At times I wish I had more family living near me, or a greater extended family sprawled around the world. I have always dreamt of having an older brother to rely on (or a gay best friend). Since I tend to connect a lot better with guys, I have always wanted to have one who was very, very close to me in a platonic way. Unfortunately, though such figures have come and gone, I can't really claim one guy who I can run to when I am hurt or scared or just have a great secret to share. More than that though, I wish that my cousins and I were closer. When I was young, I would always follow them around so closely that they nicknamed me their shadow. It was true enough, since I only got to see them once a year for a few weeks and that was my only tie to my background.
I have lived my life very much alone, or in a tiny family unit consisting of me and my parents. I always love to have people over to my house simply because nobody ever visits! It's always just me, my mom, my dad, and for some years, my cats. There are no random second cousins or great aunts, twice removed who can swing by to say hi. In fact, there isn't a single other person in our family in the country, from either side of the family. So, other than the summers that I got to go back to China in my childhood, I've hardly ever seen my relatives. Lately, I have also spent a lot of my time on my own, first as I went off to college, then as my dad moved back to China, then as I studied abroad in England, then as my mom moved back to China as well, and finally as I moved out to Singapore to work.
Granted, I am not alone alone. Yet, I have had nobody I can call family in the same country as me for the past two and a half years, but for the few months my mom came to visit, the couple of weeks my dad has spent back, and the lucky few days that some of my aunts and uncles got to come watch me graduate from UCLA. Family, after all, are the only people who are linked to you from day 1. And in my life, they are the only ones who have always been there, even if it was largely in the background and rather out of reach. But year after year, they are there, growing in their own ways, and eventually we will catch up again. For me, friendship has not worked out quite that way, since each move brought another group of people to leave behind. I can never claim a best friend from my childhood who watched me grow up. The only people who truly watched me grow up were my parents.
I have certainly been blessed with a lot of wonderful people in my life, but once again I find that they come and go. I'm so used to people leaving my life and becoming a great memory that I didn't even notice I do that, until a close friend pointed it out. Perhaps I got too conditioned to having to leave people behind with every move we made over the years. I don't have the mindset that makes me think of someone, pick up the phone and call them, or drop them an e-mail to catch up. Instead, I just wonder whatever happened to them and how they are doing. I am always grateful when I do hear from a long-lost friend and get to see how they are doing in their lives. I love that we are becoming a more globally connected world now and facebook was the first social media tool that allowed me to get in touch with friends from lives past. I also love that you don't need to be maintaining a conversation with each other to keep tabs on and be able to find each other years down the line.
I like to dream about a handful of aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins bustling around during Chinese New Year, as the whole family makes time to be together. Sadly, I've only been in China once during that time of year since I left (which was when I was too young to remember anything anyway) and I don't recall a thing about it. My dad has told me that to truly experience Chinese festivities, I need to spend Chinese New Year back in his hometown, the little place that he grew up in. Now that truly has small town flair in its celebrations, with all the stops pulled! Maybe if I have time next year, I can make it come true, in the second Year of the Ox that I will experience since the one I was born in. 2010 will be an important year for me because I will have gone through two full Chinese zodiac cycles. I'm sure that has some sort of significance.
Someday, I'd like to be able to gather with all my relatives (or at least one representative from each family unit). But over the years, even our not-so-big family has had trouble reuniting as my cousins married off and started to create their own little families. Between work, children, spouses, and friends, it's hard to find time to get together like we used to when everyone lived in the same town and the only ones missing were me and my parents. Now I'm embarking on my own life as well, sacrificing time with loved ones in hopes of building a strong foundation for a successful future. Work is hardly as flexible as tertiary education was, with more hours and less ease of changing schedules. Plus, there's a lot less time off per annum. On the other hand, I am very fortunate to be working for a company that would, like no other, work with me to try to make it happen, if I so chose. One of the things I will miss most about education is the lovely summer months filled with enrichment learning, extracurricular fun, and personal fulfillment.
Despite all this daydreaming about a huge family, I still don't want more than two or three kids, if only because I don't know if I can handle any more. Growing up so independent and with all the attention focused on me makes it difficult for me to conceive how it would be with a handful of children running amok. The grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it? And that is why I wish I had a companion to grow up with, whether sibling, cousin living nearby, or best friend from childhood. But, because I know there is this tendency to think that the other way is so much better, I do recognize the benefits of only childhood. Thus, I don't want to overcompensate by having so many kids I don't know what to do with myself. Instead, to create that feel, I'd like to live in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other and the kids can play together. This would also be a great way to expose them to how others live their lives, especially if it's a multicultural community!
