YOU ALMOST RAN THE RED'COS YOU WERE LOOKING OVER AT ME

I'm done with one semester in Canada! It has been the longest semester ever, what with all the adjustments I've had to make. During my Liberal Studies exam yesterday, Kaia came over to me and said, "Sarah Mei, double-space" because I'd forgotten to write in double-spacing on my exam booklet. Those are her final words to me this year, until I take the continuation to this module next semester. I took a bath with a really pretty bath bomb today, so life is currently really, really good. My sisters are coming over for a week next week! I'm excited, we'll be exploring Vancouver together, so if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know, thank you. I'll definitely take them to Granville Island market, I haven't even been there since my first time with Alessia. I had a job interview today, I hope I get it because it would be so convenient for me, although I would still need another job to pay for my tuition. I don't really have much to say, I would like to sleep a long, deep, sleep, while I still can before the next year and semester creep up on me.

HAKOMI

I've had a pretty alright two weeks. This morning, it snowed for the first time since I've been here! I had a lot of fun playing in the snow and walking through it, on the way to school. Just recalling waking up to everything powdered in thick layers of snow, and seeing it through my window, is making me smile now. It's truly such a surreal magic moment. Last week, something unexpected happened, in which I found out the identity of someone I'd been suspecting for a while. It was reassuring, just to know that it wasn't any of the people whom I used to be best friends with, who was having mental health issues or some such thing. I had a counselling session with my therapist in school, a couple of days after that, and I didn't even mention the thing that happened, so I suppose it doesn't really affect me that much. I had a really good session, I'd been telling him (it's the first time I've got a male counsellor, and I'm glad I've got as much trust in him as I've had with my previous therapists in Singapore) about the worry that constantly plagues me, perhaps due to my studies and my general interests, and the fact that I cannot seem to allow myself to relax. He suggested a new form of therapy I'd never tried before. He asked me to tell him the line of thought that would pop up whenever I wanted or tried to relax, so I told him. I said, "sometimes I'm happy with my personal life and when I'm telling myself 'you can rest now', a thought pops up: 'the world is still fucked' and it prevents me from fully relaxing." He told me to think the thought "you can rest now" and to simulate the relief I feel in those moments to myself, while he voiced "the world is still fucked" right in front of me. We did it a few times, and I truly felt myself feeling the relief through those times, because he'd trained me to trace the feelings to their roots, and I also heard him saying "the world is still fucked." After those several rounds, I laughed because his voice really sounded like my voice in my head, he'd asked me to clarify it and he used the exact intonations I would use, and because he sounded like me in my own head, I found it absurd and was amused, but the relief I felt in my body didn't go away. My counsellor said we had a breakthrough, because we'd created a pathway for me to do something new, and to feel something new even while having a negative thought. He said, "both can be true." The world is fucked, and you can rest now, Sarah. I'm not sure why he caused me to feel so safe, but he did, and I think I've been a different person since then. In any case, he's married and older so I have no attraction or transference of feelings toward him, my true love still lies with Kaia, hehehe. I have two research papers and two exam papers left till the end of semester in 10 days, and then it's Christmas break for three weeks. :)

TURNKEY

I watched this TED talk in our feminist studies class, and I'm telling you, I'm not giving birth unless and until my partner legitimately pays me to do so, along with when I do the household chores and whatever else. I also am a big proponent of adoption, anyway, so perhaps I will never give birth in my life. I'm not sure, it's too early to tell. I am only 31, and in my first year of college. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My head has been wrapped up around billionaires and the redistribution of wealth for the past week. It may be because a lot of what I study invariably revolves around giving back and ensuring justice for marginalised communities. It might be because I've been veering toward such issues for the past couple of years. It might be the latter leading up to the former, and now I have a constant headache because the lack of light makes it really hard for me to stay up when I'm supposed to stay up, compounded by the fact that my brain never, never, never stops working, and sometimes my eyes glaze over when you're talking to me, because I'm thinking about something else, which is rude, and I'm sorry. I try very hard to be present and attentive, but I don't succeed at everything I do.

Joey says billionaires are like toddlers, because toddlers get what they ask for, and they don't take no for an answer. Actually, Joey spoke of specifically one billionaire, who is Elon Musk. It's interesting to have a tenuous connection to Elon Musk like this, it's a name I say often, and most people know who he is and have said his name. My school counsellor (I go to one because I thought I had adult ADHD but I haven't seen a nurse to get diagnosed, and I like just speaking to counsellors and getting therapy, anyway) said Elon Musk made a dick move, with the world hunger thing, and then I spoke to my favorite professor, my love and light, Kaia, and then she said Elon Musk is a dick, so basically Elon and dick get said in the same sentence pretty frequently.

It is strange to think of him as a person, through the eyes of someone who's worked with him and gone into the same building as he has for pretty much eight years (I think). I told Joey, when I was in LA in 2016, I'd asked him whether he thought Elon deserved what he had, and Joey had said Elon works hard. So this time, to hear him being slightly more critical of Elon, I said I was proud of him, but then Joey said, again, "he does work hard, he just refuses to take no for an answer."

There is a.... mismatch of worldviews here. As a person, perhaps the man Elon Musk works hard, yes, perhaps he stays long hours at SpaceX and Tesla and doesn't go off gallivanting on Saint-Tropez (although, does he? I do not know). Then there is the rest of the world, the proletariat who hold the factual view that you physically cannot and do not earn billions of dollars through sheer hard work, and he did not. People are working for him, and other people are creating his wealth, and people contributed to his wealth, long before he started working, so it is not only due to him that he's a billionaire.

And there's the issue of world hunger at stake. If you had not encountered it for some reason, Elon Musk offered money to help with world hunger if someone could come up with a provable viable solution. Then, someone from the UN came up with a plan! It remains to be seen whether he'll actually do it. 

The fact of the matter, though, is why did he offer in the first place? What was the point? What was he trying to do? The entire thing just screams dick move. Is he an actual toddler? Are there behavioural experts who have studied toddlers and can explain how we can get a toddler to cooperate if the toddler knew that they could alleviate the hunger of a portion of the world population?  

My head is aching all the time. I can go to school, day in and day out, talk about taxing the rich, or eating them, all the time, and then I can go home, shoot the breeze with Joey, but nothing is going to change, and the plight of the world weighs heavy, on the world. Sometimes I am paralysed from the lack of change. The system is going to have to be reformed, or we will be going through a revolution. So I sit at home, have my dinner, and think about why people are the way they are, and how we can coax them to think about other people.

SO CASUALLY CRUELIN THE NAME OF BEING HONEST

just between us

did the love affair 

maim you too?

I want to tell you about falling in love through mutual friends, by reading someone's Tweets. I want to tell you about waking up from a nap with someone else and his cat, and having him pack leftover food in your little tin container. I want to tell you about the clash of personalities and how love can sometimes not be enough to overcome differences in compatibility, in living spaces and in hobbies. I want to tell you about the resentment I feel when I have hyped someone up in my head and they tell you they're not in the right headspace. I want to tell you many things, but that would be casually cruel in the name of being honest. So I don't say anything. I spoke to Joey last night, it's amazing the things you can find out when you're too depressed to be naughty. He makes Mexican food?! What the fuck, the man has layers?? Yesterday was the first time he tried to draw a line between himself and billionaires, which I appreciated, even though he does work for Elon Musk, and if my calculations are correct, I think he's in the top 10% of the world in terms of wealth. Still, I appreciate his input on my incessant need to improve the world and come up with some viable solutions to world hunger. 

MONTEREY

I'm quite a socialist, and I believe in sharing resources. I also pay an exorbitant amount for my education, so to make things worth it, I like sharing everything I learn, on social media or on this here platform. I have the texts for my Liberal Studies course, whether in print or virtually, so if you'd like to read the texts, let me know. The range includes but isn't limited to The Epic of Gilgamesh, Vita Nuova, Symposium, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. We recently received the mid-term test papers back, so here were my essays. Again, if you read the texts themselves, all this information would make more sense. 

    In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes says that love is a wound and a want to be reunited with our other half, but Diotima says that "a lover does not seek the half or the whole, unless. . . it turns out to be good as well" (205e). Who is right? Why?

According to the speech that Aristophanes gives in Plato's Symposium, people who are in love are seeking to be rejoined with their perfectly-matched other half in order to heal a wound that was created when Zeus separated them from each other. In the stanza of 192C, Aristophanes proclaims, "And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it's to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment."

From Diotima's viewpoint, people in love seek only that which is good for themselves, or a person who would inspire them to create something which will attain a form of immortality, for they want what is good for them, and they want it to last, forever. From 208E, "I believe that anyone will do anything for the sake of immortal virtue and the glorious fame that follows; and the better the people, the more they will do, for they are all in love with immortality."

