FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Recently, I bought myself a subscription to the Dropout channel on Youtube, because Dimension 20 and Make Some Noise were making up so much of my recommended clips on TikTok and Instagram. I suppose that was also why I was recommended the Last Meals episode that Brennan Lee Mulligan was on.

It was such a good episode. As it is, I love food so much and would love to have a pretend last meal for myself sometime, so I love the concept of Last Meals. I think one afternoon, when I have nothing to do (it will probably just be tomorrow on the bus to school or something), I'm gonna write out all the foods I'd want at my last meal, and there will be so many courses and cuisines. 

Brennan, as well as his Dropout co-star Zac Oyama, are two of whom I perceive to be the wholesomest men on Earth that I truly admire, so obviously this episode of Last Meals was just more of the same. Brennan talks about when he fell in love with his wife Izzy, and one of the courses was something that his wife would make, he talks about their child and his nerdy side, he talks about community and socialist ideas, the way he always does, and it was just an hour ish well spent, and I enjoyed it greatly. 

Speaking of my ideal man, I've been really thinking about men and my dating life, as I am inclined to do. I think I teeter-totter between thinking men are genuinely not good enough to date as opposed to myself being avoidant and having daddy issues, and therefore refusing to settle down. I do think most of the time it is the former that feels the most valid and real to me.

I think sometimes I feel like I'm at an impasse because I don't tend to find leftist men attractive, and the pool of leftist men in Nanaimo is a very tiny one to pick from in the first place. As I'm generally a reflective person, I've tried to really dissect my criteria and sit with it, and I honestly don't think anything can budge.

For one, yes I acknowledge it's superficial for me to only date men I think are attractive, but it would also be hypocritical if any man who wants to date me didn't admit to their own superficiality. I know they know I know I'm pretty. I have always been a regulation hottie, I did a tiny bit of modelling in Singapore, and like, yeah I was blessed with good genes, right? For one thing, I don't want to settle with a man whom I'm not attracted to, because I don't want a man to benefit or get more out of the relationship than I do. Like, let's be for real, I'm smart, I'm funny, I cook and clean, maybe due to having been an elder sister or just being a Type A person, I'm used to planning and being nurturing and doing emotional labour, and you're telling me I may also have to settle with dating a man I'm not even attracted to? Why? What do I get out of the relationship? No, thank you.

Beyond that, too, I like people for the same reason everyone likes other people and makes friends with them: they recognize parts of themselves in others that they enjoy and appreciate. If I find myself attractive (which I very much do, as you very well know), of course I'm going to be drawn to other men whom I think are attractive. But here's the thing, right, as much as I was blessed with good genes, and as much of a leftist as I am, I also know what works for me. I wear what I like, I go for regular hair appointments (by regular I mean once or twice a year), I wear contact lenses, I take supplements so I function optimally for my body, I love my skincare regime and stick to it regularly. And then you have the majority of men who don't even look like they're trying. Like, you want to date me, and you don't acknowledge that the first reason you want to do so, is because I have been conditioned by the patriarchy to put a lot of effort into the upkeep of my appearance, yet you don't look like you're doing the same? If you can recognize that you like me and are drawn to me because I wear fun clothes and am feeling myself, perhaps you could also embody those behaviours so women can be drawn to you.

I don't know, I think the meme that I'm brought to right now is just, what do you bring to the table? I'm bringing the entire table, what can you bring, babes???? Sometimes I'm sad that I have not found a lifelong partner, but sometimes, like now, I think I really am more comfortable and confident in myself and in what I want, that I do not want to ever settle for less than what I deserve and desire.

And now, to try and negate (impossible!) all that talk of men, I will talk about some new women friends I've made in the past couple of weeks. One of my newest friends is Teju. On our first hangout, we went into Windowseat Books (a really great independent local bookstore in downtown Nanaimo - they supported the Palestine Literature Festival that happened last month), Teju saw me looking through a BC-based baking book, Thyme For Dessert, and when I put it down and walked around the store, she bought the pretty hefty book for me. What a lovely gesture for our first meeting!

