Thursday, January 02, 2014

Another year survived!

It's new year's day (slightly after new year's day now in Malaysia, since I'm writing this after midnight) and that means time for reflection on the past year, wondering where all the time went, feeling sorry at how little was accomplished, making goals for the new year and failing to do them all over again. Hey, at least I'm honest about it. :)

I considered shutting down this blog several times in the past few months, as I am a bit sad that most of my posts here which are now focused on my more personal life have been more of rants than more positive updates. And now I am trying to reduce my ranting so I don't seem like an seem like a bratty incessant complainer, hence I wonder if this blog is still relevant for me since I post about travel, food, fun experiences and other less emotional revealing and personal things on my other blog). As much as I would like to post more positive stuff, most of the good things that happen to me are mostly work related, which of course is not something I would blabber too much about on the net.

So I haven't quite decided what to do with this blog yet, so I'm keeping it around for good measure and self embarassment whenever I read back the nonsense I've been writing here for the past 10 years. Yeah, this blog is a decade old. Damn, I feel old.

So in the spirit of the new year, here's the summary of the events and my reflections on year 2013. Usually people start with the positive, then the negative, but I'm going to do it the other way round, so at least my readers don't feel so meh at the end. :)

THE BAD

1) A doggone year
One of the major changes this year is the amount of activities I've been doing with my mum, which has been mainly been dog/puppy rescuing activities. By rescuing, we mean getting puppies adopted and getting older stray dog spayed before relocating them back to where we found them, which is usually near my workplace where there are many strays.

It's good of course that we are doing this to help the animals and reduce the stray population, and it's also good that at least I'm going some form of activity with my mum, who for reasons I've ranted about on previous posts, I'd usually just not do anything with. The bad thing is that my mum is going overboard with this dog rescuing thing and it's making me exhausted and annoyed. Exhausted because all this takes up time which is getting more difficult for me due to my work. Annoyed because if she's the one doing the fostering of the dogs, it leads to other problems, such as her getting more tired and then complaining to my father on why he doesn't help out (which he shouldn't be bugged to do since he wasn't the one who picked up the dogs in the first place, so naturally he doesn't like it). And another problem which is even worse is that she tends to get attached to the older puppies too darn easily. Young pups in a group are fine as long as they are still too young and blur to show her appreciation and love. But when they are older, loving, friendly, and playful, she gets easily attached. The worst case was Pooch the ugly pup which she found at my office area trapped in some metal cylinder thing with a bad case of mange. She took care of him for a couple of months til he was healthy and his mange disappeared and became very good looking. We also kept looking for an adopter for him, even going to Ohana Pet shop in Kota Damansara which organizes weekly pet adoption drives for independant rescuers like us who do not come from an animal NGO. This involved us sitting at the pet shop for hours waiting for visitors to see the dogs for adoption and hope ours get taken, and I did this for several weeks with Pooch. Through Ohana, we found a fantastic family with a nice house and garden who adopted Pooch. It was the perfect home for him. And yet my mum started become depressed and crying because she missed him, and eventually my dad went to take Pooch back from the adopter, who already liked the dog. It made them upset, it made the owner of Ohana upset, and it made me super mad. In addition to my time wasted, far as I was concerned, she was not thinking about what was best for the dog, considering she's old, had already adopted another mongrel which I already thought is not a good dog to keep in a condo, in addition to her Shih Tzu, plus she's over 60 years old and always complaining of being tired. And as terrible as I may sound, the reality is that she is quite likely to pass away before these two newly adopted young dogs, and they will be much more harder to get adopted into good homes when they are adults, especially considering they will not be used to staying in a garden. But she didn't care, she wanted the dog so much, it hardly mattered that she gave up Pooch's chance at staying at a nice home with a big garden for him to play with and a family that can take care of him for the rest of his life. Far as I see it, eventually Pooch and the other mongrel will eventually become my problem. I know my mum wants to be loved, so I offered a more feasible idea such adopting an older toy dog, instead of a younger active dog that will grow too big and tire her out even more, but she refused. And now Ohana's owner does not even bother to help me when I have a new dog for adoption, just because of what my mum did.

Due to that, I no longer allow my mum to foster dogs, but she still goes all crazy wanting to rescue and rehome them anyway. So whenever she gets into that mood, I now have to do the fostering. And it's tiring, since I have my full time job and my own two dogs to take care of.

Considering that my mum was never this crazy about dog rescuing until after I moved out AND after she knew I had helped foster a nursing mother and her pups and helped to get the pups adopted, I suspect this is her form of empty nest syndrome. And perhaps some severely misguided attempt at trying to spend more time with me, which far as I'm concerned is not really improving our relationship much, considering the frustration she is putting me through even though I'm out of the house (which is the main reason why I moved out in the first place). It's especially annoying because she tires herself out doing this, and yet before I moved out, she constantly complained about always being so busy and being tired. I thought my moving out would somewhat reduce some of the workload she got from me, like washing my clothes, cleaning my room (all of which I always say I will do but she always does it first then complain that I'm too slow, when the fact is I'm busy working and I have a higher tolerance for uncleanliness than her), so it irks me that after trying to help to reduce her workload but not being patient enough to allow me time to do the work at my own pace, she ends up giving herself more work to do with these dogs.