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This summer when I was spending time with my parents in Beijing, I got a chance to drop by their office and see where they work (and who they work with). While I was there, it was the strangest feeling to see my dad's fancy pants office, with mahogany furnishings and all kinds of cool decorations. It reminded me of one time when I went to see him at his last US office (in LA county), where he had a secretary to liaise with. People had to go through her to get to him and that, to me, was so odd. After all, I've always had full access to him! What was all the more strange this time though, was hearing him being called and referred to as "Dr. Qin" - umm, what? Nowadays with the market being so competitive, personal branding extremely important to stay on top of things. It's no longer just an issue of how your company is imaged, what your logo looks like, how your stores are presented, and what type of packaging you use. As social media is on the rise, so is the need for personal branding. It has become more and more about the individual and as such, it is paramount to present yourself with the image you desire. Every now and then, I come up with some outrageous idea that I really wish was possible. One that I've been thinking of is if our eyes could be cameras. I absolutely love to take pictures and I try to keep my camera on me at all times. Sometimes, things just happen too fast for it to be pulled out, turned on, aimed, and shot. So many brilliant pictures and shots have been lost that way. To some extent it preserves the beauty of life, making living in real time worth so much more than trying to live through still shots. However, those are often the very moments you really want to remember and be able to look back and share with others. I have gotten the pleasure of being able to chat with Panda online while on webcam for the past two weeks and I am so grateful for this technology. Although it took me awhile to convince him we (or at least I) needed this, he finally decided to go for it and I'm quite confident he hasn't looked back. Our chosen medium of video chatting is TokBox, which is what Meebo uses. I used to sign on to my AIM, MSN, and other accounts by using the in-browser service so I could access it from any computer, but for some reason it doesn't seem to load at the office, so I have had to revert to using Trillian. Unfortunately, due to compatibility issues, I can't video with him on that, so we make our way over to TokBox to see each other. I spent the day watching America's Best Dance Crew and The Biggest Loser. I love these two shows because of how they show you people's accomplishments and the powerful journeys they take. From amazing physical skills to amazing physical transformations, it really is inspiring. I'm not much of a TV watcher (in fact, I only watch things if someone else is watching it already), but there are certain shows I really like. Reality shows can be good or bad, depending on if it's all about people being dramatic with each other or if it's about learning, growing, and improving yourself. And these two, in my eyes, are really nice shows to watch to feel good about things. April is, apparently, now deemed Kindness Month and thus the Singapore Kindness Movement was launched today, the first weekend day of the month. If nothing else, just being at event about kindness really makes you much more aware of it. I definitely was much more conscious of how my actions could be interpreted and affect others. I made sure I walked around with a soft expression on my face, if not an outright smile. I made sure I was courteous to others, saying sorry if I bumped into them and thank you when they were nice to me. I even asked for some napkins to help clean off some chairs that had gotten stuff on them and made sure the people sitting in them were aware of the gooey drips of cotton candy that had gotten stuck on their seats before they sat down and dirtied their pants. Today I really felt the effects of having what is dubbed a "blue brain" in Emergenetics terms. Blue-brained people are the thinkers who sit there, rationalizing things and using logic to solve problems. Learning is done best by mental analysis. And that, is exactly how I am. I've been laboring over a project this past week, trying to turn all the information for our training branch into a simple, comprehensive slide show. I had originally written a script for it, typing out what I thought should be spoken and what images/words could coincide with that. I sent that out to the boss to look over and got back his edits, showing me the type of language he prefers to use and the style he was looking for. From there, I changed things up as needed. For some reason, I suddenly got followed by a good dozen people on Twitter today. I'm not really sure why or how they found me, but it was quite the mix of people I know, people I don't know, and organizations I've never heard of. Up until now, I could usually understand why someone would happen upon me, because I'd have a recent post that was related to something they are interested in. However, today's follows don't quite make sense to me and I've been trying to find some sort of a pattern to it. Is it because I posted a bunch of Twitpics yesterday? Is it because of all the random links and resources I've been "tweeting" about? What is driving traffic to my page? Today was the first time I stayed in the office rather late unaccompanied by Marylin. It was just me and Goof, working away at our given tasks. I quite liked the atmosphere, which was much more conducive to working for me than most. For one, there were fewer distractions around - during the day, people are bustling in and out and random spurts of stories and sharing will interrupt the flow of work. A lot of people are also online to distract me (namely, Panda, who I now get to sit and watch working as I do my own work) and the light outside makes the world itself a distraction. |
laelene My philosophy is simple: things change. Therefore, we are all on a lifelong journey of discovery. We should be flexible, questioning, learning, adapting, and growing. Always. Archives
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