My family are the greatest. A phone call from my mum and a long MSN chat with my brother, and I’m feeling on top of the world. I guess it’s easy to romanticise Chinese New Year when you’re not around for it and haven’t been for 5 years, and I definitely remember things I disliked about it, but there are many things I miss: the camaraderie, the food, the festive feeling and the red, and sitting round the steamboat on New Year’s Eve with the fishballs and oyster sauce strategically in front of my plate.
London’s big, full-on celebrations in Chinatown and Trafalgar Square aren’t till next week, so it’s all been strangely muted so far. I took myself out for a saunter down Regent Street yesterday. It was decked out for Valentine’s and I spotted a mind-boggling number of people, girls and guys, with bouquets and roses in hand, as well as an inordinate number of shop windows with hearts in them. I grabbed a pre-dinner flat white from Sacred at Kingly Court, one of Time Out London’s top coffee places, and sipped it slowly as I walked. For a non-Monmouth coffee it was pretty impressive. People-watching comes naturally when you’ve nowhere to go; you learn all over again the pleasure of walking for walking’s sake, not as a means to an end but the end itself, doing the whole Victorian flaneur thing as you stroll down the pavement scoping out the buildings and the rush of the crowd around you.
It started pouring down with rain later in the evening, so I retired to Euston where I camped for a good hour or so with a copy of PopCo by Scarlett Thomas. I finished The End of Mr Y late-ish last year and enjoyed it, but I’m liking PopCo even better – it’s really a book of puzzles wrapped in the guise of an smart, sassy, very adult story, and if you, like me, enjoy lateral thinking, games, codes, paradoxes, the Monty Hall Problem, and the occasional mathematical stumper, PopCo is your book. It also contains a recipe for a vegan cake, which I fully intend to try out once I am safely relocated into an oven-friendly household.
Today’s my last day off till June so I am planning to enjoy it to the fullest, which naturally involves gaming (check), Monmouth Coffee (planned for this afternoon) and reading in bed (planned for tonight). In between I’m also hopefully going to settle this question of moving out once and for all, with a second visit to my prospective new house this evening, and perhaps starting to re-pack my things once again. How surreal, all this nomadding about. Hopefully this will be the last move for a long while.
(or, the mandatory new-year’s-eve pondering post that louis prodded me into writing)
I suppose I could say, what a year it’s been. I suppose a lot has happened, though I feel that often I was stumbling from one route marker to another, amazing race style, with not a clue what would happen next – only with the knowledge that there had to be an end to the leg, and an end to the race. From settling down in London and getting to know it better, to my two weeks in Stratford-upon-Avon working for one of the world’s greatest theatre companies, to the frantic flurry of job-hunting and hopping, to finally landing something, to making it permanent – I can’t do justice to it all in one post – and that’s just work. I haven’t even begun to say anything about meeting new people, rekindling old friendships, eking out the beginnings of a new life, the harrowing feeling of post-university emptiness, the sweetness of summer on the south bank, flying home, talking, thinking, loving, losing, hoping, living.
I suppose I could say, indeed, that 2009 was quite a year. But to be honest, I don’t think the events of the year made all that much of a difference; I think it would still have been quite a year had I not worked where I worked and found the job I did in the end, if I were still jobless now, if summer had been a torrent of rain, if I hadn’t taken that holiday home, if I had taken up, say, cooking classes rather than Japanese. It would all still have been something, it would still have been an experience to remember. And I suppose, too, that this is true not just of 2009 but of any year, any time; had I not done my MA in 2007/08, I would have done something else, and whatever it was, it would have left its indelible mark on my experience of 07/08 too, for better or worse.
One of my colleagues said in the office today, over discussing New Year’s Eve plans (mine was, obviously, the most boring), that he felt 2009 had just kind of drifted along, but that 2010 was going to be the year. I don’t know that I agree with the drifting, but I do feel, for no reason at all I can put my finger on, that I am more than ready for 2009 to be over – because 2010 is going to be, as noted, the year – and it won’t be because of what happens, whatever may happen; it will be simply because I am alive. The world is changing around me, and there is a long road to walk yet, and a lot of life to be lived.