Last week, I met Teju again, and this time with new friends Nilou and Megan. We had dinner at Black Rabbit and Nilou was so funny I laughed till I cried. Mind you, that was their first impression of me! Whenever I spend time with women like that, which tends to be more and more often as I try to be more intentional as to how I'm spending my time, I really see less and less value in the company that a man can provide.

On Friday, I met another new friend for the first time. Her name is Stephanie and she's from Montana in the US. While talking about Montana, she said that Yellowstone was filmed there, and because she was from a small town, she heard that whenever the Yellowstone crew would order sandwiches or catering from the local eateries, they would not tip. This appalled me because do you know how big Yellowstone (the TV show) is???? The first episode alone had three helicopter scenes! I've now made up my mind not to watch it.

Anyway, Stephanie asked me if I wanted to see a ballet with Indigenous dancers that night, so I said yes. Before we went in to the theatre, we found out we'd both seen the episode of Last Meals with Brennan, and the episode had just dropped the day before, so I knew instantly that she probably had similar values as I do, to be recommended the same kind of media content. The ballet was called Pisuwin, and it was put on by the Atlantic Ballet Company in Canada. The producer came out, and as he was Indigenous, he spoke about how his mother had said, she recalled once upon a time, when people like them weren't allowed in spaces like the theatre. The performance itself was extremely moving, but I kept thinking about his words, how he was the first of his bloodline to be involved in the ballet, and how I was pretty much the first of my bloodline to watch a ballet with Indigenous dancers.

Oftentimes, the world is dark and dreary, but the women around me do such warm things, like buy me books or take me to the ballet, knowing how broke I still am as an international student. I am grateful, grateful, grateful, to be alive yet.

IN THIS ESSAY, I WILL...

So, I don't know, I just felt like rambling in long-form again and that Instagram wasn't gonna give me enough space so I'm back here. Are we back?? We're so back?? This is a joke, I'm just joking. Last weekend, I went on another very enjoyable date, with a completely different person. This time, this man took me to see the World Series baseball game at a bar, which I did not care about because I generally do not care about sports, but it was the finals (or whatever the final game is called), between the Toronto Blue Jays and the LA Dodgers.

There hadn't been a Canadian team to make it so close to winning in ages, so pretty much all of average Canada was watching it and rooting for the Blue Jays. I didn't understand any of it, I had to keep asking what inning it was at, where in the inning we were at, etc, but he explained it gently, and also in between bites of my quesadilla and me pretending to be interested, he would kiss me and it was enjoyable, so I let him be.

This man works in a science lab, doing cancer research, which is fascinating, and I've always loved dating people who work in the scientific field, because I guess I'm more philosophical and arts-inclined. Whenever I meet someone who works in a field I know nothing about, I get to learn more and it's more interesting to me. He says he'll try to take me to his lab one day on a weekend so I get to see the work he does, and thus I will not be able to say where he works, because he might get into trouble. Do you think it's hilarious how many workplaces I've been sneaked into just by dating men in different careers? I think it's hilarious. One time I got sneaked into a nurses' lounge because my date was a doctor on night shift. The number of people I could get fired is astounding, tbh.

This week, by virtue of being chronically online and following the right people (ie. all the best people) online, I was treated to some major positive and encouraging news re: the US, which was so needed because the US is a miserably failing empire that's crumbling in on itself (this week they cut SNAP benefits?? what in actual fuck???) but again! This week there was massive hopeful news!

Zohran Mamdani became the mayor of New York City, where the mayoral race hit two million votes for the first time since 1969. This happened despite Cuomo being backed by hugely influential figures (but all of whom are berserk) and big money, making Mamdani's win even more historic. Gun safety won in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, became the first female governor of Virginia. In Cincinnati, JD Vance's half-brother, Cory Bowman, suffered a resounding loss to the Democrats. Every county in Virginia shifted blue. Ghazala Hashmi is Virginia's lieutenant governor, and the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in US history. Maine (!!!) killed voter restriction and supported gun restriction. Mary Sheffield is the first woman mayor in Detroit and she's a Black woman, and Johnny DuPree, a Black Democrat is elected to Mississippi Senate, flipping it from Republican.

