Sober

It's quite difficult to be sober when you are on a love struck period. You talk until early in the morning without really remembering the conversation. You know you are happy but could not pin point the activities that trigger the happiness. So yesterday we had a talk on how to take control of our lives again. We made a table on the positive and negative sides of what we did and tried not to pass a certain bed time limit. I think that's why people call it as falling in love, you don't really have control of what happen to yourself. And yeah, sometimes, the world becomes a blurry since what exist only your feeling towards him, nothing else matter.

Probably, the biggest downfall of being love struck is that you become vulnerable, you don't have too much control of your emotion anymore. The way he behaves influence how your emotions going to be. So currently we also try to detach ourselves, to give ourselves a sense of identity again, not got too entangled to one another. 

I never imagine having a self-control of being sober and just follow the flow can be hard. I always believe I am a human of logic, but yeah, my past has shown that logic failed when heart interfere.  

Sense of Deja Vu

"What did you do to me? Why time flies when I am with you? You are a time eater."

"Did you hack my system? Why can't I think straight when I am with you?"

Somehow these conversations gave me a sense of deja vu, a taste of familiarity to the new experience. We just talked or looked at each other in silence until he wasn't able to look at me and I lost my words, did not know how to react. I lost count on what rules we made and later on, what we dropped since it could not contain our emotions. We talk, we tease and we drive each other crazy. 

We like to make a story together. Hah, another deja vu. 

Are You Happy?

Well, that's a one million dollar question, isn't it? This article about success and happiness argues why success and happiness don't go together. I thought one of the possibles negotiation between the two is placing success as an indicator for happiness since I see many people obsess with success. After reading the article, I realize that both of them are built on opposite values. Their incompatibility is like arguing ~N is similar to N. It's impossible since when you chasing success, you always want to compete and your sense of achievement is built on how you can be special compare to other, whereas happiness is something that you achieve from inside, a sense of ignorance of other people's achievements. 

Does it mean happiness cannot go with success? For me, the question is not matter of whether it can be achieved or not but rather a question of means and ends. For people who are chasing success, a sense of 'happiness' is achieved when they get recognition of what they achieve, whereas for people who practice happiness, success is the result of being happy. If you manage to find peace from what you are doing, you are successful. I think this argument is kind of fall into an extrovert versus introvert thing 😅 Extrovert tends to find justification from outside, whereas introvert from inside. As an introvert, I find the extrovert exhausting, so this is my personal bias.

Do I hate success? I mean sure, I like to have my paper being published or able to get the first place for something. But the satisfaction does not come for the achievement but rather as a form of responsibility that come from inside. Well, at this point, I think I am walking on a thin ice since I don't like to disappoint anyone so I kind of seek justification from outside as well.

Well, I think at the end, we cannot escape from being a social creature. We somehow constantly being confronted by the social. 

Falling in Love

What are the symptoms of being in love? For me, any type of emotion always comes from attachment (or care) to someone/something. The feelings of hatred, anger, love, betrayed, sad, happiness and enjoyment emerge through the way we associate our self to something. So moving on is not about shifting from one spectrum of being attached to another point on the same spectrum (i.e. from love to hate) but rather to shift from attachment to detachment, to initially care about someone to become indifference.

From this perspective, falling in love starts with a sense of attachment. You turn a stranger into someone you barely know, an acquaintance. At this stage, the other person's existence does not effect your life yet. Although if something good happen to them, you may get a slight happiness since you know the person. This one is followed by a friend stage where one's existence become very dear to you. At this stage, your life kind of being affected by the persons you are friends with. Although distance, frequency, work, family may influence the intensity you have with your friend. You will know the big events that happen in their life but your life is not fully rotated around their lives. The last stage is lover. At this stage, both of your lives kind of collapse to one another. You try to combine two different rotations to meet on particular time and place. You're in contact on daily basis and you want to know everything about the other person's activities. You get joy in knowing that somebody had finished their lunch or going to brush their teeth.

If you have symptoms of the last stage, then you are in love. 

Culture

I think one of the main thing about cultural differences is values. In one country, being someone to be proud of is valuable whereas in other place, what is valuable is your happiness. I never understand why people like to compare one to the other or brag about their or their relatives' achievements. Probably, because I never have been a fan of being in the spotlight. I prefer people ask me about whether I like something or whether I want to do it or not. And probably, that's also the reason why I felt lost when my Oma passed away. She was one of the persons that never forced me to do anything. We just loved accompanying each other.

The interesting part of moving from one country to another is that apart from facing different cultures, you also find a mixed culture where people re-create a new identity based on the mixture of different people. And since nothing can be taken for granted, we communicate. I think one of the thing about assuming that if you belong to one place, you expect people to be similar to you, all of you are assumed to follow the same values, but in reality, people have personalities that may not be what you think of them. With differences, people are aware that things need to be communicated since no one knows what are the norms.

Probably, that's also the reason why talking to him is interesting. He is like Scheherazade from the Arabian night where he captivated me with his stories and voice.

PS: I took the picture when I went to Fort Canning Park. They have this wall with names of people who passed away during a certain period. They came from various countries, UK, US, Indonesia and others.

Un/productive

I managed to submit a paper for a conference last week (I have to write the abstract, introduction, discussion and conclusion but at least, the data and framework are there) and revised an abstract, so writing wise, I am quite okay. However, it was not the case for my main projects. I still need to write an emails to people and to start reading all the materials that I have been collecting for the past couple of months. I have been easily distracted these days, doing random things without any result. I won't even call this phase procrastination since I don't really have a new idea.

