2018 – a retrospective

Tags

retrospective, year end

Or the highlights that stick in the mind.

1. I started the year with the new job, that was the biggest – and best – source of change in my life. Actually, the start was rather ignominious. On my second day, I ate something that had me puking the entire night. I dragged myself to work the next day because it would be too embarrassing to call a sickie on day 3. In fact, I haven’t taken a single day of sick leave this entire year – which is some sort of record. The fact is that our deadlines are daily and our team is just about holding head above water so one person off can throw things out of whack. I do thing I should take more sick leave next year, well at least a couple, but I have been fortunate that after that one crazy episode I have not been terribly ill.

I love the job and I’m going well at it. My office is lovely, the people are fine. My honeymoon period is over – I managed to piss off my boss pushing him to approve my leave in December (when I realised like many senior journalists, his management style needs work. Nice guy who struggles with people management) and I have my very own frenemy, sadly the only other Indian in my team whose very presence triggers a stress reaction.

But overall, I’m happy where I am. This has been a good thing and after all my career angst last year, I’m grateful.

2. The PhD is well and truly over. I passed my exam – and did well enough to be urged by one of the examiners to apply for a job at her institution, which I turned down! I swotted over revisions, some warranted and some not (insert Hegel, boo!). They were approved without issue. I even attended a graduation ceremony in a cap and gown for the first time in my life and took a (very beautiful if I may say so myself) photo in a studio.

3. My marriage has calmed down. I have concluded that much of his behaviour is his own problem and that took a load off my back. It annoys me, but I don’t worry as much about what I could be doing. I could have sex with him more and solve a lot of this but I don’t feel terribly guilty anymore about not wanting to. We are far from perfect but at least we get along with less eruptions.

4. My kids continue to be awesome and my biggest joy. This is the year I lost my son a little (see here) and gained my daughter more (post on that coming up).

5. I read a lot. I’m going to start chronicling my reading in mini bites because well, some people might appreciate the recommendations and also to keep track of the sheer breath of my reading. I’ve ventured into areas I never thought I would – physics, for example. I’ve read feminist work I always wanted to but didn’t find time for during my PhD. And of course lots of fiction, literary and not. My rule is one fiction, one serious non fiction or academic work.

6. Time is what I ran out off this year. My job is full on in the week, and I feel the need to maximise time with kids on the weekends. I’m at risk of turning into V as I want to meet friends less. I even run away from colleagues wanting to have lunch together. I realise (and V had this ‘I told you so’ expression when I told him) that I get more interaction than I’m used to in office (after three years of PhD solitude) and too much people time leaves me frazzled. My idea of a holiday is to be alone.

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It is happening

For the longest time, I refused to talk about the impending PhD because I didn’t want to jinx it. I was traumatized with my tryst with bureaucracy and I refused to believe that there would be no spanner in the wheels and I would actually be allowed to pursue my studies without being asked to furnish another document.

This fear of bureaucracy is a particularly Indian one. I wonder if people from countries where rules and regulations and paper pushing are not weapons used to terrorise the masses (and these countries do exist, Hong Kong being one of them) have this ball of dread in the bottom of their stomachs when they are asked to produce a document. It has taken me years in Hong Kong to unlearn this fear, to go to the counter of a government organization and not steel myself for the apathy and the inevitable runaround. And just one setback was all it took for me to be back down the panic-stricken path again.

But here I am, just shy of a month away from full-time studies. I have begun to look into courses I might do – and god, it’s so exciting. Even the prospect of a run-of-the-mill Gender Studies course excites me. I met my supervisor and she seems nice – despite one slightly snarky comment – if strangely clueless about admin stuff. She quickly asked me to scratch the very basic Gender Studies course from my list, but was supportive of others. On the positive side, she remembered my topic which surprised me. I also received an email about tutoring duties and the teacher I’ll be helping for the semester is young and seems friendly.

