Jade vs. Hope

I like to think everybody has some form of split or multiple personality thing going on that they keep hidden (sometimes not so well hidden) from the rest of the world. Not to the point of switching between different personalities without warning or control, coz' that's just freaky. More like having two different parts of yourself that are sometimes or even regularly at loggerheads with each other... or sometimes being so engrossed in your own thoughts that you imagine your two selves having a conversation with each other...of course this is usually only interesting when you're undergoing some kind of internal conflict or weighing the pros and cons of a decision, or something like that. Well, I don't know if everyone has such a thing going on, but like I said, I like to think everyone does (and doesn't admit it) coz' then that makes me less weird. 

I don't talk to myself, but I find more and more that I like to have mental conversations with myself. I picture two different personas, both of whom I have actually given names, i.e. as per the title of this post. The names should be telling in itself. Jade is jaded with life and the 'wilder' persona, and Hope never stops hoping that things will turn out just the way she...well... hopes. The usual topics that lead to discord between the two are relationships with people and faith in God.  Sometimes Jade and Hope are just having a rather amicable conversation, albeit with disagreements. Sometimes, I envision them getting into total girl fights with each other. Depending on my mood and sense of adventure, I might imagine some warrior princess battle-like thing going on, complete with broadswords and the armour with boobs (of course I also imagine my two personas looking way hotter than I actually do in real life. I prefer to imagine them as Manga characters), or a ninja showdown, or we're mutants with power to blast fire balls from our hands and try to fry each other. I've stopped at the mental image of half naked female mud fights, although I suspect now that thought will be in your head for this post. My personas even have favourite colours, Jade's being green and Hope's is pink. Don't ask me why. 

I've been playing around with the idea of starting another blog, just so I can allow these two to take it out on the new blog, and the conversations I would have with myself would be ...I'm not quite sure how I would manage another blog though, since I already have two and even then I have lack of time or inspiration to update either. So for the moment, I think the new blog idea isn't going to happen. But just in case you see some posts in future here about conversations between some girls named Jade and Hope and you're wondering what the heck is going on... well, now you know. 

And that is my eyebrow raising post for today. Have a great week!

The Many (Meaningless?) Things I Wanna Do in My Life

Since my previous post about having no overall plan for my life, I was thinking to neutralize the 'sad'-ness of that thought (if you're one those who think it's sad that I have no plan) I wanted to write about some of my aspirations, i.e. things I wanna do sometime in my life just for the experience. Just because I don't have a overall direction for my life doesn't mean there aren't things I want to do along the way why figuring out where I'm going. :P It's just the actual long-term planning of how and when I'm going to do these things that I haven't done.... and maybe will never get round to doing for reasons I will explain later.

So I actually sat down and made a list of stuff I want to do at some point in my life, most of which are related to experiencing nature and wildlife, some involves a bit of adventure, some about performing, and some are just plain silly romantic. And after doing a raincheck of my life so far, I'm happy to say that I actually have done quite a few things that I have had wanted to do at some point before.  Most of things I have 'accomplished' in my life came not out of long-term planning but from an opportunity that came about that made it much more convenient to do what I want to do.... like a lot of stuff I did in Australia would not have happened if I didn't get a scholarship which allowed my dad to afford to send me to Aus for a year (during which I spent quite a bit of his money during fun stuff....but I still had some left to give back to him when I got home. Heh). And my swim with dolphins would never have happened if I didn't get send to Papua New Guinea for a work trip.

For example, some of the stuff I have wanted to do sometime in my life, and I have already done it:
1) Try sky diving (Brisbane, Australia, year 2004)
2) Learn how to scuba dive
3) Swim with dolphins (Papua New Guinea, late 2009)
4) Learn how to play guitar (not the best player, but I at least I can make some music come out of the dang thing)
5) Visit a roller coaster theme park and ride all the extremest rides (Cedar Point, Cleveland, this year)
6) Visit a Hillsong conference (Sydney, Australia, 2004)
7) Travel in Australia (travelled all 5 major Aussie cities in less than a year) and see real kangaroos and other native Aussia wildlife (almost got into a boxing match with a roo after my bag of food and that was painful and fun at the same time. :p)
8) Work in an area related to environmental conservation (not exactly in the field that I was thinking of, but it's somewhat related)
9) Perform (sing, act, whatever) on stage (done this many times in college and church)
10) Slow danced with a guy I really like, among other romantic things (^_^)

