MUSCLE MEMORY

So about two weeks ago, I turned 35 years old (!!! what the heck), on May 11.

My birthday was on a Sunday, but on the Monday right after, my team and I were going to leave for Senegal for our research project, so I planned to celebrate it one day earlier. When I woke up on the 10th, Alessia came into my room and told me I had to wake up. I got a little flustered as I'd already set an alarm so we could get to my birthday high tea in Victoria on time, and she was in my room even earlier than that. 

Alessia used my phone to film me, and told me to watch a nine-minute clip on her own phone. She introduced it, and she'd collected birthday wishes and messages from some of my very favourite people in all the world. When it got to my family members in Singapore exclaiming "happy birthday!" altogether, I literally started bawling and had to pause watching the video. It was my fourth birthday away from my family, and I've missed four of my birthday celebrations, as well as all of theirs. 

It contained the loveliest thoughts and expressions from my inherent family in Singapore, and my found family in Canada. There were heartfelt notions from people who don't usually show outwardly affection, there were funny inside jokes from my cousins who visited me in Vancouver last summer, I had new and old friends in Canada saying the sweetest things about and for me. You probably know I am a person of words, so I appreciate words, all the time. 

Once we'd gotten ready, Clio picked us up in her car and we started our road trip to Victoria. We started singing along to some old school songs, and it made me think of when Clio and I were in our first class together last semester. I loved when Clio would answer Michael's questions, because she has such an ethereal voice, it always calmed me, so it was so lovely to have her driving and singing next to me, as we were on the way to celebrate my birthday. 

We eventually got to Butchart Gardens in Victoria. It was my first time there, and the start of May is a great time for a visit. It's got all sorts of bright, colourful, interesting flowers at the prime of their bloom. We got seated at our table in The Dining Room for high tea. It was a busy weekend, with all the families celebrating Mothers' Day (as happens during my birthday every year), but our server was extremely attentive and detailed. I really appreciated her making us all feel settled and taken care of, even with a couple of different dietary preferences.

After we'd finished our tea, we took a jaunt around the gardens. Sydney started making up her own names for all the plants, and each one had some sort of euphemistic meaning to them. My friends being on generally the same wavelength as I am, they went and sized up bushes, feeling how sturdy they were, etc. Some of my friends couldn't make it, because it was the start of summer and people had begun leaving for vacations, etc, but for all the ones who were there, I was so thoroughly happy with how everyone got along.

We talked about books, about "reverse racist" jokes, vampires, copulating dragons, leftist men, all the things I love to think and talk about. They know that I'm manifesting meeting the partner of my dreams, so at three different times, three of my friends proposed to me, and I accepted all three proposals! At the end of the day, I asked to have ice cream, so we got some at Parachute Ice Cream before leaving Victoria. It was the perfect birthday celebration of my dreams. 

Thank you to everyone who was involved in it (by sending in a video message to Alessia), thank you especially of course to the bestie Alessia for putting in the time and effort in compiling the clips, thank you to the people who went to Victoria with me, thank you to all the messages over any medium, and thank you for your kind thoughts, always!

*
On the way over to Senegal, and whilst I was adjusting to the jet lag here, I started and finished reading The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei (she goes by Jemma, though). It's an intriguing story about sisterhood and betrayal between sisters, the anger that ensues, the fracture of family ties. 

I think the story is written compellingly that keeps you reading but what really draws me to it, is it's written and set in Singapore, where both Jemma and I are clearly from. To me, there is the familiar charm of a background I know as part of my DNA, it contains languages I've been able to code-switch in all of my life (and she also uses sayang, my very favourite word among all the words I know). She describes HDB blocks and void decks the way so many books we've read have set their stories against the backdrops of SoHo, Greenwich, NoLiTa in NYC, or other major global cities. It's fun to see it happen for Singapore. 

I'd been following Jemma's writing and saw her conducting research for how different Chinese dialects would refer to their maternal versus paternal grandparents, etc, and it's lovely to see her work, her baby, completed. I think it's quite an impressive debut novel, and already look forward to her next.

*

We got to St Louis, Senegal, about eleven/twelve days ago. The journey was like no other I'd been through. We first drove to Victoria's airport from Nanaimo, flew from Vic to Calgary, Calgary to New York, from New York to Dakar, and finally, drove from Dakar's airport, five hours to St Louis. By the time we got here, it felt like we had gone through four levels of hell. It was just the longest trip and the weirdest time changes. 

Three days in, I experienced the jet lag version of fool’s spring. I'd felt it before when I went home to Singapore, and it happened again. It's when, three days into a time zone change, you wake up, stay awake and go to sleep at the proper time in the destination country and you think the jet lag has abated. Then somehow, the next day it gets fucked again by your inability to shake off a nap or to sleep too early, and your body is basically doing a gotcha.

We've been here twelve days and despite all the stories we'd heard back while we were in Canada, and all the research we'd done, Senegal hasn’t been as hot as we expected. I mean, it's obviously warm compared to Canada, but it hasn't been unbearably scorching and it's been more like when the PNW is easing into its summer. The temperatures have been ranging from 25-30 degrees Celsius, which isn't even as bad as Singapore. Also, Singapore is more humid than it is here, so it hasn't felt as sticky as it would be in Singapore.

I wonder if it's subconscious racism, that people in the Western world don't want to travel to an underprivileged, exploited continent like Africa, so the perception is that it's blazing hot, and desert-like, with no reprieve. As far as I remember, I would not be able to stay out in the sun in Singapore without soaking through my clothes in sweat, and that doesn't happen here, so it's much less uncomfortable. However, no one refrains from traveling to Singapore based on its sweltering, sweaty weather, because we're known for our "modern buildings" and such. Just imperialism and capitalism doing their thing, as always.

Speaking of exploitation and lack of privilege, it's been heartbreaking to see. The sights here bear such a stark resemblance to articles I've seen of bombed sites in Gaza. The buildings have gaping holes in places, there are piles of rubble everywhere, sanitation issues abound, St Louis faces a scarcity of clean water, no proper sewage and treatment systems. These all still exist here pervasively a hundred, two hundred years after the colonization and pillage of Africa, and any progress/development is sluggish, if it is at all happening. And now, at the exact moment I type this, the plunder is happening in places such as Gaza.

Sometimes I watch people immersed in their vacations in Europe, enjoying the spoils of everything those countries have extracted from places like Africa, with all the present-day tourism still contributing to it and injecting more into their economies, whilst African and other exploited nations are still lagging far behind. It’s disheartening, and I don't know what to do or say, and it's not like I don't want to visit Europe and see their charming sites and lives. It's not like I didn't just travel to New York, one of the most capitalist and exploitative places in all the world. All this to say, the depression in me is kept exactly at bay with the precise dose of escitalopram I'm prescribed, and I'm trying my best to balance everything I know and feel, with what I can do for this Earth. 

*
The first day we went to the university (L'Université Gaston Berger) was last Friday. Senegal is predominantly Muslim and in Islam, Friday is the day for men to congregate for their Dhuhr prayers. It's sort of Islam's most revered day, so every Friday, students are wearing their Friday best. They're decked out in colourful and beautiful clothes, some in bold prints, something I have not seen at VIU in my years there. When Canadians/Vancouverites wear colour in summer, school’s not in regular session, and when I’m in school in fall/winter, most Vancouver fashion is known to be black/white/monochrome. I really appreciated the variety of African/Senegalese fashion. 

They've thrown us into university-level political studies classes with Senegalese students, conducted in French, which is crazy, if you ask me. I've never been educated in French as a linguistic medium, and here I am, learning about the colonization of Africa and democratic theories in the language??? Savage. I hadn't felt so stupid in a hot minute. However, if we continue attending classes and being exposed to the language over the next two months, I do think it will help us acclimatize, though I would also appreciate if y'all keep sending me more of your favourite French media (movies/songs/podcasts) to consume.

In our research project, we will be conducting interviews with climate refugees, who have been displaced and relocated to refugee camps, because their homes were destroyed due to coastal erosion. It's quite a complicated and sensitive issue conducting these interviews, because Senegal was a French colony, so the mode of communication in schools and "professional" settings is French. However, in recent decades, Senegalese people have wanted to reintegrate the original and native language of Wolof into their lives and shed their French colonial baggage. 

All this to say, when we go to school and when we live at home with our Senegalese hosts, we've been translating between English, French, and Wolof. So.... If you thought trying to broach the touchy topic of people losing the literal roof over their heads and their livelihoods was tough, we now have to do it threefold. You can't see my face but imagine me giving a shaky grin and a thumbs up sign. 

