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

IKARIA

I went for a yoga session with my lululemon friends last night. It was at Gardens By The Bay, where there’s a Dale Chihuly exhibition. He’s known for glass sculptures. Mel said Chihuly is based out of Seattle, so I could see more of his works in future, potentially. Apparently there’s a ferry between where I’ll be studying, and Seattle, among other parts of the Western North American coast. Anyway, the session was beautiful. It had rained in the day, so the breeze and the darkening setting-sun sky made it the perfect weather. I was in my yoga practice and felt multiple bugs crawling over me, which would normally have unsettled me, but I couldn’t see what they were, I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t care! It was a beautiful setting, and I was with people I love, and it was the perfect way to start off July and the second half of the year. I have cognitive dissonance about my work, but remain enamoured with the people I work with. I’m going for a spin session after work today, to support Annabelle’s debut as a spin instructor (yes those are the only times I go for spin). Next week, I’m finally going back to boxing, I’m so excited! I have no clue if I really like boxing or I like CruBox classes. CruBox is fun to me. I hope there’s a boxing studio near school. Speaking of CruBox, my boss Sherie (who’s also a spin instructor at CruCycle) said she would make an exception for me, in terms of work benefits, and it will really help me financially. It’s very sweet of her, and I’m going to miss her! In this final sprint, everyone has been helping me out, moneywise, whilst I have been writing essays for scholarships and grants. I need sleep. I will sleep tonight, after work and spin. Have a good weekend, a great July and a beautiful second half of 2021. :)

NOB HILL

I think I'd just said yesterday that I hadn't had any time to do anything for myself this week. Today, one of my babies from work, Megan, recommended that I read Normal People by Sally Rooney, before watching the TV series adaptation of it. I think Adam has once also asked me to read it, if I recall correctly. I may ask him one day, but today is not that day. Anyway, Megan sent me the e-book so I began reading it on my Kindle. Megan told me she'd thought I would like it because it is a twisted, sad book and she thinks I would appreciate the sad twistedness. I haven't finished it, but I already feel many things about it. My Kindle says I'm 59% through it, meaning it is a fairly short book, because I've only spent maybe four hours reading it, after I ended work.

Normal People is about two hurt people who grow through stages of their lives in their relationship to and with each other. I haven't gotten to the big reveal(s), but I'm guessing there must have been some tragic, traumatic event in each of their lives, there are allusions to such experiences. They keep misunderstanding each other, and making excuses for not having long, honest conversations. In one of them, Marianne thinks Connell is suggesting that they each see other people, which Marianne takes as him asking for a breakup (because, obviously, right?), but in Connell's head, he needed to move back to their hometown as he's from a poorer background and he thinks Marianne would want a richer, more stable partner, someone from "her station in life." 

I had to take a break from reading the book because Connell has found someone else and told Marianne that he loves the woman, and he had not mentioned the courtship to Marianne at all, even though they are supposed best friends. This leads to Marianne breaking down in front of him, before asking him to leave. I don't think I'm doing the book any justice, but I'm very overwhelmed by the feelings I'm getting from it. The way the book is written reminds me of my relationship (what a weird term to call it, a relationship, but I use it to mean our relations with each other, whenever it exists) with Joey. The story is written whenever the two protagonists have major interactions, so it could be days or weeks or months until the next time they are friends, or are lovers, or bump into each other again. 

The last time I spoke to him, he also told me out of nowhere, that it was "self-destructive" (I don't know which of us he even meant??) and that he was getting together with a woman he loved. This made me furious and embarrassed and furiously embarrassed. How was I to know?? I don't see him in real life and have no clue what goes on. It reminds me of the many times we've managed to embarrass and infuriate each other, even though I think, deep underneath it all, neither of us intends to and all we want is to see each other happy. 

It makes me think of when I was with him, and it was two weeks into us knowing each other, and I knew I was already having strong feelings for him. Then he ghosted me, and I realised he was overwhelmed by how quickly I was catching feelings. This upset me and made me cry, but then eventually, we talked again and he taught me to drive his car in a parking lot, and another one of my hosts said Joey must like me, men only teach things to women they like, and to this day, his car is the only car I've driven in my life. He spends a lot of time with me, watching people get tattooed and working on cars and watching movies till we fell asleep. In fact I lived in his room so it would have been impossible not to spend time with me, until he brings up the fact that he's been in a long-distance relationship before. I'd already known from experience that he didn't like to rush things, so I ignored the comment, even though I had to leave very soon, back to Singapore.

When I am back in Singapore, I find out I am pregnant, and I feel about thirty actual separate emotions, all at 84% intensity. He talks me through it and obviously leaves the decision to me, although both of us are shit-fucking-scared. I eventually have a miscarriage, and I am so traumatised I tell him to leave me alone, and I block him everywhere (I also send him how the miscarriage looks, just so he knows, and I'm sure he remembers). After I have blocked him, I go through my depressive episodes and battles with my mother, who for some misplaced "religious" reasons, thinks it's a blessing I'd miscarried. I intermittently feel angry at Joey, that I have to go through all hell and high water by myself, when it was as much his mistake as mine. Newsflash: it takes one person to produce the egg and the other to provide sperm. I write emotionally-charged words and direct it all at him, feeling very mistreated. This happened even though I'd explicitly told him to leave me alone. Every time I think of how much I paid for therapy, I get sucker-punched and think Joey should have had to foot half the bills, and the worst part is, he can fucking well afford it, rocket scientist that he is, while I struggled and continue to struggle on less-than-minimum wage.

In the next three to four years, one of us reaches out to the other. I do not know why. I remember writing something very close to this, once: “I’m sorry for what you had to go through because of me. I promise to do better. I love you.” I never sent it. I think it's what I want to hear, as much as what I want to say. I never understood sometimes, when he approaches or reaches out to me, when it's a bank holiday weekend, he seems to want to be affectionate, and he insinuates that there is nothing going on in his life, and then, out of nowhere, he'd push me away, again. It made no sense, and still makes no fucking sense to me. 

Normal People feels like a story written about two damaged people in an unhealthy relationship, trying so hard to be good and fix things, but have never known how to do so. It reminds me of myself and Joey, and it also makes me wonder, how many people are out there, living such unhealthy dynamics, trying so hard to be normal people? The fact that it's a popular, well-read book makes me think, hmmmm, this doesn't feel like it is that uncommon. What a sad notion! I don't know why I wrote all that, it's just, the book feels like I could've written it, and I have many feelings, and I hope I don't get let down by it. I don't even know what I expect from it, but I want their backstories to be enough, to explain why they don't do better, for themselves and each other. Okbye.

RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY

It’s a mighty hot day in Singapore. It’s always mighty hot days in Singapore. I never used to be someone who enjoys the cold, but I truly look forward to the Vancouver/PNW climate. With climate change, the weather there shouldn’t be as cold, most of the time. Terrible for the world, quite alright for me. I’ve had and am having a busy week, haven’t had time to meditate or do anything for myself. The first dose of the vaccine went much better than expected, though, the syringe and the nurse were great, I barely felt anything. I’ve been working at both my jobs for the last four days, right after the jab. It was a little sore to move my arm, but otherwise, I look forward to getting the second one over and done with, and being fully vaccinated. At least, to whatever variant it’s resistant to, so far.