I am confused and a bit stressed out about courses, because I’m not yet a student but I need to register for some classes or I might not get them. Unfortunately, because I’m not a student, I don’t have all the information on how to do that and I had to resort to asking my supervisor the stupid questions. Fortunately, because I’m a staff member of the same university I have the advantage of accessing the course list with my staff ID and can actually meet my supervisor before I start. Because I’m bad with numbers, I thought I’d need to take more courses than I actually have to. Now I’m tempted to just coast for the first semester.

Apart from rereading my proposal before meeting my supervisor, I refuse to read any stuff related to my topic. I just finished Diana Vreeland’s memoir and will move onto a biography of her. I’m going to squeeze in as much frivolous reading that is unconnected to my PhD in the next two weeks. Then, I’ll look at my notes again. I have good intentions of summarizing everything I’ve read so far into a paper of sorts (I know, I know, go ahead and laugh).

In the interim, I’ve received quite a few requests for freelance work, which is flattering. I might not end up as broke as I thought. But I might end up busier than ever, which is terrifying.

I have started carting home personal stuff since I gallantly offered to give up my desk to the new girl who will be joining during our overlap period. Also because I know from experience that unless you have a car or a friend with a car willing to be your caddy, leaving it till the last day is not a good strategy.

My plants almost died during the last long weekend break and I put them out in the terrace garden hoping they’d revive with natural sunlight and rain but they’re pretty much goners methinks. I’m seeing them as a symbol that my time here is done. I need a symbol because a part of me is really sad (and scared) to be leaving this job which has all things considered been so nice to me for more than five years. And two months before leaving I got a raise due to civil service adjustment so the salary I’m not going to be getting anymore is even higher than I earlier imagined and that makes me feel like an utter fool.

But deep breaths. I’m at the finishing line or the starting line. Limbo really. And it’s not a bad place to be.

Going back to work

Note: At the bottom of this post, I’ll be linking to other mums who’ve written on this topic. So if this post pops up incessantly in your Reader, that’s why.

Indimommy surveyed readers on going back to work after having a baby and did a nice article summing up the responses. Since I responded to their initial questions, I got emailed in a few more and while answering those I realised I had a fair bit to say on the subject. So I decided to do a post here.

Why did I decide to go back to work?

Before my baby was born, I don’t think it really occurred to me that not going to work was something that I might do. Because although I wasn’t passionate about my job, I liked working and I liked drawing a paycheck and I was fairly sure I wouldn’t like being around a baby 24/7 and all the allied chores that get thrown your way when you’re ‘not working’.

At some point, V made his preference clear which was that I continue to work. He has never cherished being the only breadwinner, and all the women he knows well worked outside the home after giving birth. I did once sharply tell him that had I wanted to stay home, he should support that (since he could financially, though it would mean saving less) but since I myself didn’t really want to stay home, I didn’t pursue that.

In Hong Kong, most middle-class women go back to work. There is a large number of highly educated women and if the choice was between their jobs or having a baby, they’d choose the former. Hell, many couples forgo having kids anyway because they believe a baby is a cost they cannot afford, even if they can drum up the interest. To push along the declining birth rate and keep women in the workforce, the Government instituted the foreign domestic helper policy, allowing Hongkongers to employ women from other countries at a set minimum wage. This did enable large numbers of middle-class women to go to work, though the birth rate is still on the low side. Basically, it’s the norm for women in Hong Kong to go back to work after having a baby, because few can afford not to.

This makes it easier to decide to go back to work. In the office, I had three other women on my floor who had just given birth and we traded stories. All of us felt we were better off back at work.

Doubts

If I had any twinges of doubt, they were when interviewing a helper. This was when I was in my second trimester so the baby was a reality and the 10 weeks maternity leave seemed to be incredibly paltry once I met the strangers I was supposed to be leaving my infant with. I just could not figure out how to pick one for the task. If I had to pick a helper for just the husband and me, easy peasy. But a not-quite-three-month-old baby is a bit different.

