Le Birthday

I recently celebrated a milestonish birthday. Let’s just say it didn’t end with the big 0, but halfway there. My group of girlfriends were meant to mark this momentousish occasion in Bali, but alas a volcano foiled our plans. So we were left to our individual celebrations.
It turned out my sister-in-law and nieces were to be here during my birthday. So I had a readymade plan. My birthday weekend commenced in Disneyland, which I am only a little ashamed to say I love. Considering we were going back after a couple of months, we really should have bought an annual pass (as V could not stop grumbling). However, I could not deprive the kids of the chance of seeing Disneyland with their cousins. It turned out to be the best possible weather, a little overcast with a hint of cool and no rain, and strangely, a lack of crowds and queues. So even though the nieces covered very little on the half day they were there before us, we covered a lot together on Day 2, thanks in no small part to what the sister in law referred to as my Disbey dictator tendencies whereby I marched everyone around in a predetermined order. As usual, from Tw moment I met the nieces, I became the Pied Piper with three children hanging off me at any point.

Also, thanks to many not-so-subtle hints, V got me the coveted mouse ears as a birthday gift. Alas, there is no being an adult and laying claim to the ears when there are kids around. My precious ears were appropriated almost immediately by Mimi who decided they were hers and what’s more, it was her birthday (the whole thing about having her birthday last is not going down well with the Meems). Then, oldest cousin Lala had her turn, and I only got to wear them before bed at night. Harumph.

However, I highly recommend them. At one point, V was arguing with me and he just gave up and said: “I can’t take you seriously in those ears.” Honestly, the Israel-Palestine conflict could be resolved if Netanyahu and Abbas donned a pair. Anyhoo, I digress.

The night before my birthday, I went out dancing with the sister-in-law, the bestie in Hong Kong, her sister-in-law and another girl who was scandalized by our behaviour. I have not been dancing and/or to Lang Kwai Fong in ages, but I got into the spirit of things quite quickly. One lychee martini helped speed up the process, which then had to be slowed down by an enormous bottle of mineral water and fries. Let us just say that we got home at 3.30 am.

Even more astonishingly, we actually woke up and went to the beach at 9.30 am, the day of my birthday. There was a typhoon in the Philippines and the waves were crazy rough but we had a lovely time nevertheless. Nothing like four munchkins collecting ‘special sand’ to rub over your legs to make you feel special.

V went out of his way to get me my desired very chocolate cake from Agnes B, which has been polished off at leisure all week. The candles however were blown out by Mimi and Nene.

The day ended with a huge pizza dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. We got a table overlooking an ice rink with extra space for the kids to move around though Nene still pissed off a neighbouring guest by bumping into her chair and thereby stressed me out. And then Nene slammed his finger in the toilet cubicle door. Oh well.

I have to say it was a lovely birthday. It has been one hell of a year emotionally. On the one hand, the PhD was going swimmingly, until most recently when I had a dreadful fall down to earth. On the other, the marriage was going not so swimmingly, but in the last month we seem to have simmered down and dare I say, made our peace? I feel like I’m finally getting off a rollercoaster and not a moment too soon.

Four

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.

 

Whew

As this blog reflect, I’ve been busy. Crazy busy. The busy that started the term never ended. Well, I had a brief respite, but then mid-term happened with presentations due and it all got crazy busy again.

It’s hard to describe what I’ve been so busy doing (and I am aware that I’ve used the word ‘busy’ too often). The short answer is that I took on too much coursework. I figured that I’d be better off finishing the coursework requirement (i.e. the mandatory number of courses I’m supposed to take) early instead of pacing myself with one per semester, and so I took two, without realising that the Graduate School was going to pre-register us for another series of courses, which though not intense still require my physical presence in the classroom.

