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Damn this day. And all of the days to come.
Q: What are you planning to do after retiring? Coaching, travelling, becoming a business man?
R: I have not really thought that far yet. I certainly hope that the cosmetic line will still be an issue then.
??
Speaking to my oldest cousin overseas, who has only recently came out of jail, I burst into tears suddenly. I’m not sure why exactly, maybe because I have not seen him in such a long long time because he’s been in jail most of his life, or maybe this phone call made me feel how far away I have been from my family. Sometimes I wish I was closer to them, although thinking about where I am today and the person I have become, it would never of happened if I was still living there. I guess these are the roads we choose and the intersections which we’ve passed, that we wonder where they may have led to. I feel very humbled by speaking to him. I have a great deal of respect for him and for what he has been through. I honestly hope he will be happier now.
I have made some changes to my life over the past few years; and I’m not sure whether I am in a better position now or not. What I do believe in is that change, contrast, conflict initiates personal growth, and that is what I am doing. I would rather choose grief than nothing. I would rather move than remain. Although for me, being the hyper-sensitive person that I am, it is in small acute steps.
Tomorrow I have to install the new modem for the internet upstairs our shop. After work, my cousin wants to exchange some nail polish (and she can’t go by herself because she doesn’t know which colour is the same as mine), then I have to help another cousin of mine install extra bits onto his computer to juicen it up, and next week I need to drive my other cousin to the airport.
/quitfamily
“If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.”
The relationship between my father and I, is like a diver on the end of a jumping board, it is highly unstable and sensitive, wobbling with tension and uneasiness, ready to plonk off the trembling mess. I find it extremely difficult to be around him and be myself. He has made it quite clear that he is completely disappointed and hopeless in me. He doesn’t accept the fact that I want to be doing, what I am doing right now, not University or study related. It is very “un-Chinese like” that I do not want to be attending University, graduating with a Masters and becoming the happiest person I could ever be. What would have pleased him most, disregarding whether it pleases me or not (because money is the only thing worth living for, right?) is to become a doctor, accountant, or businesswoman.
I understand where he is coming from, I really do; he grew up in a harsh environment where there was barely enough to eat, due to a fucked up government, hard to get a roof over your head, not to mention becoming professors and doctors.
Well, I’m sorry I was born in the late 20th century and now a youth of the 21st technological age. I’m sorry that I haven’t had it hard enough like you to find money a single priority. Perhaps, you could instead look at it this way, that you’ve been able to give your daughter a better place to grow up, and that she is thankfully blessed to have been given more opportunities, to make decisions for the kind of life she wants to lead – the choices which you weren’t offered. But she does.
She has the choice.
“Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.”