All of that is of course very superficial and surface-level news, Democrats aren't even quite the progressives they think they are, and are fully capable of being incompetent and reprehensible, and we have to wait and see what all the aforementioned candidates do with their platforms, etc, but I think it bears celebrating some significance that Americans are fed up (to put it mildly) with the current administration, and they want change. 

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Something else that Instagram has seen, but I haven't quite rambled about over here just yet, is my growing disdain for Taylor Swift. Buckle up, because away we go (oh also, another thing that my date did last weekend was he listened to me rant all about Taylor Swift, and then he asked to watch one of the TikTok academics that I had been raving about as one of my sources, too). I have consumed so much TikTok about Taylor and particularly about her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, since October 3, and I believe I have become disillusioned (yes, I know most of you are like, “fucking finally???”). I could curate a playlist of all the TikTok videos that have analyzed it in much more comprehensive and eloquent ways than I do here, so if you'd like the playlist, let me know and I'll share it with you.

So, firstly, she released at least ten different variants of the Showgirl album, to encourage diehard Swifties to consume and purchase more units of her product. She also then released extremely shoddy, embarrassing voice memos of herself recording the album with her producers Martin and Shellback, and she sold these (mind you, she never needs another dime in her life and could have released them for free). Some of the songs on the album have been deemed problematic, and whilst the TikTok videos have talked about them at length, I will only mention the ones that I feel surely about. Olivia Rodrigo was pressured to share credits and royalties for her song Deja Vu, because it apparently was inspired by Taylor, and you can tell it wasn't a pleasant situation because Olivia used to be a very big and expressive Swiftie, but she's gone quiet since the credits (and royalties) thing happened. On the other hand, Swift's songs, Actually Romantic sounds exactly like Where Is My Mind by Pixies, and Wood absolutely samples The Jackson 5. Neither of those mention the original song credits on her album.

Still song-related, the track Actually Romantic also disses Charli XCX and calls her out for having a coke addiction problem, which is apparently in retaliation to Charli's song, Sympathy is a Knife. I've seen this analyzed threefold. One, Charli herself lives in her truth of using coke, and it's all over her own album, Brat. You can't embarrass someone who owns their truth. Two, it's ridiculous that Taylor is making an actual diss track about Charli, who only just got her deserved limelight with Brat after many years of not quite making it big big. Taylor is a billionaire, and she's punching down at another woman artist who's finally getting her flowers? Get the fuck out of here. Three, Sympathy is a Knife is not even a diss track about Taylor, it's about Charli's own insecurities, which she's being vulnerable about. Ms Ma’am Taylor Swift, for someone who claims to be our English teacher, you need your degree checked. Oh that's right, she doesn't have a real one.

Then there's the song Cancelled. In it, she sings “good thing I like my friends cancelled”, and she honestly has been sticking around people who have been involved in scandals, or basically the MAGA crowd, and definite Trump supporters. Those people don't hold themselves accountable, and therefore nor does Swift for herself. Also, there is The Fate of Ophelia. In the lead-up to the album launch, Swift said on the podcast that she was teaching Kelce about Shakespeare, because it's like an inside joke that he's a jock who doesn't get her references and all, right. Well, her lyrics in The Fate of Ophelia have been dissected by my current favourite TikToker (@kaicfox), who is an actual Shakespearean academic. Ophelia was written by Shakespeare to symbolize how women had absolutely zero agency except for what the men in their lives decided for them. It's insinuated (in Shakespeare's drama, Hamlet) that Ophelia kills herself because she recognizes this, after the rebukes by her father, her brother, and in conversations with Hamlet. Her act of suicide can be interpreted as possibly her one real act of agency. Swift then sings about being saved by a man (obviously Kelce), and therefore escaping “the fate of Ophelia”, which is exactly not what the character was about. And it would be one thing if Swift herself had said, oh I like the name Ophelia, I wanted to take my own creative liberties with it and write a romance, but no, she heavily suggested that she understood the play and the character, and was then trying to be smart about it in her song, which it wasn't.

