when i returned from Honduras earlier this year, i had a conversation with someone about the discomfort that dogged me almost every day i was there. there we were, a bunch of bright eyed and bushy tailed kids from an ivy league institution, descending upon the slums of Tegucigalpa and the sloping sides of Joyas, like crows so eager to help. we were but ten inexperienced children with some time during the school holidays, many swollen ideas of public health and what could be done to improve the conditions of these people, and our two hands. school taught us to think about these things- things beyond ourselves into which we could apply our strength and intellect, and do something good for people who didn’t have the resources or opportunities that we had access to. before the trip, we raised money for our own airfare and solicited medical donations from friends, families and doctors, which we would then bring to Honduras and delegate. when we got there, we were to assist in building sustainable structures such as latrines, septic tanks, ceilings, floors and stoves that would, we were told, change the lives of the villagers in Joyas, one family at a time. every morning we would gather and have a reflective talk about the magnitude of our presence and role in this project. i think we were all proud of ourselves and how we were doing this crazy wonderful thing called service work; that we could actually see the results of our toil, one layer of brick and mortar at a time. we took many photos, kissed the cheeks of the families we worked with, shared half of our PB&J sandwiches with the kids and even the stray dogs that would lick our toes hungrily as we ate our lunches amidst the labour.

it was strange, but the whole time i felt quite angry at myself for having gone on the trip and allowed myself the unconscious prescription to an ego balm. what were we really doing there, if it took us three days to build one latrine, when one young strapping Joyas local would take only ten hours to perfectly complete the structure? why were we bringing bags full of Tylenol when the health afflictions of the villagers ran far deeper than headaches and stomach pains? why were we even building these monstrosities if some locals thought them useless, and would take them apart after we’d left, to sell the building materials in the market for some petty cash? it’s easy to feel helpless and deflated when you realize these things. we may as well have put the money that we spent on airfare into capital towards a small construction business run by the Joyas locals, or other such microfinance initiatives. to think that we were so proud at having dipped our hands in cement, when the locals were really just letting us have a taste of what volunteer work feels like. they were, at the very least, kind enough to give us warm smiles and watch patiently as we took way too long to saw planks in halves and mix cement the wrong way.

perhaps it is cynical of me to approach volunteer work from this angle, but i wished that in Honduras we could have done something real with our intentions and energy. it would be nice to know that time and resources were being optimized, instead of being expended unnecessarily and at a sub-optimal rate, just to… what exactly? i’m still not sure where the benefit lies– be it on our part, or that of the villagers, or that of the organization we traveled with. sure, we take away valuable life lessons about the importance of teamwork, service work and what it means to play a small role towards sustainable development, small steps big change etc, but what about the people we were told we were there to help? they get this brand new cement floor, latrine, ceiling or stove. that’s really nice but apparently they could have built it faster and better themselves. why did we fly all the way there to do it? it also seems that they may just dismantle everything to sell the scrap metal. further, latrines just weren’t their way of life, and there’s really not much point putting a small band aid over a large wound if other public health problems (such as the lack of clean drinkable water) weren’t first addressed. correct me if i’m wrong but the most valuable benefit seemed to have been taken home with us instead of being left there with them. how did volunteer work come to have so little real impact, and become almost self-serving?

for some time i struggled to understand our place and purpose there. during some nightly conversations with the team, i would carelessly and insensitively rain on everyone’s parade by expressing my slight dissatisfaction surrounding the aforementioned conundrums. who were we really there to help? how much exactly were we helping in terms of what we thought we were there to do? could we think of ways to be more useful? could we push the envelope a little further? can we address some of these questions before we clap on our proud arsenal of shovels and saws?

there are many ways to answer these questions that would make sense of why we went and what we did. some popular ones: (1) it doesn’t matter that we essentially went there to play in sand, as long as we show people that our intentions are good and that we care and are willing to take steps to help; (2) we take away the important lesson of understanding how small our roles were in Honduras, and it will push us to think about bigger things that we can do to truly make big and helpful changes; (3) our mere presence entails expenditure on airfare, accommodation, food, and building supplies that will directly stimulate the local economy; (4) we can bring back to New York the eyewitness account of an impoverished community, and spread awareness of problems beyond our borders; (5) some effort is better than none at all… and so on and so forth. while these responses are highly relevant ones, a quick glance and some thought will quickly reveal the problems with each, and how ultimately they just do not answer the question of why we went there to do what we did without actually doing what we thought we were doing. yes, residual effects are important, but so is the main task at hand, which was to directly improve the state of public health in the villages of Honduras.