Last night, while falling asleep, I was feeling extremely nostalgic for times past. I thought about the times I fell in love in the US, on each coast. There was a time Joey drove us back from Malibu at night, and there were so many stars in the sky, and the song Yellow was playing in my head. I had my hand on his, while he was holding the clutch (it was a stick-shift racecar), I didn’t know if that was okay but I mean, he’s a very chill guy, I think most of the time he’d be like “okay I’m just gonna let this girl do whatever she wants” so I just tried my luck, hahahahahah. One time, we were in a store that sold motorbike/riding stuff, before we got coffee, and that was within the first 28 days of us even being aware of each other’s existence in the world. I went around, exploring the store, because it was different than what I was used to in Singapore, but I was always observing him, too. Whatever he picked up, there was a mental register in my head, noting what he liked, what interested him, and what didn’t. 

Two thousand eight hundred miles away, two years later, I observed Ben playing video games with his housemate. I watched him cuddle with the cat, listened to him talk about his grandparents and his Kindle. I saw him in his kitchen, making food and telling me the things he could cook, the things he was learning to cook. He brought me to an open square, where skater boys were, well, skating, and I picked up on his political leanings, a year or so before I would lean into them myself. We played word games, and he thrashed me at them, before he eased off a bit so I wouldn’t feel too bad, insisting that he wasn’t doing so, and then assuring me that he was really good because he works with games (valid point, of course, but I know when people are smarter than I am). Every time someone mentions Central Park, I think of our first kiss there, on a bench, overlooking a frozen pond. Every time. 

I’ve been in love twice in my life, and I cling to them, because it is what I know. I don’t know what’s coming in future, I cannot tell how fast climate change will happen. I do not know the pressing urgency of rising sea levels, of sinking nations. I don’t know what lies in my immediate future, besides studying, and making friends with people a decade younger than I am, and doing well in my studies. I see myself going out into nature and getting dirty and happy and calm. I do not know when I will next fall in love, so sometimes I just think backwards and I smile and am content for what has been.

PERCH

I’ve finally got my appointments booked for my vaccinations. I don’t like physical pain and I’m quite a wimp when it comes to jabs. My first appointment is this Sunday morning and my brain is already in overdrive. I know why the thought of jabs makes me queasy and anxious. It’s ‘cos my veins are apparently narrow, so whenever I’ve had to have my blood drawn, the nurse has always managed to fuck it up, and would then have to repeat the process at another site on my body. This repeated poking and prodding has made me wary of health-related needles. It’s also the reason I’m not even able to donate blood, jeez. The health workers have told me that the amount of bruising I would get for the amount of blood they could obtain from me is not worth it. Hahahahahaha, what the fuck. It’s funny because I’m not tremendously affected by ornamental piercings nor tattoo needles, so I suppose it really is all in the head. 

Today the thought that formulated in my head was how there has been an imbalance of affection in my life so far. I suppose some people have loved me more than I loved them (my first boyfriend, for example), and then I have loved some people more than they’ve ever felt for me (this is probably Joey and Ben K), and I sure hope to whatever fucking stone in the universe, that I will find someone I love equally as much as they love me. I’m not sure why this thought formulated but then I’m not sure why any of my thoughts are formed anyway.

A few days ago, I had someone stay over at my family’s apartment, because she was unsafe at her own. I can’t say who it is because other people aren’t supposed to know. My sisters and I stayed up with her and watched a movie together, and then she slept in my room, on my queen-sized bed with me. I like this person, I think she’s chill and cool and we can vibe alright, but I obviously don’t often get people sleeping next to me in the same bed, with the exception of any of my sisters. I remember feeling a little awkward, and not sleeping too deeply the entire night. I know this because I usually toss and turn and grind my teeth at night, but that night every time I stirred I was still lying on my back, and my jaw had still been relaxed. It reminded me of the time I slept in my Couchsurfing host’s bed (his name was Dustin) at his place on Redondo Beach or whatever, and this only happened because I’d been scared by an experience in the other bedroom he’d let me sleep in and I begged him to let me in. It was awkward as fuck, we did nothing that night. I stared up at the bedroom ceiling and I kept wondering if he thought I was the weirdest ever person he’d ever met. 

This leads me to another story. That night at Dustin’s place, I had washed up and was ready to sleep, but the bed was adjacent to a wardrobe that had mirrors on its sliding doors. So I’m looking at myself in the mirror while lying on my side, and I hear a knocking sound behind me. It sounds like a knock on the window, so naturally that’s what I think it is, right? I turn around, but then there’s no knocking. I move the blinds to check for birds or the branches of a tree, whatever that could have made a knock, but there’s nothing. So I go back to bed, look in the mirror. The knock happens again. I turn around, and it stops again. I dial my sister on FaceTime, and this is when I start getting really freaked out, because it wouldn’t go through even though my Wi-Fi connection was strong. I’d been calling my sister with no problems for the past month, so this really gets to me. It is 1am and I cannot call my sister. I text Dustin, asking if he’s pranking me with the knocking and he says he wasn’t. Then I ask, pleading with him to let me sleep in his bed, one of the most embarrassing requests I’ve ever had to make in my life. (“What the fuck is going on???”)

Fast forward five years. A month or so ago, I was in my bed, in my own room, in Singapore. I hear the same exact sound I’d heard in Dustin’s spare bedroom. The realisation has me feeling extremely alert. I wonder why I’m hearing knocking beside my window, our apartment is on the sixth storey. I Google it, and lo and behold! The results say it could have been the air-conditioning unit (I don’t know what exactly about the unit, I’m really not a Sciencey person) that sounds like there’s a knocking going on. Five years ago, when I wrote about this, not a single soul told me it could have been the A/C. This year, I found out I made a fool of myself thanks to a goddamn temperature-regulating device. All this to say, supernatural things don’t exist and you only believe such shit if you were raised in religious Asian families. That’s all, folks. 

TIKKUN OLAM

could I interest you in everything

all of the time?

I just watched Bo Burnham’s Netflix special, Inside. He’s a stand-up comedian, an actor and a musician, and he produced and edited the entire thing inside his house during the pandemic last year. The good thing about him being multi-talented is the songs he performed were super catchy, I looked for them on Spotify but they’re not there yet. Of course there is political commentary, and everything he wrote and performed (to canned laughter that you can see him ostentatiously push a button to play) is relateable. There is a song about the white woman’s Instagram, about Facetiming his mother (“my mother’s covering the camera with her thumb”), sexting. The sexting song is simultaneously embarrassing and also completely understandable. He’s wearing I think just his white undies while singing it. At different points of the special, he is unhinged, derailed, and he both makes fun of it, but also doesn’t. He says, “I... am not.... well.” It’s a very interesting hour, he keeps repeating “does anyone want to joke at a time like this?” We’ve all come to the same conclusion, it’s a terrible time to be alive, there is nothing to laugh at, and still we all try so hard. I don’t know, I think everyone should watch it, because I think shared experiences somehow help the tiniest bit, and then we can all talk about it together, even though really, none of it matters. The show reminded me of Adam, I think Adam thinks of himself as a funny man, and he also plays multiple musical instruments, so I thought of him. However, I am Sarah Mei, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t watch one thing and think of every single person I know and relate everything to them. This means all the people I used to date and used to be friends with.

