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for whom the bell tolls

for whom the bell tolls

Monthly Archives: December 2014

Mini review

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by The Bride in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Things I have not done since I started the PhD:

1. Crafty stuff with the kids. I had grand hopes of being super-involved due to work flexibility. Ha! My schedule got so out of control, I could barely manage an extra 45 minutes with them. I mentioned this to one of the mums at the kindy and she said: “Oh don’t worry, I don’t work and I don’t do crafty stuff. To be honest, it’s quite boring.” Feel better.

2. Exercised: I was sure I’d lose a tonne of weight because surely I could get an hour in every day. Ha again! I ended up not even completing the yoga class I signed up for, which frankly, I didn’t miss once when I was working.

3. Read a lot on my topic: This is the biggest irony. I have not even been able to properly work on the thing I’m supposed to be researching. Because I loaded up on coursework and had a tutorial to take. Gahhhh

Things I have done:

1. Read a lot about French feminism and developed a love of Luce Irigaray even though I don’t agree with her final position on the question of difference.

2. Bonded with fellow students who I think don’t think I’m the boringest aunty around.

3. Dropped Benji to school a fair bit and developed relationship with teachers, other mums, hosted play dates, etc.

4. Written a paper, which might be of some use.

5. Completed a semester of being a tutor and impersonating being a teacher who knows what she’s doing. I have some ideas how I might do better next semester.

6. Seen a very good counsellor.

Normally, this would be the time to take stock of the year etc. But frankly, I can’t be arsed to get into it in detail. It’s been a crazy year, and frankly, the part of it when I wasn’t in the PhD programme seems like another life. My marriage has been a rollercoaster, and its still a work in progress though I don’t have much patience about working on it anymore. The breakthrough is that we have an underlying bedrock of love or affection or whatchamacallit that counts for something and are communicating a wee bit better after the fact if not pre-emptively. Lost interest in certain old friends – I used to feel bad about these relationships drifting and now that I’m going to see them, I realise I don’t care if I do or don’t, though seeing them might change that. Honestly, a part of me is done agonising, if that’s possible with me. I feel like I should just bludgeon chaotically on and not feel too bad about having not thought things through.

Normally, I’d have some existential goal for the coming year. But I’m very clear what I want:

1. To present a paper at at least one conference.

2. To catch up on all the reading I haven’t been able to do.

3. To be a better teacher. Though I don’t care tooo much about this.

4. To count to 10 more before reacting to the husband. How many years have I been saying this though? Should I give up on this goal since it’s clearly not happening? It’s a fine line between silence and resentment that just simmers and screaming to everyone’s alarm.

That is all. Back to the books.

My phone is dead, long live my phone

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by The Bride in epiphany, Hongy Wonky

≈ 2 Comments

So apparently you cannot fling an iphone to the ground multiple times (with long intervals in between) without it breaking down. To its credit, it took more than a year. It would have been nice if it had chosen to die on me within the year, because then it would have been within the warranty period, but life never works out like that, does it?

So yeah, the phone finally copped it. Although visions of a new phone began floating through my mind, I quickly came down to earth (nudged by V) because I cannot really afford a new phone now. Nor do I want a new one actually. I really like my phone, and it’s been only a year. I did know that it was on its last leg though because the last time if fell, part of it bulged out of the case and it took a bit of deep breathing and a sharp crack to get it back into place.

Anyway, V who has never been a fan of repairing electronics suddenly decided that we should try to repair this. I really had my doubts because although its not that old, the phone has really taken a beating, between the kids flinging it around and me the klutz. I guess the difference between this one and my old phone, the iphone 3G, was that the latter only had me and my butterfingers to contend with and not the rage of Mimi’s right hand. Also, because the iphone C has a pretty cover, I kept it case-less for the longest time.

So urged by V, I called the hotline. I was just getting set to explain the situation to someone with Hong Kong English which is usually the case on these phone lines, when someone with super-fluent English in an Aussie accent picked up. He was very friendly and helpful. He took me through a number of steps to see if my phone could be resuscitated. Unfortunately, though the software seems to be working, the screen seems to have conked off. Fortunately, I could get an appointment at the Apple store that evening at a time that suited me.

I wasn’t hopeful, but we went anyway. The store is always a sight because there is usually an actual line of people (tourists, most often from the Mainland) waiting to get in. We got the eye because we waltzed in due to our appointment.

The experience of the Apple store – if you haven’t been to one – is also pretty cool. The shop assistants do everything, including billing, with their own phones. Sort of a demo of the product itself. It’s usually a good experience. You’re left to yourself to play with the products, unless you need something and then someone is there pretty quick, even given the throng.

Anyway, the technician pretty much told us that we could give it in ‘for repair’ but essentially, what they’d do is quote us HK$2000 and give us a new phone. This is more expensive than we had expected, but in my mind, if it’s a new phone, it’s not a bad deal. Because I always feared that even if they ‘repaired’ it, it wouldn’t really run for very long, though V had more faith in the repair process.

So I turned my phone in, and then was phoneless till we figured out a new phone for me. Again, we didn’t just run out and buy a replacement phone. V floated the idea of trying to use a really crappy phone we have at home and although I was quite sure it wouldn’t work, I agreed (I don’t think it’s going to work.) I could get a cheap phone really cheap and yet, I’m ok with not. I called a friend and asked if she had an extra.

V is always telling me I’m addicted to my phone. Probably I am. I do look at it first thing in the morning before even getting out of bed. It helps me get out of bed. I know. I should be rushing out to hug the kids who are already awake but what can I say, I’m a reluctant riser.

