So, 2011 has just zipped us by, and we are now at the beginning of a brand new year. This year has been a challenge for me, to say the least, here’s to hoping 2012 will be a better one.

The passing of grams – She has been an integral part of my life for the past 31 years. The reason why I’m any good at Hainanese is because of her, after all, she was illiterate and only spoke the dialect. I still miss her and think of her every day, but it consoles me that she’s no longer suffering. I hope she knows how much I love her.

Career – it’s been quite a roller coaster ride. I’ve had my ups and downs this year, and have been sacrificed as a political pawn as well. After 4 years and having the best bunch of colleagues, I have decided it is time to move on. I have my reservations, moving to a new environment. But the last thing I want is to be too comfortable and end up settling.

Love life – zilch. What can I say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. The joke’s on me this time, but I have definitely resolved, that with gram’s passing, that I shall learn to open my heart again and deserve the best. *of course this person has to be gay friendly too..lol*

Friends and family – I am happy and grateful for my friends and family around me. My friends, who are of an extremely varied bunch, are there whenever I need them and I cannot ask for more. As for my folks, I wish for them good health and happiness always, and thank you for loving me that much.

Hopefully 2012 will rock than 2011!

A message from someone random on Facebook got me thinking. He feels that my posts in my blog are depressing, and asked why is that so. I replied saying that maybe I’m pensive by nature, but he was quite spot on by noticing that I have a tendency to toughen myself up in front of others, even in situations when I feel vulnerable. So, why’s that so?

Even with a chokeful of weekend events, I dissected mental state into a more comprehensible manner, as such

1) I’m outwardly optimistic, but inwardly a pessimist
2) I feel as if I don’t deserve to be totally happy
3) While I truly feel happy for others, I find it hard to relate back to me
4) I try to find a worse example to compare to, so that I do not feel bad

These points have jolted my reality because by all accounts, I come from a loving family. I had a great childhood, an angsty teenhood, and a pretty smashing transition to adulthood. So why have I always denied myself of happiness? I can see why previous partners have had a hard time understanding me, I always felt that I was never good enough for them and beat myself up for it. Probably that is why I had problems letting go of certain people and issues because they were the ones who made me feel that way, and I’ll just return to contemplate what went wrong.

So, after understanding all these, I think what I have learnt about myself is that I have to stop worrying too much about me. I “may” have to learn to throw caution to the wind and enjoy life. Because life doesn’t just stop because of you. I don’t wish to grow old and be bitter about missed opportunities, and god knows how many have passed by me, but I just sat there, refusing to grasp it.

I also have to stop being judgemental, and should not impose my ideas on how others choose to live their lives.

There’s more, but for now, I’ll just start by trying to be happy and grateful for what I have. That’s at least as good as a start I can get.

Quotes from the bloke – If you are reading this, thanks!

haha well you sound depressed and probably wanna show others u can survive despite being depressed. however u prob have a soft heart and break down easily, when ya alone that is :p

haha prob not open enough to accept peeps into your life? prob trusting yourself more thats why?

Well, not the first time it has happened, though I must say he is pretty yummy. But, not young already, I could afford to do this when I was 26. Lower Templestowe was fun, and of course, he was quite a riot as well.

This time round, he’s a successful IT-preneur, I’m just seeing how long I can hold this out for.

And what better way to start by selling some stuff online. I’ll try to see what are some of the worthwhile material items I can put up for sale while cleaning up my life

Grams. How do I begin. She has always been this spunky character to me. She practically raised me since both my parents work. I remember when I was in kindergarten, she’s always the one who brings me to sch, and will dutifully do the same when I’m off school. She will even challenge me to a race to see who runs the faster, and she always wins. (Did I say she’s spunky?).

I have always been fortunate enough to have 3 of my grandparents living with me for an extended period of time. My maternal grams was with me until I was 10, when she went back to Malaysia to take care of her other grand kids. And there’s grandpops, who, despite causing so much heartache for the family when my dad was younger, doted on me and indulged with me as well.

When grandpops left us when I was 15 and maternal grams passed when I was 23, I was left with Grams as the only living grand parent. Despite having pre-stroke symptoms which resulted in her heart being left with 30% of its normal functions, she still led life to the fullest. All she did was to tweak her schedule around. She still went for her morning walks, to the markets and to the elderly centre.

She stayed in the hospital for a month when her health was failing, all this while not missing a beat of her Hainanese folk songs. Staff in her ward called her their “American Idol”, and they were thoroughly entertained by her singing and cheerful deposition.

When she left, a part of me left with her. Life with her for 31 years of my life has been nothing short of love and gratitude. Her story has ended, and a chapter of mine has ended with her. At times I do wonder what I could have done differently so that she will be still by my side, but to live to 93, with all her children and grandchildren around her, there’s really not much more I can demand for.

Thank you 婆婆 for letting me be your grand-daughter. I wish you will still be my 婆婆 in our next life.

I never had many friends. When I was kid, I made sure of that. Maybe it was due to my independent nature. I’ve always felt that if I’m strong being on my own, I wouldn’t need to be reliant on anyone, and will just live my own life just fine.

I guess signs have always been there. In Secondary School, somehow I was ostracised because I never knew how to play the “popular” game. Among a class of 27 pupils with only 6 girls, guess who’s the one who always hangs out with 2 other not-very-popular boys? Am glad they both are still very good friends of mine.

This has somewhat disturbed my mum, because now that I’m at and over marriagable age, with no signs of having someone and the desire to find that someone, she’s concerned that I will go on with this thought for a very long time.

Frankly speaking, I really don’t care. Although the only thing I’m worried about is taking care of my parents as they age. As it is now, seeing my grandmother suffering aches me, but at least my dad has help from family, mostly from mum and I.