Recently, I came to terms with the fact that I’m okay with the world and civilisation as we’ve known it, ending. This is me, the girl who has attachment to everything, who has an existential crisis on the weekly. I think things are constantly in flux, and we’ve seen great progress and it’s okay if we die, because everything has to die and end one day. I think what bothers me most is the fact that inequality and injustice are at an all-time high. I hate thinking that while I may not be worried about drinking potable water until the day I die, while I never have to worry about having a warm shelter in place, it is the people with no agency at all, who suffer from all the consequences. It is people born in less fortunate countries (meaning with a history of being exploited by the wealthy nations) who will have no access to water, who will have the most polluted water and air and resources, who will have their infrastructure torn down, who will die in the most anguish, just because in a system like capitalism, people like you and I inherently want more from the earth. The things we want, require land to be forcibly taken, ground to be fracked, trees to be cut, crude oil to be refined, and I don’t think enough “first-world” people really acknowledge this. I hate the imbalance and I wonder, every fucking day, I wonder, if someone could teach billionaires some bit of empathy, to lessen (forget eliminating) their exploitation, if someone could be a Chidi and Eleanor, if someone could turn this from a Bad Place to a semi Medium Place. 

CREDIT KARMA

I recently began watching In Treatment. I remember Adam having told me about it, that must have been three years ago. I didn’t pay much attention to what he said, but it somehow got back on my radar, so I started last week. It’s a drama series about a therapist and features different sessions with different clients. I’m not sure if it’s reenactments based on real therapy sessions, it sure feels like it. I thought the series was interesting, based on the first four episodes of the first season that I’ve watched. When I picture therapy, I obviously visualise my own experience because I’ve gone for therapy and I’m open and chatty and willing to work on myself. These clients though, they really opened my eyes to how difficult therapy must sometimes be for the therapist, these clients are in deep denial and are so conditioned to believe and behave in ways that display toxic masculinity, etc. They are defensive and uncooperative it made me wonder why they are even at therapy if they’re not even willing to open up. It provided me with so much perspective, and I’ve only seen four episodes. I look forward to more.

In tandem with In Treatment, I’ve also been rewatching The Good Place. I think The Good Place is my favorite series, ever. If you haven’t seen it, I think you should. It’s based on the afterlife, and what happens in the afterlife, and I love so many things about it. I like how it depicts the fact that humans are really capable of change, and there’s no such thing as a good or bad person. I like how it brings up moral philosophers and moral philosophies and condenses them down to a nugget so that viewers can be introduced to such big arguments that they can then explore if they want to. I love that it’s a romantic comedy, somewhat, and the characters are all hilarious, and I love Jason Mendoza. Jason Mendoza is not a bad person so much as his head is terribly empty, he is seriously too stupid to even comprehend what good and bad are, which is a real pity. I am a romantic person, obviously as you know, and the lead characters, Eleanor and Chidi, they are both morally..... complicated people, but every time they are near each other (hmmm very hard to explain without giving everything away), they help each other become better people, and it just tugs at my heartstrings. It’s just the basic premise of love, caring for someone so much that you want to do better and be better, for them. Eleanor seeks out Chidi because he gives a talk on What We Owe To Each Other. He then teaches her ethics and morals so that she begins to care about other people and becomes less selfish. The entire series just lifts my spirits when I’m down. It’s 20 minutes per episode, it’s lighthearted entertainment and there are manageable seasons. (I know because I started rewatching last week and I’m already on season three of the four seasons.) What do we owe to each other? I would like to know. If being together means we are both trying to be and do better for humanity, I think we owe ourselves at least that.

SUPERMOON

I think I must have woken up on the extreme right side of the bed, because I'm on a bit of a cloud. I had a very pleasant dream too, I was racing on a bicycle beside someone, I don't know whom. Cycling is one of the activities that make me feel slightly free, it probably has to do with wind in your hair, yadda yadda yadda. Mine are definitely cycling and swimming. Several of the men I've dated, cycled on a regular basis, whether it was on either stateside coast, or even here in Singapore. The man I dated a couple of weeks ago also cycled his bike everywhere, and we'd have to coordinate between my taking the train and his cycling route. I don't cycle much in Singapore because the infrastructure here isn't as well-built for it, but I may cycle more in Nanaimo, a couple of months into moving there, if I can afford getting a bike. It's a slow-paced (anything would be slow-paced compared to Singapore) island so it should be safer than it is here. I also sat down yesterday and thought about my most recent relationship, I was with Lucas for one and a half years, from May 2019 to December 2020. Some people say it takes about half the duration of a relationship to get over its breakup (I don't know what pseudo bullshit studies made it up but I'm gonna go with it), which means it would take nine months, which also means by the time I'm in BC, Canada for my semester in September, I should be right about at that stage. There are men in a couple of places who are shooting their shots, but I don't think it would work out with them. Here are the things I know I like: starting with the shallow, I like a man with longish hair or at least something that is not cropped short, someone who cares about the environment and environmental justice - and by caring I mean actually puts in effort to improve the state of things, definitely someone who's gone to therapy and worked on himself - because we've all fucked up and what defines us is how much work we put in to change, and now we go back to the shallow, I really like someone who doesn't make spelling or grammatical mistakes - I know it's a terrible thing to judge someone for, and there are millions of people who aren't bothered by it, but my brain works very, very systematically, so please, allow me to date someone whose brain functions similarly to mine. 

Last week, I was feeling a little heavy and overwhelmed, because one of my family members has recently come out of prison. He's only a year older than I am, and we essentially grew up together when we were young because my grandma would take care of a whole bunch of us. He has two kids now, and this was not his first stint, and I was simultaneously happy to see him out and on Instagram, and also worried. I have several family members who have been caught up in the carceral system, and it makes me very angry at the Singaporean government. If you haven't realised, I come from a community that's treated in similar ways to how dark-skinned and black people are treated in the US. The policies here are unforgiving, and the government refuses to acknowledge how much of a vicious cycle jails and prisons are. I don't believe in prison, I am all for prison abolishment, because prisons really don't treat the root causes of "crime", as in poverty and discrimination, it simply aggravates and perpetuates the symptoms. I wish we could do better for them. I understand them because I am human, I have desires and I know what it's like to be curious, I have taken more drugs than probably a lot of my family members combined, I just do so in countries that are not Singapore and that have slightly more progressive attitudes. I want to tell my family members, we all care about them, when they are inside, we worry everyday and all the time, even if I'm not close to these people, and I don't know how to convey the message, without sounding like a patronising cunt. I want to tell them that I know it might be difficult to the point of being impossible, but they've only got this one life (or at least that's my belief), and they shouldn't let this overbearing government win by taking away what little freedom we each already have. I think in these terms of it being a game and my freedom being a win, and it works for me because I may be intrinsically highly motivated by competition. Even though I am part of the same racial community, I know I am privileged enough (I know I'm a privileged piece of shit because in this same post, I just said I like people who don't make spelling mistakes) to have kept myself fairly out of legal troubles. I received my fair bit of education and am working to get myself out of this damn country, but I also know that I am not free until we are all free. I want to see a world where we dismantle all systems and forms of oppression.