Thing is, before I had a phone, I had a book. I was never the person who wanted to interact with people more than ideas. I was always lost in my own spiral of thoughts and interaction with some non-living-breathing-interface. The phone actually is easier than a book because I don’t get so sucked in. Contrary to popular opinion, ahem.

So I didn’t have a phone for two days, and V kept teasing me about it. I suppose he was looking for signs of a total collapse. But I was okay. There were moments I reached for the phone and it wasn’t there and I just shrugged and did something else. That someone else might have been the iPad, but not when we were out. Or in bed.

V always contends that I don’t talk to him because I’m always on the phone, and this unintended experiment has shown that I don’t talk to him because I don’t have that much to say anymore. So if I don’t have the phone, it’s not like I’m talking 90 to the dozen anyway. There was a time when I’d fill every silence with conversation, but with him, somewhere along the line we switched places and I became the silent one. I was replicating him and then became him. And I don’t want to be chatter-chatter anymore. Sometimes, often, I know that my own thoughts are going to be more interesting than a conversation just for the sake of it, and I don’t have the patience to test that theory anymore.

And I think this is okay. It’s not some sad gaping fact that we’re not going blah blah at each other every moment. I’ve actually come around to V’s position, that’s the irony of it, and now he can’t handle it. Maybe because my silence makes him insecure (just like his used to do to me, though his could be attributed to the male personality while I was always chatty even for a girl.)

Also, with the kids. Possibly not having the phone made me more engaged with them, but I’m not sure. I’m coming to realise that I’m as engaged as is possible for me, because I never claimed to be super interested in kids in the first place. I find mine a tonne of fun, but there are lots of times I’m spacey and not awww how wonderful that you jumped off the table for the hundredth time. So with the phone, I might space out on it, but without it, I might be a tad more engaged, but I might also just space out in my own head which I’ve had three decades of practice of.

So yeah, this whole thing about if we didn’t have this technology we’d be having ‘real’ interactions may not quite cut it with me. Maybe 3%-5% more, but not much more than that in my case.

Four

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by The Bride in Birthdays, Pet rant, The P Diaries, Uncategorized

≈ 17 Comments

The other day Benji was lying on top of me and V said: “He’s almost as big as you.” This is not exactly true, but yeah, he’s a tall kid and he’s gaining on me and last week he turned four.

(I still cradle him in my arms sometimes and we pretend he’s a baby. Not that often, but more than Mimi would ever let me.)

We had decided that we wouldn’t do a big deal for his birthday, but as the date drew nearer, a plan started taking shape in my mind. We had planned to take Benji and Mimi to a nearby indoor playground (the kind with a jungle gym of slides and those balls to crash into) as a treat, so I decided to invite the two kids Benji has been having playdates with. The playroom is the mall near their school and there’s a pizza hut there, so we could have lunch together. I asked the mums and they were game for it.

It was the simplest and most effective celebration. I didn’t really do a thing, not even make a booking, which resulted in mild panic on the day itself. But it was fine. While heading to pick up Benji from school, I went up to the playroom and bought entry tickets for all of us (small heart attack when I saw the playroom was super crowded – I think a kindergarten had booked it for the morning) and reserved a table at Pizza Hut. This made me a tad late in picking up the kids, but that turned out to be a good thing because I was stressing about this one kid that we hadn’t invited, and by the time our kids got their shoes on, most of the others had left.

Pizza Hut lunch was a good choice as it’s easy to get something to suit everyone. The kids were fairly orderly till the end, and anyway the restaurant wasn’t super crowded.

The kids had a ball in the play area afterwards, though the mums were flagging. Mimi overextended herself had had a meltdown, which was the only false note. I had picked up some books at a sale, which I used as giveaways along with stickers.

Benji’s school allows us to send a cake to be shared with the class, and I had planned to do that, although it was proving hard to locate a nut-free one. In the interim, Benji started saying he didn’t want me to send a cake to school. I was concerned that this was an exhibition of not being willing to share, and while there might have been an element of that, underneath it all I detected a reluctance to be the centre of attention.

After trying to convince him and getting scolded by V, I finally explained the situation to the school. Benji’s teacher later told me that Benji didn’t want to talk about his birthday much but they did sing for him. I witnessed a mum wishing him and him going: “Why is everyone wishing me?” with a sheepish look.

I see myself in him. It was only when I was twenty-something that I looked back on my childhood birthday parties, the ones my mum took so much trouble over, and realised I had not enjoyed them all that much. I was stressed out, and the only lucky thing is that my sister and I shared a party. I think I enjoyed the later celebrations which were something casual like a movie or a sleepover with a smaller group much better. In my twenties, my boyfriend would harangue me into having a combined big do for our birthdays and the final straw came on my 20th, a party that was according to me in my self-consciousness and stress, a disaster. Now looking back, I don’t think why I felt my life was unraveling because people refused to dance, but that’s the thing about me, I’m hypersensitive on my birthday and an anxious host and these two things are not a good combination.

But this is not about me. Rather, because I can understand a person not wanting to be the centre of attention, I can see the telltale signs of stress in my child. I noticed it last year before his big party, though he had a good time in the end. Benji’s school principal told me her oldest son was the same and she hadn’t realised until much later that he did not enjoy the big dos.

So I did this one thing right I think. My son will have the birthdays he wants, which thankfully are within our purview to arrange. He had a lovely time playing with his besties, and opening his presents and cutting a cake at home later. We sang happy birthday to him three times because I couldn’t get the video recording right. We skyped with the grandparents. The weekend before V’s brothers-in-law Benji’s uncles landed up in HK as part of a boy’s trip and they showered the kids with attention and presents before they left. So he was surrounded by cars and transformers and superheroes.

He was happy.

 

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