But life wise, I am on an okay condition. Initially, I use to worry about love and career. I need to have certainty and sometimes, my obsession to certainty detach me to people I care about. Now I live my life closer to the younger version of myself, let everything flows, don't worry too much about what the future will bring as long that I am happy. So having someone who calls me everyday without any commitment is kind of liberating. The older version of me may questioned the motives or even ask for certainty but this current version does not really care. C'est la vie. That's life. Acceptance.

Probably, that's one of the reasons why I am not productive. I prefer to daydreaming than working, ahahaha.

Honey

In one of the WhatsApp groups, there was an offer on getting a free mask. So I contacted the number and asked for a free mask. The unusual thing was the person addressed me as honey (or cayang). I found it funny, but since the mask is coming from a formal institution, many of my friends reached out to me saying that the greeting was improper. After getting many messages, I started to ask myself whether I should feel offended by the greeting but I still could not see the mistake. People in the salon or in online shop like to call their customers with honey as well, so I think the call is acceptable. Some others argued that it's improper because the one distributing mask affiliates with a formal institution so it's better to have a formal reply. But had been working as an admin myself, I know how boring a standardized response would be. Having people responded with a smile or thank you could really made my day, especially since there were people who think getting responses from an admin were their rights. 

On the other hand, since I traveled to many places, I received many calling, 'sweety' (from flight attendant), 'honey' (from salon or online shops), 'sister' (when I went to department store), 'beautiful' (random), and catcalling (when I passed random guys in a bad neighborhood). Apart from the last one, I could accept the others. What annoyed me is people started to judge me and asked to many personal questions on first meeting. I considered it as an invasion to my personal space.

Do I have to speak up more? Or should I be offended? My golden rule is to think that people are naturally nice. So the first thing I do when I get a strange response is to rationalize it in my mind and assumes that it was only a cultural difference. I will argue when I feel threatened (which rarely happened).

The Heart

“But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you.” Fox to the Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Human's mind is an interesting thing, we love to fall into a routine. Our days are being defined by how it falls into the same pattern. We start to miss things once its change. Strangely, we don't really have a control on how light or heavy the change can be. Thinking about the possibility of having no control on your heart is a scary thing. If you runaway, you can save your heart but you may loose your chance to find happiness.

So now I am just following my heart and feel miserable due to time difference.

Alchemist

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The Alchemist, Coelho.

It's been a while since I met someone who can continue a story where I left off. At some points, I was giving up in finding someone who share the same idea of being a wanderer in this universe. But then again, the Universe works it magic. I met a person who remembered details of The Alchemist. So when I wanted to express the complexity of my feeling, we could refer to different situations of what Santiago has to face during his journey. I don't know whether our intersection means something more permanent or nothing but sometimes, when you are down, you only need a small sign to convince you that you are alright, your quirkiness has a place in this mundane world. It does not matter whether the person is there for a long run or not, what matter is that on a certain period of your life, you are happy.

I always thought that life works in a continuous space. But the more I think of it, the more I think it's a discrete space, a set of events that define what we called as life. There are events in life that appear in front of you out of the blue, a random possibilities that materialize without a reason but somehow it warms your heart. Or the way you are able to move on from someone, one day you were still crying when you remembered how things went left, but the next day, the memories has no meaning to you anymore (shout out to Taylor Swift for this perfect song). In the moments like that, I really feel that we are living in a discrete life where things can be switch on and off.

This realization makes me become more grateful of what I have. Living in the moment instead of thinking what I did wrong or what the future may lead. Be nice, doing the right thing and allowing my self to be surprised.

The Body

On June 17th, 2020 I went to a clinic to check on a constant pain that I felt on my stomach. I had a mixed feeling for the whole journey. Scared, not really sure how the system works, fear that I had serious illness and other worst possibilities. Luckily, when I contacted my friend asking how to deal with the health system in Singapore, she offered to accompany me, so one less problem to deal with. The whole process went quite fast, from diagnose until the decision to do surgery. The next day, the doctors came to check on me and she said that the surgery went well and if my body could function after total anesthesia, I could go home.

Having an operation creates a strange relationship between me and my body. There are part of me that I have no control on. It still feels strange to touch the scar and there are still some moves that I can not do without creating pain. I am healing, physically and mentally. I think mentally, this whole experience makes me reflect on the presence of important people in my life and moreover, what I considered as important.

Not Meant to Be

Sometimes not meant to be means that both of you share the same attraction but the timing is not right. You are attached to a commitment you cannot break easily and the other one could not adjust the timing for your own sake since it attached to his network as well. Your intersection with one another leave an understanding of you don't belong together despite the instant attraction. But this is life, you cannot always get what you want (or I simply over thinking things) and sometimes commitment is better than attraction. You can get bored with something but what makes things run is your commitment.

Attraction and the right moment appear at any scale of life. This time is about work, some other time, it may be about a person. Things are meant to be when every thing falls on the right moment. If it is a human relationship, meant to be refers to sharing the same stage of life. Each of you wants the same thing and places it as their priority. If it is work related, the moment appears in front you when you are not attached to another commitment.

"But if you really want it, why not fight for it? Negotiate?"

If every thing can be negotiated, what does it leave for credibility? How do you want people to recognize you? An opportunist, an unreliable person? Even when people let things slide, how do you see yourself?

I think growing up means you have to be accountable to your decision.

And it's bloody difficult!!