And then here are the things I have wanted to do sometime in my life, but have not done yet:
1) Try bungee jumping
2) Visit Galapagos Island
3) Visit the African Safari
4) Make tonnes of money through blogging, or at least enough money to live a comfy life
5) Buy an underwater camera and become an awesome underwater photographer
6) Get married and live in a small house with a big garden so we can have many dogs and less area of house to clean
7) Make a wedding portrait of hubby and I made such that we look 60-70 years old as a reminder of our goal to stay together always no matter how old and wrinkly and cranky we get
8) Start a church dance class/ ministry (after I learn to dance a lot better than I do now)
9) Write a fantasy novel with a female protagonist named Naeem, or Naima or something like that coz' I always though the name is cool
10) Record at least one song in studio that is good enough to be played on radio even if it never is
11) Fit back into the jeans I wore when I was 16.
12) Have a romantic stroll on a beach with special guy under a starry and windless night (don't want too much sand blowing around in case things get extra romantic)
13) Learn CPR
14) Be a manager/ researcher for a zoo (preferably Singapore Zoo)
15) Be part of a flash mob (this is a relatively new aspiration)
16) Volunteer regularly at an animal shelter

Looking at this 2nd list, there are things that would be really difficult to do just because it would be really expensive (particularly those involving travelling), some will remain an unattainable dream unless I give up my current job (like full time blogging or working at the zoo!) , others I don't dare to start on due to lack of motivation or belief in my own capability to do a good job (write a book? How screwed up would that end up? Don't even talk about the dance ministry idea, that might just be hilarious)... and then there are those which are relatively simple things I could start doing tomorrow, if not for pure laziness  or lack of time.

What's missing from that list is a desire to do something that will make a difference in people's lives, the closest thing being starting a dance ministry which I have my own inhibitions about since I'm not a great dancer anyway and it's probably more to feed my own interest in performing than anything else, really. I feel a bit bad that I honestly can't put in anything in there about wanting to make a difference because to be perfectly honest with myself, I'm jaded enough that a part of me doesn't really care to get too close to people. On the other hand, there is the part of me that wants to get over that and just learn to open up and learn to care for people. Coz' at the end of the day, even if I do accomplish every single one of those things on my dream to-do list, most of it was for my own experience and pleasure, which really makes no difference to anyone else.  After all, no one's going to write on my tombstone that "Here lies Carol, who jumped out of a airplace one, swam with dolphins and was part of a really funny flash mob". I get this annoying sentiment that Solomon had in the book of Ecclesiastes (which I just read through today for the fun of it while writing this). The feeling that everything is meaningless. Like you work and toil through your life and have a good time every now and then, but in the end, everything is meaningless, like chasing the wind.

Nevertheless, even though I doubt my ability to make a difference in people's lives as well as get round to doing all the things I want to try and do at least once in my life, I still have the hope that  it will happen... that someone I can change and motivate myself to get out there and just do it because whatever the thing is that fuels my hopes and ambitions run dry.

Lol, I didn't mean for this post to turn into such deep stuff. Perhaps I really need to just stop over-analyzing my life then I will have more time to do the things I wanna do. :P

No Plan

It's time for the annual raincheck on my life. Not that I've been doing this annually, just that it sounds better than occasional raincheck on my life.

I'm 28 years old, and will be 29 years old in half a year, and then I will be 30 years old in another year, by which time I can no longer pass as a 'young adult' just starting out in the working world and trying to to figure out what to do with my life but I should already more or less have some sort of plan. Plans that any normal young adult usually has....stuff like aiming for a better work position and getting a higher salary, getting married and starting a family, saving up for my own home, starting a business, maybe even deciding to become a pastor.... stuff like that. At least that's the kind of plan I guess people pass their 30s should have. Although in reality, I'm sure there are many 30-somethings who still don't have a plan. And I've heard a quote by someone who said that at 40 years old he still hasn't figured what he wants to do when he grows up.

