Cold Windows

i stopped at the window on the 18th floor to press my hands against the cold glass and to breathe onto it. outside, the snowflakes were flying and tumbling against the grey skies, whisked along by the wind in a manner that seemed so carefree. from up here, i could see people and their black umbrellas fighting against the difficult snow as they walked the pavements. it’s funny, but as a person who’s been living for the past two years in new york, a city where tall buildings are quite unavoidable, i don’t look out the windows of high-rise buildings very much. i live on the 8th floor and that’s about the highest i will go.

the truth is that i avoid the views. i know they’re pretty but they’re also painful. they remind me of so many things, like the 30th floor, the 22nd floor, the 19th floor, and even the 12th floor. flashes of the different views from various apartments and hotels come to me, and these are the kind of things you approach only when you’re strong enough. the last time i’d dared to look out the window of a room that high was when a then boyfriend had come to visit in the springtime– we’d checked into a hotel in times square, and then he told me that this was a special hotel for him because he’d had a moment here with an ex girlfriend. some things, like many other things, one just doesn’t need to hear. the other more recent time that comes to mind was the weekend of my last birthday, and i was briefly happy and prancing around the hotel room, while he ironed his work clothes. i stopped to look out the window (there wasn’t much to see) but he came up from behind to hold me. these burst of moments are short but so splendid.

then, there is also the 17 year old me, in a spaceship that hovers above the glittering city of kuala lumpur. look at the view, i had said, and he had wrapped his arms around my waist in a sudden move that felt so out of place and strangely unfitting. how many times has this happened, i had wondered curiously, but pessimistically. and then, the 18 year old me, in the month of march, in the mid levels of hong kong — i was sitting on a window ledge that would come to be so familiar in the future. we sat and talked as i peered tentatively down at the vast expanse of mad skyscrapers spread across the horizon. we listened to the most ubiquitous sound in hong kong — the ticking sound of the traffic lights — and giggled like children. that’s how it started.

and so, now, i hate windows and the views from high above. it’s more of a scared, frightened aversion than anything else. i was going to end this post by saying that i feel like just dropping everything and running away to somewhere foreign and new for some time — perhaps the street corners of suburban Seoul, where houses are small and rest above a fruit shop, or the whirling sidewalks of Kaohsiung, or even a dorm room in the aloof land of Tokyo, where i might meet Watanabe, and disrupt his life. but that’s my problem. i am an escapist. always trying to run. do i run to be found? have i been found? is this the very last time that i will be lucky?

28 comments February 26th, 2010

When The Real Festivities Begin

it’s been a weekend of tiered festivities, what with chinese new year and valentines’ day falling on the same day this year. Flushing, New York was redder and more boisterous than usual this weekend, with stalls of roses lining the streets and calls of 新年快乐! being jostled back and forth amongst the exuberant crowd. some of us had gotten together for our own reunion dinner the night before, courtesy of carol the domestic goddess, and this morning we all went for a dim sum brunch before scattering back to our various locations in the american northeast once again.

as we ate, we could hear the faint sounds of the lion dance drums rolling up from the streets beneath us, the familiar thumping rhythm calling out to our homesickness like the pied piper. some of us wanted to leave the restaurant to quickly catch a glance of the lions, but how lucky we were that the lions came to us instead. two of them, white and red with silver skin, burst into the dim sum parlour along with their troupe, and we dissolved into such excitement. i wondered aloud why they had the same colours. ‘twins!’ he responded. and suddenly i was young again, short and sitting on my dad’s shoulders, watching two lions with big eyelids prance around the crowd, soaking up love. ‘twins,’ the adults would nod in marvel and say knowingly, as if twin lions were rare and magical. i used to cry when i saw the big ceremonial platters of roast pig with its head still intact (complete with flower in its dead mouth), but i loved the lions. i loved the wooden ladders and watching the two lions dance up and down, up and down– before one of them would emerge victorious with the red ribboned vegetable in her mouth. i loved getting a fraction of the prize money from my parents if they won the gamble on either lion. and i did so hate chinese new year music, with its annoying pitch, but i loved the pink plastic cherry blossom trees and the red paper fishes that we used to help our aunts make out of angpau packets.