I veer more toward the stance that Diotima is right. Whilst there are people in love who are definitely always in search of their "one true soulmate", more often than not, this ideal creates unrealistic expectations for a person to have. A romantic relationship is unhealthy when the two parties involved do not want to leave each other's sides and have no sense of independence — this is what is currently known as enmeshment, which is when a relationship has a lack of boundaries. Additionally, with the idea that there is a "one true love" or "better half" in the world, it can lead to two things. First, people already in relationships constantly question if they have found the "right partner", instead of trying to build on the foundation of the relationship they are in. Secondly, it leads to people without romantic partners feeling a sense of lacking in themselves, when they could very well be fulfilled as a single person. 

In contrast, Diotima's idea of love is a healthier and more fulfilling one, so in that sense, I believe she is more "right" than Aristophanes is. From 211B and 211C: "it is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always in one form; and all the other beautiful things share in that, in such a way that when these others come to be or pass away, this does not become the least bit smaller or greater nor suffer any change... This is what it is to go aright, or be led by another, into the mystery of Love: one goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty. . . he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful."

Correspondingly, I believe people in love do pursue love for the sake of beauty, and for the sake of creation. Love causes an attraction toward the things that a person deems as good, and if a person loves the good in another, they would love the Good in every and all others, without discrimination. At least, I do believe that should be the standard in society, that everyone adopts an agape love, which treats everyone equally, regardless of whether they are your partner or not.

    — Nicely argued. Very clear summaries of their positions at the beginning.

 

    The Renaissance pop star Dante might agree with the contemporary pop star Dua Lipa that "Love is Religion." Explain using details from Dante's text.

Dante might agree with Dua Lipa that "Love is Religion" for several reasons. Followers of a religion are dedicated and steadfast in their rituals. Dante spent all his time in pursuit of Beatrice and in thinking of her. He also spent all his time writing, so he was religious about Beatrice and about writing, whether independently of each other or not. Followers of a religion may also be obedient without skepticism, and we see this in the following examples. In Chapter II, Dante writes, "Here is a god stronger than I, who shall come to rule over me" and in Chapter III, he writes "Love said 'I am your master.'" Both times, Dante simply submits without even questioning this force of Love. Dante is so fervent that he frequently makes supplications such as when he says "Love, help your faithful one" in Chapter XII. 

To Dante, love is also transformative, just like how religion is supposed to help one grow and be a better person. Chapter XVI: "I grieved when my memory excited my imagination to think of the transformations that Love worked in me" and "Love, many times without warning, attacked me so violently that no part of me remained alive." In his pursuit of Beatrice, his love also transforms as he moves his bliss from pursuit of her greeting to that of praising her. His writing also transforms at the same time as it moves from one movement to another with different writing styles, from the Provençal to dolce stil novo, until he feels in the last movement that he has transcended even all extant writing styles and successfully made his own. Thus, it shows that in both writing and his subject of Beatrice, he was both steadfast and allowed love to be transformative, as with a religion.

    — Very nice description of Dante's transformation and commitment to love/poetry.

GENDERBREAD

I received my grade for the first essay I wrote for the Love and Friendship module, and received kinda positive feedback from the professor I'm absolutely in love with, so I'm pretty much floating on a cloud right now. The disclaimer I would like to make is, my writing does not necessarily reflect my views, I have been called stubborn and inflexible on more than one occasion. But one can always learn and grow, I guess? :)

The dynamic between Creon and the titular character, Antigone, in Sophocles’ play is an ideal representation of the question “what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” In the play, the answers are: death and destruction. This is why I posit, based on an investigation of Creon’s and Antigone’s characters in the text, that wisdom is embodied in flexibility, a trait that neither protagonist possesses, until it is too late for both of them.  

Antigone’s singular action, of disobeying Creon’s explicit orders and going on to bury her brother Polyneices, is the driving force for why the play takes place, so we begin by examining Antigone’s character and her interactions. When she first confides in Ismene about her plans, and asks Ismene for help, Antigone poses the question “Are you true to your birth? Or a coward?” (38), therefore betraying the first instance in which she thinks in terms of binaries. Antigone thinks Ismene is true to her birth only if she assists with the burial, anything else would brand Ismene as a coward and nothing more in Antigone’s eyes. 

At the outset of the play, Ismene literally advises Antigone to “think carefully, my sister” (49) and in the following lines (50-67), Ismene proceeds to enumerate the great calamities that have befallen their family, following the Oedipal curse. However, Antigone ignores her sister’s laments and retaliates with “I wouldn’t even let you help if you had a change of heart” (69). Much later in the play, Antigone proclaims “I won’t accept a friend who’s only friends in words” (543). She does not want to divide the burden with Ismene, and Antigone has been stubborn through the entire text.

Despite the fact that Ismene has outlined her valid apprehension, Antigone provokes her with “Go on, make excuses. I am on my way” (80). This depicts the fact that Antigone is so unaccommodating, not only does she want to do the burial, she does not consider her sister’s legitimate fear and concerns, and calls them excuses.

Toward the end of this first dialogue, Antigone professes to Ismene, “You’ll be more enemy to me / If you are silent. Proclaim it to the world!” (86) and “When you say this, you set yourself against me” (93). Antigone sees the world in black and white, Ismene is either with her or against her, there is no space to negotiate anything in between. 

Even when Ismene tries to console Antigone and accompany her in a crucial, frightening moment, when the antihero is headed toward certain death, Antigone rejects her in line 546, with: “Don’t say you did it. You wouldn’t even touch it. Now leave my death alone!” Antigone is the picture-perfect definition of being an immovable object.

While we have scrutinized Antigone to her literal death, as a foil to her character, Ismene maintains: “But I gave you reasons not to make that choice” (556). Ismene has considered the minute details of the situation and was flexible enough not to think in binaries, thereby displaying wisdom in that she has not courted her own death.

We first examine Creon through the lines “...if anyone tries to run a city on the basis of bad policies… That man is terrible / So I have always thought” (176) and “I will never hold my tongue about what I see. I will never call a man my friend / If he is hostile to this land” (185). Here we see that Creon also subscribes to potentially false dichotomies, he uses the words always and never, peppering them frequently through his speeches, without considering the in-betweens of life. In the same tirade, Creon asserts, “They are the ones, I’m absolutely sure who used bribes / To lead our watchmen astray” (290), declaring statements that have no factual justification, yet with conviction of their veracity.


In lines 485-487, “...if she’s not punished… Then I am not a man… I don’t care if she is my sister’s child,” Creon believes it would reflect well on him that he would treat even his niece, to whom his own son is betrothed, with cold objectivity, but it further isolates him as being obstinate and unfeeling.


In his intense back-and-forth dialogue with Haemon, Creon utters the lines, “So you think the people should tell me what orders to give?” (734) as well as “So I should rule this country for someone other than myself?” (736). He is purposefully being provocative and inflammatory, although Haemon has been cautiously trying to advise him. This culminates in Creon accusing Haemon of a threat. Haemon then asks, “What threat? All I’m saying is, you haven’t thought this through” (752), followed by Creon’s retort of “I’ll make you wish you’d never had a thought in your empty head!” (754). 

While Ismene is the foil to her sister Antigone, Haemon acts in much the same way for his father Creon. Haemon contends, beginning in line 688, “My natural duty’s to look out for you, spot any risk… The common man, you see, lives in terror of your frown; He’ll never dare to speak up in broad daylight… But I’m the one who hears what’s said at night… This sort of talk moves against you, quietly, at night.” Through this little monologue, we see that Haemon possesses the flexibility to respect Creon yet is also privy to the real opinions of Thebes’ common folk, and this provides Haemon the wisdom of knowing what is really happening. Conversely, because Creon has ruled through fear, he has never had the wisdom of knowing what people really believe about him.

While Creon is bitterly embattled against Tiresias, he complains, “...you people keep shooting arrows at me…/ Like marksmen at a target” (1035). Instead of realising that the many approaches of advice for him indicates a necessity for reflection on what he could be doing better, Creon feels attacked and does not benefit from any counsel.

Once Tiresias has revealed Haemon’s impending death, Creon protests “It’s so painful to pull back; it goes against my heart” (1105). If Creon had been flexible, it would not have been so painful for him to pull back, before the last minute. It is only for Creon and Antigone, whose identities revolved around their stubbornness, that it would be excruciatingly painful to change a stance, because they held their beliefs so close, so dear, and so important to themselves. For people whom such stances are fluid, these decisions would not weigh so heavy on their hearts.