And I also have to act as a tutor for another course, which requires me to do a certain amount of prep. Hong Kong students are not vocal in the classroom, or at least not in my classroom (though I’ve heard this is a generic problem, and I’ve witnessed how even the most engaging teacher has a hard time getting a word out of students) and a tutorial is meant to be about ‘discussion’. Luckily, the students present for half the course, but then I still have to while away the other part. Next time around I’m going to give a little spiel on how they must talk or else, or make class participation a part of their grade. It’s seriously frustrating how they never raise any comments on other people’s work or even read the goddamn reading. It does not bode well for a future as a teacher, though I’ve heard that this is culture-specific.

Right now, we have to give everyone a pass because there is a huge political confrontation going on and at the start of the semester many students were out in the street protesting. Which I respect them for, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think right now they’re just getting away with not reading for class. Was this the case in India as well? These were undergrads. Somehow I feel that these students have so many more resources – hell, we never had tutorials as undergrads – and should be grateful and take advantage of them, but instead as I suppose is to be expected, they take them for granted. I’ve got some positive comments, but my general impression is one of apathy. Gah.

After the one drinks get-together, I’ve not done much socially with the other students. Though not sure they’re doing much socially with each other. Some have gone to the protest site together. One guy invited us all to a football game but I couldn’t go though I would have liked to. There was a dinner after a symposium that I skipped. In the end though, I’ve stopped caring because I’m too busy. Also, I realised I’m not the only isolated soul, and in some ways I’m more connected because I go into office fairly frequently and do the odd chit-chat.

I still have an ambiguous relationship with the foreign girl. I think she could be cool if she wasn’t so academically activist in her views, but more to the point if I didn’t get the sense she’s only friends with me when there’s no one more interesting to cast around for. Like the other day, she pretty much ditched me for a girl with cooler (green) coloured hair. I don’t know whether to be outraged or amused.

In between, the marriage hit a low and this combined with the general fatigue made me hit and all-time low. I decided I was properly depressed and just gave up – on the marriage, not the PhD. The studies were the one thing that was keeping me sane because I was too busy to over-contemplate the ruins of my relationship.

The birthday was coming up and I decided to just skip it. I wanted to wallow in my misery on my own.

Then suddenly the husband twigged that he had gone too far and decided to give me a break. I have to admit I’m still skeptical and on my guard, but at the moment things are looking hopeful. Though one never knows how long any such period will last until we descend into the warzone again. I’m not sure I can ever go back to the person I was in the relationship, but this respite shows me how draining constantly having someone on your back can be (now that I don’t.)

Part of the reconciliation was that I decided to have a very small birthday party at home. I had been wanting to invite the fiance of a friend home for ages so I called them and another couple. V went all out and cooked up a storm. My helper E commented this was the first time she had ever attended a birthday party for me, and it’s true. I’ve never really had people over. Benji instead of being his usual reticent self was a bit manic. Mimi ignored the guests because I suspect she’s afraid of one guy in particular simply because of the way he looks.

My most recent frustration is a class I’m taking on Kant. It’s a very small group, to the extent that it’s more like an interest group than a class, and therefore the discussions are really random and ad hoc. Which would be great, but either the comments are too detailed or just vague and what I want is like a clear eluciadation instead of rambling when we haven’t grasped essentials.

Also, everyone in the group is firmly in the Enlightenment humanistic traditions, when I’m in the postmodern poststructuralist era whereby the very notion of sex is up for question, and apparently this is a radical idea to some people. Which I know it is, but this is a philosophy department for God’s sake. I made the mistake of unbiting my tongue and airing some views and was firmly corrected by professor in charge. Gulp.

My most recent gripe is organising my schedule around a presentation for the class, only for the class to be cancelled the afternoon of the presentation, and then rescheduled to a most inconvenient time. I’m still seething. Argh!

Shanti, Shalom, etc.

What’s your biggest aspiration for 2013?

This is my last post under Weverb12. I really enjoyed participating in this initiative, the prompts largely did get me to reflect on various aspects of the year gone by and brought into focus some things that I might not have noticed otherwise. It also provided ready inspiration for blogging, so yay to that. I also found myself reading the posts of other participants and some of what they wrote made a gentle impression on me. I must thank the people behind this effort who created a nice-looking website and thought up the prompts.