i don’t regret the trip. it wasn’t the fairytale volunteer experience that i’d thought it would be, but it stretched my mind and my heart so far, even despite the realization that we hadn’t been all that effective as a brigade that championed public health. it forced me to reflect on every single volunteer work experience that i’d had, and to pick out all the plausible reasons why we did each one and why we were made to do it (big distinction). it was a clear lodestar towards what was important, and even further towards the understanding that ‘what is important’ isn’t something static.

ultimately, being in Honduras taught me that the best way to help people is to allow them the knowledge that our helping them helped us back more than we helped them, or just as much as. in that way, they have done us the big favour of gratuitously helping us even though we were originally there to help them. this, i think, empowers the Honduran a whole lot more than some latrine hastily constructed out of misaligned bricks. we may have done this one small thing of building one family a stove with a piping system, but they did us the bigger real deal of educating us. the crucial ingredient however is that they have to know they did us this favour, otherwise that potential is wasted. they have to know that they did so much more for us than we did for them in the short time we spent there. that despite being ‘impoverished’ and ‘uneducated’, they are equipped with the ability to teach and do many things better than these random americans who fell from the sky with secondhand clothes and free medicine. such knowledge, even if unfurling from a very small flicker of pride in showing the random malaysian volunteer how to mix cement the right way, can be so powerful if harnessed correctly. i only wish i knew how to convey this information to them at the time, but alas i think i was either too shy or too stupid to recognize what my real role in Honduras was.

there was a girl from the family we built a latrine for who patiently kept refreshing my memory of the spanish words she’d taught me earlier in the week. her husband showed us how to hammer a nail into a plank in 3 hits and smiled encouragingly when we kept breaking the nails. they shared their food with us. explained the religious script on their doors. the women of the sanitation committee first bore children at the age of 11 and then raised many more in the years to come. the young boys that moved like greased lightning on the football field could kick a ball harder and faster than any of us could. all so awesome in their own right– why are we the ones who get to say that we are ‘helping’? what exactly were we doing with our hands in Honduras that is worth more than what they know and can do? i still dont have the answers but for all the above gifts from Honduras and for the questions they inadvertently raised, i’m grateful that i had the opportunity to go, and that we did what we did.

we’re going to Panama this year, hopefully with a bigger and better brigade with clearer goals!

#1 putting the tin roof on an almost finished latrine

#2 laying the base for the latrine

#3 starting on a water storage tank

#4 an average Honduran water storage tank, where the locals store water for cooking, cleaning and bathing as there’s no proper pipe system in the mountain of Joyas. also a big contributor to mosquito breeding

#5 nino!

#6 the men of the house helping us with the cement, which they mixed 10x faster than we did!

#7 G working on smoothing out a cement floor. most of the homes in Joyas don’t have floors, which renders the family members (who often walk around barefoot) very susceptible to the fatal Chagas disease which is caused by parasites from the ground.

#8 stray chickens doing a run

#9 M and B making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us and the kids of the house. isn’t this picture super adorable :)

#10 playing games with the rest of the Joyas kids, who really love games

#11 young man with perfectly sculpted double eyelids, proud to receive a Superman sticker

#12 evening soccer with the boys, who run and play like superstars

more photos soon!

my heart has been irreverently displaced by something very small. its tiny, pulsating force seemed so harmless in the beginning, but i can ascertain for now that my feelings have truly been hurt. isn’t it weird? i have no right to feel like this. i should be trying to finish all the work that i allowed to sit and curdle over the long thanksgiving weekend. but this is bringing back a lot of horrible sensations from 2003 that i can’t seem to fight away alone. i just want someone to make this better :(

pictures from boston, when joe and i went to visit dominic:

#1 dom’s very waspy suburban neighbourhood

#2 fall colors, all gone by now

#3 it has been my lifelong dream to climb onto a mailbox and take pictures

#4 but that picture didn’t come without a very ungraceful behind-the-scenes process