and of course i loved angpaus too. chern han and i chanced upon a little temple in flushing today, and we stepped in to offer joss sticks. they gave us little angpau packets (from Citibank!) as we left, and i thought they would contain some Taoist good luck charm, but instead each packet contained $2. i was so very thrilled, but the slice of authenticity felt strange in my hand. it was my one and only angpau this year. if i were back home, my brothers and i would be hoarding red packets, counting to see who got more this year. my mom called me today to talk about some money that i owe her, and i jokingly said that she could help me keep my angpaus from her friends as part of the repayment. she snorted and said that’s more like a rebate on the angpaus she had to give out this year anyway. and i laughed because it still seems so familiar to me how my mom used to usher us quickly into a corner and make us check how much Uncle This or Aunty That gave us, so that she could ‘pau’ the same amount for their children. in my semi-angsty teenage years i used to think, wow, how artificial this practice of giving angpaus is! but who cares! money is still money. angpaus are still angpaus and they’re still awesome and i still want them. the adults can worry about all the red packet politics!

we didn’t gamble last night but we did play games with cards. chinese new year does lack something without the crackling sounds of mahjong and the smell of new crisp paper notes. i was always the ‘water fish’ so i shied away from gambling, but now i wish i’d learned how to play from my parents and my brothers, who are all incredibly pro at anything involving cards and money. it’s something that you miss out on, just like how you’re missing out on a whole world of existence if you can’t read chinese and you find yourself in flushing or little bourke street, taipei or hongkong, or a chinese dessert place with no english menus. but at the very least i am redeemed by my ability to peel a very mean mandarin orange uni-peel.

i called my parents the other day to wish them a happy chinese new year. they were having reunion dinner at my grandfather’s home, as is the annual tradition, where my aunt makes the best foochow fishballs, steamed fish, fried glass noodles, wined chicken and all sorts of wonderful festival fare. my parents passed the phone around, and for 5 minutes, my soulless suite was filled with life as my relatives gabbled down the phone. so much shrieking! when they hung up, all was quiet again, and it was just me in a house of people who don’t quite get along, in a wintry state, surrounded with schoolwork and the problems introduced by dictatorial democracy, frenemies, long distance, and growing pains. i’ve grown so much stronger being here, even if i often feel helpless. i guess giving up some years of chinese new year and valentines days is a worthy trade.

this is my campus in the snow. it looks beautiful. i was late for class one day but stopped to admire the vast fields of snow as the blizzard raged. days like this i love my school and can’t imagine myself anywhere else. especially when we get snow days where all classes are canceled and there are snowball wars! though i’m still very bruised from particularly well-packed snowballs.

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early last night we walked past one of those flower warehouses that was open all night in preparation for the valentines’ day rush. the buckets and buckets of flowers and fillers and strewn newspaper everywhere reminded me so much of valentines day in 2005, and the flower project that we had in high school. we’d went all the way to cameron highlands, song jun and i, to look at the different grade of roses so that we could order them in bulk to make bouquets for sale. i vaguely remember us having them delivered to someone’s (aira’s?) house and storing all the flowers in her bathtubs before we started the wrapping. jamie, who’d worked in a florist the year before, taught us how to wrap bouquets and shred curled ribbons. it’s a lot harder than it looks, as is de-thorning roses. but we made so much money! it was the most exhausting valentines day ever, but so memorable. this year, i have a silly smile on my face. it’s quite like the silly smile that sieutheng used to get so aggravated by back in form 2. :) there is a lot of health in how i’m feeling. these smiles keep spreading across my face like– dandelion seeds! in the wind. and they are really quite unstoppable.

happy chinese new year, happy valentines day, and happy life, everyone! :)