Well, right now, I don't really have a plan. And by not having a plan, I mean I don't have  have a clue what to do other than continue doing what I have been doing for my whole working life, which I guess so far has been work, go to the gym, go to church on Sunday, serve on Sundays, hang out with friends occasionally, waste time on Facebook, do some fun things every now and then, like travelling, paintballing, scuba diving, and that's pretty much it. It's been working out pretty well so far. But in terms of planning for my long-term future, I haven't been doing much in that respect. I have asked my this question recently... the famous question that potential employers use on employees... where do I see myself in 5 years? And my answer is... probably pretty much the same thing I'm doing right now.

I have been thinking of making a big change, which is moving overseas. My brother who's in the US is encouraging me to go there, or Canada, or Australia. And on surface, given all the complaints people have about this country that is Malaysia, it seems like great idea. The politics suck, the cost of living is skyrocketing, the education system is going to the shits, etc, etc. Why not just get out of here while I still can.

Well, unfortunately to say, I've realized that even though I do have some spark of adventure in me which is the reason why I can jump out of airplanes and go looking for sharks when diving/snorkelling, I still like my comfort zone here in Malaysia. Doing what I've been doing. Yeah, the politics suck, but as long as I can still live my life and the PM isn't trying to blow ME up with dynamite or accuse me of sodomy, I'm ok with the occasionaly drama in the news. Cost of living? Biggest costs are house and car and raising kids. I already have a fully paid, car and I stay with my parents in a cushy condo and not planning to move out unless I get married, and I'm not married which means I have no expensive kids to raise. Otherwise, cost of living is not that bad. Bad education system? Again, no kids, so well, doesn't really affect me.

Yes, I am still thinking that getting out of the country would be worth it. But only if I get married and plan to raise a family, which also means my future imaginery and elusive hubby would have to want to make the move too. As long as I'm single, Malaysia is a pretty cool place to stay in. I have friends and family here, I can watch my nieces grow up, we have great food, shops open way past 5pm, and also it would be a terrible waste to do my diving course this year and then move out of Malaysia (which is next to pretty much all the cool dive spots in the world).

So since I plan to be stuck here for a while, it still means I have no real concrete plan, whether it comes to work, finances, personal life or anything else. How many ways can I possibly have no plan?

Work-wise, I enjoy where I'm at but have been pretty happily plodding along doing my work and hoping for a raise every year. I'm far from the ambitious type where I tell myself I must become manager is x no. of years and at least double my salary or whatever... I just hope for the best and take whatever good I get, whether it be a raise or bonus or whatever. Only recently have I have been feeling stagnant in my area of work (as in I don't think it's getting me anywhere, position-wise) and itching for a change in the main work I do so I get different experience and better future prospects. This is only after almost 3 years in the same job. That change actually could have happened sooner in the almost 3 years since I've been with my current company, but a combination of being already busy with my now stagnating work and my own lack of drive to 'succeed', i.e. work myself up the corporate ladder, lead to the slow progress. But since I've been pretty happy at my job now, I see no reason to leave (part of the reason why I don't want to migrate yet... coz' I need more experience at my work!).

Financially, it's always at the back of my mind that I need to learn how to invest in something reliable. I am currently investing in something through the help of my dad who did all the research on the investment and I'm just along for the ride. But I know I can't rely on him forever and I need to learn how to do my own investments in the future. And since I hate anything to do with finance, except of course, the money itself, learning the tricks of investing in something is scary. Coz' investing is risky and putting my moolah in the wrong place might end up in me losing it. But it's still important, otherwise my moolah will just sit in the bank without growing and that might be difficult when I get to an age when I can't work anymore. Or I actually do start a family and have to raise those money sucking kids. :P My best plan in this area? Marry a guy who is good at financial planning and can help me with investments. Or even better. Marry a damn rich guy who doesn't squander his fortune away. Set for life, baby. >:)

Well, that leads to the next aspect where I have no plan... marriage and family. Kinda hard to plan for that I'm single. Though anything can happen of course, and in five years time I could very well and have met someone and start having little buns baking in the oven. Are there potential guys? Well, yes, there are always potential guys. Whether I will end up with any of them or not is another question. So right now, no plan whatsoever.