I think it was Sangitha who proposed (or at least that’s where I first came upon the idea) of coming up with one word to crystalise what one hoped to achieve in the coming year. I do make resolutions (I notice this word is going out of fashion, with people calling it by any other name, which I find very amusing) and setting these targets does go a small way towards making change in my life. This year my resolutions were a number of small things – maybe too many, I probably should have stuck with just five – and I’m happy to report that 10 days into the year I am putting some of them into practice.

So, on many days (if not all) I have forced myself to get out of bed earlier, especially if I’m just lying there tossing, even if it means rising at 5 am like I did this morning. When this happens, I do a bit of pranayam. And I get more time with the kids. I have also reduced my chocolate intake. I have signed up for a kickboxing class during my lunch hour (though turns out I’m on leave a couple of times its held), admittedly due to peer pressure from colleagues. I’m not sure the momentum can be maintained but eating less chocolate for 10 days means 10 days worth less of fat on my bones, so I win no matter what right?

I can also already see that biting my tongue is going to be the hardest and most crucial resolution. If I had to pick one from them all, I guess it would have to be this, and this is also the one I’m most likely to fail at.

In the spirit of this prompt, it might be useful to pick one overarching goal for this year and I’d like to use the one word format. My word for this year is “peace”.

I need to learn how to keep the peace more. To speak mindfully, thinking about whether what I am going to say really needs to be said and also to consider whether the other person’s motivation might be different to what I intuited at first. To do this both at home and in company. To distance myself from people if they are too annoying. To embrace doing things on my own. To take my job lightly while still doing the best I can. Basically to do what it takes to maintain my mental and emotional equilibrium.

Amen.

Inner poise

What did you, as an individual, let go of to further the greater good this year?
sacrifice [GROW]: This post is part of Weverb12

I’m very tempted to say “time” again, but that would be boring, so I’ll say what I tried to do and which I hope to do more of which is “bite my tongue” aka “don’t rise to the bait” aka STFU.

I used to think it was important to put my point across. I learnt that with one’s extended social circle this is not true. Most people really are too dim-witted. It is actually a waste of breath. It is more effective to walk away and if possible roll eyes in private or, if not, roll eyes there and then but still walk away. Smirking is allowed in both cases. Come on. Sometimes one even gets one’s point across while doing that. Sometimes silence and retreat makes people wonder what was wrong with what they just said and, maybe they will figure it out for themselves. If trapped by say dinner table or being on a boat, go with “hmmm”. Don’t attempt to argue beyond the intelligence of random people. Do not expect random people to have read anything. Etc.

I must have done this somewhat effectively because rude guy at New Year’s party actually asked why I wasn’t arguing with anyone on Facebook anymore. I was so tempted to say “Because you’re all morons” but I gave him a collected “I don’t have the time.” He persisted though. He was/is very annoying.

However, smiling serenely in not-so-polite society was not my big contribution to the greater good in 2012, because I already started doing it in 2011. Rather, I felt I needed to apply some of these techniques to my relationship with V.

Not because I think he’s a dimwit. But because I think he shoots his mouth off at me to let off stress. One of the epiphanies I had recently was that given that he is stressed out at work, I need to pick and choose what I go to battle with him on. This should be obvious I know. You can roll your eyes at me.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t and probably never will reach the saintly heights of ignoring him when he is picking on me personally (partly because I realised I have been internalising his messages and it’s fucking me up) but if he is doing something minor that I find fault with, I shouldn’t be pointing it out. If I’m honest, a big reason I point out his flaws is because he’s so quick to point out mine. But apart from that making me a bitch, this is not the time to be doing tit-for-tat. I also caught myself ranting at him in reaction to some bigoted statement he made which I knew he doesn’t believe (because all his actions are the opposite of it) but just wants to piss me off and/or release stress by talking nonsense. If it’s the former, I’m better off ignoring him and if it’s the latter, I need to let it go for now.