Then, when she got wind that her album was being disliked on TikTok, she appeared on a Zane Lowe (for Apple Music) interview, and said “the rule of show business is if it's the first week of my album release and if you're saying either my name or my album title, you're helping,” which, what???? She'd never struck us (the Swifties, I mean) as being this person who's just cold and calculative and only in it for the business? All I can say is, yuckkkkkkkkkk.

In the past month, even Taylor's longtime friend, Hayley Williams, performed a song from her new album on a late night talk show, and the track she performed was about racism in the US. Billie Eilish donated $11.5 million, and when Taylor did a late night appearance, she described Kelce's job (playing football) as putting his life on the line, whilst there are literal genocides happening in the world, at this moment. It's just now striking me as god-awful how asinine she is, because she's a billionaire (meaning she obviously has a level of success backed by legions of fans), and how she will still say “people hate me because it's cool and popular to hate me.” No, we don't? People hate you because we live in a society with massive and growing wealth divides and you're a billionaire who refuses to redistribute your wealth or use your platform for good. Taylor Swift is tone deaf and out of touch with reality.

I've done a lot in support of Taylor Swift, you know. I don't want to hate her. I loved her earlier songs, I've gone to three of her concerts (one 1989 and two Eras Tour shows), but I honestly cannot in good conscience ever stomach any more of this woman.

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Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the Jonathan Safran Foer quote: You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. I've liked it for a long time, and I wonder if I've actually mentioned it here before, though I can't be fucked to look for it. I think I quite embody the quote, in a way that I allow myself to be very sad and vulnerable, but I also have extremely happy and meaningful moments, and I think they're all real and authentic. However, I think the society I live in, mostly do not.

I think a lot of people around me are comfortable and also very scared of ever bursting the bubble wrap that surrounds them. I think they're scared of having uncomfortable conversations, and they're always chasing the next high, and nothing about their lives seems to be as particularly important nor meaningful nor authentic. Of course, I understand and am not calling out people who may not go to therapy because they're financially strapped, or I'm not even talking about people who do go to therapy but keep it on the down low. No, I know who I mean, and it's many, many people, who would never ever face up to the reality of their lives (therapy or not), because then your entire worldview might come crashing down on you.

It's the same people who'll say, yeah, there's racism and colonialism and imperialism, and they think that just saying it and saying it all happened in the past, and that they would never engage in such a thing, makes it all okay, makes the past all go away. Babe, every single thing that's happened in history has led us to this moment, to this eternal rat race that I have to run to prove my worth while you coast through life, and you think it's enough for you to say “it's over now”? No, babe, I need more anti-racism, I need you to help me dismantle the structures that have been built by undeserving old rich/white men, because I do not want the next generations to have to go through the same goddamn struggles that I did and am still going through. And you know, I say babe, and I don't know if you (whoever you are that's reading this) will think I mean this personally, but I don't. If you feel called out, trust me, it's only because it is a majority of you in this society who do these same things. You are all part of a club, and you need to let the rest of us in.

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It's the beginning of my fifth winter in Canada, or basically the fifth winter in my life. I think, by virtue of it being my fifth winter, I've kinda become more accustomed to the ups and downs, and the highs and lulls of seasonal life (because Singapore was a tropical country year-round). I think my first two, three years here were marked by big changes, and big emotional upheavals and to my regulatory systems. I mean, of course the world is seeing more and more unprecedented times and that affects me, but overall, I think I've done a pretty alright job of creating a life for myself here. 

There've been so many monumental changes that you couldn't understand unless you were also a migrant from Singapore to Canada. For example, Singapore isn't a union-inclined society at all, there isn't talk of unions nor collective agreements, nor worker rights and things like that. When I came over and I started working for the students' union, a lot of the language was utterly new to me, I had to reshape my brain and language and understand the inner workings of work culture here, and I think I did it pretty well. I think I also assimilated to “Canadian” culture pretty well, I understand how people do things here and I absorb and rehash the little Canadian utterances, the “ehs” and “shooting the shit”, yet I don't think I ever do it in a way to increase my proximity to Whiteness. Today Sydney said “Sarah Mei can’t be pocketed” because we were talking about my meeting with the interim VIU president tomorrow, and I take that to heart as a high compliment. Sarah Mei cannot be pocketed???? Excuse you, in a world where everything can be bought for a price, I think I can be proud of myself for not being cowed by wanting to stay within party lines or impress the right people and things like that. Fuck that, I live by my morals and I think that is what will keep me happy and my life meaningful. It reminds me of maybe a decade ago, I and my best friend at the time, Han, we said something like we would rather be good people, and not nice people, and I believe I still live by the same maxim. 