In my 24 years, yesterday was the first Christmas I’d ever spent on my own. I’d always had family or friends around, if not both; and I guess a part of me always took it for granted that it would be the case year on year.
I feared I would be terribly lonely this year, what with London shut down around me, trapped indoors with nowhere to go, no one to talk to. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it all and claim that it wasn’t actually lonely at all, that it was perfectly fine, that at no point did I fleetingly wish someone else was around. But you know – with the texts that I started getting on Christmas Eve, and my mom’s phone call in the morning, and the emails/Facebook messages that trickled in – I didn’t really have all that much time, or inclination, to feel sorry for myself.
I had a blissfully warm lie-in after hanging up with my mom, and after finally (reluctantly) rolling out of bed around 10:30, put on my Spotify Christmas playlist and started the day with “All I Want for Christmas is You”, which is probably still my favourite Christmas song – if only, in large part, thanks to Love Actually. It was cold, but not the frightful, bone-chilling frost of the cold snap that had ravaged England and the continent for the past week; instead it was more of a calm, settled crisp cold. Listening to Mariah, I couldn’t help smiling to myself and singing along as I made my morning coffee. Oh I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow – how true, that.
So the day passed uneventfully and in supremely restful manner. I threw myself gleefully into playing more of Dragon Age (woefully behind many of my friends, I think, because I don’t usually have time or energy to play after work!) and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time. Christmas movies at Christmastime are something of a tradition; had we all been home together, I would probably have been watching Home Alone 2 with my siblings. But this year we are all scattered across continents: my sister and brother in Singapore, my mom and dad in Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains for a 3-day outdoorsy walking holiday, and me here in winter with my endless mugs of hot tea and honey.
This morning, I woke late revelling in the fact that I was not caught up in a crazy Boxing Day sale crowd, and put on some unabashedly cheesy 80s pop to twirl round my room to, starting with Bananarama’s “Love in the First Degree”. It’s been a good holiday season, so far. I miss people – but then again, when have I not? And as for being on my own, it was far less devastatingly depressing than I had been led to believe, for the most part. I felt warm, and I felt loved, and what more could I want at Christmastime?
It is always the leaving that brings it all into perspective.
It’s so easy to say that the weather in Sydney is too changeable, my house too cold, my brother and his friends too noisy, my mom too naggy, the lack of coffee in the kitchen unacceptable. But then, looking out on the pink-purple-orange sunrise over Sydney Harbour as we crossed the bridge, my backpack and my suitcase in the boot once again and my dad behind the wheel to the airport, I didn’t want to close my eyes for fear I would miss another priceless moment.
Tasmania was beautiful. Having been once more transformed into a city girl by the always-on lights of London, it was eerily quiet at first; even capital city Hobart doesn’t really feel all that much bigger than York, and as we travelled into the mountains and the (comparative) wilderness I was suddenly struck by how rare, how amazing it was that this part of the world, not 2 hours’ flight from Sydney, had managed to remain so pristinely untouched. This was not some urban-generated landscape, this was genuine nature. And after all this time, there are still no better travel companions than my family.
Yesterday as I sat on the old familiar 174 and went by my old neighbourhood en route to Orchard, looking down the street where I grew up, at the condominium which now occupies the place I used to swim, the playground at Bouganvillea Park behind the old bus stop, I almost didn’t know what to feel. There was nostalgia in spades, there was an ache for what is irretrievably gone, there was a warmth and a deeply felt thankfulness for what hasn’t changed at all. My sister, summing up my thoughts, said to me later in the night that she wanted to go back to our house and our neighbourhood, but at the same time she didn’t want to, was almost afraid to, because she knew it’d be different.
Today, I took a walk down Orchard Road from ION to Plaza Singapura, and at least half of what I saw was completely unrecognisable. Change is inevitable, I know, change is to be embraced. But oh, the dizzying vertigo. And yet – I know that when I sit in the airport again on Wednesday morning, another boarding pass in my hand, I will be soaking it all in and wishing I didn’t have to leave, however unfamiliar to me this island now is. There are still the people. There are still the memories.