This was one of my resolutions last year and I made some progress on it. But I need to do better in the coming months. In the immortal words of Bridget Jones: Inner Poise.

 

Resolutions – 4

This is a typical one. Thou shalt not procrastinate. Themore time I have on my hands, the more I jump from one task to another. I callit multi-tasking but it could well be ADD. I need to make myself finish a taskat work before clicking another window.

Like the religion one, this one is a not a priority. Justsomething to keep in mind. Going by my activities of the past day, however, it’s not off to a good start.

Resolutions – 3

This Christmas I went for Mass after over a year, or has itbeen two? I’m not religious. I pick and choose what parts of religion I want tofollow. For much of my adult life, I have picked Christmas, Easter and the weddingsof friends as my mass-going days. But since Benji, I haven’t done even that.

We didn’t do anything for Christmas this year except go tochurch with Benji. He stayed quiet for some of the singing but tended to wantto run around and V did the needful. This is quite a cliche because in India, you always see the dads running around with the babies while the mums stay inside devoutly bearing the spiritual burden for the family. But it works for us because V cannot actually remember the last time he sat through a whole Mass and I do not see the point of a truncated Mass.

I loved the Mass. As I grew older, I realised that thevalue of Mass for me is in the very things that I used to scorn as a child andwhich adults would tell me was the point – the ritual of it, the sameness, the repetitionof words that have been repeated for time immemorial. There is a peace in that repetitionthat goes beyond the meaning of the words.

Recently, on IHM’s blog, I got embroiled in a big debate onthe ‘benefit of religion for women’. Mainly, I had a lot of time on my handsand got bored with what everyone else seemed to be saying. I find the smugness ofthose who don’t believe as boring as the fervour of those that do. I find thestandard arguments of religion as patriarchy, religion as war-mongering,religion as the source of all evil optimistic at best and unimaginative andstale at worst (or maybe vice versa). I went through that phase in my teens and now I am more respectful of other people’sopinions, even their follies and delusions if one wants to see religion assuch. I agree that religion has propped up patriarchy, that it has been the cause of war – or at least the excuse for it; the cause of war is generally a quest for power. Organised religion is about power but at the individual level it is also about other things and I think it’s time we look into those as well.

I believe in the irrational and that everything cannot beexplained. I am not against a good placebo. I am amused by people’s easy acceptance of explanations under thebanner of science that they probably understand even less than religiousexplanations. It seems like a new version of the Emperor’s New Clothes. If it ispeer-reviewed it must be true. And the truth is what we must know, even at thecost of beauty.

Anyway, this is not about religion or science but aboutresolutions. I like sitting in a church occasionally. I like losing myself insongs about good intentions. I like the performance of the ritual and therepetition of it. Why am I not doing this more? So I will. I hope. 

Resolutions – 2

The Chinese are fond of telling spouses thatthey look like each other. What seems like an absurd and possibly offensiveremark to people of other cultures makes perfect sense to the Chinese. Byvirtue of living together for so many years, people begin to resemble oneanother, they say. Looking alike is the end result of a long and strongmarriage. If an entire culture can accept that spouses begin to take on thephysical characteristics of each other, how much more likely is it that spouseswill take each other’s emotional timbre and habits, not just in terms ofadapting to another person but becoming like another person?

How I have changed over the years has begun tointerest me of late because it is so obvious to me that I have changed. I caneven clearly see the changes that are attributable to V, the ones thatliterally are V.

Some of them are for the good:
1. I am moredecisive
2. I am better atnegotiating the corporate workplace, strategizing instead of being idealistic
3. I don’t make such a mess of a toilet
4. I will hopefullybe in control of my bank account.
5. I think before Ispeak

And others, not so much. I realised recentlythat I have been playing a kind of emotional tit-for-tat in my marriage. Inorder to demonstrate to V how the things he does that he refuses to change hurtme, I started doing them myself. Some of these ways of responding and beinghave become part of me. The unfortunate thing, though, is that in adopting themI killed some of the best parts of who I was – the empathetic one, the one wholistened, the one who pampered someone who is sick, the easygoing one. UnlikeV, who still has his good points intact, I seem to have lost all of mine. WhatI am left with is a hard, bitter shell of a person. I no longer like who I amand neither does V. And as a strategy, tit-for-tat didn’t work because I don’tthink he got the point anyway.