YUCCA VALLEY

Some days, I meditate and it helps. Other days, my subconscious wreaks havoc and all my thoughts run wild. It looks and sounds something like this. Breathe, sweat, grow, love. Shut the fuck up, all these mantras trying to placate me so I don’t join a community and organise to overthrow the government. What is the point of meditating? Thirty minutes later, I will be back to facing climate anxiety. Why am I so anxious about the climate? It is too late and it is happening and will happen. Why do I want to save the world? The icebergs are melting, sea levels are rising, and in a couple of decades there will be wars for freshwater resources. It is too late. What is so important about humanity that it has to be saved? We’ve lived through our prime, we’ve moved from caves and rubbing rocks together to make fire, to launching rockets to outerspace, and staying in outerspace. Maybe all the men on Tinder are right, we’re here for a good time, not a long time. Maybe one day when this planet has gone through its wars and natural disasters and cooled down after hundreds of years and productivity is written off as a sin, humans will repopulate themselves and rebuild civilisation. What is so important about human beings that we have to be saved? We’ve caused the extinction of thousands of species in our lifetime, why should we be any different from those species of wildlife? How narcissistic to think we are any special. What does Joey think of this? What the fuck does it matter what Joey thinks of this? How is Ben facing this, is he still smoking lots of weed? What the fuck does it matter how Ben is dealing with this? What does Lucas think of this, what would he feel about the fact that I grow ever more radicalised, every single day since I’ve seen him? Would he be proud of me? What the fuck does it matter what Lucas feels about me? What the fuck does anything matter? We are all going to die. Some days, my Calm meditation sessions give me energy to face an increasingly despondent world, and some days I want to punch the app (yes that’s right I want to punch the damn icon on my phone) for lying to me because as a singular human being, no amount of calming my thoughts is going to contribute to the betterment of society. What if, instead of monetary currency, we change currency to the offset of carbon credits? Every time you make a move that’s good for the environment or has as little carbon impact as you can, you get credit for... whatever, rent, perhaps? The less you work, the less impact you have on the environment, and the more credit you get to spend on your livelihood. You get a roof over your head, seeds to plant and food to eat. How’s that? I read somewhere, or someone told me, that cryptocurrency is terrible for the environment. All bankers would incur an immediate debt, just for being bankers. Let’s flip the world on its goddamn head. So much for not caring, I’m still thinking about how to bring about change. What we need is a complete overturn of values. Singapore is experiencing a rise in cases and there is speculation of another impending lockdown. I will be able to earn and save less in case that happens, so you can find me under my bed, crying and trying not to die. I don’t seem to be here for a good time nor a long time. 

SAFE HAVEN SURRENDER

The phone number of the man in the latest post ends in 5169, the same as the man who works at SpaceX. The man who lives in Seattle switched from cigarettes to a vape, the same as the man who cooked for me in Brooklyn. The two Bens from New York, they’re both of Jewish heritage, and every time I read news of Israeli settler violence against Palestine, I think of them, not that I think they’re Zionist at all. The man I loved for two years, we got together on my birthday, and today would have been our second anniversary. The funny thing is we didn’t even spend our first together, because Singapore was on lockdown, he was in his apartment and I was in my family’s. I sang Taylor Swift’s Mean on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles the first time I was there, about fifty-two full moons ago, and I have changed, grown, become a whole other person since then. I have loved different people, I have loved differently, I am a new person now. And yet, every single one of those past versions of me still lives within me. Not a single one of those people I have loved could be replaced by any other. I know which trait belongs to which person, I know who’s been to therapy, and who wants to but hasn’t. I started out my day wanting to have a good day, but it weighs heavy on me, I am feeling so many things in so many places, I do not even know where to begin untangling them. There are things I probably still haven’t uncovered. You drew stars around my scars, but now I’m bleeding.

FIDELITY

Imagine being in a haze. Not physically, but in your mind. You go on a date and play truth or dare, drinking shots of soju when you refuse. This takes place in a private karaoke room, where you sing Taylor Swift, off-key (it’s always off-key for me, I’m tone deaf) and he tries to sing My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, but it is too high for him. You both get steadily more drunk, you talk about your exes and he talks about his. Truth: Which ex would you get back together with? It’s a toss up, East Coast or West? Never thinking about the recent one, the one who loved you, because you have to deny what hurts, right? You’re in a daze, anyway, it doesn’t matter. He is smart, smarter than you are, and this is not too common and you know it. You’d have to be smart to advise college kids on what paths to take, it will affect the rest of their lives. You carry yourself like the woman you know you are, you are intelligent and kind and good-looking and you could command anyone’s attention if you wanted to. One of the shoots you recently modeled for has just churned out a social media ad that your friend screenshots and sends you, it’s a telehealth app and you look so happy and bright and you’re holding a pack of birth control pills like they’re the best things you’ve seen, which is ironic because you argued about STI testing, you don’t remember the last time you got tested because it never used to matter when you’re in a relationship and you only have one partner. But smart men, they are your weakness. They will always be. He carries himself with the assuredness of being anatomically well-endowed or that he at least knows how to pleasure a woman. It turns out to pleasantly be both, until you have the STI argument. How many men have never used a vibrator during sex, and how many women have seen social media posts, agreeing that penetrative sex, together with a vibrator is the best combination? Such wildly different lives we lead, all due to our sexual organs. When you arrive, though, you are disappointed, because his room is messy. Why are men’s rooms always messy? There are sheaves of paper on his bed, there are piles of clothes, there is a photo frame of him and his goddamn ex (oh mon dieu!) on the dresser. He promptly sees it and faces it down, but too late, we both know we are not over our exes. You tell him, Jesus, I’m going to write a book about all the men I’ve dated, and the common thread will be how goddamn messy their rooms are, how do women raise men like these. He says, “you should see women’s rooms, they’re just as messy” — again, it’s never #notallmen, but #somewomenaretoo! You walk the five blocks back from your workplace to his apartment, and it’s the first time you’re seeing Singapore’s buildings lit up from near, it feels a little like New York City with its grids and forever-lit-up towers. You hate the idea of these corporations and you hate Singapore, but the two of you walk together and you think, what a pretty, pretty haze, you could stand to be here a little longer. You’re both so messy and you don’t know what you want, and where you’re going, but some days, it’s nice to be in a daze together, than apart.

KEYBIND

baby, I know pain is as natural as the rain
I just thought it didn't rain in California

I'm currently in the midst of typing my final essay for the semester. In 24 hours I will be done and free. I received my final grade for Indigenous Gender, I got an 85%/A, and given that I got up before the sun did for those classes, I'm happy with those results. I don't think I'll do as well for Politics nor Philosophy, but I'll accept B's this semester. Unless one of you wants to hack into the school system and adjust my grades. Lol I kid. I think.

Rachel, who was one of my friends from school and is also now my boss at my second job, told me about Warmspace, and I immediately signed up for it. I had my session a couple of weeks ago, and I really liked it. So someone from Indonesia created a platform called Warmspace, during the pandemic last year. What happens is you indicate your availability for their timeslots, then you get matched with someone else who's available at the same timeslot. You can meet anyone of any race, gender, age, whatever, this way.