However, I do think I have a slight advantage on this end. Having picked up Mandarin whilst I was growing up Malay (due to Mandarin being the ubiquitous language in Singapore, as well as my mother remarrying a Chinese man, making half my family nucleus half-Chinese), the linguistics part of my brain has always been stronger. I learned to code-switch between three languages, and from the age of primary school, when I learned a word, I would make sure I knew it in English, Malay, and Mandarin. Now, I have to replicate the exercise, but with French and Wolof. I am, obviously, three decades older than when I first had to do this, so I may not be as quick, but it isn't a practice I am wholly unfamiliar with.

*

I would say acclimatizing to Senegal has had its culture shocks for us, though perhaps more so for my Canadian counterparts than for myself (although they don't have the added religious PTSD). The Muslim prayer calls are blared over loudspeakers, and so they are loud when we are asleep, and secondly, there are mosques everywhere, and there is no escaping them. Having been raised Muslim, I'm aware of the intended benefits of Muslim prayer. Five times a day, you have to take ablution, so you keep yourself clean. For able-bodied people, there is the physical act of standing and bowing, so the entire routine integrates hygiene, movement, flexibility, and also meditation, taking you out of the stream of life and reminding you to be present in your moment. However, we have all felt the obnoxiousness of the prayer calls here, and it makes me think of commuters who play music or have phone calls on speaker mode on the bus. It’s so overwhelming and loud, and people with stimulus issues are forced to feel overwhelmed. It's kind of a contradiction, no? If a god were truly with you all the time, there is simply no need to shove it down people's throats (or ears in this case) so often, so forcefully, and so intensely. 

Another cultural difference has been in the gender dynamics. Twice, over two different meals, we had conversations with our Senegalese hosts, who are Fadil, Bassirou and Mame. One of the men is of the opinion that there can be no real friendship between men and women, which is firstly obviously unhealthy gendered standards, and secondly, is extremely heteronormative. However, our woman host, Mame, does not subscribe to similar notions, and she said she would not marry a Muslim man who wants to marry more than one woman, despite it being the cultural norm in Senegal. It's heartening to know that there are feminists here who are trying to break out of the cycle, and all power to people like Mame!

Speaking of gender, thanks to being on feminist Tiktok and/or Instagram, I have discovered the aqua tofana tattoo, and that is my next planned tattoo. Aqua tofana was a colourless, undetectable poison that women used to give their husbands when said husbands were being absolute abusive/useless shits, and so present-day women have started/revived a trend of getting tattoos of small vials, as symbols that we can exist without men, and actually, we're also usually better off without them.

Through the week, we have been treated to a few authentic Senegalese foods, some at the university campus, and one meal cooked by Mame. We had yassa au poulet on campus, I had a fataya for breakfast once, and today Mame made us thieboudienne. All three were stunning dishes, and I definitely want to try to recreate any and all of them, when I'm back in Canada, and also for my family in Singapore. Food makes me so happy, seriously, sometimes when I want to give up on life, I think, no, there is so much more delicious food I haven't even tried, how could I deprive myself and my tastebuds of all the different permutations and combinations of flavours that life has to offer me????

*

A couple of nights ago, I attended VIU's Senate meeting online. It was a spicy session because program cuts were on the table, given the institution's financial failings. Sometimes I really don't understand how the university is still standing, there are obviously nitwits abound, who cannot even create a proper agenda package (whether due to malice nor incompetence, we still do not know, but when it involves people's livelihoods, does it even matter).

I was honestly almost at my wits' end this week. I had to stay up from 11PM to 2AM Senegal time to sit in on a 4PM Senate meeting, Nanaimo time, and sometimes it felt like they didn't have two functional braincells to rub together in the boardroom (although that's not true, because some of the people in that room, I do respect). At 1AM Senegal time, I kept telling myself to breathe deep breaths, and think of Art, and Lauren, and Jocelyne, and Kaia, and Warren, and Sydney, and Janelle, and Sarah, and Alessia, and all the Canadian people with sense, and sensability, and who give me the patience to deal with such rubbish.

The pesky people I work with who don't have spines, I have as much derision for them as I do for the Senegalese mosquitoes that are giving me grief here. 

*
I've been trying to use less of Meta products (because the company is owned by a fascist), so I’m on Mastodon now, and I've also been importing my Instagram posts over to Pixelfed (both Mastodon and Pixelfed are open-source apps, I believe). It's a little challenging, because y'all know I'm always, always rambling. I'm never not rambling. So much of my ramblings have been on Instastories and I think I've built a great community for myself there. I post and consume posts about mental health, anti-racist, anti-fascist, pro-community causes, etc. However, it's definitely self-defeating if these posts are hosted on a platform that's inherently capitalist and fascist. I know this because it censors Palestine issues, and I can see it whenever I post about Palestine, and similar issues. I know people from Singapore and Canada have enjoyed and loved my candid nature, being vocal about things that affect me, or controversial things in the world that really shouldn’t be controversial. However, I keep saying I want to start a revolution and that I would be the first to strike a match to the ground, so I cannot be attached to my Instagram profile of all things, it's not even something that's tangible.

Anyways, before we came to Senegal, I’d been going to the climbing gym at least once a week for two months and there isn’t a climbing gym here (because obviously they've got other things to keep their minds on). When I get back to Nanaimo, I will have to retrain my arms to their baseline strength. Should you feel so kind and generous, you are welcome to gift me either a continued membership to the climbing gym, or French classes, so that I ace my Canadian citizenship requirements and/or am able to work with the government? Much appreciated! Bisous xxxxxx

MATILDA

Let’s see if I still remember how to do this. It’s been a hot, hot minute. I feel like I’ve kinda wasted away a year and a half of my life, sorta. When the genocide in Gaza became amplified and publicized in November of 2023, I got involved in the advocacy for it, because I know some Gazans who went to and still go to VIU. I saw my therapist and the school’s nurse practitioner and I got put on antidepressants, specifically escitalopram. Art, my therapist, wasn’t quite wholly in support of it, and his reasoning was that without the antidepressant, I took on too much for my plate of responsibilities, the drug would add a layer of bubble wrap, and I would simply add even more responsibilities for myself. However, he recognised that I was in charge of my own body and mental health, so with the nurse practitioner, I decided to start on a course of antidepressants. I think the escitalopram works somewhat for what it’s intended, I’ve been through breakups and pitfalls and setbacks and of course they all make me sad occasionally, but more and more, I’ve had the mindset of “it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” except somehow nothing seems to matter to me in any scheme of things now. I’m not doing my assignments and am failing? Doesn’t matter nor reflect on me as a person. I’m missing deadlines for work interviews? Doesn’t matter nor reflect on me as a person. Nothing seems to be a reflection of me as a person. I don’t know if it’s also coupled with the senioritis and the fact that, for as long as I’ve been in Canada, I’ve been a student, and once I graduate, I’ll be a big girl living the big girl life with big girl responsibilities and I’m not sure I’m equipped for it, nor do I look forward to it completely. To say that the past year was an entire waste would also be reductionist too, because even though school went by in a dumpster fiery blur, in terms of my Chairperson term on the VIUSU, we managed to make some big moves, and we finally collectively removed the previous President of VIU, under whose leadership our school kept bleeding more and more money. That was a much needed breakthrough, and the students definitely took the lead on that one. This summer, I will be spending months in Senegal doing climate mitigation research and interviewing climate refugees who have already been impacted by coastal erosion and whose livelihoods have been crushed and completed transformed. In that way, I suppose the last year really isn’t as bad as I think it is, but again, I don’t know if it’s the escitalopram, I really don’t have a grasp of reality that has gone by. I know I’m so overwhelmed by change and the stress of juggling school, work, as well as the minutiae of the changing nature of international student and work/immigration visas. I want to take my antidepressant through to when I graduate and maybe in the first year of settling into a big girl job, but heck. I am looking forward to being my full complete person and feeling the things I’m used to feeling. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely not hating on the antidepressant and I recognise that I need it for a time, but I miss the person I used to be. I almost don’t recognise myself.

LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE

This past weekend was the BC Federation of Students’ AGM. I spent it campaigning for a year-long position as a Director-at-Large. There were four Director-at-Large positions, with eight candidates vying for them.

On Saturday evening, we each made our speech contesting our case, then spent an hour in the room for the other Locals’ delegates to approach any of us and ask questions about whatever they wanted, pertaining to our candidacy. 