Thankfully, our part-time helper who we loved and trusted offered to come on board if we could pay her for the gap period when she was between employers waiting for her visa. We decided the extra expense was worth it, and in the end, immigration came through with the visa quicker than expected so we didn’t pay as much as we had thought. Several people who I’ve told we paid this amount are surprised, but for us it was money well spent.

Then Benji had reflux and I began to worry about going to work again. When I voiced these doubts to my mother, she said she would look after him but I must go back to work. When my sister had doubts after her baby, my mom told her the same. My mother is a stay-at-home mom who has completely changed her views on being one. She believes in the security of a paycheck now.

When I went back to work, it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. Immediately, the haze of anxiety that had enveloped me after Benji’s birth dissipated as I was forced to think about other things than whether his milk was coming up and burning his throat or how he was napping. My helper seemed perfectly capable of managing him and the household chores (though we told her she could skip the latter if it was getting too much) and she did so without the excessive worry that characterised me as a caregiver.

Did having a good domestic help sway your decision in continuing working after the baby?

Yes and no. It was never that much of a decision to make. I just assumed I’d go back to work. But having a good helper gave me immense peace of mind.

There’s a small chance that the helper wouldn’t have worked out. Most people I know in Hong Kong do find satisfactory help to look after their children. But if I really couldn’t find someone I was comfortable with, then I would have had to stay at home at least initially. Although my husband would have naturally been a better caretaker, I have the smaller paycheck coupled with the fact that I was trying to breastfeed. This is the sad truth for most households and a reason why its mostly the woman that gives up her job (though also, most people just don’t consider dad staying home as an option, even though bottle feeding exists). Honestly, I don’t see how I could have continued that indefinitely because I would have struggled mentally and emotionally.

The availability of help swayed my decision to have another child. I would not have done it without because after the first child I knew what a child would demand of me.

My second helper also showed me what it would be like to have a helper you don’t trust implicitly. While she loves my child, she can’t be trusted to make decisions. I would have had to micromanage a lot more and I can imagine a lot of stress.

Right now, I have two helpers who work well together in looking after our children and our when we’re at work and I feel super blessed.

 Flexible hours

I don’t have flexible hours but I have reasonable and fixed hours. I also have understanding bosses who would understand if I needed to take a bit time off for something family-related. But it’s not the norm, so I’ve only done this once so far.

My husband also makes it a point to leave on time. We’re fortunate that we have jobs that allow this, but I think we’re also the kind of people who seek out these jobs even at the expense of money/career advancement. Thankfully, we do have enough money/reasonable career advancement anyway.

In cases of crisis, both of us are willing to work overtime (hell, I’ve edited stuff for my office a week after my baby was born, typing with one hand and holding my baby and breastfeeding on the other, because they called me in a crisis). I used to have to work the odd Saturday and the husband would back me up, I backed him up when he’s on business travel.

I think the reasonable working hours do help in keeping me from feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. I can switch off from work when at home and just spend time with my kids. Even so, as they grew older, I’ve felt the need to be there for them more, and hence the choice to do a PhD now (it was always on the cards, just a question of timing) which I think will give me more flexibility.

Policies

In Hong Kong, because of the helper situation, workplaces generally assume that parents don’t need to take time off for most kids’ stuff. Helpers serve the function that stay-at-home moms do in other places. Hence people are usually expected to work long hours, which kind of sucks.

Maternity leave in Hong Kong is 10 weeks which is far from ideal because babies are very vulnerable and need a lot of care in the first three to six months and it’s logical that parents would want to be involved at this delicate stage. Not to mention that it’s hard to sustain breastfeeding remotely, especially breastfeeding rooms are pretty much non-existent and one is reduced to pumping in the toilet or what you hope are deserted areas. I have a colleague whose child has severe allergies and she found with her second one that breastfeeding helped, but she couldn’t sustain it when she returned to work and her child is suffering but she has just accepted it. It pisses me off that such an affluent society that claims to want to tackle the birth rate cannot invest in the wellbeing of newborns by giving mums at least four months off.  Paternity leave was instituted only last year and is all of FIVE days and that’s supposed to be some great thing. While I have a stellar helper, not everyone does or feels up to trusting someone else with such a small child. So at the policy level, much needs to be done.