See, I'm ranting again already. Enough of that.

2) The trouble with guys
Ah yes, failed attempted relationships with members of the opposite gender were another favorite ranting topic of mine this year. And every year before that for as far as I can remember. April and May this year were tough as someone I'd known and cared about for a few years turned out to be completely not what I thought he was, and I never met him again since April due to that. And then I met another guy who I got along incredibly well with to the point where I was thinking it could potentially be a great relationship, until he abruptly ditched me for the stupid reason of not being able to get over his ex-relationships. Well, it was more complicated than that, but the fact that I tried to be understanding towards him but he simply completely shut me off, really disappointed me. A lot. Thankfully, I have gotten over that by now and removed all traces of contact with him from my phone with no remorse. But those couple of months, I was so annoyed with life, you could probably cook an egg with all the steam emanating from my head.

3) The Chow Chow brain

Undoubtedly one of the most memorable parts of 2013 was my online encounter with one of the most annoying human being on the planets, who after I wrote an article for FMT which went kinda viral, decided to take it upon himself to make a point about how pathetic my viral article was compared to his grand efforts to make Malaysia a better place (berating strangers online apparently being one of his modus operandi in improving the country. Still not sure how that works). That complete story was in my post here, so I won't go into it again. However, as terrible as he made me feel, in the end, that encounter, in addition my sad experiences with guys, kinda helped me towards becoming more of what I wanted to be. Although some people might think that how I've change isn't actually good at all, but to me I prefer to think of it as good. And hence I move on to the good parts of 2013.

THE GOOD

1) A good year at the office
As I said earlier, I prefer not to talk too much about work. So I can only say that I've been quite fortunate that even though I'm not the ambitious type in terms of climbing the corporate ladder, promotions and whatnot, for some reason, my bosses like what I'm doing and they reward me for it. I got several increments this year and a promotion. And I'm also lucky to have very open superiors and colleagues whom I get along with very well. Even though work has been super busy at some points, I know that I will be appreciated for it. For that I am thankful.


2) Emotional robotism
Yeah, that subheading doesn't sound that good, and as I mentioned, some people probably wouldn't think it's good, but I do. Last year I had wanted to become more in control of my emotions, almost emotionless in a sense, so I wouldn't become so easily emo or depressed in case of future sad experiences, whether it be with guys, family or whatever. Which in my understanding meant I also had to not feel so happy when good things happen, coz' logically when something makes me happy, and that something eventually is removed from my life, then I will be sad again. So if I don't allow myself to be too happy, then I won't get too sad when it's gone. And I also could not allow myself to hope for too much, as that would lead to disappointment if not met. And I really don't like being disappointed.

Needless to say, that was not an easy state of mind to develop, but well, my encounter with the Chow Chow brain in addition to my two relationships that turned sour pushed me so far over the limits of my tolerance that I quite suddenly found that I had pretty much achieved that emotionless state. Pretty much, but not completely, as I still feel easily annoyed and mad when stupid people tick me off, but not emo or sad about stuff that used to make me that way. I have never mentioned it here, even though I've been that way for several months, as I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be a temporary thing and that I would soon be bawling internally again after some time for some reason or another. But it's been almost half a year and I still feel that way. Well yeah, I still get sad about stuff sometimes, but the impact is a lot less. I'm actually not quite sure how to explain it. I'm not emotionless in the sense that I lost my ability to care about people's problems or feel a sense of injustice when something is not right. Just when it comes to my own personal problems, I don't feel as sucky as I used to. And to me, that's great!

And for my final bit of positive summary for the year....

3) WTH, another guy?
Oh yes, I've  actually met another new guy I like, and I've actually been getting along well with him since around July til now. I decided not to mention him til now, since after my previous experiences left me sour and I didn't know how long this one would last. Nor do I know if it is going to last, as for the moment, we are doing not moving any further than occasionally enjoying each other's company and chats, but he's not really sure if he wants to make it any more serious than that. It's a possibility, but far as I'm concerned and in line my policy of not having hope to avoid disappointment, I have to consider it a bigger possibility that he will eventually leave. Right now, he's one of the sweetest guys I've met, and he does not annoy me at all (which is really almost impossible these days), and he's the type of guy who should already be married with two kids, but for some reason he isn't. Or at least, that's what he tells me, but for all I know he could have a secret family somewhere I don't know about coz' that the kinda of weird stuff that happens to me.

For the moment, I enjoy what we have now and glad that I have someone to talk to ever so often, although I keep in mind not to get too expectant of any further developments in the relationship as it could go bust at any time, and I don't want my heart to go bust with it. I keep my options open at all times, with the mindset that if I meet someone else who's interested, and this guy still doesn't want to commit, I will not be hesistant to end it without feeling sucky. Yes, I understand that sounds sad and kind of cold, but after all I've experienced, that's the way the cookie has to crumble.


So that's my year, with it's bad and somewhat good. This year, my goal is to make the most of my single life and do more crazy fun stuff, like join some flash mobs or go bungee jumping or travel to some weird places like the African Safari or Galapagos Island. Don't think all of that will happen, and I'll probably ends up being swamped with work and having too much annual leave leftover again, but it's good to dream and all.

Happy New Year people! I will spare you all a depressing Cyanide vs. Happiness comic strip this year. No guarantees for 2015 though.