So how was Taiwan?

Every time I go on a trip somewhere I look out (sometimes a bit too desperately) for that one stark trip-defining event. That moment I fell off my own luggage bag. That wall scrawled with the whisperings of a conscience weighed down by night-time sins. That stracciatella gelato. Kilimanjaro beer under a blanket of night sky. Legs hanging over a wooden jetty, writing a postcard, surrounded by mountains. Waiting in a cosy restaurant after closing, because the proprietor and his wife were a kind couple who weren’t about to let two homeless girls roam the streets of Salzburg on their own. Feeling my way up a hill in total darkness, feeling like an explorer of the wilderness, only to find out at the peak that I still had data connection.

These memories are important. They remind you, as you stare aimlessly at the computer screen and scribble laboriously in your work diary, days and days on end, that escape is possible. And necessary. Because, where else and how else would you get to feel all these wonderful feelings again?

S0 – Taiwan. Taiwan is a beautiful place. One tenth the size of Malaysia (I think), it’s like a good makeup compact – so many beautiful colours and textures squeezed into one tiny little area. Twenty minutes outside Taipei, and you’re looking at a sulphur spring shooting steam out of a dormant volcano. Although, technically, we didn’t see a thing – we only heard and smelled it, because it was a rainy day overhung with an opaque curtain of mist (which was also very beautiful in its own right). Two hours on, by high-speed rail, you’re off traipsing down tranquil earth pathways that snake through majestic valleys, overlooking the crystal blue running water of Liwu River. Then not too far off are two little towns nestled into the slopes of endless, rolling hills; one with a charming history of gold mining, and a display of grand, fortress-like abandoned factories to show for it.

In Taiwan, I felt safe and free. Nobody looks at you funny because your neckline hangs a little too low (oh, the number of times over here that I’ve wished I could hit someone in the face and tell him to watch some porn). In fact, nobody really looks at you at all. People stand in an orderly queue on the right side on the escalator, and get nagged at when they don’t queue for tickets. Night market proprietors don’t shoot you dirty looks when you decide not to buy anything. You don’t walk down a street anticipating that a motorcyclist might swoop by and take off with your handbag, or walk into a carpark wondering if you might ever encounter a rape and kidnap attempt. People are polite, don’t yell, don’t shove, don’t manhandle. And our taxi driver – what a sweet old man he was, buying us dessert to try  just because we asked what it was.

In all the places I’ve ever lived there’s always been an easily observable occupational divide. People who man MRT/tube/LRT ticket booths, construction workers, porters, taxi drivers are typically (or stereotypically?) somewhat downtrodden groups of society – all the groups that make headlines in talk about the state of the economy and politics. Foreigners. The elderly. The poor. And you usually tell right off the bat. Unhappy faces, less groomed, working class accents, etc (or so I think).  I’m not too sure how accurate this is (rose-tinted glasses perhaps) but Taiwan seemed different. The train lady could easily have been a bank officer. The noodle shop man could have been a fresh grad with a Masters degree.

Taiwan is a beautiful place. On our third day, we visited a beach (Seven Stars something). The sky was grey, as it was for the entire trip, and the waves spirited, continuously hurling against the pebble beach, splashing and breaking into angry white sea spray. There was a man parked on the void deck in the corner, strumming on his guitar, singing Mandarin oldies. And we stood there, my brother and the love of his life, my mother and father and I, wind tugging at our scarves, sharing a piping hot roast sweet potato. I remember looking around, taking it all in – the sky, the waves, the music, the crashing, the look of contentment on my parents’ faces – and thinking: yup, this is it. The trip-defining moment.

2012 in Conversations

2012 is a bit complicated. It isn’t J1, or J2, or second year, or the year I graduated. So it’s 31 December 2012, the end of the year I … what? Where is my reference point? The year I turned 23, perhaps. But in 10 years 23, 27, 25, 24 are all going to mash into one another into a blur of memories, and then it would all become “When I was in my twenties”. So maybe. Maybe if I write some things down and the WWW never crashes and takes all my conversations with an imaginary audience with it, one day I’d be able to look back and say, hey, when I was 23, in the first year of work, in the year I figured out how to use powder to degrease my hair, XYZ happened. That would be nice.

2012, on balance, has been good to me. There were holidays, there was lots and lots of singing, there was exotic travel, my Singapore trip count possibly spilled over to my other hand, there were some new friends and rekindling of some friendships I never ever want to lose. There was a certain extent of self-enlightenment, but that has since gone one full circle and then hit a brick wall. There were some points where my dark emotional tendencies went on a bit of an overdrive; but apparently BBC says creative people tend to get depressed very easily…so I’m not just a girl, I’m in fact a creative girl, thank you very much.

This is going to be a scrapbook of memories. It’s going to be a long post. But it’s really not meant for anyone but me. But if you insist…patience is virtue.