Also read

Anna’s Mom’s take on her experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch yoga

That’s what the class is called because it’s slotted during the time we’re contracted to take our lunch hour. Yes, our contract specifies when we lunch, but luckily our office is a tad flexible on this.

I resisted signing up for this class even though it has a large following from our office because 1) it’s in Cantonese 2) it’s embarrassing being Indian in Hong Kong and so inept at yoga. When an Indian walks into a yoga class here, everyone assumes you’re the teacher first and then after the real teacher makes herself known, everyone including the teacher assumes you’re an expert and the reality is then more shocking.

Nevertheless, because so many friends were going and I figured they’d babysit me a bit in terms of language, I decided to go. Yesterday was the first class. I surprised myself at actually being able to sustain some of the poses and not being the utter worst in class. A much younger and slimmer girl was to my eternal gratitude. Nevertheless, it was hard. There were parts that were good and I realised I’m old enough to enjoy yoga because I like the steady breathing and am not that concerned about weight loss, although that would be a bonus.

Halfway through the class, I was thinking that if I could do this twice a week, I’d be good in terms of exercise, but by the end of the class, I thought once a week was enough. It’s quite a workout and you end up feeling quite sleeping after.

For some reason, the people in my office don’t take a shower after. Okay the reason is that they’re adhering as strictly as possible to the office timings. Can you imagine, we did a kickboxing class and didn’t shower after? It’s ridiculous, though admittedly Chinese people don’t sweat as much I think. After V made fun of me, I was determined to try to sneak in a shower. It helps that my boss who was in the class is on leave and summer is a slow time anyway. So I raced off to the showers, and I landed up catching up with everyone else on the way back anyway. I don’t think five minutes of running water over our body is going to kill anyone.

As the day progressed, I was dead tired though. This may have been exacerbated by PMS but I am just not one of those persons whose endorphins make themselves known in a tangible way after a workout. Instead I usually feel in dire need of a nap. And this was when I was regularly running in school as well.

I have always been in awe of people who go to the gym during their lunch hour (my sister was one of those people). In my case, in addition to the sleepiness, it screws up my eating timings, and then once I drag my ass home, I don’t have the luxury of vegetating on the couch or hitting the sack right away. So this is not an ideal routine for me, but for now, I’m sticking with it.

 

Reflections on 100 Happy Days – 2

Yesterday, I posted some general thoughts on the 100 Happy Days challenge. One of the most interesting things about the challenge is looking back on all the posts and seeing patterns in what made me happy during that period. I created a chart online (which in itself could go down as my happy moment of the day had I still been doing the challenge). Here it is (but boo, the resolution is not high enough for you to read the categories and I can’t be arsed to figure out how to fix that. Ive listed them at the end for those who care):

 

Anyhoo. Here’s my analysis:

1. As you can see, the kids really dominated my happy and if you add in the excursions, which always involved them, it’s even more. Kids help me combine two things I enjoy – being with them and getting out into the great outdoors.

2. Food was the next big winner, which kind of goes to show how a good meal can help one’s mood (much as we are told to avoid this dependence).

3. Interestingly, friends and fashion came in for a tied third. If you add in the part about Benji’s school (which I know is a funny category but there was a whole bit of happy related to resolving that one) to the friends category, as some of that is due to conversations with friends and family about the school and being grateful for their support, the friends category could get higher. But it’s interesting to note that fashion (shopping, what I chose to wear and being happy with my appearance, looking at magazines) figures quite high.

4. I’m surprised books didn’t figure more, but I think I made a conscious decision to not have the challenge dominated by Just Read posts, and I managed to suppress this more successfully than the kids posts. On the other hand, I wasn’t watching out for food enough (and maybe I’m influenced by the idea that people like looking at pictures of food), so that sneaked in there more heavily.