As we approach the play’s conclusion, Creon’s expressions take the forms of “You were expelled from life / By my bad judgment, never yours” (1265), “Why don’t you kill me now? / My misery is so huge” (1309), and “I killed you, poor child…/ I’m worth less than a nobody” (1319). We have now seen Creon lose everyone who was dear to him, and suffer much pain that could have been narrowly avoided, if he had simply acted sooner. Having seen Antigone lose her life, and Creon lose everything of value in his life, both due to their extreme tunnel vision and single-mindedness, we can infer that flexibility is indeed a form of wisdom, which you would do poorly to lack in life.

This was her feedback:

Sarah Mei,

You have a wonderful, expressive writing voice, and there is excellent use of evidence in this essay. A couple of things that would improve a future draft: clarifying the thesis to be more specific and following from your particular analysis of the play. For example, perhaps something about how thinking in binaries/dichotomies leads the characters to adopt an all-or-nothing rigidity. Having a specified thesis would then help to organize your body paragraphs into micro theses that support this over-arching claim. 

Another key thing is to be sure to begin new paragraphs with a claim or a micro-thesis that tells the reader how the evidence that follows is building toward the main thesis. With these two edits, this would become an outstanding paper.  78/B+

(I have made in-text notes on docx file)

BUY AN UMBRELLA, YOU CHEAP BITCH

I've had an enlightening, enjoyable and lovely weekend. Alessia and I took the ferry to Vancouver, and it was my first time going into the city proper, because prior to this, I'd only done a short transit at the Vancouver airport to fly into the island. Alessia's family lives in Vancouver so I was doing a sleepover at her family's house. Her mom picked us up in the drive over from the ferry terminal to their house, and I had a sort-of field trip on the way over. Alessia's brother had just returned from his birthday trip to Whistler with his girlfriend, and they're twenty years old, so her mom was telling us about the trip, and everything was just so chill. In Singapore, if you're from my community, when you go on a trip with your romantic partner, you'd have to lie to your parents about the people you're going with, pretend it's a group trip with your friends, etc. I learned about the issue with snow in Vancouver, and the fact that they recently had a salt shortage during a snow-in, and had to get salt delivered in trucks from other provinces. A salt shortage! To deal with snow!!!! What an interesting issue. 

We got to their house, and they had prepared the guest room for me. Alessia has a dog (fuck I'd asked for the breed, but now I've forgotten, I know there's a poodle part in the mix) called Korra, who is the gentlest furriest bear of a doggo, and she was so friendly, I loved giving her belly rubs. Alessia then drove me to Stanley Park, which was a lovely gradient of yellows and oranges and reds, and we found out that Stanley Park is bigger than Central Park in terms of land area! We then went to Granville Island, which is like a cross between Grand Central Market in LA and... I think, the Meatpacking District in New York? It has an entire market of fresh, delicious, diverse variations of cuisines, and also lots of cool, crafty, indie items on sale. I know when I was in New York, Adam took me to a sort-of reclaimed warehouse, that sold soy candles and eco-conscious items, I don't remember where it was at the moment, but for some reason the term Meatpacking District means something to me? Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, Granville Island is currently my favorite place in Vancouver, and I definitely look forward to another full-day visit sometime. This time, I had a lox bagel sandwich, and the salmon tasted so fresh, I know now what they mean that seafood is super fresh in this city. We also bought fudge, and I had some of mine, and kept the rest to snack on during long and heavy classes. I freshened up at Alessia's home, then left for my date. My date(s?) and I have a running joke, I was supposed to be going on two different dates on the weekend, because I'd matched with them on the dating apps (hilariously enough, I matched them on different apps - one was on Bumble and the other on Hinge) and found myself getting along with them at the same time. 

However, one of them had a busy weekend, and so I met only one of them on Saturday. He brought a rose, because I apparently am now on The Bachelorette, and I will have to make my pick between the two of them. We had a lovely date, he brought me for bingsoo, as well as sushi. We got sushi at Davies St, which is the LGBT district of Vancouver, and the sushi was so fucking good! It wasn't even expensive, but it was delicious, so I suppose I will be eating much more sushi here than in Singapore. Even though the weather was hideously rainy (not something I enjoy, y'all know I love and thrive on the sun), I had a very enjoyable date. He also bought me "Canadian snacks" - most of which I'll probably snack on during my film studies classes, so basically all the people I'm hanging out with are being the best tour guides, and I’m so grateful.

Having mentioned one date, another curious thing is the other person I'd matched with, he and I have a mutual friend, a thing that has never happened in all my years and regions of being on dating apps. If you're observant, you'll know who our mutual friend is, because I only have one Singaporean friend who lives in Vancouver. She knows about us and our match, she had only nice things to say about him, and so, in my book, this increases his credibility by 319218. I'm looking forward to seeing him. On one of our video calls, he showed me his relatively new tattoos, and one of them was a character I recognised immediately, because I'd also been enamoured by her on the Netflix food documentary she was featured on. It struck me as wonderful that he'd chosen such a person for a tattoo. 

On my date on Saturday, I found out that he and I had a very enjoyable time, emotionally and physically, you may make of that what you will. It's always nice to know that someone you can connect with, also fits with you physically, so that's great. Now I will have to see the other person, and see if there is also a spark in real life. If there is, then I'm either fucked, or it's time to explore polyamory (I KID, I KID). I like both people, or what I know of them. They are both humorous, work with sound, are very aware of their own... personal stuff, as well as socially aware of all the shit that goes on in society, and I'm fond of them. I think they like and appreciate different things in media, though, so it is interesting to see how dating each of them will turn out. 

At the moment, I just learned about interactive movie screenings of The Room and Rocky Horror Picture Show, both of which the audience can participate in and do call backs to the dialogue/scenes (for example when Janet uses a newspaper to shelter herself from the rain, someone will yell "buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch"), or throw items like rice, or toast, or spoons, at the screen, at different points of the movie. This seems so fucking fun and I cannot wait to experience it for the first time in my life. Somebody needs to tell The Projector in Singapore to do this, I'm sure they know of such screenings happening, but I wonder why they don't conduct such viewings. 

I am.... happy. I am feeling a lot of love, and I hope you feel it too, in some way, shape or form. Thank you, Canadians, for making my experience of Canada feel so wholesome.

ANOMALISA

you call me again drunk in your Benz
driving home under the influence

you scared me to death
but I'm wasting my breath
'cos you only listen to your fucking friends

I don't relate to you
I don't relate to you, no
'cos I'd never treat me this shitty
you make me hate this city
and I don't talk shit about you on the Internet
never told anyone anything bad

'cos that shit's embarrassing
you were my everything

and all that you did was make me fucking sad
so don't waste the time I don't have

don't try to make me feel bad

I would like to make a disclaimer that I am simply linking this song because it's been in my head since I first heard it at the Friendsgiving dinner I went to on Sunday evening. I think it's a good song, and I love the contrast between how calm and serene it sounds before it turns into an absolutely ragey rant, and it still works so well together. It's one of those songs I think will stay in my mind for years to come. I absolutely did not expect this.

This has been a lovely week for me. Kass invited me to a Friendsgiving dinner, where I had my first sweet potato pie that was topped with marshmallows. North Americans eat the weirdest food, but it works, so. I had my first mid-term test this week, I have consumed a lot of media for school and have written a lot over the course of the past seven days, so I don't quite have much more in the way of words.

I shared a password to a media platform with someone who has been in my life for a literal week, and he shared his password to another media platform that I don't have a subscription to, and I don't quite know why, but this feels so intimate. I am possibly ascribing more meaning to something than it inherently has, but that's me, as you well know. People have been very nice to me, and I am smiling, and laughing so much, and even though it is way too early to tell and I will never know why, I think I know which direction I am leaning toward. What do I mean? Who knows? We'll see. 

As always, I wish you the best weekends and the best lives. :)

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

It has been a long day, but a very good one. This morning I gave my presentation on Dante’s Vita Nuova, I was proud of my slides and the snarky words I’d chosen to highlight Dante’s sheer audacity. That was at the start of the class, and my professor said after that, that it was such a high bar for the rest of the class to match up to in their weekly presentations, and that my professor herself didn’t want to follow after me, to conduct the class. She was being very sweet and kind to me, but I felt so relieved and appreciated for the work I had put in. I really like this professor, I want to be friends with her and her co-lecturer, who is such an interesting and fascinating character, with the most wondrous collection of knowledge. My presentation lasted five minutes, so we had one hour and twenty-five minutes left in the class. It is the liberal studies class, where we discuss important texts about love and friendship, and two of my classmates engaged in an organic debate about the parallels between Dante and Diotima (from completely different texts) and they got so involved, one of them began visualising an entire new premise of his own, and drew it in the form of a graph on the blackboard. We mathematically and graphically tried to represent philosophy, and spoke of asymptotes (I’ll give you what the axes represent if you ask me, it’s a long, 2000-year-old story). I felt like I was being treated to the first, unrevised versions of my classmates’ respective future TED talks, if TED talks are a thing that will continue way into the future. Sometimes I worry about money, I wonder how I will afford to pay for all of my tuition, because my loan doesn’t cover all of it, but in that moment, I gave myself leave to enjoy education and knowledge, for the sake of the education and knowledge I was receiving. My heart was full of love and joy. It was a moment that will live in my memory for very, very long, and I cherish it. I wish education were affordable and accessible to everyone who wants it, and not done for the sake of capitalism and earning higher wages. 