#5 success! after many, many tries where i trampled all over poor dom

#6 a slightly more graceful picture

#7 then joe decided to copy me. to add insult to injury, all he did was swing himself atop the mailbox T_____T

#8 mine now :)))))

#9 sunset spilling over the Charles River. i wish we’d had the time to walk along the river :( this photo was taken from inside a moving train

#10 dom took us to Quincy Market for dinner. it reminds me of some place in melbourne, just as bustling and with as many good smells

#11 joe and his lobster dinner. i dont think i’ve ever seen him so happy

#12 this picture happened because i squealed, “joe! let me take a picture of your mussels!!” -____-

#13 it’s a real place after all

#14 at the train station

#15 you know how sometimes you fall into these moments, and you feel like you must capture it in a photo… but as you are deliberating whether or not it would be polite to snap a picture, the people shift, and your moment is gone?

#16 for the first time i deliberated faster

#17 dinner with the very pretty xiao and her roommate ashley :)

#18 would you spend your dollar on mints or a tampon?

#19 our relative feet size

#20 i keenly apologize to all feminists in advance, but i was very drawn to the creative for this poster. at some point i announced, “she is all the marketing that harvard needs!”

#21 there is something about supermarkets that defeats their sterility

#22 i have never taken a newspaper from those stands. one day i must

#23 a house somewhere in the midst of the place where people go to get lost in boston

so i am back in New York, thrown once again into this metropolitan maelstrom of instability, surliness and frost. i’ve been sleeping my days away, much like i slept my days away in London, but for different reasons both times — there, i was exhausted; here, i am hiding. i have nothing to speak of my return here. these days all i’m concerned about is how i’m going to get the shards of heart out of the carpet.

but enough mournful talk. let’s talk about London and how i love everything about it. so i’ve always had great expectations of London, expectations that are swollen with stories and imagery from some of my favorite books in the world. i close my eyes and i can see London… where the afternoons are filled with the treacle tarts, gollywogs, tea cakes and morning mist dresses of Enid Blyton. come nightfall, the evenings are attended to by the grown-ups of J.M Barrie who tuck their children into bed with bedtime stories and then slip out of the house — the men in tailcoats and their wives in white satin gloves — into the foggy streets of nighttime London. not far away, the pretentious laughter of Oscar Wilde’s corrupt and cunning haut monde ring loudly in the air! the rich make merry while Dickens’ young boys dart in and out of the cobblestone alleys, leaving behind them the sooty trails of innocence. and then i play with the word ’sixpence’ on my tongue. how many Willy Wonka bars can sixpence buy? will i find out when i get to London, i wondered when the plane swept smoothly off the tarmac at JFK one month ago. will i see old men smoking tobacco out of pipes? does the old curiosity shop really exist?

i have since discovered that London is actually far more than my imagination can take me to. at first i worried that i would be expecting too much of a city i’d never even been to, that i was furnishing it with all these overdressed ideals and ultimately destroying my own utopia… but now that i have come and gone, there is truly nowhere else that i would rather be. i think i left my soul in London. or at least, a hemisphere of it. this may sound hasty, but in London, i felt like i truly belonged. i’ve missed that feeling. i wore it like a second skin back home in Malaysia, but 4 months of being in NYC has completely sapped me of any such peace. no one ever truly belongs in a place like New York.

and contrary to forewarning, i did not hate London weather. in fact, i quite loved it – sissy sprinkles, puddles, clouds and all. all the grey brought out a kind of melancholy in me that was actually healthy. it encouraged me to think, which is something i haven’t had the opportunity to guiltlessly immerse myself in for awhile. there were days when i would oversleep and wake up to a 4pm setting sun, and i’d just lay in bed, smell the sheets and smile. walking down Marylebone High underneath the oyster-coloured skies was the most cathartic thing i did for myself. in London, i felt at home.

also, English people are as kind as i thought they would be. sure, there are the gruff ones, but mostly, everyone is… soft. kind. sympathetic. the women really do have kisses hidden in the corner of their mouths, and even the youngest of men have twinkles in their eyes. coming from New York to a place like London is quite like stepping into the warm and floury embrace of a jolly and portly grandmother. in New York, you are just a passing face; in London, people take the time to check out what you’re wearing. god, in comparison NYC is so bad for the soul, isn’t it? how does one feel human here? sigh. sigh sigh sigh.