5. I’m surprised that exercise figures at all, clearly it’s an upcoming category. Also, the appearance of work leaves me with a bittersweet feeling.

Apart from kids, the champions of this challenge, the absolute high points, which I didn’t include in the chart, were winning the PhD fellowship and the week I spent in Bombay catching up with friends and family.

Categories:

Kids
Technology
Excursions
Exercise
Benji’s school
Art
Marriage
Music/Movies
Friends
Fashion
Books
Food
Work
Health
Misc

Update: Since many people have commented on my doing a pie-chart analysis, I must mention that I got the idea from this blogger. I remember thinking a chart was an interesting way to process the challenge, but didn’t actually think I would one…until I did.

 

 

Peaceful easy feeling

A friend and I were discussing the other day how we’re not particularly ambitious. We don’t want to be at the forefront of our careers. We don’t want to be in positions of great responsibility. We want to be worker bees, respected for executing tasks week and compensated accordingly. In my case, I like being second-in-command, consulted but not necessarily the person-in-charge. Occasionally I like been given a project to head/work on, but generally something that I can work on myself creatively, not something that requires coordination with 500 people.

There was a time when I wanted to be a career achiever, but now I just want to do things that interest me, and these may not be things that compensate well monetarily or be particularly prestigious. Moreover, I want to hang out with my kids and that doesn’t correlate well with long hours.

In terms of a job, I like stability, low stress and fixed working hours. That’s the reason my current job has suited me, despite not being particularly glamorous. I sometimes miss the prestige of my previous jobs but I don’t miss the stress, and while I have finessed the art of making the right corporate noises, I don’t think I’d cherish the extra hassle that comes with a management role. Unfortunately, in the corporate sector, the idea that someone might not want to be a leader is anathema and it’s better to keep this dirty secret to oneself. Treading water in the corporate sector is a fine art that needs to be practiced clandestinely lest one is outed as less than leaning in.

After the conversation with my friend, I realised I’m surrounded by such people. She joked that there must have been something in the water at our school because of how we turned out. But there are plenty of people in our school who are aggressive in their careers (I think, going by Facebook). Just that I’m not particularly close to any of them. Even in college, I could never get close to the Type-A people and the go-getters despite being peripherally associated with them in a number of ways. Normally these people take themselves and everything they do quite seriously while I have a hard time keeping a straight face around busyness and self-importance.

A job like my current one is hard to come by (which makes it kind of idiotic for me to be throwing if away for postgraduate studies but let’s not dwell on that). I’ve had stressful periods in my past jobs – these are always made worse if you have a toxic manager – and I’ve kept at them while I’ve needed to, but I was never able to stick it out long-term. If I job looked like it was going to be high-stress or the kind that cuts into my downtime indefinitely, I would look to make a switch. I think the husband is the same.

However, I look around me and see people working long hours in unhappy environments (it’s possible to work long hours and love it because you’re passionate about what you’re working on), constantly fatigued by the demands of their jobs and I wonder why and how they do it. I know there are only a fortunate few who can afford to change but I think many people with our social and educational background can do it if they allowed themselves to consider stepping out of the career path they committed to. Sometimes this involves taking a pay-cut or a pay break, but the pay-off in terms of peace of mind and time to breathe can be worth the lifestyle cuts. Normally, these people say “it’s not that bad” and “it could be worse” which I understand is a very real concern, but from where I’m standing it looks pretty bad. I also think that many people in our generation are imprisoned by the idea of being successful, of living up to their qualifications and of not being able to face that they may not have what it takes to excel at the chosen path without working themselves into the ground.

Jobs aren’t the only sources of stress. Right now, one of the biggest stressors of recent times in my life, my marriage, seems to be sorting itself out (touch wood). And the difference it makes to my quality of life is amazing.