I did some work in between, until DnD started at 5pm. Every week, I get more terms added to my lexicon, I learn how to say “nat twenty” for a natural 20 on the die, “soft twenty”, which is when your die adds up with your character bonuses to give you twenty, and today I learned “dice jail”, which is the funniest and most endearing thing I learned about the superstitions of my fellow players, who are otherwise pretty darn intelligent and rational. We were well into our session when one of them said he wanted sushi. I haven’t had sushi in Nanaimo, it’s supposed to be really fresh and good and cheap here, because we’re right by the sea, so I said we should order sushi. Then the girl next to me said she should probably eat because she hadn’t eaten for the day and she had gotten started on a new medication for ADHD, today itself. We took forever to order because all the nearby sushi places that delivered were closed for the day, etc etc, but we got into some pretty whackass hilarious conversations over the phone, as a group. In the end, we couldn’t get sushi but I insisted that we order pizza, for the sake of the girl who hadn’t eaten. It was pretty alright pizza, incomparable to sushi – a food I would marry if I could, but at the end of it, she sent me a personal message on Discord thanking me for being kind, and again, I felt the same love I’d felt with my professor in the morning. I have strong protective instincts, it comes with having many younger siblings. I’m not the best elder sister, but I know the people who hurt my younger siblings, I would be down to… do something to them in return. I also have strong protective instincts because there are a lot of people in my life who have always fought to protect me, because I suppose I’ve had lots of bumps in my life and I didn’t grow up the same way they did, so I learn from these strong protective forces in my life, all the time. Alternatively, I also don’t like it when people don’t have their meals on time, because I know sometimes when you’re not mentally all there, when you’re just too preoccupied with life, it just takes you more spoons to make sure your body is equipped with the basics it needs. Self-care can be impossible for the people who need it most, so I needed to make sure this girl fed herself.

I’ve been quite homesick, there are many things I miss about being home. I feel like I would sound ungrateful if I voiced it, so I don’t, but I know everything I know, everything I love is back there. I love Canada, I love the part of Canada I’m in, every day has been such a joy but I’ve been trying to be honest with all the conflicting feelings I’m having. Today, today I felt at ease, and joyful, and loving and loved, and I was proud of today. Today someone was kind to me and I was able to pass that kindness on.

EXIT PLAN

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” 

― Theodore Roosevelt

STUFF WE DID

A thing that I'm getting used to while I'm here, is how comfortable some people can be about themselves, by themselves. They text when they want to text, they don't text if they don't want to text. They say what they really mean, and mean what they say. I think it's a little bit of a culture shock. I don't know if it's particularly my gender or Malay-Muslim community or the fact that I was in fact a woman and grew up in the Malay-Muslim community, but I suppose a lot of my identity in Singapore had to do with how I relate to others, how good of a friend I am, how much of a big sister I can be to my younger peers at work, how I interact with my family members. A lot of who I am hinges upon what I can be or do in service of other people. It is the first time I am living on my own, properly and for the long-term, and I have all the freedom in the world, within reasonable boundaries. I would like to explore the sliding-scale of my personality, and find out who I am, and how much of who I am is what I thought other people wanted me to be. I have spoken to Joey more and more, and I think he is trying to make me have some sense of the person he really is, so I don't live in my head or portray an ideal of him in my head. In a way, I've always known the person he really is, of course, I just didn't want to contend with it. However, I find that this might work just as well, if I'm to really find peace and move along. I've been playing catch-up on my schoolwork, I think it's going as well as can be hoped for. I don't have much to say about school, I feel like it takes up a lot of my brain juice so I don't have much energy to think about anything else. DnD has been fun, I am at the babiest of steps of creating my character, and I have about 99% more information to absorb about the entire realm, so that's yet another information overload I'm constantly engaging in. MJ gave me some very significant advice yesterday, and I do hope that if a romance unfolds here, it will be like the one I had with him at work (not that it was a romance), but I hope it's a dynamic in which I make a friend, and we grow to know and trust each other, and I hope if I fall for the person here, they fall back for me. I miss MJ, he's so much more mature than he portrays himself to be. 

RAVEN

In Love and Friendship this morning, we further discussed Plato’s Symposium. Diotima says love should be a love in the abstract, a general love for the general, whereas Alcibiades makes it very, very personal and asserts that for love to be love, there must be one particular object to direct your love to. In it, there is a speech made by Alcibiades, he proclaims his love for Socrates and it is a speech I very much identify with. There is a kind of desperation to his tangent, I like the speech very much, as I can be relied on to admire most ideals of love. I think the kind of love I know how to do is the kind that feels both possible and impossible at the same time, the kind that makes you feel there’s no love that’s not laced with hate. Contrary to what people may believe or want to believe about me, there are far fewer people I love and care for, than the ones that I do. It takes me a lot to actually love someone, I think, of course there are prerequisites that must be fulfilled, the foundational level has to be ticked, before you go up another level, and then another, and then eventually, you reach the point of love. I find that I have been compartmentalising much more than I thought I was, there is an entire box of things, in my brain, that exists without my contributing to it. It’s a box with wardrobes and shelves, it knows without ever expressing: the RX8 is his car, this is the model of bike he rides, that’s the truck, these are the Vans he wore, that’s what he drinks as a meal replacement, what series did we watch together way back when, what school did they do their Master’s at, what colors does he mix up from color blindness, this is how he laughs, that’s the kind of joke I already expect him to make, he likes dulce de leche ice cream, this is what he can benchpress, what time and what day will he respond, what product does he use in his hair, how do I make his bed because I’ve never had a flat sheet for mine, who am I thinking about when it comes right down to it? Who is it? It infuriates me because I keep this box pretty well-sealed but somehow it seeps through and the feelings I get from it are stronger, they are more vivid by the time they reach my senses, they make me question everything and nothing — and I, I am currently a scholar of at least one philosophy module but the more I learn, the more I learn that I don’t know anything.

VETTEL TAKES A STROLL

I feel like this week is the week that has made me feel like this is now my real life. It has been such a week, and it’s only Thursday. I wore the wrong top to school yesterday, and it was suddenly windy when I walked home, so I was pretty sure I was going to get hypothermia. I’ve begun to feel the little inklings of stress that comes with being in school. The worry from the night before an assignment is due: should I stay up now to complete it or will I be able to work better if I sleep and do it early in the morning? Will I wake up in time to do my assignment or will I miss my alarm? Yesterday when I got home I was completely out of energy from the cold (and from my nine hours in school) and I was too lazy to cook, so I heated up a can of soup, soup that probably had minimal amounts of nutrition and also tasted terrible. My only respite was Money Heist. When I watch Money Heist I feel like the Spanish in my brain that I learned from Duolingo, it comes alive, but then I go out into real life, and I forget everything. Yesterday I was outside a classroom where I could hear a level 100 class of Spanish being held. It was cute. Two years from now a handful of them will only be able to order off a Spanish menu and that will be pretty much it. That’s as conversational as it gets.

IN MY HEADI DO EVERYTHING RIGHT

I found out why I was having such fever dreams and almost texted Joey. Almost, but I did not. Sarah 1 - 0 hormones. I got my period, obviously. I wonder if other girls get this damn horny in the build-up to their periods. Why doesn't anyone ever talk about such things? I find it strange. I find a lot of things strange, but I do find this strange as well. Like, it's a natural mechanism for the human body to feel hungry, and it's okay for me to say I'm hungry three times a day, and say I'm craving Mexican food. And then my body tells me to jump someone's bones, because it's in heat, and suddenly it's taboo to say. Why? Who set the damn rules? The Bible? The Quran? HAHAHA. 

I had my first day of school yesterday. It was so long, both my 3-hour classes actually went on for 3 hours each, so I had six straight hours of classes. I do not understand why my schedule is so heavy on only one day, but I think when I accepted it it was because I'd planned to work on my free days, which is still supposed to happen. I had my first lecture for a liberal studies mod, it's called Love and Friendship, which sounds like ridiculous bullshit, but I enjoyed it so very much.

It's basically a course where we parse texts ranging from thousands of years to decades ago, we're reading the likes of Plato and Goethe and Sophocles, and we're taking everything that was said in those texts, about love and friendship. We do also discuss some rather more contemporary influences, like Virginia Woolf and MLK, Jr. Both the co-lecturers are so, so engaging and funny and entertaining (one of them broke out into song and dance, and I swear I fell in love with her, but no, I can't - because power dynamics in a school). 

