OK, as long as I didn’t think too much about what they were. They were served in a heavy, buttery, savory gravy that itself was terrific, but the intestines had a kind of… well… intestinal consistency. Kind of like liver, but mushier.

I did well with them until I started thinking of how I would describe this dish, and I thought, It doesn’t look like intestines. It actually looks like tapeworms. Then I pushed it aside and asked for a salad.

“You don’t like it?” asked Luca, who loves the stuff.

” I bet Ghandi never ate lamb intestines in his life,” I said.

“He could have.”

“No, he couldn’t have, Luca. Ghandi was a vegetarian.”

“But vegetarians can eat this,” Luca insisted. “Because intestines aren’t even meat, Liz. They’re just shit.”

P. 62-63, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

It takes two

A few people have been asking me, “So how does it feel like to be married?”I have been replying, “Not much different from before, really, except I suppose if I want to have a baby, I now CAN!”

Well to be honest it was strange the first couple of days. On my wedding night I broke down, because it felt like I had almost “betrayed” my family and now “belonged” to this man. I wasn’t sure after our night’s stay at The Sentosa Resort & Spa if I was allowed to return home, or head back to my Mum’s other apartment in Pasir Ris. In the end my Mum said it was OK for me to come home so I did and was glad to see everyone.

My Mum and I opened and counted all the red packets and we decided to donate S$1,000 to the Buddhist Free Clinic. I gave her S$700 to get a new washing machine. And the rest pretty well went straight to pay for my visa application. Over 5 friends donated at least S$500 to the various charities we’ve nominated, which really made R and I so happy.

It took a few days for reality to sink in and for us to get to terms with our “updated status”. In Hanoi, R forgot and referred to me as his “girlfriend”, though toward the end of our holiday we’d finally gotten used to addressing each other as husband and wife.

When we came home from our honeymoon, my Mum thought I should stay with R at her flat instead of sleeping at home. We would come around for dinner each night, and then afterward my grandmother and my Mum kept on shooing me back to my place.  It felt so odd to leave each night when all my clothes and cosy bed were upstairs in my room.

But things are very much the same back here in Wales, as we’ve already been living together since November last year. We still sleep in the same bed, go about the same routines, talk in the same way, pay the same share of bills, wind each other up crazy like we always do and kiss each other good night every night. I’m actually glad we tried to live together before we got married, because it allowed us to iron out a lot of issues during our first few months, which meant we didn’t have to deal with any rude shocks when we began our married life.

The only more noticeable difference I suppose is things are now about US, and no longer about YOU or ME. It’s OUR future plans and not my or his plans. I can feel that our actions now have a direct impact on each other, so we can’t just go ahead and do something if we want to like before.

Being married has brought us closer to each other’s families, and my mother’s even planning to go on a trip with us to Bangkok next February. That, in just a year ago, would have been something outrageous and unheard of. My in-laws have made me feel very welcome to the family. My mother-in-law gave us a very generous gift of £500 and my sister-in-law got us a garden table set.

One day on my way home I thought about my new status, realising I have now officially taken myself off the market and am no longer single and available. Well, to be fair it wasn’t like I was actively dating loads of different men before but you know, it was a sudden realisation that now that’s not even an option. That stirred up some weird emotions in me for a few moments but after that I hadn’t even thought about it again.

I have better things to do. Like going to the gym, eating heathily, taking my daily doses of folic acid and calcium tablets, you know, start looking forward to what many married couples look forward to.