I realise I’m very fortunate to have a fairly sorted life. I don’t have financial worries. I have great household help so things run smoothly at that end. My kids are fairly peaceful and I have help with them. My loved ones are mostly doing okay.

But when stressful situations arise, I can’t live with them for very long. This is probably a failing, but I seek to do something about it. Apparently, one has to work on oneself to manage the stress better, but I’ve found that that can only be a coping mechanism and changing or removing oneself from the stressful situation if possible has better results. You lose some but constantly tense shoulders and a churning stomach are just not worth it, no matter how much deep breathing you do in the meantime.

Related reading:

1) This post

2) This article by Zosia Mamet (though I disagree that feminism is to blame for pushing the money-and-power path).

A few more happy days

I signed up for the 100 happy days challenge on instagram, because I prefer sharing my happy with strangers than my ‘friends’ apparently. But my preferred mode would have been via the blog because a lot of my happy is stuff that is better described in words than images. Nevertheless, clicking a photo makes one think and focus so maybe it does serve a purpose even if the photos are not stellar. The snapshots also literally serve as a reminder of that day so I can blog about it later. So here goes:

Day4: 17 Feb

[Ok turns out I deleted this photo from my albums and so I had to take a screenshot of my instagram photo to post here. The wonders of technology.] I’m sure I’ve mentioned how I love fashion magazines. A couple of times a year I buy one as a treat. The past few issues I’ve bought, I’ve stored because sometimes I need to cut out stuff for Benji’s craft stuff. Specifically, Benji has to do a dictionary for school where we cut out and stick photos of stuff that starts with a particular letter. Benji’s book has a disproportionate number of trendy items, ahem. So on Monday, I pulled out the old magazines again and while I didn’t find anything relevant to the letter N, I realised that I was attracted afresh to some photo spreads and began poring over the magazines again and was fairly inspired.

Day 5: Feb 18

I grumble about my new boss a fair bit, because she’s a delegator par excellence, but I need to keep in mind how she’s really nice about other things. Like I realised I messed up on my roster dates, and she just waved it off. The other happy of the day was discovering and playing with this website, which I used in the collage above.

Day 6: Feb 19

So this was one of those even keel days when nothing particularly striking happened. But a photo book we did using images from our recent family photo shoot did come in the mail. V had been impatiently waiting for it for days, so the look on his face when it finally arrived was priceless. Also, creating the book was a challenge. It was free Groupon thing and allowed us 40 pages but I didn’t have that many photos I wanted to use. But I didn’t want empty pages either and there was no way to contact the supplier to get fewer pages. So I had to put in a fair amount of creativity in using the photos and the various scrapbooking ad-ons in the software. And in the end, V mistook me saying I was “nearly done” for “done” before I had completely finished tinkering.  The result, though, was quite nice.

Day 7: Feb 20

V introduced me to Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets segment and we had super fun laughing. Then, I had more fun looking up snarky posts on Pinterest and giggling in bed.

Day 8: Feb 21

When my niece Sibear visited she was taken by this flapbook that our friend had gifted Benji. So I found it on Barnes and Noble and had it delivered to her for her birthday. My sis is ill so she allowed Sibear to open the box to distract her and then she messaged me saying that Sibear is obsessed with it and wanted to put it near her pillow at night. They compromised and it lay at the foot of her bed. Oh, the joy of picking the right gift!

But even better, my sis sent me a super cute video of Sibear going “Thank you, ….” in her very strong American accent, and then “huh” [when my sis reminded her to kiss me from behind the camera] and then a big smoochy sound. Thank you iMessage! That video is going to be my happy-on-repeat for months to come.

 

Shrinking violets

Describe a conversation that you had this year. Why was it memorable?
Communicate [LISTEN]: This post is part of #Weverb12.

I cannot remember a particular conversation, and that’s not for want of trying. I actually went to gtalk archives to check but there were too many to peruse.