***

I remember prowling the streets of KL with bags of food in my arms, and the faceless man shooting up in the shadows of a darkened shophouse. I remember the smiling, well-groomed old man sitting on the steps of Maybank tower with a gold pen in his breast pocket, just lounging there like he wasn’t homeless, he was just waiting, waiting for a bus to take him somewhere he belonged.

***

I remember being in office at 2, 3 am in the morning, feeling extremely tense, stapling together drafts that didn’t mean anything to me.

***

I remember walking barefoot, hand in hand, out onto the silver sands of Bintan, glinting and feminine under the glow of the early morning sun.

***

I remember Manila and the jarring disparity. There were these dismal streets that looked like a rundown 80s’ America, with torn paper signs hanging off deserted neon lights. There were roofless, windowless, scarred little block-shaped buildings, awkwardly sitting within the embrace of curving, rolling highways, looking like no one has touched them for fifty years. Then the stalling traffic forces you to take a close look, and you see a man lying with his arm over his eyes, taking a nap under the tarpaulin on the roofless top storey. Yes, that was home.

Yet just the night before, there was Greenbelt and Glorietta and their heavily guarded mall entrances. Please, guards, look after all these rich foreign shoppers, like me. Keep us safe. Keep all these burly white men, each with a local woman hanging off his arm, and an LV bag hanging off hers, safe. I remember a South African conference participant saying to me: this is amazing. I’ve never been to Asia, and I never expected it to have such first-world infrastructure.

I don’t remember what the spot was, but the next morning a taxi driver showed me where the shooting of bus hostages took place in 2010.

***

I remember standing, onstage, in a circle of light, singing my first proper solo, and feeling the most insecure I’ve felt in ages. I remember dancing and singing and the snapping of fingers, consciously telling myself to stop thinking! You’re performing! But I couldn’t stop my mind my from saying, over and over again: OHMYGOD look how far you’ve come, from not being able to remember Orientation batch dance in J1, you’re now singing and dancing – at the same time – onstage to a paying audience!

Boundless, unrestrained, uninhibited self-expression is exhilarating. Sometimes I feel I can only achieve that sort of security singing in a group.

I remember leading my parents home from Lot 10 in the car, and feeling like a schoolgirl – proud that they were proud of me.

***

I remember feeling manically depressed. What a psycho. I remember the distance and the anger and the despondence.

***

I remember, in vivid detail, Dar es Salaam, and Robert who worked in mining. On my last night in Tanzania, I went down to the hotel restaurant armed with a book, prepared to have dinner alone. But I ended up having a long chat over dinner with Robert, from the Yukon, who trained young men how to work in the mines. He had a son and a beautiful daughter, who took after her mother. I don’t know his last name. But I remember his face, and I remember his nails were encrusted with soot. We talked about many things – about Malaysia, about the Yukon. He was surprised I knew about Yukon – so I told him about Calvin and Hobbes, and Yukon-Ho! and how I’ve reread Calvin and Hobbes a million times. I told him how I know Dar es Salaam had some beautiful beaches close by, but I didn’t really mind not going, because, it’s only a beach, right? Beaches are everywhere. But no, Yukon had no sandy beach, so the beach was a big deal to his children, eh? But Yukon did have a nice little desolate coast tucked away somewhere, and he knew a secret route there. He told me how he thought people were wrong about mining, and that as far as he was concerned he gave those boys much better wages and a purpose in life. Perhaps. Perhaps working in a place that accumulated dust in your lungs that eventually killed you over the years was no different from a man who jumps off planes for a living.

We headed up to the rooftop bar after dinner. It was a nice, starry, cool sky that hung over us. That was when I noticed his sooty nails. We had a Kilimanjaro beer each, and I remember what it tasted like. It was better than Heineken. Robert said it was amazing how if you didn’t look down, you could be anywhere in the world. You would never know you were in Africa.

It was true. It was surreal. It made me realise that I was not going to let life go before coming back to this continent again and really seeing, feeling Africa.

***

I remember intermittent moments in the year where I felt unadulterated joy. Waking up. Sitting in a car. Giggling. Eating. Children. Decorating. Finishing a handmade calendar.

***

December. I remember tearing open an envelope to find a lovingly cut up jigsaw puzzle of photos and messages, an unexpected birthday present from friends I’ve started to let slip away; yet after JC, whenever I missed JC, the handwritten messages I collected from them over the two years were my only source of comfort. How could I have let myself forget that!

I remember walking away from office those last few days before Christmas, and then taking two steps back just to admire the Christmas tree and the blue fairy lights, and the cutout snowy hills and incorrigible snowman peeking out from the side, making fun of the tiny trees. I had been having food poisoning, and going back to my flat to wait for my parents to come pick me seemed like the best thing in the world. It’s amazing how parents can sometimes just make everything okay.

I remember Christmas Eve. The airport.