The video session lasts about an hour. You start off with a short three-minute meditation facing each other, then with a voice prompt guiding each of you through the session, you choose words or themes to ask each other questions about, and then you're given a few short minutes to respond to the other person's chosen sharings. I got an Indian man who was completing his PhD in Germany, who hadn't met his family for about a year because they live all over the world. We talked about hope.

I really enjoyed my session, I do think it's very important in such a global climate as today. My takeaway from it was that, although we were in such far-off nations with different experiences, we were strangers who could care for each other. It was amazing. They should definitely try to use the platform at retirement homes or anywhere old folks are cooped up from meeting their loved ones, until the vaccines have been fully administered!

Speaking of vaccines, India is suffering the brunt of Covid, mostly due to the patenting of the vaccines by companies in America. If you believe in applying patents on healthcare products over the health of your fellow people, please never talk to me again because I will goddamn punch you in the face. Fuck right off, I don't need you in my life.

BROWN DWARF

I have a Politics exam paper in half an hour (now thirteen minutes). I have one more Eastern Philosophy essay to submit a week from now. Once the philo paper is submitted, I will be done with my first semester of school. Seven more days. 168 hours. I can do this. I have been very stressed throughout the month, but I am personally responsible for that, for taking on way too many jobs and opportunities. Derek Chauvin has been charged with the murder of George Floyd. It's one step forward but not damn near enough. Justice cannot be served when the system that exists prevents justice, every day. It's time to abolish the police, dismantle the patriarchy, destroy capitalism. Recently, I said to someone I was subconsciously angry at capitalism, and if I weren't working all the damn time to survive, I would be much healthier. They said, having observed Communism, it's sadly not much better. I retorted that I think that's a narrow mindset, that when someone criticises capitalism you gotta compare it to communism (or what you think communism is) or a failing system that you know, because we are human beings, if there's anything we're capable of, it's dreaming up new systems and ways of being. If you can do it with outerspace, why the fuck not dream about different things on Earth. Why the fuck not? Alright, my exam paper has been emailed to me. Sarah Mei, out! 

Also, she always types my name with a hyphen, I don't know why. I have clearly never used a hyphen in my name, because there is no hyphen in my name. ????????

PETER LUGER

A notion commonly held across the world is that young adults are less politically engaged than older generations. A significant reason for this prevalent view is that voter turnout at national elections is taken to be the main and most important measure of political engagement. In this paper, I will set out to reject the claim that young adults’ political participation is on a decline. This will be done in two prongs. First, I will highlight several causes that may contribute to and account for low voter turnout among younger generations of people, aged 18 to 35. Secondly, I will prove that in other measures besides voter turnout, younger generations are very active and involved, indicating to a large extent that they are in fact not any less politically engaged than their older compatriots. 

In a focus group discussion done with youths in New Zealand, contrary to the findings of research in the quantitative tradition, fewer differences were found between young voters and non-voters: the interviews and focus group reveal surprising similarities in the political efficacy of young voters and non-voters. High school students made statements reflecting the necessity of working in community to improve the sustainability of life on this planet, as well as beliefs that money would be much better spent on ‘feeding hungry people’ than on ‘weapons and bombs for war’ (Sheerin, 2007). 

Another key finding from the same study is that young people, including non-voters, are often interested in and enthusiastic about political issues. 80% of the survey respondents, including non-voters, said they felt strongly about one or more political issues, such as unemployment and education. In the US, Braungart and Braungart (1998) have similarly challenged assumptions of youth political apathy, arguing that young Americans (again, including non-voters) are increasingly concerned with a wide range of political issues, including gun control, healthcare and the environment. Similar research in Australia has revealed that young people are interested in a wide range of political issues, leading researchers to conclude that young Australians are not politically apathetic, but rather disinterested in politicians and traditional party politics. (Sheerin, 2007) 

In the United Kingdom, research studies were conducted by Nestlé to survey teenagers’ attitudes towards politics. Most knew little about politics, had not thought a great deal about political issues, nor been involved in political activities. When shown a list of different types of people whom they would trust, young people placed their trust in doctors, teachers, and their own parents. Adults, on the other hand, were significantly more cynical and less trusting. While younger people in the UK may rightly judge their own grasp of political knowledge to be tenuous, they may be inclined to trust their elders and previous generations to make wiser and more informed decisions through the electoral process, as opposed to youths casting their own votes (Mortimore, 2003). 

The Nestlé study also revealed that many young people do not have the intention to vote because they do not feel valued by political leaders. One in five (23%) say they would not vote because ‘politicians don’t care about people like me’. For young people, this applies to all political parties. 17% say voting is pointless because ‘all political parties are the same’. As a result, 16% also believe that politics do not make a difference to their lives. However, half of all respondents indicate they would be interested in learning about the issues ‘which will help me decide how to vote when I turn 18 years old’. This notion is stronger among students of private institutions than those attending state schools, which may suggest that it is those from a background more supportive of political awareness or those who have already received some degree of citizenship education who are most keen to find out more. If so, citizenship classes may have a beneficial effect, not only in initiating the educational process but stimulating the curiosity or desire for further knowledge. (Mortimore, 2003) 

In Cyprus, a country divided by separatist lines between Turkish and Greek Cypriots, fieldwork shows youths being excluded from decision-making and peace-building processes. Young people frequently think that their messages are devalued or ignored. Research highlights what is known as ‘adult territoriality’, where the politics are mainly dominated by older men who do not allow young people to take part in any type of governmental body. An interview with a young Cypriot revealed, “political parties are hesitant to encourage youth candidates in politics and they don’t have any intention to open the doors to youth either”. This creates a glass ceiling that prevents young people from being included in politics, decision-making or peacebuilding. “It might be because of the Mediterranean culture, but elders do not listen to you until your hairs turn grey,” was a comment by another 28-year-old Turkish Cypriot. “It is deeply embedded in the Cyprus culture that if you are a young person, you [have] no experience to be listened to,” said a 27-year-old Greek Cypriot, indicating that youths on both sides of the issue share the same sentiments. (Dizdaroğlu, 2020) 

In a cross-national study (Kitanova, 2018), the researcher proposes that lack of political activity is more likely to be apparent in countries which are newly democratised. The age of a democracy is argued to have a direct impact on the propensity of young individuals to engage in politics. Through the democratic experience in a country, individuals develop loyalty and form certain political habits (Jackman & Miller, 2004). Countries with similar historical trajectories will have similarities to the process of how a young person goes through life and develops their political beliefs and behaviors. When the democratic experience is new, therefore, there would not be necessary developed habits of voting. In new democracies, historically there are high levels of state centralisation, low levels of freedom, and a lack of automatic examples in the nuclear family structure, on how to engage in political participation. In contrast, young people are more engaged in politics in advanced democracies compared to new democracies because there is a certain know-how that has been passed down. (Kitanova, 2018) 

The global atmosphere and unforeseeable circumstances in recent years have brought forth many valid reasons for political unrest as well as community organizing. One such example is the fight against climate change. In the past two years, especially, students have pioneered and championed for long-term solutions to the pressing issue of mitigating impending climate disaster. Students were the ones holding placards in Kiribati and chanting: “We are not sinking, we are fighting.” Concurrently in Australia, the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, had said that students should stay in class rather than go on strike. Danielle Porepilliasana, a Sydney high school student, made a comeback comment: “World leaders from everywhere are telling us that students need to be at school doing work. I’d like to see them at their parliaments doing their jobs for once.” (Laville & Watts, 2019) 