We were talking about love in two of its Greek forms, erōs and philia. Plato describes each human as having been a full four-legged creature and so when we were split into two, we all have a yearning for our other half, through ages and ages, looking for them. I'm going to tell you exactly what went through my head as this was being said in the lecture. I thought of Joey. Listen, I don't know how my brain works, I don't know how anything works, but Joey was the person who scratched Taylor's Love Story for me when we first met five years ago, and in case you just met me, Taylor Swift is my favorite artist of all time. My only frame of reference is my entire life of experiences, so yeah. I don't quite have a fair chance of asking my brain to jump to anyone or anything else, immediately, when such incidents are discussed. 

Anyhow, I also had my first Feminisms and Genders (they are two different modules) seminars yesterday, those are the classes that stretched across six hours. My professor is the head of the department and she's rad. I love her too, she's head (and creator) of the committee to deconstruct the syllabus and make everything anti-racist. She's very respectful of the lands we live on, and she taught us to say the Native names of the territory and its people. I said when I started school I wanted to go by Sarah Mei, and true enough, in my Feminisms seminar, we have three Sarahs (fuck me I TOLD YOU it's the most common name), so she immediately picked me out as Sarah Mei. 

This semester's going to be super great. I can tell I'm going to enjoy my classes phenomenally. I definitely need to have a coffee to start off every Wednesday though.  

CHRISTA MCAULIFFE

Okay so, tomorrow is my first official day of school. It’s a Wednesday and Wednesdays are my longest days. I have three classes from 8.30am all the way to 5.30pm. The good thing is there’s a Starbucks in the building of my first class, and as a planner, I’ve planned my day to include a Starbucks drink, if I’m feeling a little decadent. Otherwise, I’ll just drink whatever I have at home. As a planner, I’ve also planned many other ridiculous things in life. I’ve planned what to go as for Halloween (that’s like seven weeks away). Here is what’s ridiculous about it: it’s a couples outfit, and I have no romantic partner. I’m nailing this planning thing. I’ve also planned a trip to Mérida, Mexico! That’s where Samin Nosrat went to in the Netflix episode so I figure I can find really good food there. I already found out how much the return tickets will be. Not quite dirt cheap, but not exactly expensive. It’s not gonna be out of my pocket, anyhow, so I might as well travel while it’s still valid. I’m just gonna settle in to school, get used to my workload, and then I’ll book it. Perhaps in November or December, when it’s cold here and I want a week of sun. Perhaps, if my schoolwork allows it. Can you tell I’m nervous about school? Because I am. My schoolmates are all a literal decade younger than I am, what are they going to talk about??? Animal Crossing? TikTok? Oh my God I’m ancient.

MELIPONA

I applied to join two different student clubs in school. I'm not sure if I'll be accepted, I don't know how they work here, but both are activities I've never really dabbled in, so I'll be in the deep end of the pool. I do know I'd love to learn all about how each different aspect of life works, it would be cool to grow in territories I've never stepped on, so we'll see. I just finished watching an episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, I have one more episode left (the Heat episode). The Netflix series basically explains how each of the four factors plays a part in cooking, and so I've bought the cookbook to use in my future kitchen adventures. I've been cooking a lot since I got here. Mostly because it's cheaper to cook, but also because I enjoy cooking. I didn't used to cook as much because it was my grandma's domain, she shows her love for us through her cooking and her food is really good, anyhow, so there was no need for me to step into the kitchen. I did enjoy it, though, there were a few recipes I would always make that my friends loved to eat, and my mom knew I liked to cook, so she got me an apron that I brought along to wear when I cook here. I'm looking forward to using the Salt Fat Acid Heat cookbook because I've really liked how she's approached it almost as a science, I've never seen a cooking show that worked like hers. The reviews for the cookbook are stellar too. In the Acid episode on Netflix, she went to a village in Mexico where the residents bring their little cornflour/masa to the community mill to make their tortillas, and it's so adorable. I love the idea of communal living and facilities. Everything they made in the Acid episode looked amazing, from the tikin xic to all the different salsas with habanero and without, to the pavlova (looked! stunning!). There's a little Mexican restaurant a block away from our place, that looks super good, it's always packed, and I think the owners/chefs might be actually Mexican. They have horchata! I saw the menu but I haven't eaten there yet. I love Mexican food, but in Singapore, we don't have Mexican food like they do in this part of the world. Don't get me wrong, the Mexican restaurants in Singapore serve great food, but it's not like when I was in LA where I got to visit small shops making their own tortillas instead of using machine-made ones. Plus, you can't find horchata in Singapore. I wanna see Mexico sometime. Y'all know I won that flight credit from the TripAdvisor writing contest thing (I must have mentioned when I won it), and I used some of it on the way here, so I've got like $10k left to use. I'm guessing flying to Mexico from here wouldn't take up too much money. The only thing I need is for the pandemic thing to settle, I think I can travel out of and back into Canada, if I test negative for the virus, I know I was exempt from quarantine because of my vaccination status, but I don't know. I don't wanna take my chances, and the damn PCR test is invasive as heck. It feels like when you accidentally swallow a gulp of water when you're swimming, but instead of water, it's.... a solid stick. Bluergh.

UNDERCUT

Yesterday, I went to the Value Village at the University Mall near my place. Value Village is a thrift store, and I was looking for a secondhand kettle and rice cooker. When I was cashing out, the girl at the cashier said she liked my skirt and asked me where it was from. I told her it was from Singapore, so she asked if I was going to uni and I said yes. We found out we're taking the same philosophy module this semester, and she said some of the reading materials for that course could be found right there, secondhand. I made my first friend, her name is Skyler! Cannot wait to see her again in school!!!!

I thrifted maybe half the things I would need, like cookware and bedroom furniture. One of them was this mirror. I did a room tour, which is a stories highlight on my Instagram now. It's a little silly to do a room tour 'cos the room isn't big and I don't have very much, but as I said, my Singaporean friends are eager to see all about my new life here.

On my first day here, I was a little miffed at my roommates because the kitchen was messy and they had left me literally no space to use in the shared fridge. One of them had her boyfriend over and they were in her room, so I didn't see her for all of two days. I eventually found out that the other roommate, Sunny, had been in a bike accident. She's walking around in crutches now and she had to have surgery after her accident. I'd planned to get a bicycle for my commute around town, but now I'm thinking about it again. I tend to err on the side of safety. Sunny dropped a bowl of sugar on my second day in the apartment and I helped her sweep it up, and I cannot afford to rely on anyone like that if I'm going to school. 

Sunny is a 52-year-old Korean, which my other roommate and I found out yesterday because I asked, and we were both shocked. She has a 26-year-old daughter but she looks like she's only slightly above 30. I guess Korean skincare does work.

My other roommate is Poonam, she's also going to VIU but she's in her final semester and graduating soon. Her boyfriend has gone back to India so they'll be doing long-distance for a while. Poonam helped me clear out some fridge space, so all's good now. We're also going to the city today, she's helping me set up my bus pass and all other admin matters.

On the day I landed in Nanaimo, I was struggling with my 10kg backpack, yoga mat, and two huge luggages. To help me get out of a coffee shop, a lady went out of her way to hold the door open. On the way to my apartment, I also didn't know how the buses worked yet, so the bus driver asked for the vicinity of my place, drove me as close as he could to it and stopped where there wasn't even a bus stop, and he didn't charge me because he knew I had no clue what was going on.

The sidewalk right in front of our house has a row of sunflowers planted along the side, and there were kids' chalk drawings on the ground!!!!!!

All of that happened on my first day here, so if that's what Canada is going to be like for me in the next four years, I'm very excited for more.

Yesterday I also shopped for groceries. I wanted more lavender ice-cream, like the one I had with Joey in LA. The grocery store didn't have any. Perhaps when we are in the city today, I will find some. The weather is actually really nice in Nanaimo right now, but I know the temperatures are gonna drop soon, and then cuffing szn will begin. It would be nice to rest my head on Joey's shoulder, have lavender (or any flavor, tbh) ice-cream and watch the rest of The Kingdom. Dang. I am a creature of familiar comforts indeed.

Currently, what is intimidating me are Canadian coins. You know you are comfortable in a place only when you've gotten familiar with their coins. I currently have $16 worth of coins, and I'm going to remedy the situation by spending some of them today.

It has been one of the greatest weeks of my life. It hasn't always been smooth or pleasant, and I was really tired from my journey here. Yet I know this is only the foundation, and the beginning. I swear I will always remember with gratitude, everybody who contributed some money, to give me a little margin to get started with, to indulge in a little bit of fun before I get down to srs bsnzz. I am grateful for everyone who's stuck around and comforted me with wise words when my anxiety got the better of me. I'm even actually really, really happy to have met one of the loves of my life, to have seen so much growth, in him, and perhaps in both of us. It's been a solid first week, and I feel encouraged to see and do more.