And then there's spiritual life. Well, I certainly have no plans to become a pastor, full-time church worker or anything of the sort. Once upon a time I wouldn't mind being married to a pastor if the opportunity came, but now I'm quite sure that will never happen coz' I'm pretty sure I'd make a terrible pastor's wife. On the other hand, I have been having... spiritual issues and was thinking that maybe it's time to go to another church and see what happens. And so was thinking of pulling out of ministries I'm serving in and leaving my current church. But still haven't done it. Mainly coz' I have no plan which church to go to AFTER that. Am kind of occasionally visiting other churchs when I can, to survey the field. It's funny coz' once in the church I went to in Australia, the pastor there, while praying for me, made a prediction that I would become some great woman for God. And everytime I think of that now, I'm just like...hmm... right....

So those are some of the ways where I have no plan in my life. But then I also asked myself... is it really so bad to not have a plan (other than financial planning, which I still consider important no matter what)? I mean, we can plan for stuff but it may not work out the way we want and turn out to be a waste of time (maybe money). Like I usually prefer not to plan for vacations too far ahead of the date, coz' there's another more important event that may come up later at the same time and screw up my plans (happened to me before and I wasted a flight ticket to Thailand!). On the other hand, if I'm content taking each day at a time and hoping for the best, whether it be in my work, personal life or spiritual life, then I may end with things better than I planned or hoped for. And actually I feel like this has what has been happening to me....for example, in my work I have been quite blessed with benefits and favour from my management with I'm not sure I deserve. And in my personal life, I have been blessed with some good friends, and.... I have met a guy whom I really like have great relationship with. But I'm still not sure what will happen between us in the long term, and until I figure it out, he's going to remain a secret. In the meantime, even with having no plan, I still greatly enjoy his company.

Perhaps it sounds bad, but I actually quite enjoy having no plan and enjoying the spontaneity of life. It's been working out for me so far and hopefully it'll continue doing so for a long time. :P

Listen with expectations

I just spent about 3 and a half hours since 10.15pm chatting with a friend at a cafe. I have questions about my Christian faith which I have to believe he has the answer to. He refuses to tell me because he has no idea how I will react to what he has to say, and he thinks that I will not react well at all, based on his past experiences with other friends. From what I gather, he is 100% sure that God is real. However, he does not believe God is how Christians depict him to be. But he does not what to be the one to break a person's faith. And of course I'm just all the more curious to find out what he knows.

The most I could get out of him however, was a way to get answer to my burning questions.... direct from the source, i.e. the big G Himself.

Listen without expectations.

Now whether I can actually do that is another story. Stopping and listening, I have tried and got nothing. Listening without expectations....that is ... a challenge. I do believe I've talked about how I have this fear about God telling me something I don't wanna hear. And I guess hoping that I won't hear something I don't wanna hear is a form of expectation.

But the burning questions will continue to burn until I get my answers. So I will try.

And we'll see what happens. ;-)

My friend also did say something about how I should stop thinking too much and being afraid of things going wrong. I don't know how the heck he figures this stuff out about me. I thought I did a pretty good job of making people think I'm the carefree, always happy-go-lucky type. Well, that's why I quite enjoy talking to this guy. :)

Of an old song and an old book

There are two parts to this post (yet another long one. Nyarr!). The first part is about a song I've been thinking about. And the second part is about a book I've been reading, or rather, an excerpt from that book.

I've been thinking about this song.