I remember Christmas. I remember looking at the red cabbage, sprouts, beans and bacon in the wok, thinking, gosh, what a brilliant shade of purple. I remember smelling the roast, and looking at the spread on the table, and thinking, yes, you’ve definitely upped your Christmas dinner game.

***

At this time last year, I was moping about how I wasn’t in Trafalgar Square rocking the cold weather and getting squashed among a buncha rowdy happy people. Which was when I decided I was going to make myself a collage of all things related to those 3 wonderful years in UK so I could slobber over the good old days.

But you know, I’ve decided. I should stop looking back. I’d never ever figure out what I want to do with my life if I kept dwelling on the past when I thought I knew what I wanted.

Instead, I should go read a book.

Merrily merrily

‘Tis the season once more, and it feels really nice to be carolling again after skipping a year.

Today we carolled in Publika to a tiny audience of 8 or so, among a setup of miniature houses and lawns overlooked by a double-storey, sparkling green Christmas tree. The audience was a good receptive mix of people; foreigners and Malaysians, one on a wheelchair, children and the elderly, middle-aged couples. When Chi Hoe announced that we were going to sing Ding Dong Merrily on High next, a couple of the children went “Yayyyy!” and started singing the first verse in anticipation.

It was then I suddenly realised, that as much as I missed singing the Handel Messiah and O Magnum Mysterium in the UK, it shouldn’t matter to me that I’m here now, in Malaysia, singing to a bunch of faces that look like mine, because the enraptured, smiling face of the lady on the wheelchair should be enough. The eager cheering children carefully skirting the one meter radius from our circle of carollers should be enough. Music bridges that bond wherever you are. Music makes people happy no matter where and to whom you sing.

It’s the same singing O Magnum Mysterium in Cornwall to a group of distinguished elderly churchgoers. It’s the same singing Disney songs in Malacca to very special children and adults, or children’s songs about saying hello how are you to a classroom of also very special schoolchildren in Coventry. It’s the same blaring the Hallelujah chorus in the Warwick Arts Centre, it’s the same harmonising to Ave Maria at a wedding in an Earlsdon church, it’s the same dancing and leaping about the stage wondering if someone is gay or European to a bunch of young and trendy Malaysians. It’s the same carolling to  overworked scruffy university students in the Math building in Warwick and sipping wine after, it’s the same carolling to happy children and a happy lady on a wheelchair at Publika and eating wantan mee at the food court before.

I should tell myself that everyday.

Catharsis

I spent the weekend we went rafting and caving (wooo) telling myself to be more positive…and I must say,  I’m quite a bit happier now. Not happy, but at least not on a perpetual mope – I suppose at some point you have to smack yourself and tell yourself it’s not worth it.

It helps that it’s been raining a lot. Thunderous downpours, not the sissy, slimy, sloppy kind. And I love it. I love rain. I love standing at the pantry window when it’s coming, listening to the blinds beat on the window, like it’s trying to get in. I love feeling the cold wind rush in and envelope the small, darkening rectangular space. I love watching the rain smash down onto the helpless unassuming rooftops, abruptly softening the sharp, hard edges of the city, melding the dull, muted colours into an indiscernible steel blue and washing away the hills peering over the horizon. And then walking out and feeling the drizzle, stepping out under a night sky that is the confused colour of a bruise.

It helps that everyday I am surrounded by people I can laugh with, laugh at, and who laugh at me.

Now I might have believed it sooner if they hadn’t plonked it on every possible card and plaque and shareable quote of the day or whatever… but it really is true that we should count our blessings one by one.

There is an Option

“The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”

What I need is a cure.

Something or someone that tells me to stop being so unhappy, and to stop saying in a million different words why I am unhappy, and is capable of making me obey.

Something that can penetrate deep into the soil, through the brick of well I have slowly dug and let myself into, downward, downward, downward, and pull me, with distinctive authority and firmness, out, and say – look, you silly girl, you dug a well from your bedroom floor. Here is a comfortable bed. Here is a wardrobe full of pretty clothes. What in the world made you start digging? What?

Here is a piece of wonderful music. Here is a poem. Here is an excerpt of lyrical, visual, romantic writing. Feel it. Rejoice in it.

The only times I feel happy now are fleeting – a couple of hours at choir, getting lost in clashing chords and Christmas. The half an hour I spend rolling around in bed on Saturdays and Sundays, the morning riding in through the crack in the curtain on a sliver of sunlight. The one hour I spend puzzling over To the Lighthouse, half of which I spend rereading pages I have read – the book never ends. The one hour I spend thinking about the new things I want to do…but eventually don’t of course. Because there is work. There is always work. And I don’t know how to slice through my head and put a boundary between work and the rest of my heart.

But maybe it’s not about work. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ll never stop digging, and searching, and maybe, until I feel the onrush of scenery-air, mountains, trees, people on my skin, until I feel the warm cosiness of the beeping oven, maybe, until the muddy banks of the river disappear into the curling horizon, I will continue making my way down, and woe betide those who try and stop me.