So this post shall be a tribute to MinCat who I have had so many great conversations with this year, and basically every year since we’ve known each other. The next best thing to having great friends right there in person is having a great friend who is online practically all the time you are. We have a lot of “going to pee/back” punctuating our chat marathons, which should tell you something. I sometimes lose track of the people that pop into MinCat’s life (she is very social, that one) but if there are names that don’t ring a bell or developments referred to that I hadn’t heard of before, I am surprised.

MinCat and I work well conversationally because we are both self-critical, we have shit going on in our heads that we air and then analyse, we can get silly about the same things now and then, and we have a lot of common interests. Both of us have things going on this year and we have shrinked each other time and again to decent effect. We can say things to each other that are sometimes brutally honest, but I like to think that we do so without being outright bitches. We also have theories about Life, the Universe and Everything that we test out on each other and firm up before unleashing them on the world. 

My other great online chatbuddy was Curly but her boss killed that for us. Boo! Neverthless, when he was away and our clocks serendipitously synced, we have had some good times.

I mentioned before that at the back of my mind I’ve worried that my closest friends are the ones I’m in touch with online. But I’m beginning to realise that it’s more than a lot of people have and also, I have to acknowledge, that if I had a bunch of people I totally gelled with right here and now, I would still be cherishing these online conversations as much. It would be great if we could have them over coffee every other day, but the Internet allows me to bring my friends to work, so yay to that.

This is less a post about conversation and more a tribute to friendship. This article sums it up for me.

#Weverb12: walk [LIVE]

Describe the path to a favorite place of yours to walk in 2012. What’s meaningful about the place or the journey?

Have I mentioned I love walking? I dislike standing still, so I will choose to walk over waiting for a bus or a taxi.

Quite unusually for Hong Kong, I actually have to walk on the street to get to work. Most people I know have an MTR exit that serendipitously comes up right near their workplace. Because I live right on top of an MTR station, the husband, for example, pretty much has to take two elevators down, ride the MTR, and then take a couple of escalators up into this work building. This might strike some people as terrible, but in a place where rain is perennial and there is a typhoon season, it can be pretty darn useful. Especially if you’re grocery shopping with a baby in a buggy, like my helper has to do, for example. Or you’re allergic to the sun, like my husband. (I am not joking. I used to poke fun at him, but this year, he was officially diagnosed as suffering from migraines, so that might explain is sun aversion.)

Anyway, I am not the only one who finds the arrangement of actually (gasp!) walking on the street to work for a little over 10 minutes unusual. Now and then someone will suggest a shuttle bus, and be promptly ignored. When we moved to the new building, there was a minibus from the MTR to that building and I happily availed of it.

However, I have gone back to walking, partly because the wait for the minibus can get long, but also because I realised that I need the exercise. I have resolved to not only walk that route to and from work but also to and from lunch. Since I cannot find the motivation to exercise after work, at least these 15 minute spurts will count for something.

Now, let me describe the walk. I emerge from the MTR station – one of the smaller ones – into a lower income area, primarily comprising public housing. There are a lot of elderly people and more than the normal share of disabled people around. In this MTR, for example, there is a gang of old women who wait outside the turnstile for people to give them the free newspapers that are distributed in the MTR. They collect these to sell to recyclers. One of these ladies is so bent over, she’s almost always looking at the floor. At some point, an old man joined the gang and I suspect he gets more than his fair share of papers just by virtue of gender difference. I also often see this guy in a motorized wheelchair who is pretty speedy on the sidewalk and even has a passenger standing behind him.

The stretch of the street outside the MTR is pretty busy. There’s a new bakery that’s become a popular alternative to McDonald’s just next door for grabbing breakfast. A lot of office workers buy their brekkie on their way to work and consume it at their desk, I assume because they are up so late at night (most lights are on in our building around 2 am) that they’d rather save the time they would have spent eating at home for sleeping.