It's an old song that came out one year before I was even born. I don't particularly like the song. In fact, I'm contemplating whether or not to hate this song. The reason why I'm thinking about it is because the singer, Charlene, is singing about her situation (whether it was real or not, I'm not sure), which is something that could very well be my situation in the future. In a nutshell, the lyrics are sang from a woman who is probably way past her prime and has enjoyed a good life travelling around the world, messing around with guys, living the life. But in the song, this women is giving advice to a married woman with children, telling her that even though she feels unhappy with her marriage and a discontented mother and dreams about doing the things she will never be able to do because she's married with kids, the woman singing advises her that all the 'fantastic things' she's done in her life is nothing compared to having what the other woman has, which is a family. At one part of the song, she sings (or more like, speaks) "Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie...but you know what truth is? It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with tonight. The same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love." And then she goes on to sing about how she cries for unborn children that might have her complete.

I have many reasons to hate this song. Coz' it makes single women like me worried that if we don't get hitched to someone and have kids, we'll end up old and alone and regretting it. It makes women like me think that finding a guy, settling down and starting a family is more important than anything else. It makes women like me wonder if getting out there and living our single lives, doing what we want, how we want it, is not going to be worth anything later in life. And I hate it mostly because this could actually turn out to be true.

Just recently, I got into another round of conversation with the same guy I had a slightly drunken conversation that I talked about in my previous long waffling post. At one point we started talking about 'true love' again (that question he was dogging me on in our last drunken conversation), and then he commented on my recent Facebook status about this article.

Some of the girls who commented on my FB status are more skinny than curvy, so I'm wondering why THEY would be so happy. Bygones. Anyhow, the guy I'm talking too saw my status update and asked me this question: Do I really NEED a boyfriend? After all, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, going on vacation to US, learning how to scuba dive, getting involved in many activities, etc, etc.

Getting technicalities out of way, I'm sure no girl ever actually NEEDS a boyfriend. The question is more whether I actually really want one or not. And it's quite funny now that after a long history of lamenting my lack of love life (most of that lamenting done on this blog itself), I'm now so used to being single and independant that I'm seriously considering if it's best just to stay that way for the rest of my life. But, as I told my friend, I'm also wondering if I'll end up regretting that choice later on in life when I'm old and frail and alone. On the other hand, I may also end up regretting getting hitched to someone. To me, I'm considering 3 possible scenarios:

1) I meet my 'Mr. Right', get married and live mostly happily ever after (every relationship will have its up and downs, but the important thing is that we learn to deal with it and still love each other). That would actually be my ideal situation. And it would be a great plus if we made beautiful babies who grew up to be fantastic people that actually took the time to take care of their folks. In such a case, I would certainly have little or no regrets in my old age because I know I'd have family around and people who love me.

2) I meet a guy, get married, have kids, and then life just spirals downwards from there. Could be either we reach a point where we cannot even sleep in the same room and can't talk to each other without getting in to a fight. Or worst still, we decide to get a divorce. And to top it all off, the kids could turn out to be an irresponsible bunch that fly off the Australia after we spend RM20k a semester trying to get them through uni, only to find out they've failed the course, decided to run off with some guy/girl and never call home again. In such as case, I still end up being alone and regretful in my old age, and I would not have gottent the chance to do all the things I would get to do if I had remained single. So what's the point?

3) I remain single, do whatever I wanna do for the rest of my life, make good friends, visit the world, experience new things, without having to endure all the emotional hoohah of marriage and potentially bratty kids. And then spend my old age withering away in an old folks home, where the news of the week is that another friend of mine passed away, and I would be planning the best way to commit suicide without leaving a bloody mess for the old folks home helpers to clean up.

Scenario 1 would be greatest. Scenario 3 would be great as long as long as I have energy to run around and enjoy my life. Scenario 2 would be just about the suckiest situation to be in. And while I would certainly love being in Scenario 1, if I had to choose between living a life in scenario 2 or 3, I would choose Scenario 3 and be alone for the rest of my life. However, in order to get a shot of living out Scenario 1, I have to run the very real risk of it spiralling downwards to becoming Scenario 2. Which is what I am damn shit scared of happening. My fears are not unfounded. I've grown up in a home where my mum constantly finds a way to be annoyed with my dad, my dad is completely exasperated with my mum's impatience, they currently both stay in separate rooms, and their kids, including myself, hardly ever take the time to actually sit down and spend time with them except if it's someone's birthday or some festival. We kids are not close to our parents (there are reasons for this, of course, and if you know what it's like, you'll know it's not an easy situation to change) although we still carry out our filial duties in terms of providing for mum and dad. Somewhat.