We were scattered all over the room, and I was asked questions like (list not exhaustive — I literally did not stop talking for one hour): how my being in the position could help the Federation’s relations with Indigenous communities; how I could improve the BCFS’ position on environmental or sustainability issues; (because I’d been the only candidate to bring up Gaza in my speech) how I’d deal with potentially an Israeli student feeling offended by my Palestine-geared advocacy; what kind of initiatives I’d push for if I received a position. 

I fielded these questions, one after another, as best and as authentically as I could. It was exhausting, I’d never felt like I had to talk about all the values I believed in and cared for, for all of an hour. I don’t even do that at therapy, during which I’m either laughing because I get to relax and let my guard down when I’m with my therapist, or I’m crying, for similar reasons. 

Nonetheless, I felt encouraged by all the questions, I knew the room was filled with 150 or so people who only wanted to make sure that the positions were filled by someone competent and up to the job, and I knew they, like me, were doing it because they cared. It might have been only an election of university students across BC, but I honestly think it was a positive situation because we’re all mostly mature enough to know of real-world issues, but not jaded enough to engage in mudslinging like in real-world politics. My seven candidates who ran for the position and I, we’re friends, and I knew we all wanted to do our best in the interest of students. 

Today, we received the results and I had won one of the four positions. Cole and Leah cheered the loudest and gave me cheek kisses when we found out. I could finally breathe deeply and fully. I was elated but what really filled my heart was when the other Local delegates congratulated me. 

They said things like they felt a good vibe coming from me when they talked to me, that they could trust me, that they never questioned that they would vote for me, that they were proud of me — and these were people who’d just met me for the first time! It warms my heart because doing activism is obviously a kind of work that can be draining. It requires that you focus on the problems and issues that exist in society, so that you can create awareness of and hopefully help to fix them. 

Most of the time, out in public, I’d have to explain what certain -isms mean, why some things aren’t cool nor acceptable, or why we should be doing more when we have the capacity to do more. When you care about one thing, you usually care about more and more, and burnout can be so real. 

In this room, though, I didn’t have to explain myself. They knew what issues exist in the world, they only wanted to know that I cared the way they did. I didn’t have to convince them of anything, except that I will eventually do the things I said I would. My favorite times are whenever I spend time with the BCFS because these people get me, they don’t make me feel like I’m too much or I care too much. So it meant a lot to me that they believe and had such faith in me.

I know it might not be the biggest deal but I’m truly grateful to be doing such work. I’m afforded an opportunity to be representing 170,000 post-secondary students across British Columbia, to do what I love and fulfills me. It gives me hope. Thank you all for creating an environment that’s allowed me to grow so much. I’m definitely gonna do my best for you.

I HOPE THIS PAIN’S JUST PASSING THROUGH

Now I am stuck between my anger 

and the blame that I can't face 

And memories are somethin' 

even smoking weed does not replace 

And I am terrified of weather 

'cause I see you when it rains 

Doc told me to travel, but there's COVID on the planes

And I love Vermont, but it's the season of the sticks 

And I saw your mom, she forgot that I existed 

And it's half my fault, but I just like to play the victim 

I'll drink alcohol 'til my friends come home for Christmas

And I'll dream each night of some version of you 

That I might not have, but I did not lose 

Now you're tire tracks and one pair of shoes 

And I'm split in half, but that'll have to do 

So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad

That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad

No, I am no longer funny, 'cause I miss the way you laugh

You once called me forever, 

now you still can't call me back

ZEEP ZORP

During one of my therapy sessions in the past year, Art (also known as my Professor Dad) asked me for a motion that I could use as a self-soothing method, when I told him that sometimes I didn't have anyone around to ask for a hug or to comfort me. I had to think about it, but then I told him I guess I could bring my palm up to press against my chest, just around my sternum, to simulate the pressure that one would feel during a hug. Sometime in the last few weeks, my sister shared a video with me, that was of me crying at a kind gesture from a cousin of ours, before I'd left Singapore, before I'd ever stepped foot in Canada. In this video, I could be seen soothing myself by pressing my palm against my chest and rubbing it gently yet firmly. That was when I realised I'd been doing the thing before I even knew I was doing it for self-comfort. It was a genuine "huh, cool" moment. 

I ordered a journal for myself that should arrive soon, it's called One Question A Day. It's supposed to have 365 questions and you answer one per day, and compare your answers, year on year for five years. I don't know what the questions are yet, but I hope they're good, and I might update them here weekly, when I'm done answering them, depending on how good of prompts they are. Jeremy recently suggested that I begin to write more often. At first I thought, I write so much for school, I write essay assignments and exams and speeches, why would I write even more? But then I realised he was right. I used to love writing for myself, for fun, and I'd pretty much stopped, because I was too busy with school and work. I want to go back to writing more just for leisure and for the fuck of it, so I guess here I am, starting the new year in a way that I will try to be consistent with. 

A24

The past two months have been a hell of a wave to ride. I juggled four paying jobs with a full course load of school at one point, to earn enough for spring semester's tuition. I was at my behavioral intervention job, did babysitting for the two most adorable, precocious kids in the world, am assisting on a library research project, and I work for the Students' Union, still. To be honest, even with all that, I still managed to do pretty decently in uni. I got into a fellowship scheme for spring, which gives me a tiny stipend for books, and is actually a cross-faculty book club I have to be part of for the semester, so it's going to be even more work on my plate, but hell, if I have to be paid for something, it might as well be for reading books. I also won the Alexandro Malaspina Award for interdisciplinary excellence, which is easy for me, as someone taking a Political Studies Major and a Liberal Studies Minor. The latter award came with $500 cash, so now I have $7000 saved, of my $12,000 spring semester's tuition. And yes that's twelve grand for the next four months, half of which I don't have. People here/domestic students don't seem to really wrap their head around the number until I show them the invoice on the school's website. But you know, we'll see how things go, I guess. So anyway, despite doing decently well in school and work, the issue of the Palestinian genocide weighs heavily on my mind, possibly even more so, because both the country I come from, Singapore, as well as the country I reside in, Canada, are allied much more closely to Israel than they ever should be. I've been to pro-Palestine marches here in Nanaimo, but it's a very small community that attends, and it's disproportionately people of color as opposed to the majority white people who live here. It gives me a constant headache and perpetual existential crisis. I have a Palestine story highlights on my Instagram, if you should need it to be aware of why you should be pro-Palestine. If you're here, reading this, I assume you're already aligned somewhat to most of my beliefs, so I don't think you'd need them, but they're there. They're also resources for you to have conversations with the greater public if you ever wanted to do so. 

MR. DRESSUP

Last week, Alessia and I were entertaining the idea of fostering a kitty in our apartment. Unfortunately, we asked our landlords and they said no, so that was a short-lived dream. Jeremy had won a pair of tickets to see a film as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, and then we bought a couple more tickets, so I went over to Vancouver last weekend to watch some films. While staying over at Jer's, I also got to spend time with his cat, Barbara, and she's a Maine Coon, so that was nice. The first film we saw was La Chimeras. Both of us felt it was a little long and some of the scenes seemed disjointed at times, but overall I thought it was amusing and the story was a very interesting, intriguing, surprising one. I'd say I liked it and Jeremy gave it a 7/10. The other film was Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe. I hadn't heard of Mr. Dressup prior to the film festival, but apparently he was the Canadian counterpart to Mister Rogers (they were both friends). It was lovely to watch the film and be introduced to a decades-long icon of Canadian children's entertainment, and to such a stellar personality. Ernie Coombs, who played Mr. Dressup, as well as the show he put on, were both so wholesome and heartwarming. I watched as the entire theatre of young and older adults who'd grown up with Mr. Dressup cried as they felt waves of nostalgia at seeing the father figure they'd grown up with. I clearly cried as well, because it was so good to know of such a hopeful persona and TV show, and also because I cry at nearly everything. Jeremy was moved to tears, which is a big deal, because he has trouble crying, and he gave the movie a 10/10. After that movie, Jer took me to MacLeod's Books, one of those old bookstores that are just overflowing with piles upon piles of books and nothing else, no merch and all that. I hadn't known before I stepped in, but apparently the place is a Vancouver institution and well-known among Vancouverites. Whilst browsing, I saw the book Ishmael, a book that I'd seen and read sometime during my travels in LA, and that I very much enjoyed. I made my way through the towering stacks and saw books that reminded me of my professors, one of which was The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, a book that Mark Williams loves to quote from. Whilst I weaved through the tight corners, I heard the elder bookstore owner quiz his two younger employees. When one of them asked the elder where to categorise one of the books and why the author's name sounded so familiar, the older man said "he was the guy who came up with the word 'robot'", and the three of them kept going back and forth about other books and authors. I observed them, entranced, and I told them it was like watching an episode of Jeopardy. I asked the older man if he knew everything in the world, so he responded that he didn't, but when he was back in school way back then, his friends called him a walking encyclopedia. I told him I believed it. I don't really enjoy the dropping temperatures and the start of rainfall, but last weekend was one of those weekends where things felt enchanted and I felt lucky to be alive. It was just one of those days.

RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT ME

I can’t believe it’s been three months since I went to see Taylor Swift live. A lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same. 

In personal news, Adam is back in his hometown doing his part for wildland firefighting. He and I still message each other sometimes, though it’s never been anything dubious nor sexually misleading in the past three months. He’s a decent guy, and I think he and I both really liked each other in the day-to-day of things, so that makes things harder, of course. I still think about him when I want to talk about the big things, or the smallest of details in my day.

On the political front, I’ve been to a couple of BCFS meetings and skills workshop weekends. BCFS is the British Columbia Federation of Students, which is basically the union of students’ unions across universities in British Columbia. Two weekends ago, we spent a weekend at Loon Lake Lodge in Maple Ridge on the mainland, it was the perfect weather and I swam properly in Canadian waters for the first time! The week before that, the VIU Students’ Union met with Jagmeet Singh and Lisa Marie Barron, to speak about inflation and how it’s affecting affordability for students. It was surreal to be in a room with Jagmeet Singh, I remember watching his speeches from way back when in Singapore. And now I’m here, representing students, talking about my own experiences, doing the damn thing! I am getting closer to my VIUSU family, and I’m truly glad I’m spending this summer back in Nanaimo instead of working elsewhere.

Speaking of work, I got a job as a care worker for youths with behavioral disorders. One of them has ADHD, is severe on the spectrum disorder, has sensory processing disorder, and last week, because he couldn’t go out for a drive (it’s one of his regulatory activities and we were out of gas), he smashed a window in with his head. It was a lot to deal with, but he’s not very cognisant of things, especially not of fear and danger. I’ve met my therapist Art since then, and it’s interesting to unpack things from my job with him. I wouldn’t have thought I’d do exceptionally well with a high-stress job, but with my kids, it’s like I’m a fly-on-the-wall observing them and their inability to recognise that despite the enormity of their feelings, certain things are simply not urgent in the grand scheme of things. It’s a good lesson to apply for myself.

Summer is lovely, and I guess I’m right where I’ve always been.

LABYRINTH

2022 was a mixed bag, as a year usually is. It was the first complete year I lived on my own, in a brand new country, so I kept reminding myself to live in the moment, and to count the moments. I ran into many unexpected infuriating and upsetting incidents that unsettled me, because I was still building new support systems while trying to maintain the ones from my home country. Nevertheless, I experienced so many wonderful moments, that on the whole, 2022 was a win for me. I explored nature in Haida Gwaii, laughed uproariously with a stellar character and was mesmerised by all the things he taught me while we were literally cut off from the rest of the world. I moved into an apartment with a woman, who’s equal parts mother, sister and friend, she cheers me up when I’m bogged down by life and capitalism, and we also watch raunchy shows on Netflix together because, well, sex is great, what can I say? I met a classmate whom I remembered and who remembered me from when I took online classes whilst stuck in Singapore, circa Covid times. We began studying together in the library, then moved on to driving to get groceries together. In the two weeks before I left to come back to Singapore, it was always his hand I was holding. Even when we were at the university’s board of governors’ meeting, appealing so they wouldn’t raise international tuition fees at a higher rate than domestic fees, for which he had no personal stake in attending, he was still seated next to me, holding my hand through all of two hours, on the day of our exam paper. My favourite professor from freshman year told me after I’d done a cohort presentation on St. Augustine’s Confessions, that she missed me and that I have an “infectious joy”. I came home to my actual family and chosen family members doting on me, gifting me little sums of cash and food I’d been craving. Overall, I wouldn’t change a thing, and I look forward to more, in 2023.

FREEDOM AND ALIENATION

This paper aims to reimagine social relations in a society where private property has been abolished, based on a close reading of The Communist Manifesto as written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For this paper, we will be making reference to the pages of the course readings packet, which includes the Manifesto.

Marx and Engels write that under capitalism, proletarians essentially live and exist in constant survival mode. This is first exemplified in the passage (132) where the proletariat is described as “a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work… labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity…” They also illustrate the very real and common day-to-day living scenario (133) in which “no sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.” Another prime example of this basic survival mode of existence is portrayed (134) in “the growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious.”

Given the three examples above, one would be right to conclude that under capitalism, working-class labourers embody a precarious sort of existence, in which they are unable to forecast what their life could look like in a month, let alone a year later or longer. Such conditions are not conducive to dating and building relationships, nor for a traditional family nucleus, as the time required for all working-class people to sustain themselves on minimal wages, essentially means a lack of time for nurturing interpersonal relationships, or at least makes it significantly more challenging to do so. Members of the proletariat more often than not, even observably so in current society, lack the capacity to give of themselves to any other pursuit when their brains are focused on procuring basic necessities to ensure their own survival.

In direct opposition to capitalism, with the abolition of private property, everyone would then be a working and functional member of society. Workers would be reaping the fruits of their own labour, and not a single bit of their labour can be exploited to contribute to anyone else’s capital, and the idea of capital would be abolished. All that time that a proletarian had previously spent at work, only for the bourgeois class to squeeze and reap from their labour and profits, now turns into time that people can spend with their families, friends, and anyone they desired. What currently exists as high rates of isolation and a lingering sense of mistrust will be replaced with healthier and stronger relationships in community, as instead of perpetually experiencing the unending stressors of life in capitalist society, one can then feel like there is much value in spending time on building relationships, without having to consider the opportunity cost of that period of time.

Marx and Engels also expound on the idea (135) that the “proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour… has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush as many bourgeois interests.” This can also be seen (135) in “The proletarians… have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.” This paper explores this idea in terms of housing, which is a basic human right that everyone deserves and should be able to afford. Unfortunately, in a statistic that is sadly needless to bring up, only 25% of young Canadians would be able to afford buying a home. The longer capitalism is allowed to happen, the worse this situation deteriorates. Families require basic security before they can thrive, which begin with a foundation of having a roof over their heads. In current times, the lack of property strips away the right to having healthy and happy families, from the proletariat.

By contrast, in a world without private property, all people who benefit from private ownership, such as landlords and hyper-rich building owners who buy out residential developments with no real need of living space would no longer be able to do so. Instead, people who want to start families and have children may feel much freer and inclined to do so. There is much more security that people can provide each other in terms of married life and family life, without the threat of your home being removed from you.

In another line of thought, Marx and Engels elucidate that within capitalism, proletarians are only able to have surface-level relationships. One such example (132) is found in “owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine.” The workman seems to have less, if any, of an identity, because he is accustomed to his work having lost all charm, and as he has been shown to spend more and more time at work, this reflects a lack of depth of character to the proletarian. When workers have no access to time for exploring their real desires and likes, the relationships they form will then be on a superficial level, as they are not even completely aware of who they are as people. These surface-level relationships can happen in all the forms, whether it is a romantic courtship, or even in terms of friendship. The proletarian would not be able to develop sincere friendships as none of them can build real connections.

This is fairly distinguishable from the scenario that we can imagine if private property were to be abolished. In our current state of extremely high productivity, and if all labourers are not shackled down producing capital for the bourgeoisie, these former labourers can also enjoy the fruits of their own labour. They would have the time and independence to explore all the things that pique their curiosity in the world, they will be closer to their real and natural souls, and they will know better what they like and dislike. From there, they would all be equipped with a better knowledge of whether their romantic or platonic interests are healthy, genuine, and deep, instead of based on superficial and insignificant things, simply due to ignorance. Marx and Engels also highlight the difference (138) that “in bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.”

Another visible feature of capitalism that Marx and Engels heavily criticise is the presence and promotion of hypercompetition and hyperindividualism. One such example is when they write (140) that the bourgeois “has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.” In today’s society, many liberal capitalists are under the impression that having more women business owners is something to be celebrated, and we toast to the idea of “girlboss queens”, who seem to “have it all.” However, whilst these successful businesswomen may have broken through some form of glass ceiling, it also emphasises the idea that everyone should necessarily work so hard. It pretends that if everybody competed with each other, it would be to everyone’s benefit as it promotes “innovation”, instead of hyperindividualism. In Communism, because all class struggle is resolved, all oppression would be non-existent, and women will no longer have to compete with men to prove themselves.