Perhaps I should get myself a cake to celebrate my fifth winter in Canada/life. I think I shall.

A WEEKEND IN THE LIFE

I’ve had, what is for me, an ideal weekend. Now, I say that with the caveat, because of course I know everyone’s ideals are different and when you read about my weekend, you could be like, ew I wouldn’t want that, but I wanted it, I highly enjoyed and appreciated it, and it was my ideal weekend, and so I wanted to pen it down, just because not all weekends are ideal for me, not every hour and every day in a row.

I had therapy on Friday morning, where I got to rant about the horror that is living in this world in the body that I inhabit, and then I had an appointment with my nurse practitioner. My NP actually had some concerning news for me, that I didn’t even expect, so we’re tweaking my medication, and then I’ll have to get blood work done again in a couple of weeks to see if it’s helped. The news from my NP wasn’t ideal, but I’ve only started regularly going for medical checkups when I got to Canada, and I really like the consistency of getting to know my body, and helping it along in the course of my life. It’s one of the virtuous cycles that happen to help my brain and body understand that I care enough to take steps to care for them, which then I think just keeps getting me to feel better, overall.

Then I met Sara for lunch, and honestly, she reminds me of my younger sister Lyssa and how they approach life. One time, Lyssa threw an egg onto our family’s car because she was beefing with our mom, leading Mom to think for the longest time that one of our neighbours was hate-criming our family. It’s very funny and amuses me how they’re like “if you’re gonna create problems for me, I’ll do it right back to you,” whereas in my head, everybody’s problems are my problems and I stress out over it all, when I literally try to be as unproblematic as I can be. Anyway, I obviously admire Sara very much in her demeanour and her strength and resilience, so I love spending time with people who inspire me.

Post-lunch, I took the ferry to Vancouver because I’d had a dumpster fire of a week, professionally, so I wanted a respite from the island. I met a man whom I’d matched with on Bumble, but we hadn’t quite had the longest of conversations so, it was all a very eye-opening experience. He picked me up from Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal, which, for my Singaporean friends and family, is one of the terminals on the mainland that receives ferries from Nanaimo. We got to his place, and I was immediately in awe because the first place it reminded me of was The Vault, my favourite cafe in Nanaimo. His apartment is a loftish type thing, with high ceilings and windows and the bedroom overlooking the living area. One of the walls was plastered in art, and not like the snobbyish hoity-toity kinda art, but just very eclectic and cool and things I would think are important and I would like, so it was basically The Vault, right. I posted photos, and several people also thought it was either The Vault with renovations or that it very much resembled The Vault.

So there I was, in amazement that someone’s living situation was basically like my favourite place in all of Nanaimo, somewhere I feel safe and gravitate to and visit pretty much once a week at least. We chatted to get to know each other, and then he made dinner for us. It was somewhat Japanese in part, he made agedashi tofu and eggplant, and there was also rice and God knows what, all made while I’d picked up his copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and started reading it. Dinner was tasty, and also very well-presented, I wanted to take a photo but it was also the first time I was having dinner with this person, so I didn’t.

That “date” was about 36 hours long, from when I arrived in Vancouver on Friday evening to when I left him on Sunday morning. In between, he made breakfast for me, and then took me to hotpot because I’d said I was definitely in the mood for hotpot in the chillier fall weather. He made the reservation for hotpot, and whilst we were there, I also noticed that everything he cooked, he would give me the first serving before serving himself the same thing. It was my first time at Liuyishou in Vancouver, and I would deffo recommend it! Hotpot is hotpot is hotpot, but some soup bases are simply not worth going for, so Liuyishou has good options, and attentive servers too.