My Wednesday and Thursday this week have basically vanished into air (literally), and my body clock is currently in some whacked-out timezone that is neither UK nor Australian, so I’m feeling pretty disoriented. But nothing beats the feeling of being back, of hanging out in my living room with my laptop with my siblings watching telly. Daddy took me out laptop shopping today followed by a trip to the Sydney Botanic Gardens to take advantage of the awesome warm weather, and we had lunch at Masuya, a family favourite Japanese restuarant in town; I also finally managed to satisfy my perpetual xiaolongbao craving with a trip to a new Shanghainese restaurant near our home, and we made plans to hit the beach tomorrow for some good fresh fish and chips, and pancakes later in the day (why yes, I have planned my days around food)!
Speaking of new laptops, I basically presented my dad with my very few specific requirements (must be able to play Dragon Age and NWN2, must have good sound, must have Win 7, doesn’t need to be that light/portable as I mostly just leave it at home anyway, must not be ugly), and he picked out this drop-dead sexy beauty for me:
Toshiba Qosmio X500
This, my friends, has to be the Mustang of laptops or something. It’s clearly built to be a gaming rig, hence its massive size and high-end specs, and I’m just hoping that my back won’t break lugging it back to Singapore and London, but dang it’s pretty. They’ve apparently been flying off the shelves so fast that they don’t even put it out on display in shops because then they’d just perpetually have no stock. We had to ask for it specifically. Thank goodness for the internets.
My dad’s l33t bargaining skills also resulted in us getting a copy of Dragon Age, a new pair of headphones, and a Logitech GX9 mouse thrown into the deal – for less than the RRP of the laptop. w00t! :D
i just had an 8-hour nap. possibly longer, as i can’t remember when i collapsed into bed, but it was definitely before dinnertime, or i would’ve been a good girl and eaten my dinner before crashing. what a strange feeling to stir from sleep and realise the day has vanished. what an exhausting day, and week, it has been.
i can’t remember the last time i was awake at 1am.
it feels strange, and quiet, and cold, though not all that much colder than when i wake early in the mornings. but there’s definitely now an autumnal chill in the air, the sort of crisp, decisive, pervasive cold that isn’t dissipated by sunlight. toes tingling, fingers balled into warm little fists in my pockets as i walk down the street, i can’t help constantly thinking of the warmth that awaits in a little over a month’s time. it’s not the only thing keeping me going, but it is the main one for sure.
happy birthday, daddy. 51 and you’re still the #1 man in my life. i don’t think that’ll ever change, because you’re just that awesome.
Wow, talk about a curveball I didn’t see coming.
One of the odd things about blogging is that it is so public, so open a platform, that when big things happen you don’t really want to stand up on your virtual soapbox and shout them to the world. So, well – we’ll be okay, is all. My mom rang me an hour ago, jolting me out of an early slumber (which is just as well as I had skipped dinner to go to bed and would’ve woken up starving if I hadn’t rolled out of bed after the call to eat something), and things sound fine. It’s just the terror of the unknown that has got to me.
In other news, new job kicks off tomorrow – fingers crossed. The 3-hour daily commute is going to knock me out totally though, so expect a marked decrease in online activity. My correspondence-pwning days are over…
z| zhi |z ::: and i asked the guest bboys
z| zhi |z ::: what they thought about bboying as a living
z| zhi |z ::: they said not only do i need to be a good bboy, i also need to know the business to bboy for a living
z| zhi |z ::: advertise myself
z| zhi |z ::: and work twice as hard
z| zhi |z ::: but im up for it man
tuesday’s child: yeeeah
tuesday’s child: that’s the spirit
tuesday’s child: : D
tuesday’s child: i’m not giving up finding a job in the arts too even though i am broke and i could make money if i go home and be a teacher
tuesday’s child: heh
z| zhi |z ::: yeahhhhhhhh !!!!!!!
z| zhi |z ::: its like when you bboy
z| zhi |z ::: commit to your moves and dont be lazy whenever and wherever
tuesday’s child: yeah : )
tuesday’s child: you can’t do this halfheartedly
tuesday’s child: if you want to be pro you have to commit to it… and you can’t say “if this doesn’t work out i’m going to do something else instead”
tuesday’s child: cos it has to work out!!
…my brother is inspiring. Never what you do, it’s how you do it.
Life in point form:
:)
sq
cui
LcT