On the final point, Marx and Engels also denounce the imperialist cultures of extraction and exploitation that are commonplace within capitalism. The first passage in which they shed light on this (130) is in, “all old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones.” Another example (129) of this is, “It has resolved personal worth into exchange value. In one word, for exploitation… naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” The final nail in the coffin (131) is found in, “Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture.”

We believe that Marx and Engels may have looked badly upon the extraction and exploitation of natural resources, as the daily occurrence of it might be internalised by everyone in society, whether proletariat or bourgeoisie. When one is so accustomed to exploitation being naturalised and normalised, perhaps that is a model for interpersonal relations that take place in capitalist society. Marx and Engels did believe that all things are materialist, and so as people observe behaviours in society, we might be inclined to act and think in the same way, and believe that it is justified to be exploitative even in interpersonal relationships.

To contrast with this idea, in a Communist society, where there is no competition, no class struggle, no need for hyperextraction and exploitation of finite resources in nature, people would emulate such behaviours in their dealings with one another. There would be more mutual respect, and at the very least, a core belief that everybody has inherent worth beyond what they can produce and contribute to someone else’s capital.

MEEP MOOP

I’ve been back in society for exactly a month. I moved to this room three weeks ago and I really like it here, I might post photos here when it’s all furnished. I’m waiting for a poster to be delivered (it’s of Taylor Swift, obviously). It’s a new house in a relatively new neighborhood. We’re further away from school but I live with Alessia and she’s an amazing roommate to have. I’ve been overwhelmed by school and other things. Classes actually get progressively tougher the longer you go through your education, who woulda thunk?? I’m also part of Students’ Union and the university senate so I’m trying my best to balance all my responsibilities equally well. I felt like Instagram was not helping, I’m a sociable person but sometimes I think I give away a lot of attention and energy for absolutely no justifiable reason. I don’t want random people to have access to my person without it also nourishing me as a person. I’m trying to limit my use of Instagram so call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me! If we’re friends, you should already have my cell number or just ask and I’ll give it to you. Alright, I’m off to read some school texts and do some work. See ya on the flip side.

HANGTIME

I've been in Haida Gwaii since Friday. I've fed a wild deer (got lots of responses on Instagram!) and gone fishing once. The day we came into the island, I got a little queasy on the boat because I wasn't dressed well, it was cold and it had been a long day. Yesterday we went out fishing, and the guide put on loud music, I was dressed properly, and every time we caught a wave it felt like I could have been wakeboarding. My friend Dani caught a salmon, and I saw it from when it was alive and struggling, to it being fileted and sealed in a plastic package. Fishing, I can do without, but the boat rides, man, the boat rides make me feel like I'm living my best life. I'll be working at West Coast Fishing Club, and my long play is to get one of the guests to adopt me. If they can afford a 3-day vacation at 8K CAD, I don't think my tuition would be such a big issue for them, right? The whole lodge feels like it's working together, the guides with their songs and fishing knowledge, right down to us ladies serving at the restaurant. Today I helped my boss and formatted the menu for the restaurant that I'll be serving at. It sounds delicious, so I'm looking forward to tasting bits and pieces. The owner of the lodge brought his dogs down to the island, but I haven't seen them. Apparently the owner of Lush Canada will be here for a stay this season, and I love Lush, as a brand, still. She was here for a previous season and after she left, she sent lots of Lush products to the fishing lodge for our staff, so I hope she does it again this year. I LOVE LUSH PRODUCTS!!!!!!! Also, I'm a whore for free things, because I'm poor. When I get a rich person to adopt me, all I'll do is redistribute the money channelled to me, after paying for tuition. I cannot believe people have the money to drop on a three-day fishing vacation, that is also the cost of my one semester/three months of tuition. This world makes no sense to me. 

PRIMORDIAL POUCH

Sometimes you don’t learn a lesson unless and until it is too late. So you lay in bed, breathing slowly, through your mouth, because your nose is clogged with snot. It doesn’t get easier, but apparently you learn to handle things better. Apparently. You tell yourself, think of the worst thing that’s ever happened in your life. That’s easy, it was when I was pregnant and had a miscarriage and fell out with my mother and was depressed. I cried through an entire train journey in Singapore, bawled, wept, and a lady came up to me with an entire pack of tissue paper, telling me that whatever it was, I would get through it. I did. But it doesn’t get easier. Never will. The pain and hurt you go through, maybe it is proportional to the pain and hurt you have caused another to go through, so you sit with it, sit with the ache and emptiness in the lower part of your belly. Breathe into it, isn’t that what your meditation app tells you to do? So you breathe. You think of Taylor Swift. Why do you think of Taylor Swift? You don’t know, but you do. Why does it take forever to know what love is, and no time at all to lose it? On my birthday, I wished to ease my way in this capitalist world, but perhaps I should have wished for emotional maturity and peace instead. Maybe I do not know what I’m sorely lacking in. 

LOST FUR

WHY WASTE TIME SAY LOT WORDWHEN FEW WORD DO TRICK

My sister is figuring out her finances and affording life in Singapore, so we both commiserated with each other for being peasants.

Peasants earning peanuts eating peanuts who turn out more peasants. If you don't get that, it's okay, neither does anyone else.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE IMPOSSIBLY MESSY

Last week, I was in New York. I went with Jeremy, I used my flight credit to get us the flights there, and Tina was away for the first bit of our trip, and stayed at her boyfriend Cesar's place when she got back, so she let us stay in her apartment. Jeremy picked up the tab for all our other expenses.

New York City was... a trip. Because we had only one week there, I tried to cram as many things as I could for Jeremy's sake, who had never been. When we arrived, we had a boo-boo with unlocking Tina's apartment door, and so we had to call the locksmith at midnight. I have now learned that lesson for all future locks, for the rest of my lifetime.

However, when we finally got in, we found that Tina had prepared some stuff on the kitchen table. She had folded some origami, made some doodles of us, and given me a disposable camera for my trip.

Before we'd arrived, Tina kept saying she hoped I'd like her place. I hadn't been there before because she'd been living with her ex the last time I was in NYC, but the moment we got in, I knew that no matter what happened on the trip, I'd enjoy being in her apartment. It was just the right size of an apartment I'd like for myself, small but for a simple, contained life. It was decorated the way Tina would decorate it, and as she's one of my best friends, I clearly liked her aesthetic. There was a bit of romance, a lot of nerdy, some quirky. I felt her vibe in there and I felt at home.

Jeremy and I started our trip with a karaoke session at Sing Sing Avenue A, where our bartender Amy was the loveliest. It was the first time, when we asked for her favorite music, Jeremy and I had ever heard anyone say "I don't listen to music, I hate it," because Amy works at the karaoke place. I suppose it kinda made sense that she doesn't wanna listen to any version of music after spending major portions of her week having to listen to people butcher all the songs.

During most of the week, the weather was still rainy and cold, sometimes even colder than Vancouver because the wind was stronger there than in Vancouver for some reason. However, on one of the milder-weather days, we took a walk in Prospect Park and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and I was treated to a vision of the pinkest cherry blossom trees. Jeremy is from Vancouver where they have the same thing, so it wasn't as much of a treat for him as it was for me.

The lady was telling her child that ducks have webbed feet, so I heard him repeating "webbed feet" very slowly and tentatively, it was so cute. I don't know that he even understood what webbed feet mean. It was such a precious moment for me to have witnessed, and I'm amazed that it happens all the time when you're raising a child! 

(the color contrast in photos is 'cos some were taken with our phones and some were developed with the disposable camera from Tina!)

I enjoyed that day very much. Jeremy got me snacking bacon from Dunkin Donuts, and at first I was like, why the fuck did you get me snacking bacon from Dunkin Donuts, of all things???? But lo and behold, it was the best bacon I'd ever had in my life??? It was moist and like a little bit sweet, like they'd seasoned it with honey or syrup or something, and had the right amount of salt and pepper, and it was from DUNKIN DONUTS, so maybe I was just hungry, and Jeremy knew it better than I did.

The next day, we were due to watch Hadestown, a musical that one of Jeremy's work friends had told us to watch. I was wearing a vintage dress and to match me, Jeremy had packed a suit. He didn't have comfortable dress shoes, though, so he'd planned to get them the morning of the musical before meeting me back at the apartment to set off from there. The bus back from the shoe store was delayed, so Jeremy was late.

On the way to the theatre, I was stewing in my anger on the train, because we were rushing for a musical, and I knew we would miss a little of it, and it wasn't the first time Jeremy's ADHD had messed up the day on our trip. When we got to the theatre, I was positively having a breakdown, and when Jeremy held the small of my back to calm me, I actually shrieked "don't touch me!" but it was during the second song of Hadestown, so no one else heard me, besides him and myself.