Over in Taiwan, dozens of representatives from primary schools, high schools, and universities gathered in the capital, Taipei, to launch a petition demanding presidential candidates to lay out concrete policies that would reduce climate change risks. Protests demanding environmental protection and accountability took place in New York, Sydney, Nairobi and Delhi, among countless other major cities throughout the globe. Historical movements were ongoing, and young people were in charge. There was widespread media coverage, and one of the many remarks made was: “This is a movement led by young people across the globe. We’re not just looking for an excuse for a day off school or college; we’re standing up for the future of our planet.” (Laville & Watts, 2019) 

In another major crisis that culminated in 2020, to stand up for black lives and against police brutality and systemic racism, protesters stormed the streets in hotspots around the world, including in Auckland, Paris, London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam. Students planned BLM marches across the United States and many were at the forefront of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Activism also found a platform on social media, where students propagate resources and information for others to become educated about the pressing need to strive for racial justice. 

Students and young adults share links to petitions, offer advice for safe protesting practices, create templates for emailing authorities, list bail funds and black-owned restaurants and businesses in need of support, and share videos documenting instances of police brutality at protests. At the risk of endangering their own lives, safety, and mental health, students rallied behind the BLM movement and have spearheaded and founded far-reaching branches of the movement. In a 2015 case that unraveled at the University of Missouri at Columbia, after students reported multiple instances of being subjected to racial slurs and mistreatment, the student body launched protests and called for the resignation of then-president Tim Wolfe. The president resigned shortly after. (Rim, 2020) 

Raising awareness and fighting misinformation is an important role that many youth have taken up, and an ongoing example of this would be the COVID-19 pandemic. A Tweetchat in Africa has attracted over 90,000 participants and helped to protect against disease spreading. #STOP-COVID-19 infographics are available in more than sixty African languages dedicated to dispelling myths about the virus. A number of creative ways of sharing messages have also emerged, including via music in South Africa, graffiti in Kenya, and poetry in Gambia. 

Young people are supporting their communities in various ways through maintaining access to basic services and providing humanitarian assistance. Many local initiatives are engaged in distributing soap, installing handwashing stations, manufacturing bottles of home-made hand sanitiser and making protective masks. Other youth groups are working together to hand out food packages and sanitation kits, deliver free and anonymous mental health services, and maintain the menstrual health of women and girls in rural areas during lockdown. (Itcovitz & Kazimierczuk, 2020) 

Youth-led demonstrations often receive harsh criticism, such as calls for youth climate activist Greta Thunberg to “shut up and go back to school” (Dizdaroğlu, 2020). The aforementioned studies have shown that at least in Cyprus and in the UK, younger generations do not feel cared for nor listened to. It takes no great leap of faith to put forward that when a segment of the population do not feel included or validated, they would be much less inclined to participate in politics as well as vote in national elections. For states that regard young adults with apathy, it is state governments and politicians who should have the maturity to extend their empathy and inclusion to youth, if the intended result is creating and fostering political empathy in young adults. 

Furthermore, Kitanova’s research as well as the Nestlé study both show that when you foster an interest and plant seeds of knowledge in kids and younger adults, they are much likelier to want to know more and do better. It naturally follows that to inspire higher levels of political participation, young adults need to be exposed to political knowledge earlier in their lives. Political and citizenship education can and should start with government initiatives at the grassroots level. 

On the other hand, when looking at factors beyond the electoral process, within the past year alone, it is apparent that young adults and even teenagers are not lacking in their concern for the plight of the community. They have taken to the streets and writing letters to Congress, starting political movements and organizing online, protesting and rioting, for greater causes than themselves. They stepped up and displayed their passion for and dedication to saving the environment, social justice causes and weeding out racism, and in the healthcare and welfare of their fellow citizens during a global pandemic. Given all that they have done for the sake of community, it would be hard to assert that young adults are less politically engaged than their older counterparts. 

References: 

Braungart, R. C., & Braungart, M. M. (1998). Citizenship and Citizenship Education in the United States in the 1990's. IN ICHILOV, O. (Ed.) Citizenship and Citizenship Education in a Changing World. London, Woburn Press. 

Dizdaroğlu, C. (2020). Young people are campaigning for political change worldwide - but their voices are too often ignored. https://theconversation.com/young-people-are-campaigning-for-political-change- worldwide-but-their-voices-are-too-often-ignored-132893 

Itcovitz, H., & Kazimierczuk, A. (2020). Never giving up: youth voices and participation in the time of COVID-19. https://includeplatform.net/news/never-giving-up-youth-voices-participation-covid-19/ 

Jackman, R. W., & Miller, R. A. (2004). Before Norms: Institutions and Civic Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 

Kitanova, M. (2018). Youth political participation in the EU: evidence from a cross-national analysis. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2019.1636951 

Laville, S., & Watts, J. (2019). Across the globe, millions join biggest climate protest ever. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/21/across-the-globe-millions -join-biggest-climate-protest-ever 

Mortimore, R. (2003). Young People’s Attitudes Towards Politics. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/migrations/en-uk/files/Assets/Docs/Archive/Polls/nfm16.pdf 

Rim, C. (2020). How Student Activism Shaped The Black Lives Matter Movement. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2020/06/04/how-student-activism-shaped-the-black-lives-matter-movement/?sh=5177d06a4414 

Sheerin, C. A. (2007). Political Efficacy and Youth Non-Voting: A Qualitative Investigation into the Attitudes and Experiences of Young Voters and Non-Voters in New Zealand. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/962

KÁRMÁN LINE

I have had the most tiring week. I am tired of tiring weeks, and months, and days, and years. This morning, I presented my Indigenous Gender project with my groupmate who lives in Vancouver. Her name is Alessia. She was quarantined for two weeks because the mother of the kid she nannies had Covid. I had a great time chatting with her for hours this past week, doing our project and getting to know each other and our families. I have a screenshot of Alessia being really shocked and laughing when I told her I was 30. She thought I was 18. I woke up at 5.15am this morning to present the project at 5.30am, I think our professor and classmates were impressed and it was a job well done. I am tired of online classes and will be so, so glad when we can all be rid of them. I have three more weeks of school. I have an exam, and three essays to go. 

This past week, I have just realised how much I’d yet to be aware of in myself. I’m scared Lucas hates me. When we ended things, he said he’d look forward to one day when we were friends again, but I’m really sad thinking of if he changes his mind and doesn’t care about me anymore. Sometimes, I think I would be a prime candidate for cancer. There has been so much cortisol in my system for such long periods in my life. My mother had cancer when she was about forty years old. I am so tired of the stress and the unhappiness.

I look forward to being in Canada, and rooting myself in nature, and forest bathing, and putting away my phone to be present, wherever I am. After going through this entire week, I have realised that I have a different notion of love. I think I have had enough of fiery passionate flame-like love. I don’t want and I don’t need the heart-pumping love of racing through a desert wasteland. I don’t want a two-week whirlwind winter romance in the greatest city in the world. I just want the comfort and safety of loving a man who loves me back. I want the warmth and pacifying feeling I get when I am self-soothing and place my hand over my heart, to calm myself when I am overwhelmed by my emotions in public.