Calm just reminded me I haven't meditated at all this week, so I must do so tonight. I wanted to do so on the night I arrived at Joey's place, because a 16-hour flight is something you need to meditate from. But then when we eventually got to bed, it was pretty much 2am and I didn't wanna keep him up 'cos he was driving me off at 4.30ish. So! Long story short, I have a lot to meditate on tonight.

Have a safe and lovely week, wherever and whenever you are. You are always in my thoughts. Edit: I got a Canadian number now, please hit me up if you’d like it, on Instagram or whatever! Otherwise I won’t be responding to my Singapore number anymore.

PERUVIAN VIPERTOOTH

Tina’s in Peru for a wedding so she’s actually closer to me in timezones than she would be in NYC. I wish she would just fly here so I can spend time with her. Today is my first day meeting my housemates, one of them has her arm in a cast because she broke it in a bike accident. They also left no space for me to use in our shared fridge. URGHHHHH I fucking hate having to establish boundaries. Also re: Tina’s last question, I thought I made it quite obvious. Hmmmm. Tina and Joey would like each other ‘cos they’re both ridiculous. Also because I clearly have very strong feelings for both of them. Joey said he’s contemplating a work move to Seattle and I’ve been thinking about it way too much even though it has nothing to do with me. U R G H what am I going to do with myself.

THE LONGEST DAY IN THE LIFE

we were both young when I first saw you

This post is going to talk about all kinds of love: the platonic kind, romantic, physical and fun love, an agape love for your neighbor and each individual in the world, familial and filial love, and some of them are mixed in with one another. If you cannot tell what kind of love I mean, it probably means I'm confused and can't tell either, and I'm not even being coy. I really don't know.

 
First of all, I was supposed to fly ANA to Narita, then onwards to Vancouver last Sunday. When I was checking in, the ground crew told me that my Covid PCR test was not going to be valid for my arrival time in Nanaimo (where I will be studying), because I'd taken my PCR test too early and my layover in Narita was going to be too long, and therefore I wasn't allowed to board my flight. Most of my friends and family members were there at the airport with me. I felt completely dejected, so I went home and cried, and just bummed around, before booking a more direct flight through LAX.

Anyhow, on that Sunday night, Jaysen passed me a wrapped book that he said was supposed to last me through the layover. It was the book Humans by Brandon Stanton, and it contains 400 or so stories about and by humans all over the world. If you're familiar with the account Humans of New York on Instagram, it's basically the same concept, but done with people from all over the world. As I had two days before my next actual flight to LAX, I finished reading it at home. I loved it. I love books like that because I love human stories, and I especially love the Humans series because on my second time in LA (in 2016), I was reading the Humans of New York book, and somehow I found myself in New York next, so I just... really feel an affinity for it. I left the book at home because I'd finished reading it and I didn't have much space in my luggage, so if anyone in Singapore would like to borrow it, let me know and I'll ask one of my sisters to pass it to you.

Jaysen wrote me a card to accompany the book. The intro of the card is like that because some of them (my clingies hehehe) had written me a card for my farewell, and Jaysen wrote his message in it last minute, while he was in my house restroom, when they had come over for dinner. Jeez. In any case, Jay said he knows I'll move on to do powerful and meaningful things in the world, and Monica said in her farewell message that she'll always support my changemaker ways, and hearing words and messages like that always pushes me forward. Sometimes I think people think I'm unrealistic, I'm too dreamy, and when I try to push for a replacement of capitalism, when I denounce the grind of life, when I argue for a degrowth economy to make a final push against climate change, I feel really silly and I think most people in my life just look at me like I'm weird. So it helps to know that some people do believe in the things I believe in, or at least they're not discouraging me from my beliefs. 

On my actual flight to LAX, I'd arrived early for check-in, and the ground crew was almost done with my pre-boarding, when she said she couldn't complete it because it would beep her to key in my ESTA number. If you're not familiar with ESTA, it's a sort-of visa alternative for countries that have good connections with the US or whatever, so Singapore is part of it. Before Covid, Singaporeans didn't need an ESTA for layovers and transits, both the ground staff and I confirmed it, but apparently it had changed just for Covid. So, I applied for my ESTA right there and then, but time kept passing and it wasn't being approved. I was losing hope because at the time I applied for my ESTA, it was 6am in EDT, which means even earlier (3am) in PDT, and I was so done waiting and trying to get around Covid procedures.

I left the boarding counter, and found my friends, Syai, Aishah and MJ on the departure kerbside. They weren't allowed into the terminal because in Singapore, the Covid protocol is only passengers are allowed into terminals. I sat there, lamenting my entire PCR test and ESTA fiasco, and telling them I didn't want to go to Canada anymore, Canada hates me, and every part of my journey seemed jinxed. All three of them (and Nate, who used to fly with SQ) told me they would wait for me till the very last minute. They called the ESTA hotline, they Googled ESTA durations, they tried to find loopholes. I was ready to retrieve my luggage to go home, when at the actual very fucking last minute (the email's timestamp was 6.41pm and my flight was at 7.50pm), I received the email saying my ESTA had been approved. 

I ran the fuck out of the terminal and gave everyone a hug, then ran to board my plane. If I graduate, I mean when I graduate, because clearly I will graduate, it will only be because I have people like MJ, Aishah, Syai and Nate who sat me the fuck down and told me not to give up hope.  

I eventually boarded the plane to LAX, and found out I had three hours of complimentary wifi. My Instagram inbox had been flooded with well-wishes as Singaporeans (who are still not completely allowed to leave the country) said they would live vicariously through me, watching me in my studies. Sandi texted me saying I had "main character vibes" and I suppose, I'll try to be a good main character?????

When I arrived in LA, I met up with Joey. This plan was only 2 days in the making, because you understand I'd only booked the flight ticket through LAX two days prior to flying. On the way there, while in the plane, I was very unsure of it. I hadn't met him since 2016 when, if you will recall, we accidentally got knocked up lololol. We haven't had the smoothest relationship online for the five years since, either. He said he would meet me, but I didn't know if he would stand me up, or whatever. 

He did end up picking me up at the airport, along with all my luggage. I'd intended to leave the luggage at the airport, but all the lockers got removed after 9/11, so the more you know. We'd planned to get ice cream or dessert, but we went to a couple of places, and they were all closed, because by the time we had driven out of the airport, it was half past ten ish at night. I did, however, see a lululemon in one of the malls. I got excited, even though I fucking hate lululemon (it pleases me so to be able to say it after two years). I hate lululemon just by virtue of it being fast fashion, otherwise the clothes are pretty decent. I've been wearing only lululemon through my entire journey (which has now taken thirty-two hours, and the clock is still ticking). 

So he brought me to Ralphs, which is a grocery store/Trader Joe's type-beat supermart that closes late, and we got ice-cream in a tub. Joey also said I smelled like animal crackers (what in the fuck, I do not understand) so we got a pack of animal crackers for me to smell. We went back to his place, and we watched the first episode of The Kingdom, which was just Joey making silly comments about it, whilst I complained about the lack of zombies (spoiler: they only start turning up at the end of the pilot). 

He gave me a tour of his current house, and it was actually a pretty nice place. As expected, he had random bolts from previous rockets, all his geek-type shit, but then in the parking lot! There was a limousine!!!! I don't know why he or his housemates have a limousine, and it just again reminded me of how.... absurd his life is. He works for Elon Musk at SpaceX, and I don't think he has as critical a mindset of billionaires as I do, of course. In any case, seeing a limo in his parking lot just made me feel a lot. On the one hand, why the fuck would anyone have a random limo?????? On the other hand, Taylor Swift also goes around in limousines and I love Taylor Swift, although why I'm comparing Joey to Taylor Swift, I do not know. Los Angeles is fucking weird. 

Joey and I made up a joke about giving him 5 stars on Yelp, because he'd been such a considerate host the entire night. When I was in his car, he asked if I was feeling warm or cold, and then when we were at his place, he asked if I needed another blanket or pillows while I was in his living room, and he told me I could get water from the dispenser, etc etc. Also, something that made me smile was Joey now carries a waterbottle around his house to drink water from, which is a huge improvement from five years ago. He used to have cartons upon cartons of bottled water to drink from!!!! At the time, it didn't bother me that much because I wasn't as aware of climate change, but if I saw it now, it would bug me. I wonder if he made the switch because of some other woman in his life, because if he did, the world has only her to thank.