I have issues with emotional regulation and containing my anger, so that was definitely one of the lowest points on our trip. Whilst I got immersed in the first act of Hadestown, Jeremy was so taken aback he couldn't focus on the show. That was a terrible mistake, because Hadestown was amazing and one of my new favorite musicals (it's romantic AND about anti-capitalism, what in all fucks and HOW did I not write it????!!!!), and I wish I hadn't robbed Jeremy of the experience. 

When we talked about it later in the week, I asked Jeremy if he would take his medication whilst he spent time with me, so that he could be a little more functional, but he doesn't like them because apparently ADHD meds all cause stress on the heart, which means ageing faster. So it's a complete stalemate, because either Jeremy ages faster, or he lives with his ADHD symptoms and I'm constantly stressed, causing me to age faster. It also frustrates me that I know I have flaws with my emotional volatility and am seeking help for it with therapy, but he doesn't seem to do much for his ADHD.

He does the weirdest things like absolutely needing to buy dress shoes to match an outfit for one day, apparently ADHD causes you to prioritise things in ways I don't understand??? I had seven different outfits for the week, but I wore my low-cut sneakers with all of them, even the vintage dress, because style is what you make of it, and you don't have to be so rigid about it? Like, which stuck-up rich white person even made the rules and why do I have to follow them? Who says you need to wear dress shoes with a suit??? Even though I wore mismatched sneakers with all my outfits, I still got compliments on each of them??? Because I know I'm stylish????? 

Anyway. On one of the days, we went to The Met. I'd told Jeremy he would love the museum, and indeed he did. He took five hundred and thirty-something photos and videos, and he only stopped because his phone died. I don't have much in the way of photographic evidence to put up here, but they're all on my Instagram story highlights. Of the maybe five (lololol) museums I've been to, The Met is absolutely, undeniably my favorite. It's got such a fantastic collection.

On Thursday, we went to Harlem for the jazz museum. 

We went to a few jazz shows and jazz clubs because Jeremy is starting his degree in jazz this fall. I have videos of those, again on Instagram. I don't really get jazz, but I think it's lovely to see Jeremy enjoying it, and of course it's easy to appreciate talented musicians.

On Friday, we finally met Tina.

I always say I love the fact that I have two kinda elder sisters, Tina and my cousin, Hazwani. I call them both Kakak, which means elder sister in Malay. I'm kakak to so many, so it's nice when I'm the baby. Because I'm THE REAL BABY.

I had gotten tickets for Jeremy and I, and Tina and Cesar for a show at Caveat, and the show was done by Depths of Wikipedia.

On the way there, Jeremy was curious as to the nature of the show, which I didn't know, because I like to go in to things blind and be surprised. I was slightly worried the show would be a flop because I didn't know anything about it, but it was hilarious and fun and entertaining and engaging. Jeremy, Cesar and Tina all really got into it, and I'm so glad we got a good pick of a show! If you're ever in NYC, go to Caveat, and I hope you get a lovely game/show as well, though they usually do have an awesome selection.

My favorite parts of this trip were the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, watching Hadestown, staying in Tina's apartment, The Met, and Caveat.

When we got back, Jeremy and I had a serious conversation, and we broke up. It was funny (not haha funny, more like uncanny funny), it all happened in the lead-up to/through/after my birthday. Jeremy had gotten me a small strawberry shortcake to have myself, and I blew the candles on it, and through it all, we knew we might not be spending much more time together, so I was happy on my birthday, but I was also so sad.

but you keep my old scarf

from that very first week
'cos it reminds you of innocence

and it smells like me,
you can't get rid of it

'cos you remember it all too well

'cos there we are again 

when I loved you so

Anyway. Yesterday I was back in Nanaimo, and I met Marcus for lunch. He asked me out to lunch so we could have a send-off before I leave for my summer job in Haida Gwaii. We talked about Ukraine and Hong Kong, and his plans for school, and New York, and Hadestown, and I find that when I'm with Marcus, it's so easy and chill and comfortable. I always feel strange meeting Marcus, I clearly like him more than a friend, and I'm trying my best not to be that person who's like "I'll be friends with him until he likes me more," because clearly that's gross and creepy. I want to be friends with him, but I've always had trouble making the distinction between platonic and romantic, once I've crossed the line. 

Jeremy says he'd like to be friends in future, when I'm able to do so, but I obviously have had trouble with this all through my life. I told Jeremy I do the same thing even with Joey, and every man I've ever had romantic feelings for. I'm just a girl with trauma and am trying my best, and staying friends with people I like so much, confuses the hell out of me. I like Jeremy and Marcus and Joey and Ben and why do I have to choose?!?!! I like them all 'cos they all have different appeals, and I have all the feelings.

Send fucken help, man. I need all the help.

SHE USED TO BE MINE

I don't feel very well tonight. I haven't felt well in a while and a half. It's been three weeks since Marcus and I kinda stopped talking. I say kinda, because sometime in between then and now, I was at work at the supermarket, and he bought something and we chatted for a bit, and it felt alright. I miss him, as a friend. I think we were actually good friends, we were on a similar wavelength, and he would respond to my Instastories about books, and capitalism and lord even knows what, but he doesn't, not anymore. Before the thing three weeks ago, I had a hectic weekend slaving away at the supermarket, and he asked if I wanted to take a break, and I felt so cared for. I think you know I have a very good memory, so I remember silly things like Marcus' cat having a hernia, and the things we wrote down on our slips of paper while playing The Game of Things, and how Marcus and I would always have answers that were adjacent to each other's. My heart gets very attached to moments, I have to tell my fingers to pry themselves apart, to let go, Sarah, it's okay to let go of the way things were, so they can be what they'll be.

At times like this, whenever I feel overwhelmed or heavy, my respite is always to come here and write. I don't know why, but the moment I express it, it lightens a load. I think it helps that I've been given feedback in the last six months, from multiple professors, telling me I write beautifully, that I have a wonderful and expressive writing voice. I know exactly what I want to say, and it comes out the way I intend it to, and it feels much better and with much more direction than my feelings know what to do. I think the neurons that work to store memories of men and romantic relationships in my brain lump them together, because tonight I think about asking Joey, to tell me about space. I think about how six years (six! years!!!) ago, I asked Joey what he enjoyed about work, and he told me he likes when kids come in with curious questions. I think about Ben and his cat Tux, and him planting and growing his own food. Every time I go through a thing with a man, one (1) singular man, all the memories of men (multiple) come flooding back, indiscriminately. What a strange thing for my brain to do. 

One time, Jeremy had his hands down my jeans while I was doing the dishes, and his brother Aidan unexpectedly came into the kitchen, so Jeremy pulled away from me and did something else, in record time. Jeremy doesn't remember this happening, but I still laugh about it because I knew something like that would happen one day. The man cannot keep his hands off me (but really, can you blame him?). The ADHD really affects his memory very weirdly. I don't understand it very well. Today, as the women's rep I got allocated my office in the students' union building, and I am looking forward to decorating it. I'm gonna have to move my things and set it up soon, because I'm leaving in a month-ish to Haida Gwaii for my summer job. I have two papers left to go, and I really don't have the energy to even care about them anymore. My brain is saturated with information, and my heart, with emotions.

A SOLDIER WHO’S RETURNINGHALF HER WEIGHT

The week before last, I had a pretty decent week. A lovely week, if that. Jaysen and his girlfriend Sofeah were here for a holiday, so he brought a bag of things my family had packed for me. They were foodstuff I either can’t get here or are priced exorbitantly, and they also packed a bottle for making roti kirai, which I’ve never made myself, so that’ll be an adventure. I went to Budgies Burritos with them for lunch, and they were going for a hike in the higher parts of British Columbia, so I took them to shop at MEC in Vancouver. I had never met Sofeah, so it was fun to meet her then. If you remember, I used to have a crush on Jaysen, so I thought it’d be awkward, but Sofeah is a lovely person. I’d have loved hanging with her in Singapore, I think we’d be friends. 

That night, I came back to the island, and I played board games with my friends from philosophy class. Marcus brought the oslo kringle he’d baked for me, which raised some eyebrows at the table, and we played board games at River’s apartment, where she has a ferret and kitten, so it was chaos and made for an absolutely lovely night. We made up inside jokes upon inside jokes for the answers to The Game of Things, and it was hilarious and I look forward to playing games with the same group again. The next day, Marcus and I went to the cat café in Nanaimo, because I’d said on Instagram that I missed Mochi. That was the second day in a row I was spending time with cats, but then the very next day, Hannah took me on an unplanned hike up Mount Benson, with the kitten she was catsitting for Jayne and Dave. It was three days in a row I was with cats! 