In life, I’ve always had the mindset of wanting to experience everything at least once. I want to take all the drugs. I want to try polyamory. I think life is so short and time-limited, I want to do all the things! Then I realise, my mental health is not intact. I am not an average privileged white man who has gone through life relatively unscathed. I take everything seriously, I go through life fiercely and furiously, and when things end, as things do, I am the one who crashes and burns. I don’t want that to happen anymore. I have made enough mistakes in life, I’ve seen my parents make enough mistakes in theirs, and I think it’s time. I’m ready to start building. I forgive myself for everything I’ve done to date, I forgive myself for not knowing better, for hurting other people from a place of hurt.

I’ve been having a sharp, stabbing pain in my heel, and it’s either a splinter I can’t find, remnants of when I slipped and injured myself on the overhead bridge last week, or a case of plantar fasciitis. I’ve never had that last one before, and I suppose my Nike sneakers that I wear to work are really worn out now, so I need to get new shoes, which means a higher expenditure this month. Sigh. I need that 100K to heal me and my life.

WHENEVER YOU’RE READY

I watched a scene about a stillbirth today and it threw me off-balance, or even more off-balance if possible. In the span of ten minutes, my brain went through all the bad things that have happened in my life. Unstable parents, my father serially cheating, leading to the partner of someone he solicited sex from asking me to advise him, being strung along by someone who was cheating on his fiancée, having a miscarriage, my mother telling me the miscarriage was a blessing because it was premarital, even with my knowledge that I was premaritally conceived, the time a stranger followed me up the staircase landing and flashed his penis with no remorse at all, whilst I was shaking and trembling all the way home and when I reached home, then being guilted by my mother that I’d reached home so late. I never felt enough for my parents so I’ll never be enough for myself and no one will ever be enough for me. Today all my brain told me was, you don’t deserve happiness. If anyone in this family were to ever end their life, it would be me because I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in an afterlife, and I’m not scared of anything happening to me after death. I think I need antidepressants. I’m not very well in this moment. All I am is tired.

FAIT ACCOMPLI

When I first met Lucas, one of the first things I saw him post was an Instastory that said “healing is not linear”. How apt, or how curious it is, that it describes how I am, at the end of the relationship. When I broke up with him, I’d expected to hurt right after the breakup, so I gave myself a little time and space to hurt. I listened to Taylor Swift’s saddest songs, and I thought I was healed. I didn’t picture myself four months later, being awake at extreme times, pushing my brains to expand a little bit more, to learn a little bit more, to churn out words for just a little while longer. I didn’t see myself working two jobs, running to photoshoots, juggling earning an income and simultaneously spending it all on educating myself, with no one by my side. In 2019 to the end of 2020, in all my tumultuous times, when I was learning, when I was growing, when I was literally pushing the boundaries of the person I was to become the person I am, Lucas was always, constantly by my side. Now he is not. I suppose I am grieving the loss of his consistency, the solidity he provided. The grief is overwhelming me, I did not expect it and therefore sometimes, at the mention of any word I associate with Lucas, I start crying, at work, during a shoot, while in a class at 2am. Currently I have makeup on, waiting for my turn to model for some photos to advertise a product that I actually would use and advocate (I’ll talk about it when it’s out and ready). At this moment, typing about this, I am grieving and trying not to cry so my makeup stays intact. The tears will come and they have come. They say you will never truly get over the people whom you love, and I suppose that’s one way of knowing I did love Lucas. Also, fuck the non-monogamy thing. There is no way in hell I could do that in the next five years. I don’t have anything against his new partner, I know Lucas and I trust they will be happy together, and I’m happy to know that, but at the same time, Jesus Christ, it does hurt to see him with someone else. I don’t know how to reconcile humankind’s history of communal families and having multiple partners ingrained in our DNA, and the conditioning we’ve all had to commit to one individual for the rest of our lives. But that’s not a question I have to figure out now. I’m also really not even the type to fuck around, despite what some people think I’ll be doing in Canada. I’ve got two new vibrators since the breakup, but I haven’t slept with anyone since Lucas. I haven’t even kissed anyone since Lucas. I fully advocate for people doing whatever they want with their bodies, but unfortunately I’m not a no-strings-attached kind of person. I have a gazillion strings attached to the person I am. When we first got together, I truly did envision living out the rest of my life with Lucas, and I grieve the loss of that. I’ve decided, when I next date, I want to be fully intentional. I want to be healed and self-aware, and I want it to be long-lasting. I want a really long dating period, of at least six months, to gauge if it’s a person I can and really want to commit to, before even putting any label on a relationship. I really don’t want to go through another breakup, I think I’ve had enough in my life and I’m not doing well at all with this one.

WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB

I am in great pain. Please help me. 

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me. 

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

I am in great pain. Please help me.

SKID ROW

but what is grief,

if not love persevering?

I’ve had quite the week. Or maybe the month. The year? An entire life? Yesterday I met my cousin Hazwani, and I told her about having seen Lucas with another girl on his Instagram. We went to The Projector, it’s the only independent cinema in Singapore, and Lucas liked it, aesthetic kid that he is. We used to like going there together, of course it was the location of our first date, and many more after that. Hazwani and I took pictures at the photobooth in The Projector. We laughed over our silly rhymes, pretending to be “writers” like Lang Leav and Rupi Kaur. My cousin is truly one of my best friends, I love her, she’s seen me through so much, through everything in my life I guess, but it did make me miss Lucas, who was my best friend for close to two years. It was raining heavily yesterday, I slipped on an open staircase and fell five steps down, breaking the fall with my bum and left arm. My arm is bruising, and both my cousin and I were completely shocked for a while, but I told her I’d get over it. I’m not too bothered by physical injuries anymore, I think it’s a lululemon thing. My arm is bruised, it takes two or three weeks to heal, it goes away forever. What worries me is my heartbreak. You get heartbroken, you spend three nights sobbing. You think you’re done. But then you see your ex with someone else. It starts all over again. I miss Lucas. I don’t know in what capacity. Yes, I took him for granted when we were together. I enjoyed his company, being my partner, he was also my best friend. While we were on lockdown, it was his money that went towards my therapy sessions. He never treated me like I needed to be fixed, he’d just let me be however I had to be, let me go through whatever I had to go through. He was really good for me, and I know I loved him, but I don’t know if I knew how to love him. When I was young, my parents would have violent fights, and they’d make up, and I thought that was love. Their fights would involve one of them telling me to throw away a peace-making gift from the other, and the other one telling me I’d better not throw it away. Their fights were the kind that resulted in one of them smashing in the windscreen of the other’s rented car. My parents were not stable people, I don’t know if I can say they are stable people now, and I’m clearly not stable either. I miss Lucas being dependable and stable. I don’t know if I broke up with him because we weren’t compatible, or I’m not equipped to love. Why do I crave love from people who barely give me any attention? I’m an emotionally attached person. If I can feel for people in third-world nations I’ll probably never get to visit, if I can harbor feelings for someone I met in LA five years ago, if I can still recall the romance I had with a man I spent two weeks in New York with, you’d best believe my memory will not let slip a man I spent two years being best friends with. He was a solid, dependable, soft, funny, loving and considerate man, and I will always love him. If anything, I just hope people know I loved them, I love them, and I tried my best to love them. I know not all relationships are meant to last forever, I know sometimes you just have to enjoy things in their season, but I just want to know whether I had the right reasons, I just want to know my reasons. My heart hurts, and my body is banged up from the fall. I cannot stop crying, and I want the stages of grief to be over. I’m in pain, everywhere and I just want to know when it will end.