some places in London that i went to and really liked:

1. Portobello Market

possibly my favorite place in all of London. Portobello Market is a long street market along Portobello Road in Notting Hill (!) that is open from 8am to 6pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. i’m not sure what it’s like there on the weekdays, but the market is absolutely bustling on Saturdays, an atmosphere that i absolutely loved. Portobello Market houses stalls and stalls of antiques, curios, independent designs, handicrafts, vintage clothes, bags and shoes, old cameras and jewelry, secondhand books… and just about any kind of bric-a-brac you’re looking for.

a shop in Portobello Market selling all kinds of doorknobs *___*

an enclave selling mostly vintage jewelry and secondhand books

pocket watches on necklaces

i love this place :) i could spend a whole day just sifting through all the beautiful things here.

2. Camden Town

thronged by London’s younger set, Camden Town is garish and brash, but never boring. there is a largely punk rock, emo-kid, gypsy vibe about Camden that is immediately apparent from the wild harajuku-ish merchandise that is both sold and paraded around the area, and also the dudes pushing marijuana on the sidewalk :P slightly dodgy zone, but definitely cool in its own way. there are several markets along the streets of Camden Town, but the best one is Camden Lock. everything else is kinda Petaling Streetish, but Camden Lock is a larger market within a courtyard that vends the artier stuff, mostly handicrafts and trinkets. there are also lots of new age shops in Camden Lock, with palm readers and the like!

the punk / emo-goth / lolita-esque clothes for sale

a little part of Camden Lock

3. Marylebone High Street

Marylebone High Street is the main artery of the little shopping district of Marylebone, and while the High Street is the street i like the most (it’s the most concentrated), the other smaller streets that girdle it are definitely worth checking out as well. the shopping here is demure and sophisticated, with the bigger brands giving way to the smaller independent labels. my favorite shops on the street: Mascaro the shoe shop which has gorgeous shoes (they also carry stock from Pretty Ballerinas, which makes ballet flats that are to die for…!!), Daunt the bookstore, and the Oxfam secondhand bookstore at which i spent too many an hour reading books that i should have just bought for 1-2 pounds.

Daunt Bookstore

the Oxfam secondhand bookstore

4. Regent’s Park

a huge, beautiful park in the heart of London that draws you in even in the winter. such a romantic place to be in when the sun is setting. also ducks galore, which always makes me happy :) apparently there’s a rose garden in here too, but of course none of them were in bloom when i was there.

5. Tate Museum of Modern Art

i love this museum right down to its secret enclosed spaces and the graffiti on the back of the doors in the women’s bathroom stalls. definitely a must visit in London, if you’re into art galleries.

one piece from the famed water lily series by Monet

this was my favorite display at the Tate. the artist worked as a maid at a hotel for a period of time, and while she was there, she took photos of the belongings and rooms of the hotel’s various customers each day of their stay, and also kept a journal describing the belongings and state of the rooms as they changed each day. she went through their luggage, passports, trash can even! she then documented her findings and turned it into art. ah. satisfies the voyeur in us :P the people in the photo are clamoring around just one of about eight or nine pieces.

graffiti on the bathroom door

6. Borough Market

greek desserts

Alvo thinks that Borough Market is an authentic British culinary experience, and i quite agree. Borough Market is a roomy food market in Southwark that sells all sorts of international gourmet food under one roof. foodstuff purveyed: freshly baked bread, imported herbs and spices, gourmet sausages, exotic meats like ostrich and pheasant, burgers, cured meats, sandwiches, falafel, chocolates, candy, mulled wine and a whole smorgasbord of other delectable things. the various vendors here make for good lunch stops. while i didnt venture to sample any exotic meat, i must say i had a very good steak in red wine sauce sandwich from a stall somewhere in the bowels of Borough Market. also had this hot scallop with a bacon and bean sprout mix which is purportedly a favorite at the market. both stalls shouldnt be too hard to find if you’re going to be poking around :)

a delicious chorizo sandwich

7. Oxford & Bond Street

i didnt explore either street as much as i would have liked to, but apparently it’s the only place Azlan ever stops by when he comes to London, so i suppose that must count for something :P it’s good shopping la i suppose. Bond Street is also where the almighty Selfridges is, which for some reason is a huge favorite not just with the Londoners, but also the rest of the world. if one more person tells me that Selfridges is their favorite mall in the world, i will scream. why? what’s so cool about Selfridges? it’s just like Metrojaya but with bigger labels… i must be missing something :\

8. Carnaby Street

i LOVE! it’s another one of those shopping districts; quite like Marylebone High Street, but younger and more contemporary.