Last week, I had a little thing happen with Marcus. His life is not for me to comment, but I felt unsettled and overwhelmed. As it was, last week was out of the ordinary, because VIU was hosting the national basketball championships for the top 8 women’s basketball teams of Canada. I worked a pretty long shift at the gym, and got to meet more people at once than I’d met in a long time. I also messed up my schedule so I had to miss my therapy appointment. I then went to Vancouver to meet Jeremy, and came away feeling more terrible than I can recall in a long time. When I’m with Jeremy, the good moments are great but sometimes we’re tired, and we meet once every two or three weeks, and it culminates in a crescendo of chaos, and not the good kind. I find myself saying things that make him feel small, and I hate myself for those moments. It’s impossible to break up with someone you love, and I do love Jeremy. He’s a really good person, and I hate that I cannot live with the effects of his ADHD, and that his mess is a thing I cannot accept as part of my life. He tries his best, and I know he tries his best, but sometimes, it doesn’t feel enough. And yet love him, I do. 

We’ve spent maybe four months together, and I don’t want to give up the times we listen to songs and sing in the bathtub, or when we’re walking along and he sings absolutely ridiculous lyrics to Taylor Swift songs, and I don’t want to miss him being soft with me when I really need it. But then sometimes I make my way to Vancouver, and I’ve already travelled three hours and I wonder why he doesn’t have a driving licence so he can pick me up from the ferry terminal, and I wonder why he can’t make his room presentable for me, and I wonder so many things, and it’s impossible. Sometimes I feel like I may have the emotional range of a teaspoon, because everything overwhelms me.

PROLETARIAT PROFILES

I wrote a TV show pitch for my TV module, and I thoroughly appreciated my professor's feedback. He really knows his TV, which I suppose is a great criterion for a media professor to fill. I'm definitely curious about the TV shows he mentions and recommended.

This is a pitch for a reality TV show about working-class people, and it will be called Proletariat Profiles. In the simplest way to conceive it, Proletariat Profiles would be like the layperson’s version of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, minus the millions of dollars. It would first launch on YouTube, financed by the producer’s (my) own savings or funds crowdsourced from a platform such as Kickstarter or similar. If it gains enough traction, it might get signed to a network television company or Netflix, but that will not be the main aim. The budget needed for the initial production would not be a big one. Unlike Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Proletariat Profiles will revolve around regular people with regular, actually relatable lives, for the average Joe and Jill, and everyone in between. 

It will be filmed over the course of a year, so that the audience can follow the “characters”/participants of the show through as many important or significant seasons in an ordinary person’s life. For example, over the course of a year, we will feature the different participants going through holidays such as Christmas, New Years’ celebrations, their respective birthdays, tax seasons, Valentine’s Day, each individual’s observed religious festivities, and so on. We will then release the episodes in the following year, coinciding with the themes of the episodes. For example, events filmed on Valentine’s Day will be released on the next Valentine’s Day. The entire year will be filmed before being released the following year so that the show will not affect, influence nor interfere with the lives of our participants, in any way, shape, nor form.

There are two options we will utilise for filming and producing the show. We will equip each of them with an iPhone or any smartphone with a camera that’s good enough to be used for vlogging (video logging). Occasionally, we will have a basic crew to film each participant, in either an interview-style, or tailing them on any event they would want to highlight, with their permission. It will be as no-frills in terms of production value and kept as close to lived reality and down-to-earth as possible for an Internet series, with no glamorous lights or sound, and no intention of making it look polished, primed nor curated. 

There will be a rotation of several “characters” or participants as part of this show. We will try to cast people who traditionally struggle more in a capitalist system. For example, we may have people in the service industry, working as waitstaff, bus drivers, cashiers and bartenders, sewage workers and janitors. We would have a sales worker who doesn’t really care about the things they are selling. One of the participants could be a college student working two jobs to afford tuition, another one a single parent supporting their kid, someone with a mental or physical disability. We would also incorporate people of color, a homeless person, someone who’s recently been incarcerated, a person struggling with substance addiction. Someone who has to sacrifice their creative side and “sells out” by having a corporate job, because it’s the only way they can survive in the economy. 

Every one of the participants would be working-class, with real bills to pay. Even while they work, they find themselves going further into debt. We will feature vulnerable moments such as having to wait for a bank transfer to go through before they can cash out their grocery purchases, among numerous other experiences most people would have gone through, yet each person feels cripplingly ashamed of. We will follow them as they take public transit, or struggle to keep up on car insurance payments. We can display the myriad of ways a capitalist system is violent toward many disenfranchised communities, who are trying their best but barely staying alive and dealing with issues such as food insecurity.

The message of this show is to directly contrast with the narrative that “if you work hard enough, you’ll make it” often used as propaganda for allowing status quo to continue. It will feature our participants working hard almost all of the time in their lives, but who still don’t make it, because the odds of capitalism are against many more people than they are for them succeeding. Proletariat Profiles aims to showcase the reality that most of us are closer to being homeless in any given year, than to becoming a millionaire or becoming rich enough to retire or live a life that’s not enslaved to capitalism. 

Traditional media (which is inherently capitalist) has not showcased people who are struggling because capitalists currently have control of society and want to maintain a facade or pretence that capitalism works well enough for everyone to prosper and make it, so as to maintain the control they have. Therefore, a subversive show like this is useful for showcasing that there are many who live below the poverty line, that those people then have nothing to be ashamed of, and that any failings that occur are inherently designed to happen within capitalism, and not somehow individual moral failings. 

While our participants are not to be blamed for individual failings, there are also not exactly any individual villains on the TV show. Throughout all our narratives and situations, a thread that connects all of them is that capitalism necessarily needs to monopolize on some people’s disadvantageous situations for anyone to come out on top. The enemy is not any single person, but the enemy is the system of capitalism itself. 

Another aim of the TV show is to highlight the humanity of our participants. Traditional media has by far shone a spotlight on the glamorous, unattainable lives of celebrities and people with “success stories” in life. People like waitstaff and janitors, cashiers and sales workers have never been portrayed as having personalities. They exist only to do their jobs of providing a service, and then suddenly they are no longer relevant in our lives. This show hopes that by featuring people in professions or communities that have been long ignored, we can bring them from an invisible sphere, into the visible. 

As an alternative to the bleakness of the plights of our participants, we will feature certain ways we can all start to back away from capitalism and form other ways of existing and being. For example, mutual aid is a way for sharing with the community so that the participants don’t rely on philanthropy, nor believe in any justification for people to be rich nor poor enough that philanthropy is required. We can also feature a few participants with more environmentally-friendly lifestyles, such as those who only make purchases in closed-loop economies or supply chains, promoting sustainability. 

The audience for this show would be people who are disillusioned or are starting to question capitalist society as it is, and who want to inspire change. To gather audiences, we would start from grassroots avenues, such as putting up posters in spaces that would support such a show. This includes socialist societies/groups in different provinces and countries, liberal arts colleges, working-class-populated bars, mom-and-pop stores, and locations frequented by people with such similar ideals. I believe the audience would be attracted to watch such a show if it were produced, for several reasons. 

First, it would be very different from any other show in production and circulation, and by virtue of novelty alone, it would be entertaining or enlightening. Secondly, as mentioned, our intended primary audience are people who are already disillusioned with capitalism, and therefore they would want to seek hope by watching similar people go through similar events in their lives, and relate more to them than anyone else they’ve ever seen on TV. Thirdly, the primary intended audience members may want to persuade their peers who don’t already hold such socialist beliefs, and having such a show in production and being broadcast, would greatly enhance the possibility of that happening, using real and unfiltered portrayals of working-class people trudging through life. 

To attract revenue, we would also appeal to the socially-involved natures of such audiences, and ask for a crowdsourcing of funds for the show to be perpetuated, such that it can reach wider circulations, and hopefully spread the message to bigger audiences. 

His feedback:

In many ways this show is exactly what you describe and would have a very hard time to get 'green lit', again for exactly the reasons you describe. Yet it is an important possibility to pursue along the lines that you outline toward the end. As far as a pitch goes, you need to reorganize a bit, particularly when it comes to the 'why' questions that you answer well toward the last page or so, but for the average person listening to this pitch - most are done orally first - there will be an immediate 'poverty porn' image that harkens back to 'Good Times' or 'Welcome Back Kotter' or 'Sanford and Sons' from the 60s and 70s, or even the 'Honeymooners' from the 50s. The alternative perspective from poverty porn positions it as a fresh take and for a defined audience who, though they aren't 'rich' or constantly consuming, are what many call 'the bottom billion' who are generally ignored and are yearning for something solid. 