After midnight, while Joey was going to bed, I teased and flirted through text, and I'm saying it upfront because we need to normalise women having physical desires and expressing them. This is also why y'all always see me posting about my toys on Instagram, because I would like it to be normal accepted behavior!! So, even though he had been completely gracious and made not a single move on me, I basically jumped him in bed. I would like to say, firstly, that doing stuff at 26 and 27 years old, and then doing it at a jump later at 31 and 32 years old, feels different, and it felt much better now. The good thing is Joey does what he says he will do (men need to underpromise and overdeliver), so even though it was daytime in Singapore time and I should have been awake, he induced me to sleep without even any external.... appliances. HAHAHA I amuse myself so much does anyone else even appreciate me making a clown of myself?????? 

While we were both drifting in and out of sleep (we only had like three hours of sleep between the time we actually went to sleep and the time we had to wake up for my flight to Vancouver), I counted the number of times we both had the sleep jerk. You know, when you're falling asleep-asleep, sometimes you kinda have a little spasm when you actually fall asleep, I don't know why but last night, it preoccupied me to observe how many times we did it. Could have been because I'd already had a longass journey, and my brain needed something to do.

I don't know what it is about Joey. I know I'm starting a new life in Vancouver and I'll meet new people, and you never know the kind of people you will fall in love with, but it's been five years, and he still has space in my heart, and it's been two years since New York, and I know I will always have a soft spot for Bennett. For all intents and purposes, Joey and I are not exactly compatible. I think we are similarly intelligent but in vastly different aspects and disciplines. He likes rockets and space exploration (I would have found it more appealing a couple decades ago when space was the final frontier but I currently find the urgent matter of climate change much more significant than men stroking their egos), and he likes racecars. I like social justice and mental health, the preservation of nature and waste management, etc. I could not give two and a half fucks about racecars. 

And yet. And yet, you could have a hundred, or no actually, a thousand people talk about coolant and engines and it would mean nothing to me, but if Joey talks about it, I would be mesmerised and learn something new. The pheromones he produces are attractive to the transmitters I have. It's so weird, you put me in a car or on a couch with Joey, and he could say something completely mundane and I will be smiling like an idiot. Isn't it fascinating?! I find it fascinating, because I try to attribute it to his voice, his hair, the actually ridiculous things he says, but someone else could have those same things and do the same things, and it all boils down to how our bodies react to each other chemically. I love how I have fun with Joey, like a lot of the time, I'm using my brain and thinking about how to change the world, but then Joey wants to watch a zombie show and make fun of it, and it's a joyful thing for me. What the fuck even????

It's been a long, long, longass journey, and I want it to end, as in I would like to reach my place and shower, and clean the fuck up. However, I am also full of love from all the love people keep sending me, from my family, from my friends, from my lovers and ex-lovers alike. I am receiving love in the form of money, in the form of words, in the form of time. I don't know where anything will lead me to, but these moments, these moments of love from all of you, they are enough. I am so full of joy and courage, and I'm ready. 

AN ODE TO MING JUN

On Wednesday, I had a night to remember. It was a lovely night to remember Singapore by. As I’d said, MJ told me he’d booked massage sessions for us. So we left work, had dinner and teh peng, on his tab. We’d never really had the time to spend outside of work so this was the first time we were talking about past loves, the idea of the loves of our lives, and all that jazz. We then went for the massage. The two masseuses were very amiable and entertaining, at just the right amount. They both spoke Chinese interspersed with English. If you don’t know, I understand Mandarin but I try not to speak it in Singapore, because first, I don’t understand why Chinese immigrants expect non-Chinese people to speak Mandarin to accommodate them, whilst never putting in effort to learn a different language, say, the Malay language of my heritage. Why should I compromise my language and culture to accommodate yours? Secondly, Mandarin itself is a tough language. One of my half-Chinese half-sisters doesn’t even really speak the language even though she had ten years of formal education of the subject, and I am well aware it’s super easy to butcher the intonations, so I steer well away from it, unless I’m outside of Singapore and speaking Chinese actually helps me somehow. Anyhow, so my masseuse was massaging my feet and explaining the different flaws there were in my health, like sleeping late, not sleeping well due to waking up to pee, etc etc, and I was very amused because in contrast, MJ had none of it. I would wriggle in pain from my massage, whilst MJ enjoyed his thoroughly, all his masseuse said was he could feel that MJ takes whey protein for his gym sessions. Don’t ask me how he knows that, I’m not a massage therapist. When the massage ended, MJ said he would get ice-cream for us next, so we did. He got me a hot fudge sundae, and then we sat at the intersection in Singapore that reminds me of the famous Tokyo intersection, and had our ice-cream. Eventually, we began talking about more serious things. The lululemon Singapore leadership bench is going through a shuffle, and I know my team has been feeling…. not-so-good vibrations about the upcoming changes. Each team/store in Singapore operates and feels like a family, and families generally don’t like being taken apart. Even for me, I have a deep loyalty to my manager Sherie, I don’t think a lot of people know why, but I attribute my growth in lululemon to her. The year I joined lululemon, I’d gone through that bad friend breakup with my best friends of fifteen years ish, so I took very long to open up to my team. After a few months, it was Sherie who coaxed me to take a chance on my team, to trust them and watch the process unfold, and since then, the thirty or so people I’ve met in lululemon are some of the people I would trust most with my life. Okay, but I digress. MJ and I were talking about major life changes, and the fact that he doesn’t feel like he belongs in Singapore, either, but he feels more bound to his family than I do. A lot of what he said obviously resonated with me, that he’s a dreamer, and a believer, and I’ve seen it in him through the eight months we worked together. I know MJ has always been emotional, like I am, but I don’t think he’d ever felt encouraged to express his emotions, given that he’s a guy, and in Singapore, as in many parts of the world, men are still not encouraged to be sensitive. While I watched him struggle, I knew he was a kindred spirit, that he gets as attached to people as I do, that he feels very strongly about people, more than money, or any other factor. I began hugging him and rubbing his shoulder, and he started tearing in my arms while he sat next to me, on those steps right outside Ion. You should already know this about me, that I melt easily when I see people being soft. You might not know this part, but I’d already told MJ before that night, a while ago, that I was romantically attracted to him, but it’s not reciprocated. I don’t think he’s romantically nor physically attracted to me at all. At first, I was like, ack that sucks, I have dreams about him but he doesn’t have such dreams about me (disclaimer: I do not control what I dream about and also, working around physically fit people in lululemon, I’ve also had such dreams about the girls, but that’s another story for another day), but then I thought about the night again. He bought me dinner, brought me to a massage, and had ice-cream and poured out his soul to me, and he did all this, not with the intention of bedding me, but just for the sake of my company. On that night, I realised the whole thing about romantic love being overrated, and that platonic friendships should be placed alongside if not above romance! People who take care of each other, and go on friendly dates with each other, for the sake of wanting to take care of people without needing to be taken care of in a romantic sense?! That’s the basic sense of community. Ironically, community is also one of lululemon’s core intentions so indirectly, they got the job done. Anyhow, when I look back on my memories of Singapore, I will always, always be glad to have gotten a best friend in MJ, and I will always be fond of him.

ALOE VERA

I’m in between two massages. What a bougie day I’m having. I booked my first massage session using ClassPass, which is where you can book fitness sessions and claim them through lululemon as an employee. However, you can also book beauty and wellness sessions and claim them, and lululemon will be none the wiser. Of course, that’s not what it’s meant for, but if you don’t tell, and I don’t tell, my employment ends in a couple of days and it will be the last thing I claim!!! Yesterday, my best friend from work, MJ, told me he’d booked foot massage sessions for both of us after our dinner later, and he said I couldn’t negotiate, and so that’s the story of how I have two massage sessions in a day. I know no one asked, but no one has ever asked me anything, yet y’all still end up here reading this shit that no one ever asks for?!?!?!

Anyhow. During my massage just now, I smelled something that brought me back to LA. It wasn’t the first time I’d smelled it in Singapore, nor was it the first time I was transported back to LA, but the spa was filled with many different aromas, and so I had to work my brain to pick out the one that was LA-related and identify what it was. For some reason, it permeated many of my memories of LA. I’d smelled it at the beach, I smelled it in the restaurants, I smelled it through cars and courthouses. While the very nice lady was massaging my shoulders, I thought “it smells like Joey” and then “no, this is not what Joey smells like” — then, “no, it smells like the mountain”, followed by “no, not the mountains” and then, because my brain neurons never let up, not even while I’m supposed to be falling asleep during a massage, I realised the scent. It was aloe vera, and the reason aloe vera persists in all my LA memories, is because my lips were very chapped during that hot summer, and I constantly used an aloe-flavored/scented tub of Vaseline lip balm. That’s why I thought it was Joey, because I would kiss him and he would probably smell like it. What a trip. Scents are wild.