9. Soho / Leicester Square / Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly Circus

the Soho / Leicester Sq / Piccadilly Circus area is a lively and spirited junction that teems with good restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs. it’s also where Chinatown is, as well as many West End theaters. Covent Garden, a large touristy courtyard housing some rather interesting toy shops, is also nearby. i mostly descended upon and departed quickly from this area whenever i had to meet someone there, but i’m certain that some idle hours spent traversing the area would uncover gems here and there. nevertheless, i quite like the area — it’s convenient, diverse and effervescent.

entrance to Chinatown

a little carnival in Leicester Square

——-

i left London with a heavy heart, but writing this post has made me miss it even more :(

after thrice missing the train to Nottingham (consequence of the lethal combination of oversleeping, taking way too long in the shower and the conniving machinations of Fate – he deliberately left me in darkness), i successfully cried my way to a free ticket onto the 11.15 Nottingham-bound train today. not bad eh? so i’m now lying on my stomach in songjun’s house in Dunkirk drinking perfectly-made hot honey with lemon, happy and contented while songjun snores away on the futon. Dunkirk is a little suburb in Nottingham that i recently learned is dubbed Taman Dunkirk Jaya because of its principally Malaysian population. i am jealous; how nice it must be to be constantly surrounded by lahs, yau mou!s and cibais. and the promise of marmite chicken…

anyway, because i am deathly afraid of missing my train back to London, i have vowed to not fall asleep tonight. so in the extra time that has newly been opened up to me, i have somewhat learned how to use iPhoto, and therefore finally have some photos of London to show! happy day! folks who have been emailing me about the dearth of photos in my blog, may you now be appeased!

#1 london suburbia

#2 a small toy store somewhere in south kensington. sigh <3 london is full of adorable shops like this one

#3 a toy sink from the shop. the 6-year-old me would have loved one of these. actually.. so would the 20-year-old me

#4 mince pies! in my younger days when i devoured enid blyton books like no other, i imagined the delightful mince pies of enid blyton’s world to be these robust, savoury pies stuffed with scrumptious minced pork and piquant herbs. alas, this sublime image has been destroyed! mince pies are actually sweet; in fact, they are awfully reminiscent of pineapple tarts. not that pineapple tarts are awful, it’s just that mince pies were a lot more delectable in my imagination…

#5 Tamtim and a mince pie. haha! he liked them a lot more than i did

#6 more cute London shops. this one is a baking utensils + cake deco shop. sigh! i was too afraid to go in, lest i feel like i must own everything in there. ginny, you understand me right.

#7 me and the famed Four Seasons roast duck restaurant in chinatown. verdict: VERY good duck. i think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that it’s the ‘best duck in the world’, because it’s really of a different category from the roast duck of malaysia and hong kong (the Four Seasons duck sits in an absolutely yummy dark sauce whereas the roast duck we’re used to back home is usually drier), but it’s so good that i could eat it every day. actually, i kind of did for the first week i was in london.

i also went to Gold Mine in Bayswater, where the renowned chef of Four Seasons supposedly ran to, and i do actually think the duck there is yummier, though marginally so. the sauces are different, i believe, but Gold Mine has the one-up of this tofu dish called pei pa tofu. it is to die for!

#8 the Tube. i like it SO much more than NYC’s subway — faster, cleaner, and less sketch. i definitely do not miss the drunk and violent bums nor the smells of eau de dog pee in the New York subway stations…

#9 punctuality, as they say, is the thief of time

#10 making friends with the lions of Chinatown.

#11 Gloucester Road station, the tube station i see every day!

#12 outside the Adelphi Theater, where i watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. it was the first West End musical i watched upon arriving in London. i dont know… it’s just not the kind of musical i like. it was campy, tacky and i could not appreciate the music at all :\

#13 voon emerging from the tandas! this picture is just too cute

#14 Tower Bridge in the night, en route to Valerie’s apartment, which is fast gaining the reputation of Malaysia Hall #2!