The one thing that I think you did well was demonstrate and describe the class struggle focus. The one thing, from a North American perspective is the issues of race, gender, and geography, though I imagine a version of this occurs in many places along similar if different social divisions. This is important because the show seeks to address an imbalance but should be mindful of creating a new one; or worse, creating a new "Honey Boo Boo" who is a poor, rural girl from the Southern US who is both famous but seemingly unaware that her fame is because people are looking at her life from a classist-urban dismissive standpoint. That level of care is hard to balance when the subjects are needed but delicate. You should look up Norman Lear’s evaluation of the unintended impact of 'All in the Family' such as we discussed in class to help solidify this. Great idea, some room for a few more nuances. 80/100

BIG YEAR

I submitted this essay for my TV module and got a 78% for it. Apparently, I'm a solid 78% student across all my modules, so I'm trying to improve my writing to bring it to 91% (because Marcus got 91% for our philosophy paper, wtf, is he Socrates???). Anyway, I have been elected to be the women students' rep of the Students' Union, and my term starts in May. That's all, have a lovely week, I'm busy working to pay off my tuition, if you'd like to loan me a sum of money so I don't have to pay hundreds of dollars in interest to my Singapore bank monthly, I'd highly appreciate it, this is not a joke. 

    Thinking about this as a 'big year' for spending time with screens, make a list of your screen time attention - TV formatted 'shows' in particular (i.e. not quick YouTube experiences or one-off TikTok videos - but maybe recurring series, etc.). After thinking about your list, think about what it says about you ... if all viewing is, in a way 'connected' and 'productive;' what does your list say about you (both to you and to others who might read your list)?

Among the shows on my list, there are definitely certain ones that I would consider and call my absolute favorites. These are Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act, Jeopardy, Queer Eye, Ted Lasso, and The Good Place. Everything else, I might have considered filler, to pass any free time I had while I was at home and having a meal, or just because there was nothing else interesting on Netflix. I will describe what each of my favorite series represents to me, and in this way, I will also aim to describe what it says about me.

When I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, it was because my sister had watched it and she had stickers and decals of the characters on her laptop, as well as her phone screensaver, etc. I’d also heard, in general, that many people liked it and that it was a well-made show. I started watching it to be in the know, and to fit in with my sister, and other people who liked the show. It turns out that I did enjoy it and liked it, as well. What I think it says about me, is that I have a fear of missing out, slightly, and that I do yearn for connection with other people.

Beyond this, Avatar: The Last Airbender is about a heroic protagonist who is literally the only person who can save the world from the “bad guys”. Additionally, he manages to make a friend in his foil and antihero, a person called Zuko. Zuko has a misguided-villain-to-semi-hero redemption arc, and what I’d like to think this says about me is: I have a hopeful streak, and I do hope that in this society we live in, some heroes (with no supernatural powers) might band together to save the world from climate disaster.

I watched Ted Lasso because one of my good friends recommended it to me, and I became so very fond of it. Ted Lasso is a show about a football coach who’s perhaps the opposite of or very far off from the stereotypical football coach one might think of. The show is written around strong men and women. The strong men have sessions in which they talk about their feelings, without making a big deal of it. There are characters that display streaks of toxic masculinity, but they are few and it’s also portrayed as leading to unhealthy relationships and self-esteem issues.

The strong women lift each other and have real and proper girl friendships, without any of the usual bitchiness or cattiness or superficiality (although they do sometimes talk to each other about men). This is definitely one of the shows that appeal to me because of my feminism, and strong personality. I enjoy that the show tries, and mostly succeeds, to defy gender norms and restrictions.

It also deals with mental health and therapy in a rather comprehensive manner, that maybe will show viewers that i) therapy is for everyone, ii) it is okay to be scared of therapy if you haven’t been or if you haven’t had good experience with it yet, and iii) that it’s still possible to overcome or work through it and use it for the better.

I am a strong proponent of therapy and mental wellness, I go for free counselling in school as a student. I aim to publicise to as many people as possible that such resources are readily available to us. We as students should be taking advantage of it, because therapy and mental health facilities aren’t readily available in many places, and especially for free (although I think it should rightfully be free considering the exorbitant tuition I pay as an international student).

Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act has a special place in my heart because I’d been his fan for many years, since his first Netflix special, Homecoming King, in 2017. What I hope this says about me is that I’m loyal, what it might say about me is I could be a little obsessive. Patriot Act has been cancelled because he got into trouble with a few rich and powerful people (I think this was the reason), but it was a solid, informative, entertaining, and moving series. He would talk about important issues such as Black Lives Matter, unfair marijuana criminalization/profitization based on race, fast fashion, etc etc.

His points were hard-hitting, but somehow, Hasan Minhaj has a rare way of bringing emotion in without necessarily sensationalizing issues. Anyone can present facts and figures, but he did it in a way that resonated with you. At least, I might have felt more of it because he’s a person of color (still not a woman of color yet, but perhaps that’s for me to fill) introducing -or developing arguments about- issues to the world, on Netflix. All this to say, Hasan Minhaj to me is meaningful representation, and that’s something I stand strongly by, especially as I go to school in a predominantly white country and still see predominantly white faces in many classes.

Jeopardy is my absolute favorite game to watch and play. I grew up watching the late, great Alex Trebek, and always thought of him as the kindly white grandfather everyone should have. He was one of the people I wanted to meet in person (the others are Taylor Swift and Hasan Minhaj). What I want this show to say about me, or what I think it does, is that I’m always thirsty for knowledge, and I’m semi-autodidactic (if I were a complete autodidact I wouldn’t be in university).

If you haven’t seen a contestant called Austin Rogers, please watch the episodes with him. He’s one of the top winners of all time on Jeopardy, and he has one of the quirkiest personalities I’ve ever seen in anyone. I love how Jeopardy makes knowledge fun to attain, and when you watch these absolute shining personalities do well on the show, with their puns and snappy quips, it’s top-notch entertainment.

I don’t know what it says about me, but I think there’s a bit of predictability to my watching Jeopardy. When I was back home in Singapore, my six family members in the household knew I would always spend some time watching Jeopardy, before or after work, or on my off days from work. It felt safe to me, and perhaps it signified a certain safety to them, as well, that I am a creature of habit and I love my routine. I don’t know for sure. Sometimes, my sisters would also watch it with me, and I used it to bond with them a little, although I don’t think they ever really enjoyed the show as much as I did, because I never see them watching it if I’m not.

Of all the reality shows that exist, Queer Eye is one of the best, in my opinion. Again, what it says about me is possibly that I’m actually optimistic and romantic under all my cynicism. It’s nice to see people who are deserving receive a makeover that, more often than not, really improves their entire lives. I have a problem with the premise of Queer Eye, in that I am much too politically radical, to really actually buy into it. I think there are far more people in America that are struggling and that they cannot all be helped by Queer Eye, and it’s because the systems and infrastructures are making it that way. I think, to really help America, the country needs a systemic change, that doesn’t allow capitalism, racism, classism, nationalism and all the -isms to marginalise entire populations of people.

However, for that hour or so, it is nice to see that given the right amount of help (tens of thousands of dollars in the making), and the right kind of help, even people in the most dire of places can turn their lives around. Now, if only we could provide tens of thousands of dollars to everyone in America, by taking it from the ultra-rich. I would watch that show. Focusing on Queer Eye, though, I think it succeeds at what it sets out to do, which is to make a candidate feel good about themselves, and in turn, becomes a feel-good TV show for the audience.

The Good Place is my favorite TV show of all time. What I like about it is it introduces the viewers to the tiny, basic gists of philosophy and ethics, and that allows the audience to decide if they want to learn more. Generally, philosophy hasn’t been accessible to mass communities and has been gatekept by and for old, white men, so to see such information being included in an entertainment show, for anyone to watch, is heartening.

Even within the content of The Good Place, it acknowledges and contends with the fact that the world is extremely unjust and unbalanced, that results in it being impossible to judge anyone fairly. The ending of the show is a typically good and nicely-wrapped-up ending, and the two protagonists whom you’d naturally root for, end up together, for eternity. This, again, shows my romantic side. Apart from that, I do think what I’d like the show to say about me, is that I’m thoughtful, pensive, that I care about other people, and would like everyone to receive what they truly deserve.