It’s an uphill trudge up this road, past a mall of course, which famously raised the rent forcing the old mom-n-pop stores  to give way to chain stores priced, according to me, too expensively for the neighbourhood. There is a flight of stairs to climb up to the main street, last year with broken steps that could be super slippy in the rain, completely unacceptable considering the older population that uses them. This is a good walk to do to get a sense of Hong Kong that is less prosperous and more down-to-earth, if you will.

I come up onto a main road, which borders a park. This part of the walk is really pleasant because there are trees overhanging the road and it’s fairly quiet, except for the chirping of birds and there are some really unusual (to me) species flitting about. In the park, there are always elderly people doing tai chi and kung fu to music with fans and swords. It’s pretty awesome.

It takes about 10 minutes to hit the university. If I am lucky, the bell in the clock tower will be tolling. I used to work in the first building, but now I have to walk through a promenade to get to the new building. On the way, I pass a sports ground which is usually empty at that point. Five minutes later, and one elevator ride up, I’m in office.

How do you get to work?

#Weverb12: respond

respond [LISTEN]: Do you actively listen to your inner voice/conscience? Describe a time this year you heard and responded to it.

So my instinctive response to this was, yes. But on second thought, I’m not so sure. My inner voice tends to be more of an inner debate, whereby I incessantly weigh pros and cons before making a decision. I once read the Linda Goodman description of Libran character traits and it explained exactly what I do – which is endlessly go back and forth in the pursuit of finding that perfect balance.

V is also a Libran but he is a very quick decision-maker (the stars must have been differently aligned when he was born). Making decisions around him became a source of great angst for both of us. I could literally feel him breathing down my neck. From his perspective, it was frustrating standing around tapping his foot while I went: “Okay this, no this, no this, no that” seemingly ad infinitum. From mine, the sound of his tapping foot threw my train of thought out of whack.

Initially, this led to some tension, then I followed the path of going with his decisions a lot, then I began to rebel leading to a lot of tension and now I’m trying to strike some balance again. The truth is that V’s decisions, by and large, tend to be pretty good, especially the big ones. Like my current job. When I got the offer I was dithering as usual – not helped that I was in Bombay at the time and my father was not exactly thrilled with the idea of me doing something so low profile – and finally, V said, just do it.

So it is tempting to let him make all the big decisions, partly because he has a high success rate, partly because he’s quicker and in very small part because he bears a slightly bigger responsibility then (though I almost never rub this in).  However, this goes against the grain of my feminist beliefs and also, he can get really overbearing. I am okay with him making decisions about my life when I am okay with it but not without asking. Thus, when I had to buy a phone and he was quite clearly trying to bludgeon me into his preferred route, I did not appreciate it.

Nevertheless, being around V has made me a quicker decision-maker by force of husband’s irritation. Thus, for the smaller things, I just make quick decisions and compel myself not to go back obsess about them.  For example, choosing what to eat at a restaurant. It used to be one of those things that annoyed him because I hadn’t made up my mind right up to the time I was giving the waiter my order. So for these things, I adopt a just-choose-something-and-stick-with-it approach. For a while, V had been edging me into decisions or outright telling me what I should order (often he got it right) but I no longer accept this. Same with shopping.

The hardest decisions to be made were when our babies were very little. I just could not accept V’s knee-jerk decisions because with my babies’ health, I wanted no margin for error. I wanted to weigh pros and cons but I was also paralysed by lack of complete information, guidance and a patient spouse. It was a very tough time.

My inner voice also leads me to be a softie. If someone is selling something, I feel like I have to reward their effort by buying it. Especially, if it has some feel-good tag be it “charity” or “organic” attached to it. So, for example, I signed up to do a scheduled monthly donation to a charity. I’m actually happy about this but it means I need to be very firm when approached by other charities because I’m already committed. It also means that last weekend, I bought two beetroots for HK$50 because I felt the need to support the farmers at a farmers market. V stood by shaking his head.

I will say, though, that for the medium-to-big decisions, the ones I am most satisfied with are the ones where I have spent a decent amount of time mulling over, and then they turned out well. For the small things, I’ll acknowledge Just Do It works.