25 comments February 14th, 2010

Snow

the snowed-over roofs of the car looked sad and lonely as i watched them slowly become unrecognizable. from the eighth floor, all the pain and misery at street levels feel sufficiently far away. i can look out at the horizon of softly falling flakes — holding close a mug of hot chocolate, remembering that both the mug and the cocoa powder are gifts from cherished ones — and i can feel safe and warm in my woolen slippers, and i can think how romantic all this snow is, only because i am up here. but when i run down the sidewalks and arrive eye-level with all the real suffering, my prior ignorance becomes unavoidable and so pregnant with guilt. how quickly we scuttled to the subway station, because it was so cold outside after the warmth and brightness of the boisterous restaurant where we had that wonderfully warm and hearty galbi shim dinner. we probably didnt see anything as we ran past. we talked about our crisp coats and tailored jackets, where we bought them, how much, what a lovely cut. can people die from the cold, i naively wonder. i remember how enghan told me that in dartmouth, it is a safety precaution to have warm cloths in your car during the winter because of how cold it can get there. you can die if your car stalls. how easily we say, i’m about to die from these whipping winds and the frost in my fingers. in malaysia, we can’t die from the cold so i guess in some way we are lucky. but what about that man outside red mango in ktown? he lived in a house made out of three shaking panels of cardboard. what did i do? did i do more than run past? one day when i make a lot of money i’ll spend it all on portable heaters for the people to whom snow means a lot more than romance or christmas cards.

12 comments December 12th, 2009

The One Foot Rule

i often stumble into those things that i’ve tried hard to parcel away into just ’some month’ in the many months of many life. but it’s almost that time of year again, and the renewed festivities in the air bring me back to that epoch, that carefully partitioned meadow that i often look at longingly from behind a glass wall. it smells like fresh sheets and the melting evening sun. it sounds like the soft giggles of secret sex. it’s so very, very tempting and it lies there, beckoning me to come in, and it promises to be so warm — but like everything else in history, it is inaccessible to me because i am older now. i have grown and i have moved on. for every day that i wake up and think, shit, i’m late for class, i am really moving one day away from it, further and further until it is displaced from me and mine and i will no longer remember the sounds and the smells and how he looked as he watched me put on makeup. i was putting on eyeliner. i saw him watching from the mirror, so i turned around and asked, what? nothing, he said, it’s just cool that i’m dating a girly girl. we’re not dating, i wanted to say. are we? then we slipped out of the house together, my hand safe and snug in his pocket, my heart comfortably resting on his, and he held me close in the blustering winds. one foot rule, okay? that’s what we decided on. we had to keep a distance of one foot from each other for the night. this is my friend! i introduced him. i basked in the awkwardness with which he handled my friends, and me, as i playfully ruffled all the seams of his composure within a one foot radius. he sat beside me during dinner, and i complained loudly, emily make him stop! he’s flirting with me! and emily shouted over, yeah stop flirting with her! he blushed hard and i laughed cruelly with emily. later that night, when the one foot rule had dissipated and we were entwined and warm under the sheets, i giggled and apologized for being mean. he smiled, kissed me, and we fell asleep holding hands. it’s always like that. it’s always about me being mean for the sake of fun and glittery excitement, while he just kisses me and waits patiently until i’m bored of the game du jour, and i return to him, pouting. but i like the fun and the excitement. i can’t give it up, no matter what month of the year it is. there is a pace, and i wanted him to run with me too. but everything happened so long ago, and i’m so in danger of forgetting him. today i did not think about him at all. i appreciated the realization that i had simply forgot to keep him at the fringes of my mind, if not at the very center. it made me feel like i was finally in control. but then it occurred to me that i’ve only been awake for three hours today, and three hours of not thinking about him is not very substantial. nevertheless it’s a start. i’m thinking less and less about him, and every day that i wake up is another day further from ’some month’ in the many months of my life.