I wish I had something like that to make me think of New York City, but I don’t. New York didn’t smell like anything particular to me, and nothing viscerally brings me back there. I remember it being cold and windy, and perhaps if I have bagel with lox, I get reminded of New York. I don’t have bagel with lox very often, and it’s not so much a visceral response as it is my brain making its own connection.

ALL OF THE TIME

If you still haven't watched Bo Burnham's special, Inside, I'm not sure what you're doing with your life. This song is stuck deep in the workings of my head, and I hope it doesn't drive me crazy in the two weeks I'll be spending waiting for school to start. I hope it doesn't play in my head while I'm out walking on trails and exploring nature, and setting up bank accounts and phone lines.

welcome to the internet

have a look around

anything that brain of yours can think of 

can be found

we've got mountains of content

some better, some worse

if none of it's of interest to you, 

you'd be the first

welcome to the internet

come and take a seat

would you like to see the news

or any famous women's feet?

there's no need to panic

this isn't a test, haha

just nod or shake your head and 

we'll do the rest

welcome to the internet

what would you prefer?

would you like to fight for civil rights 

or tweet a racial slur?

be happy

be horny

be bursting with rage

we got a million different ways to engage

welcome to the internet

put your cares aside

here's a tip for straining pasta

here's a nine-year-old who died

we got movies, and doctors, and fantasy sports

and a bunch of colored pencil drawings

of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other

welcome to the internet

hold on to your socks

'cause a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock

they are grainy and off-putting

he just sent you more

don't act surprised, you know you like it, you whore

see a man beheaded

get offended, see a shrink

show us pictures of your children

tell us every thought you think

start a rumor, buy a broom

or send a death threat to a boomer

or DM a girl and groom her

do a Zoom or find a tumor in your

here's a healthy breakfast option

you should kill your mom

here's why women never fuck you

here's how you can build a bomb

which Power Ranger are you?

take this quirky quiz

Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

could I interest you in everything?

all of the time?

a little bit of everything

all of the time

apathy's a tragedy

and boredom is a crime

anything and everything

all of the time

you know, it wasn't always like this

not very long ago

just before your time

right before the towers fell, circa '99

this was catalogs

travel blogs

a chat room or two

we set our sights and spent our nights

waiting

for you, you, insatiable you

Mommy let you use her iPad

you were barely two

and it did all the things

we designed it to do

now look at you, oh

look at you, you, you

unstoppable, watchable

your time is now

your inside's out

honey, how you grew

and if we stick together

who knows what we'll do

it was always the plan

to put the world in your hand

could I interest you in everything?

all of the time?

a bit of everything

all of the time

apathy's a tragedy

and boredom is a crime

anything and everything

all of the time

could I interest you in everything?

all of the time

a little bit of everything

all of the time

apathy's a tragedy

and boredom is a crime

anything and everything

and anything and everything

and anything and everything

and all of the time

SHRIFT

I spoke to both Joey and Adam today. It was Joey first, I think he wants to be friends so I tried to set a boundary but I don’t know if it’ll work out in the long run. It may not, because I have very strong feelings for some very particular people. People should not insist on remaining or reappearing in other people’s lives if the other person has romantic feelings for them, that is highly inconsiderate. I don’t know why I like or love someone, I just do, and asking me to switch off my feelings is impossible, so then the onus falls on me to circumnavigate the situation around my feelings, which is like, why should I do that? Is the friendship worth it? What do I even get out of it? Someone I used to be in love with knowing I exist? Great. However, Joey does live in the timezone I will be living in, and so perhaps it’s best not to burn bridges at this moment. Who knows. I asked Adam if he’d asked me to read Normal People, because clearly when Joey appears in my life, it’s just a scene right out of the book. Adam said he might have, because he loved the book. So tonight he raved about it a little, and I loved that part of Adam, that we can talk about books and media. He’s a boy I will always be fond of, much the way I feel about Lucas, but unfortunately Adam didn’t elicit that feeling of “this is someone I want to be with” while we were together. Not that it matters, because he’s living happily together with his partner now, and they look very happy, and I’m super glad for it. You know the other person who elicits that “this is someone I want to be with” feeling, Bennett from Brooklyn? On the opposite end of the spectrum from Joey, he’s never texted me after I left New York, never popped up anywhere. I sent him an Instagram DM the start of the year and I don’t think he’s ever opened it. He may actually have a partner now, I don’t know, I haven’t been looking at his profile since I sent that message because I wouldn’t be able to deal if I see him with someone else. Modern problems and modern solutions. I hope I meet someone in Vancouver who will elicit that goddamn feeling again, and not someone who wants to be friends with me while I’m in love with them and then someone who’s in love with me while I want to be friends with them and U G H. I do acknowledge how much of a first-world problem this is. All just a slice of life. I truly enjoyed talking to both Joey and Adam tonight, both men who have been in me (HAHAHAHA), but my feelings or lack thereof have always made things more complicated than just: I enjoy it and so it is. 

LONG STORY SHORT

no more keeping score

now I just keep you warm

no more tug-of-war

now I just know there’s more

no more keeping score

now I just keep you warm

my waves meet your shore

ever and evermore

past me, I wanna tell you 

not to get lost in these petty things

your nemeses will defeat themselves

before you get the chance to swing

When I was younger, I would write every single detail, everything someone said to make someone else laugh. I don’t know if I’ve lost that interest or ability. It seems a little redundant, because I document many things on Instastories, and you can hear how someone laughs, you can really know the things I fall in love with, so it feels like my words don’t really match up. Perhaps I only wrote or write out of necessity. Who knows. I spent time at the beach last week, with Sandi, I’m sunburned now. It hurts, but it also doesn’t. Julia, Aishah and Monica came over for dinner tonight, Mon tried to recall the fifty nifty United States of America by singing a song, Julia said she wanted to drive from Canada to the Bahamas (???), and when we played Jackbox on the TV, Aishah named herself Bahamas to make fun of it. Sometimes everything just depends on context and I think I’m trying to live in the moment. Over the past week, everybody has been telling me they’re feeling excited about my adventure, and conversely, I’ve been nervous as I’ve ever felt. I don’t know why, for the first time in my life, I’m feeling scared and so much wistfulness for what I’ll be leaving behind. I love the people I spend more than half my week with. They look out for me, and I want to look out for them. I don’t want to be in a continent where I barely know anyone, where I feel like if I run into trouble, I will be able to call only Tina, who is literally on the other coast. I feel a range of emotions, it makes me feel so, so encouraged to know that there is an entire squad of people who want to see me off at the airport, who are supporting me in every way they can, even though I do not even know if they will be allowed into the terminal. I’ve spent some time building bonds and making a life here, and I love-hate my sisters and I want to eat my grandmother’s food all the time. I suppose what’s playing in my head is Lorde’s Supercut, and I’m playing a romantic reel of only all the good and nice things that I have here, because I know I’m letting go of it, but there is also the stress of life in Singapore, there is the existential dread I get from walking into and working in a mall everyday, feeding capitalism, and getting fed nothing in return. I love some parts of my life now, and I will miss it.

EDIT: Uh, a few hours after I posted that, I woke up to these messages from Tina. Excuse me while I cry on the way to work?!?!

UC DAVIS

I would like y'all to know, Hasan Minhaj saw a story I posted and that's all this post is about.

I've watched him since 2017 (I went to look at my past posts), love everything he does. Homecoming King, from 2017, is still my favorite standup, and Patriot Act alone educated me on world issues. He rarely has any bad takes, although I do remember just a couple of episodes that I guess I thought could have been slightly more entertaining.

I rewatched Homecoming King and so far, it's still aged well, nothing has gone sour or offensive or tasteless, as of now. I'm gonna be in that neck of the woods when his new show The King's Jester drops, so I might get to see it live??? I don't know, it might be a lot of money when I'm still trying to find my footing, so yeah, anyone who wants to marry me and pay for the show, you are welcome to. You are also welcome to pay for the show, no marriage involved.

That's it. That's the post.

NEUROATYPICAL

look at the stars

look how they shine for you

and everything you do

they were all yellow

I came along

I wrote a song for you

and everything you do

it was all yellow

so then I took my turn 

what a thing to have done

it was all yellow

your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones

turn into something beautiful

you know, you know I love you so

you know I love you so

I swam across

I jumped across for you

oh what a thing to do

it was all yellow

I drew a line

I drew a line for you

what a thing to do

it was all yellow

yellow, yellow, yellow

your skin, oh yeah, your skin and bones

turn into something beautiful

you know, you know I'd bleed myself dry

for you, I'd bleed myself dry

I'd bleed myself dry

it's true, look how they shine for you

look how they shine for you

look how they shine 

look how they shine for you

look how they shine for you

look how they shine

look at the stars