Sometimes I forget how old my father is. 

He has the humour of a twelve year old but a recycling bin of puns that dates back a hundred years. Those have met him may remember how excited he can be with a new toy - a 3D printer or drone or VR set - like a five year old at Christmas, and he retains a childlike wonder and curiosity about new things that I hope he will never lose. 

By those laughter lines by his scrunched up eyes lie wrinkles. Ones you might expect even on a fifty year old, let alone on someone who qualifies as a senior citizen in every country, but when his hair is still largely black and wiry and most of his face is hidden by the thick glasses that have been a fixture prior to his uni days, they can be hard to identify. 

His feet hurt after we walk all day. My calves and back may ache, remnants of my fencing days combining with naturally bad posture, but I don't limp in the same way with one foot dragging slightly. Part of it's the gout, but then again things accumulate the older you get. He's had gout for the past ten years at least, but only in the past three or so has it really been as big an issue. 

And for me, the baby, full of energy, prime of my life. I'm bounding off, impatient, slightly irritated that my pace has to be disrupted. Then I see the dragging foot and I remember that I'm accompanied by someone more than triple my age. So I slow down a little and stroll, and keep in mind that even if he's a few steps behind me physically, it's because he's lapped me time and again in life. 

Drafted May 27, 2017

Writing more this year was supposed to be one of my new year’s resolutions, which I set back to make a Chinese New Year resolution just so that I could hibernate mindlessly a little longer. Except that all fifteen days of it have passed so I don’t really have much of an excuse putting it off for much longer. Along with my other resolutions, including staying more contactable (I can basically hear my friends laughing across the ocean), which has sadly been marred by phone trouble and a recent Netflix addiction. 

So, like I said, here goes part two of eat, pray - who am I kidding, for me it’s more like eat, eat, eat. 

The thing is, I’d thought I was done with this whole finding myself crap. I’d thought that it was a freshman year thing, something incited by a new environment and new experiences. This blog I’d started basically as an outlet to figure myself out, and by summer I was having such a great time that I thought I had. Then sophomore year rolled around and I thought I’d spent enough time figuring myself out, time to start trying to figure the rest of my life out - and I thought I had to lock in a career plan by the end of it. And consequently spent a good portion of my fall semester in a basement. A good semester nonetheless, with great company, but often lacking sunlight and vitamin D. 

And what I’m saying is basically that I was a twenty year old who thought she had life all figured out, like every other college aged movie protagonist who finds out that no, she did not. I was telling a couple of people over break that I think training and Singaporean schooling essentially bottled up my teenage angst and everything else apart from physical and academic growth and now everything is falling out belatedly after my teenagerdom’s concluded. 

So I tried thinking about what I would want to do. And I realise I have hardly any idea. I have some clues, I want it to be related to what I like to do, and that I know - fashion? reading? sustainable business? music? but then am I good at it? I’m so distracted and interested by so many things at the same time. I still like business, but I don’t want it purely to be my life. And if you ask me what my ideal job would be, it would be an amalgamation of everything. 

All I know is that I don’t want my answer to why I chose a job to be that I fell into it. I want to know where I’m headed even if I don’t know where I’m going (if that makes sense, it made sense in my head). Even if that leads me right back to the beginning of where I thought I’d end up, at least I won’t start my career off with a bunch of wistful what-if’s. I want to have fulfilment in doing something, in the pleasure of creating something, in the experience of seeing things grow. I guess that’s a start, but it’s a long way to the end of a thought process that’s initiated by a simple question that mysteriously enough I’d somehow thought I’d answered without ever really tackling. 

Sometimes I feel that to think can both be a blessing and a curse in that it can drive you away from contentment. Maybe sometimes not thinking is necessary and a happier existence, and sometimes I envy my friends who are fine with working hard now for benefits in the future. But these sometimeses don’t stop me thinking about what else I want to be, even if I still have no damn clue, and as much as I know that age shouldn’t be a barrier in the future from doing what I want then, I see no reason why that in itself should be barrier from doing what I want now. 

Coming to London was about a few things for me. I know it’s hardly diving into uncharted territory, and it’s not like I’m completely adrift here, but for a girl who spent most of her time from age 9 till 18 circulating within a community with only slight changes (I count at least five from my P3 class in HP with me) it’s still a shift. So I guess coming here was once again about reminding myself that survival outside my direct comfort zone was not a one-off accomplishment fuelled by freshman enthusiasm, but also so that I could breathe and make myself think a little bit about what I want. As much as I love New York and being in it, the pace is so fast that it’s easy to get swept along into the throngs and still feel like you’re moving too slowly. 

I am living a great life. I know that, I appreciate that. Louis the Child and Porter/Madeon performed in one night, it doesn’t get much better than that combination. In all honesty I could simply focus on the good parts and watch Netflix till I forget the rest, it’s pretty easy to move on like that. But then that’s escapism, and not focusing on something doesn’t make me any more prepared to deal with it or another iteration in the future.

As much as I wish I could say I did, I don't have that security that I thought I did. If I did, things I’ve said before wouldn’t replay themselves in my head and make me cringe sometimes or I wouldn’t care so much about what other people thought. And I know that that might never go away, because who has it all figured out? All I know is that for all that I’m laughing more freely and having more fun than I was, progress is relative and there’ll always be room for more. I guess that’s why shows like Girls (very recent wagon) and Skins (one day one season) exist, it’s comforting to know that we’re not the only ones who feel like we have nothing figured out after what can feel like ages of trying. (Is my Netflix addiction really showing?) 

I suppose that’s part of me writing, because for me writing is charting, and saving as a draft or scribbling in a diary is a lot easier than putting thoughts online for invisible eyes to judge. And in a sense it forces my accountability, not so much because I feel more accountable to some vague presence than I do to myself but more so because I don’t want there to be a disparity between what I write and what I mean. 

So stay tuned for more incoherent ramblings, hopefully much more consistent than before. 

Photos:

At the New Museum, “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest” Exhibit

Featuring Eunice, and random strangers