Yup, this is one of my more depressed posts I guess. As I’ve always said, if it happens, it happens. If not, then so be it.

I guess there are many who beg to differ with me on this. A lot of screams, pleas, even personal hatred for the incumbent candidates seem to have a life on its own these days. I guess there are quite a lot to contend with ; high cost of living, transport, housing (thou shalt not talk about it if it’s work).

Among friends, although I’m in Civil Service, I’m not inclining to either PAP or other opposition. However, I must say I’m glad that this election has brought about political awakening amongst us young voters.

I remember when I first decided to embark on my thesis in 2006, the subject was clear – political plurality in the wake of social media, although blogs were more heavily leaned on that time. But I realised most of my friends were nonchalant about it, and most had turned in before midnight, while I was still tracking intensely online in Melbourne, right through 4 am.

During my time in Australia, my professor and supervisor were quite surprised that I wanted to choose this as my major. I mused that just because I’m a Singaporean doesn’t make me a Yes Man. The online environment and mood was changing, and I wanted to be one of the first to document it. Classmates raised eyebrows, engaged me that why would I want to turn that stone when it’s been well-sheltered. I laughed and thought how would they know about Singapore? My closest classmates came from Columbia, Mauritius and Taiwan. They shared with me lives in their own countries, and it got me thinking, real and hard.

And it struck me, we have no idea how lucky we are. Here we are, griping about everything under the sky. But my classmates were just happy to leave for Australia. I realised that for people who have spent an extended period of time overseas are grateful to what the Government has done. I say this because when you are standing at a train station in Melbourne Central (no less!) and your next train is 40 mins later, you take things into a different perspective. When your room is smaller than a store room and costs AUD 600 and a monthly transport ticket costs close to AUD 100, you suddenly appreciate everything back home.

I’m not defending what the Party has done, and of course, the lack of humility is one of them. Even I feel quite stupid when they try to explain their “only-scholars-can-come-up-with-this” kinda policies, and I always rebut with “wtf”.

I just hope the ruling party hears the people’s voices and reflect long and hard why are they being sidelined and picked on. My greatest nightmare is to wake up one day, post election, to find out we have no effective government. Like what has happened to Belgium. I think no one wants this to happen.

I’ve never been what you call the extremely adventurous kind. I can only do the developed countries backpacking (ie Japan), which doesn’t count as much at all. But when I was asked to join a good friend in the US for a whole 3 weeks during the holiday season, I just couldn’t refuse.

It was probably the most daring thing I’ve done to date, and I know, I look like a wimp. So I booked a flight out on 22 Dec to New York, spent a week there, flew to Vegas to celebrate ringing in the new year and my last time was at San Fran, a place I think is probably the best place to live in the world, even more than Melbourne. And if you know how much I adore Melbourne, you’ll realise I mean it.

New York, New York
First, spending Christmas in NYC is probably the best place one can be. Despite the unforgiving, blustery cold, the first inkling I had that I landed in the land of dreams was Christmas songs echoing from the bus shuttle’s radio. That alone was enough to make me feel the difference in the spirit. When I landed on 22nd, there was no snow, so there was a bit of anticipation going around, I think everyone was expecting the white stuff to drop by pretty soon.

My crib at NYC was the Waldorf Astoria. Yup, The Waldorf Astoria.However, it was not as luxurious and glamourous it was touted to be. Everything in the room was somewhat broken, be it a light bulb, a bathroom switch etc. The service was excellent though, and that probably made it up for non-working equipment.

It’s actually very easy to roam through the streets of New York. Since I lived in mid-town, that meant I was in the centre of all the action. Madison Ave was just next block up, so I grabbed the map and headed on to Macy’s. The sun and the freezing cold made perfect company as I trudged down the streets, smiling like an idiot to everyone who would bother looking my way. And boy, did Macy’s bring my childhood dreams to life. Of course, it is nothing more than a huge shopping mall with droves of mad Christmas shoppers, but you can’t do Christmas without Macy’s, so I just stood there in awe, freezing with my cuppa skinny latte and some chickpea sandwich I grabbed.

The next few days of NYC was just sheer madness. Once Puffmot arrived, she started bringing me to all the places possible, from Staten Island to Soho, and even the Meatpacking District. Christmas was a bore, everything was closed, so we ended up have the famous Gray’s Papaya, twice over.

While Xmas passed by pretty uneventfully, the same couldn’t be said for Boxing Day. I had geared up to head on to Woodbury Common, the must-go place for all tourists who are looking for an attractive discount. The one-hour bus ride to the state of New Jersey was lovely, but that was the only last of pleasant weather I got for the rest of New York. Within an hour of my shopping spree, it began to snow. It looked really lovely at first, bits of shaved white ice falling from the sky. However, after a couple of stops later, it just turned ugly. A blizzard has descended upon us! In New Jersey! Where I am an hour away from the safe and warmth of my hotel, no less! I ended up having to queue for my bus in the fierce snow storm in the open for almost half hour before I managed to get onto the bus. By then, I could not feel my toes and felt the whole shopping trip was not worth it. The trip back took three hours as the traffic came to standstill due to the snow. When I got back to Port Authority in NYC at 9pm, public transport has ceased to operate. I was glad that certain train lines were still operational, and made it “home” in one piece.

The next few days were trying to understand how to manouveur in a the wake of a blizzard – apparently it’s the 5th worst blizzard to happen in NYC in recorded history. I had on a pair of boots which saw me through the worst of winter weather, and I must say it stood up okay despite freezing toes. Then it was mad rush to visit MoMA and Met Museums. I could have stayed an entire day at the museums, everything about them were just so intriguing.

And then it was off to Vegas…