So I have now decided I have to thaw myself outand unravel some of the habits I’ve formed over the past two years. I have to somehowget back the great things about me I’ve repressed to the point of annihilation inorder to just make a point. It’s going to be hard but I think I can do it. Some of those qualities are still there, buried deep down, I just have to practice being them again. 

Resolutions

My birthday has always been a time for me to reflect on where my life is going. But this year I ignored my birthday so New Year is going to serve that purpose. I’ve had a couple of realizations in the past week that I want to put down so I don’t lose sight of them.

Some time ago I wrote this post the point of which was basically how the environment you live in can influence you and how one needs to be vigilant and proactive in not absorbing the worst of the environment around you – and how some environments make that harder than others.

Recently, I have had to face that I have absorbed some not-so-positive things from living in Hong Kong. I have become one of the Impassives – the kind of person that turns a blind eye and doesn’t volunteer help unless asked. A few days ago while getting into the turnstile in the MTR, the woman in front of me dropped her pen and didn’t notice. In my previous life, in India, I would have picked it up and gone after her and given her the pen. I didn’t. I glanced at the pen and then swiped my card and carried on. Granted, at this stage in my pregnancy, it’s a little hard for me to bend over and to run after anyone and then I’d have the hassle of communicating in gestures (because she was clearly not one of the English-speaking ones nor did she look friendly) that she had dropped her pen. But I should have done it. I didn’t because it is so normal in Hong Kong not to. Nobody does it. I decided then and there that I need to make an effort to counteract this tendency to not get involved even in the most minor way.

Yesterday, on the MTR, the seat next to me freed up and a little boy sat down while his mother stood in front of him. Then the seat on the other side of me freed up. In India, I would move up so the mother and son could sit together. People in Hong Kong don’t do this. It’s not their problem. But this time I moved. Such a small thing and yet, I had become a person who would not consider even the most minor inconvenience to myself.

Living in Hong Kong has perils for me because I am naturally anti-social. I am very comfortable moving among people who don’t make eye-contact, who don’t indulge in the usual pleasantries, who don’t interfere in other people’s lives. But even I know that in indulging in this kind of behaviour there is a line one crosses after which one becomes a society of automatons. The faces of people on the MTR are not only impassive they look dull and unhappy. I realised I don’t want to be one of them. So I must force myself to react, to smile, to catch people’s eye, to wish my neighbours good morning.

That’s my first resolution for the coming year. When out on the street, be the nice one.

10 years ago

[inspired by Shilpa’s tag]
1. I was on the cusp of an existential crisis that took me a decade to get over.

2. I thought I was fat. Now I know better.

3. I was much more fiery in my cynicism. Now I often just smirk. Except on this blog. I seem to be getting angrier and more ranty though.

4. I didn’t know I could flirt. Or rather, I knew I had it in me, just hadn’t perfected my style.

5. I thought I loved being alone. I didn’t realize I could be clingy. But now I know an empty house chills me. And I am not quite myself when my husband is out of town. I’ve never felt this way about anyone else though. Scary.

I really had to think for this one. I know I’ve changed in many ways – I certainly look different, feel older (and wiser?) and finally calmer, and lead a slower life. But I also seem to have come full circle in some respects – my youthful preoccupation with thinking about and debating ‘serious’ issues, less sociability, a renewed enthusiasm in hobbies, a certain amount of confidence. Ok. So I seem to be the person I was at 20. Only fatter. Hmph.

Edited to add: A big one struck me just now. I’m so much less ambitious. At 20, I wanted to be at the top of my field and to change the world. Now, I just want to make enough money to keep my family happy and to be in a job that is non-stressful. Changing the world… I try to do it at the individual level, through my own actions.