Throughout that 36-hour period, we talked about a lot of things, as you can when you’re spending every waking hour in the same living space, and it was very comfortable, very easy conversation, very enjoyable. I also highly enjoyed being intimate with him. If you do not know me, you should know that I’m very physically affectionate, I love hugs and tracing shapes on someone’s skin, and holding hands, and using the back of my palm to gently rub someone’s cheeks, etc etc. Cuffing season is upon us, so it was definitely nice to do all those things with someone whose skin temperature felt good on mine.

On Sunday morning, I left early to get my new tattoo done. When you do see it, if you are my family you might shake your head and be more disappointed with me, but I am unreasonably happy about this one. It says “I’m sure you can’t find the 4th object” and it’s just the caption at the top of the game ads that play between Facebook or Instagram posts. You know when there are literally only three items in the image, but then to clickbait you they say “I’m sure you can’t find the 4th object.” Well, it’s now done on my right forearm, and I’m happy with it for multiple reasons. My first two tattoos, I wanted them to have so much meaning and I thought about them for quite some whiles, but eventually because they’re both on my back, I don’t even see them nor remember they exist. I wanted one that was more prominent because I think I’ve reached the stage where, if you’ve already got a tattoo, what the heck is another one? The other thing that makes me happy is I’m actually pretty glad it’s an obscure dank meme that no one gets, it strikes me as pretty hilarious. The tattoo artist and I also had a good chat and he filmed some amusing content for his page after we were done.

Once the tattoo was done, I took the bus to Alessia’s place and got to crunch some auburn autumn leaves in my Marceline boots, so that also added to the ideal nature of the weekend. Alessia and I got ready then went to have KBBQ at Kook, which I really enjoyed again! Piping hot rice-heavy Asian food in the fall? Sign me up again and again and again. Alessia was looking very pretty and hot yesterday, and honestly I don’t understand how women like us get fumbled all the time, except I do know this world is stacked against turning out competent and exceptional men, so I guess I do understand, it’s just hard to accept.

Alessia and I have come such a long way from our first summer together four years ago. I truly cherish my friendship with her. Yes we made excellent roommates, and we do fun things together and immerse ourselves in girlhood, shriek-about-DMs-from-men type beat. But part of what makes our girlhood so strong is I think we’ve navigated some heavy issues, and I recently watched a Tiktok of a woman saying how men’s “friendships” could never (in general, of course, by and large).

About two years ago, Alessia and I had a conversation about some things that may always present themselves as maybe a little wrench in the clockwork of our friendship. I’ve told Alessia, that despite the surface agreements about cops and the policing system being a complete farce and harmful, and about the patriarchy and how men will never be able to reach the general standards of women because they’re just not even incentivised to do so, etc, despite many of our general consensus holding true for each other, based on the radical, politically-conscious and politically-involved person I am, I could never and may never feel 100% safe around her, and she knows that and tells me it’s valid. Like, we come from vastly different worlds, right, and even though she does tend to share her privilege with me, her priorities and mine tend to differ quite widely, and sometimes you could even say they’re in contention to each other’s interests. However, we’ve done the hard thing of talking about the uncomfortable, and will continue to do so, and I think that’s why it’s so easy for me to also treasure my fun times with her, because we’re not ignoring the obvious but folding it into our interactions with each other and our worlds.

It was an unexpectedly sunny Sunday yesterday, so we got ourselves Earnest Ice Cream, but then it got cold and windy because we were by the waterfront, so the vibes were completely off, but eventually we still laughed through it and I at least enjoyed the discomfort of it all. We saw an improv comedy show on Main Street, had a slice of pizza before coming home, and she drove me back to Horseshoe Bay this morning.

Overall, I literally could not and would not have changed a thing about my weekend (tl;dr good Asian food, warm and deep conversation, comedy and laughter, someone I love and am familiar with, a new tattoo, the crunch of fall leaves, people’s consideration of me and for me), and I’m immensely grateful for it.

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!

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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 Jocelyne, and Kaia, and Warren, and Alessia, and Sara, and Sarah Lovegrove, 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. 

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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.