BALLPARK FIGURE

I wonder if I would have made a good TV writer. I think I watch a fair bit of TV but more than that, I internalise it and my brain churns out thoughts in the formula of TV writing. You know, when the woman knocks on the man’s door on Christmas to make a declaration of love, or when the guy arrives at the airport a tad too late and makes a PA announcement to stop the love of his life from boarding the plane to relocate elsewhere in the world. I have made grand gestures, more than once. I write long, elaborate notes. I write them on owl postcards, on the back of packages. I wonder if they still exist in the world, or if they’ve long been incinerated. In TV world, grand gestures almost always work. The recipient changes their mind, and they choose each other. There’s a literal scene in Grey’s Anatomy, where Meredith says “pick me, choose me, love me”, embodying the literal version of the pick-me girl. 

I wish I weren’t such a person, but one of the values that motivate me is most definitely acceptance. It’s highly likely due to the fact that my father left the family (ish) when we were young, and my mother literally doesn’t accept the non-Muslim, tattooed, physically “promiscuous” person I am. She refuses to acknowledge that part of me, which is a big part of me. When I see workplaces professing to be families, I gag because it’s just a way for capitalism to legitimise the gazillion hours you spend slaving away at work. And yet, I always absorb myself into my work teams and treat them as I do my family members, or better than, because they treat me better than my family members treat me. They see me, hear me, acknowledge and validate me, and I cannot help but appreciate them for it. 

I have a colleague whom I really like, her name is Mel. I don’t know why, but I like her a lot. Sometimes we just spend a few minutes chatting at work, and she always gives off the chill vibes I aim to internalise and embody. She reads as much as I do, or perhaps even more, and sometimes she talks to me about books and restaurants. I think she knows a lot of things, but she’s always professional about her work. When she has fun, she really has fun. When we were unboxing new things at a shift, she’s the kind of person who would act like she’s Paris Hilton DJing in Bali, she’s just weird like that. She also recently bought a mini basketball game for the pantry, to hit free shipping on an order. I want to be that kind of person. I want to be the person who knows many things, but also has my shit together. 

Apropos of nothing, I really don’t think, given the global situation we’re all in, happiness is an attainable goal, nor should it be. We’re living in an age of social media and information, it is impossible or at least unlikely that you can stay unaware of global inequality. I just watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez make a three-minute case on her Instastories, about the migration crisis, which she rightly says is not simply a migration crisis. The crisis was created because imperialist America invades and destabilises other countries and regions, capitalist America thrives off consumerism and contributes a majority of carbon emissions, and the climate and economic crises force the global South to relocate, for lack of a choice. 

Every day that you don’t consider the interconnectedness of everything is a day you choose to be wilfully ignorant of injustice. It is necessary that you don’t numb yourself to the ills of the world, to the Asian hate crimes, to police brutality, to Myanmar’s decades-old and ongoing political instability, to bigotry that the LGBTQ community face everywhere, it is necessary that you don’t literally buy into personal joys and happiness, at least not most of the time, because it is only when you face facts, that you begin to want to effect change. If you don’t see how broken the world is, you’re not paying attention. When was the last time you cried?

HOMESLICE

I did a silly thing. I went to view Lucas’ Instagram and his recent story showed he was dating intimately (a spa/massage or something) with another girl. I don’t know why I did this. I’m sad now, and I also don’t know why I’m sad. Perhaps because I used to be that girl next to him. Last week, my grandma asked again why I wasn’t speaking to him, and again I had to say, it’s not me not speaking to him, he’s not speaking to me. I have sent him a couple of messages, unanswered. He has a whole life, as do I. It’s okay to not remain in each other’s lives. I’m on the way to work, and today I think about all the little things. The way I’m feeling, the wistfulness, the nostalgia, I’m sure in the few millennia of humanity to have existed, I’m not the first person to feel it. It’s okay to feel this way, it’s natural. We all set timelines and quotas of when to look at our exes’ pages, we tell ourselves not to, we say okay let’s give it a year, and then we go ahead and do it at three months. I used to love watching Grey’s Anatomy and identifying with the songs used in the soundtrack, and adding those songs to my Spotify. If you go to Youtube, there are so many comments that say “Grey’s Anatomy brought me here” or — brought me here. It’s the collective human experience. My colleagues and friends think rather highly of me, in terms of my brain power, they think I read much more than I actually do, but I’m more emotionally intelligent than I am intellectually intelligent. When I am sad, like I am now, or when I’m angry, or when I’m tired, I vocalise it and express it, and people like it that I’m so human. It reminds them that it’s okay to be human too. I feel weird when I think about how I throw caution to the wind and let everyone know about every single turbulent thought that goes through my head, on social media, but then I stop and think, how many people have found courage to open up to me first, about family issues, about money issues, about anger management issues, because they’ve seen me with mine? How many people have I helped with mental health because they’ve seen me seek help for mine? I’m vulnerable, and that allows them to be vulnerable with me. I know so many more things about so many more people that I would never have known if not for the humanness I display. All this to say, I viewed an ex’s Instagram today, and on the whole, it didn’t make me feel pleasant, but I’m not about to beat myself up over it. I’m a human being, being human.

SUMMA CUM LAUDE

My politics research paper is due in two weeks, and I promise I will get it fully completed at least one day before the deadline. I promise. 

These are the topics I have to choose from:

i. Is either Russia or Turkey or Brazil a hybrid regime or an authoritarian regime? Why? Be sure to first define and discuss the characteristics of hybrid and authoritarian regimes and provide some background on Russian/Turkish/Brazilian politics before assessing whether its regime is hybrid or authoritarian.  

ii. Compare and contrast two binding referenda from two different regions or countries. To what extent do referenda enable a majority of citizens to have an effective direct say in decisions of national importance? Why or why not? Be sure to address the relevant historical context as well as the key actors, arguments and consequences.

iii. Young adults aged 18 to 35 are often said to be less politically engaged than older generations. To what extent is this correct? Why? Be sure to use examples from at least three countries.

I just want to say, for transparency's sake, that the reason I'm running around like a headless chicken (or is it cockroach? or do both work??), is I didn't know anyone who earns enough to be a guarantor for a loan to pay for my entire tuition. I therefore took out a loan for half my tuition, or two years' worth. I have enough savings for rent for a while (also two years' worth??), and I can probably scrape some kind of money for maybe a year's worth of tuition while studying, but then hopefully for my last year, I have the money for school before I start paying it all back. 

I'm exhausted! I'm just.... writing here because I'm having a politics class now and if I don't move my fingers or any part of myself I will likely fall asleep. Honestly, I cannot wait for this semester to end in a month. For my last fourish months in Singapore, I'll be working two jobs to earn and save more money, and I can sleep at slightly more sensible times. I have had so much cortisol in my system for the last three months, I really, truly, honestly need it to stop.