Suffice to say, I don't want to live the type of family life that my mum and dad are living right now. And hence, I'd love to hate the song "I've Never Been To Me" because it sends the message that being married with kids is the best thing you could ever do with your life. Which could be true, or it could go completely the other way and make your life absolutely miserable.

And I'm 28 years old, which makes me at the prime of my life and I'm running out of time to decide whether or not to go the way of marriage and family or the way of singledom. If at some point, my maternal instrincts activate and I decide that I REALLY want to have kids, it may very soon come to the point where that ship has left the dock and there's no way I can jump on it anymore. And I'm not just talking about my biological clock ticking away here, there is another reason for it (which is kind of explained in the 2nd part of my long-winded post). But even if I do decide I want to go the way of marriage, I don't have any potential partners at the moment. And finding the right guy is not easy. My friend was is a bit bewildered on why it is so difficult for me, as he seems to have the opinion that there are many guys out there who would want a girl like me.

Interestingly enough, in one earlier conversation (we've had a few other meet-ups since our first drunken conversation, just so you know), he voiced his suspicion that the reason I'm hesitant to get into a relationship is because I think that I don't deserve to be loved.

And just like the song, I'd love to hate what he said. Because the fact is that I don't consider myself a person with low self-esteem. Therefore the notion that I'm afraid of a relationship because I don't deserve to be loved, which implies that I am a person with low self-esteem, should by all means piss me off.

But unfortunately I hate to say it, but he could be right as well.

Which leads me to my thoughts about the book excerpt. This same guy that I've been having these fascinating conversations with recently lent me a book. It's a really old book as well (like the song) which came out in 1989. I would have been 6 years old and in kindergarten at the time, and funnily enough, the book is called "All I Really Need to Know", I Learned in Kindergarten - Uncommon Thoughts on Uncommon Things" by Robert Fulghum. It's basically a collection of the writer's thought on various topics, each of which are short write-up of only 3 to 4 pages each.

In one story, he talks about his thoughts on children playing hide and seek. And then talk about how adults like to play hide and seek, in their own way. The excerpt is as follows:

A man I know found out last year that he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brace he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say goodbye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?""I don't want to bother anyone."

This hit a bit too close to home for me. I've said before on my blog that I don't like people feeling sorry for me, which is why I keep many thing to myself. So while this may sound like I'm going off tangent from the earlier topic, it does relate. Please bear with me. :)

At the end of 2010, I paid a visit to a doctor for a medical check-up. To be specific, it was a gynae and it was the first time I'd visited a gynae. He did some tests, and told me to call back in a week and see how were the results. When I did, it turns out they had found some mild 'abnormal formations' on my cervix. They had to do a biopsy to remove the abnormal cells and check what it was about. So I took a day off, hopped into a cab to the hospital, and went in for the biopsy, which was done in about an hour or so while I was out like a light, after which I took the cab back. Didn't tell anyone about this, by the way. After another week, the doctor explains to me that I have a virus. Not anything that will kill me, and there a chance that the virus goes dormant, in which case I won't have anymore problems. However, there is a higher chance of the buggers recurring and causing more abnormal formations in my cervix. To cut long story short, I am at high risk of cervical cancer. Which again, will not kill me as long as it's monitored. But there is a risk that the buggers may cause enough mayhem in me that I will one day have to have my cervix removed. This could happen within the next few years, or next decade or more.

And once that happens, I can never have kids.

So while that's not too much of a concern for me right NOW, it comes back to the point where I know my time to make a decision is running out. If I do decide to go the way of marriage and children, then I don't have much time left to make that choice. But then there's always the problem of finding the right guy. Plus now there's the additional problem of getting a man who's willing to invest in damaged goods.

On the bright side, it's the weekend and you should watch this vid and smile coz' it has dancing monkeys!