#15 andrew, emily and the glenister bros. look at andrew’s big happy smile!

#16 cute teapot i totally wanted

#17 calling home from the steps of a hotel near Bond Street. i was shocked to find that a mere 3 minute call cost me something like 8 pounds. T____T le sigh. never again.

#18 obligatory tourist photo with a london phone booth. i think i was making a face cos i couldnt open the door. mou sik fan!

#19 tamtim and i – partners in crime!

#20 tamtim acting fierce

#21 i also watched Les Miserables! which i loved to bits. officially my favorite musical now.

#22 the staff at Odeon Cinemas have their favorite movie printed on their nametags! this guy misspelled Memento, but he knew a lot about movies, which made for good conversation as i was getting popcorn

#23 at the Hummingbird Bakery, where i had the best red velvet cupcake ever. ever. ever. ever. more pictures another day!

#24 at a secondhand bookshop in Portobello Market

#25 another secondhand bookshop, but this one is in Camden. secondhand bookshops are without a question the one thing i like most about London. i think i’ve bought something like 15 books since i got here, and for under 30 pounds. /smug. some gems: Vita Brevis by Jostein Gaarder, a collection of letters by D.H Lawrence, a critical analysis on Virgil’s Aeneid, and a book of Oscar Wilde short stories for 20 pence. happiness :)

ah, london. i cant quite get enough of you.

i was a field mouse hiding at the bottom shelf of the bookcase, clutching a tome that felt larger than life, shaking with fear. the world swiveled around me in curvy waves of pounding feet and harsh fingernails, and i felt like the whole of Selfridges was going to swallow me alive. Gerrard lay forgotten on the floor somewhere and i would probably never see him again. remember the day he came to me, delivered into my hands unsuspectingly in a little jewelry packet? all this time later, i lost him and didnt even realize it until i missed the familiar thud it would make against my heart. an hour ago i was running helter skelter through a park behind Bond Street and laughing with the taste of chilly London air on my tongue, but as i crouched there in Selfridges amongst the towering stacks of books, i felt truly alone. actually, i’m so sick of Selfridges. i’ve been there for days on end now. and tomorrow (actually, in three hours), i’m going to be meeting some friends there for the Boxing Day sales, but i am optimistically relegating the whole jostling, elbowing and snatching shindig to the category of spectator sports. i also cant do the queue thing. queues drive me up the wall; there’s just too much foot-tapping and fidgeting on my part to be had. and then there’s the dangerous thinking that is inevitable as one waits. right now, all i want to do is not think. coz i’m on holiday. this new-found aversion to thinking is precisely the reason why i’m even here. ah, life. ah, london. so full of pompous cupcakes and prickly christmas trees.

merry belated christmas, everyone :)

how did you guys spend christmas? please entertain me with lovely stories of hot chocolate, crazy xmas eve parties, kisses san mistletoe, church service, gift exchanges or turkey from Mr Ho’s Fine Foods .. :) or even lovely stories of none of the above.

as for me, i ushered in christmas day with a congregation of crazy malaysians cramped into a little enclave in Butler’s Wharf – we had pizza, played Pictionary and passed around a strange-looking thing called a beer bong. then i hibernated until 4pm and woke up to milk chocolate digestive biscuits. watched Before Sunrise in intervals. stuffed myself with turkey stuffing later on at night. talked all night long. took a long shower with my favorite papaya soap from Body Shop. quite perfect.

some pictures:

a stand at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park where i bought hot blackcurrant. Ribena :)

toffee apples, something i’d only ever read about in books up till this christmas. i’m still not exactly sure how to eat them though… i stupidly bit very hard into one and almost broke my jaw in the process. so i ended up sticking the apple into the oven to get a gooey sugary coating instead. that was a lot nicer.

my santa hat, which i later found out was actually a santa stocking. quite embarrassing.

a nice huge christmas eve bratwurst. happiness! this came with mulled wine, which is supposed to be a christmas favorite, but was kinda awful-tasting in my coarse and unrefined opinion :\

crazy malaysians! spot the beer bong

big floating snowman in Carnaby Street

outside Selfridges