52 comments November 25th, 2009

I Jumped Into Cold Water

heartbroken people should avoid concerts, i think. and since we are all heartbroken people, i suppose that none of us should ever attend concerts. last week, i went to watch Joshua Radin’s show at Webster Hall. i went with some friends from school, but i left them because i’d found what i thought was the best seat in the house– some tall speakers right next to the stage, atop which i hastily clambered and found myself at eye-level with the man himself. i was thrilled at first, but quickly realized it was a big mistake, because i could see everyone. webster hall is quite small. i could see all of the girls being cradled from behind by their tall boyfriends, his chin on her head, as they swayed together to the music. i could see all of the guys going to get drinks for their girlfriends, and those girlfriends holding their boyfriends’ coats as they waited. there was this one couple right in front of me — the guy kept twirling his girlfriend’s hair around his fingers, and many times he would lean down and press his face into her hair (it was so golden and soft-looking). she smiled much. i wondered if she was happy.

i felt sad as i watched everything. is this how god feels? all these songs are about me, i couldn’t help but feel, and because god has so many songs written about him, he must be sad too. is he lonely as he watches over everything? where do all these people in love come from? and why are they always at concerts?

for all of the concerts that i’ve been to lately, i’ve been missing someone. that someone is always far away, whether in hong kong, new york, australia, china, london or singapore. i’m somehow always in these situations. perhaps i’m a sucker for pain. let me tell you guys the story of the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival that i went to a few years ago. i was 18 and so young, and that time feels like showers and showers of meteors away, but the truth is that i’m only 21 now and three years isnt that long a time. when i was 12 i used to read blogs of 21 year old girls in towns scattered all over the world, and i would think, wow, how old these girls are, and how real their lives seem to me, this 12 year old in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who was, for the most part, quite happy. now i am their age. but my life doesnt seem real to me at all. Unnecessary Tangent Counter = 1.

the point was… the concert in bangkok. so i boarded the very colorful Thai Airways plane, and i remember thinking how easy it was to swathe capitalism in happy purple and yellow seats, big posters exclaiming ‘fair trade coffee!’, big smiles, buy 1 free 1 promotions. but before i knew it i was at the concert site. did i know that i was going to meet the love of my life there? probably not. i wanted to hold his hand but i was afraid. perhaps it was possible that i’d always loved this guy. i remember him feeding me cut-up sausages with a skewer stick, and us sharing a big cup of Coke, but i don’t remember if he held me from behind as we listened to Oasis and Snow Patrol.

lots of things are hazy now in my memory. i dont remember how many nights i stayed, or if i was nervous before i met him. these days, i’m thankful to have him in my life because he saves me from drowning. the last time i was back in KL, i was supposed to help him with some shopping, but the day started and ended with me storming out of his car angrily in the middle of a vast and congested road. he never came back for me, so i kept walking. i could have walked off the edge of a cliff in the middle of bukit bintang and he would never have known. sometimes i think i need to check that fervid temper of mine.

i dont have much to say today. i’m really quite emotionally drained, as i tend to be these days due to nothing at all. it’s the start of a new week, i know, but i had such a restful weekend that spanned extra days. my favorite parts: a dusty evening nestled among old books at the strand, ice skating at bryant park, playing drinking games over lychee soju and the best fried chicken in the world (now sold in singapore too), hearing Sandstorm being played at a club, and the 12-hour sleep i got on Friday. blissful rarities! but these things can become undone so swiftly just by one wrong move. but then again, i’ve always been lucky.

Winter by Joshua Radin

I should know who I am by now
I walk the record stand somehow
Thinkin’ of winter
The name is the splinter inside me
While I wait

The walk has all been cleared by now
Your voice is all I hear somehow
Calling out winter
Your voice is the splinter inside me
While I wait

at the concert, he told us that the inspiration for this song came to him as he was walking along 1st avenue, between 3rd and 4th — which is the name of his first EP. but of course that’s where it had to happen.

22 comments November 24th, 2009