either here nor there

drama. drama. drama.

But what's new? Story of my life. or rather the life around me.

What was suppose to be a fun occasion has gone a lil sour. The old farts needs to learn and let live. seriously.

Getting quite annoying but what can you do? You're born into a family. You don't really have much of a choice there. Don't get me wrong. I love most of them to bits but sometimes, you really wonder who the adults are.

I finally got my own place.

Claire and I gonna be living together. Pictures will hopefully be up on facebook soon.

I love it.

Don't anyone ruin my mood now.

Absolutely craving for a beer or strongbow right now.

I miss after work beers in kl with the usual suspects.

oiling my way up

There is this under lying understanding of bribery. I use the term bribery because to put it bluntly and in layman's terms it is plain outright bribery. But you see, here its not seen as bribery. It is seen as a "token of appreciation". A token of appreciation that can apparently take you far. And its the only way things work around here. Well not the only but definitely the grease that oils the machine.

I can call a million dollars a token of appreciation too! I have been "asked" to contribute a few times now but I can't bring myself to do so. And no, its not a million bucks but still. Just the thought of it somewhat irks the shit out of me. It doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm just being naive and trying to be all idealistic and shit.

The point of my writing this out is because I had a moment of weakness. A moment of weakness where I jump on the "brib" wagon to oil my way into the hearts of certain eastern counterparts. And I'm like what the heck! No! I'm not doing it! I think my moment of weakness is caused by the sense of belonging and the sense of being left out. That makes me sound super pathetic right?

Ah well.

Ain't gonna do it.

____________________

It's Claire's birthday today. We (Amil, Michelle, Eugene and I) went out for dinner together and had a good time. And today, we're going out for lunch. Both Claire and I. She's 23. I was 23 two years ago. I'm turning 25 next week! omg! 1/4 century old! omg!

Now I feel like going on a shopping spree. fck.

wabbittt!

The year begun slow and steady.

With me falling asleep on the couch at 3am in Dyan and Rod's.

Well fast forwarding to recent events, I sold my first unit of the year last week (the 2nd week of work). Pretty good eh?

Other than that, I have made some new year's resolution in the hopes of changing some stuff about how I want to live my life. You know growing up a bit.

1. Dress up more corpora-ty. I know corpora-ty isn't exactly the word of a grown up but eh. I'm starting something right? Anyways, I have been dressing up more for work since I started. No flats. Always in heels. Barefoot in the office of course.

2. Better time management. Arrange more work appointments and not appointments to meet at D'Legends (its now our official Friday Night drinks place to be). And also to Make time for my other new year resolutions.

3. Go places! Travelling! Which brings me to my first holiday out of KL. I'm going to Danok and Hat Yai for the first time this weekend with the Gohs. More new first time places to go to! Sri Lanka, watch out!!! :)

4. Lose weight. Trying to stay off rice for lunch and even if I do have rice, its has been cut into half since I started work. No late night meals. And I'm going to join the new gym at Mont Kiara. Fitness First, here I come!

5. Make me some moolah! Yup. As much as I hate to admit it but I need them moolah for my new years resolutions.

6. Read more! Start building my little library! The sweetest thing was when the bf started looking at space saving ways to have a lil library! lol. Yay! more books! In the midst of that, I discovered Alexandra Potter. Chick lit: yes. Soppy chick lit: no. I'm reading her second book now. Will go get more soon! Before heading to Danok of course! :)

Discovering more responsibilities and watching people achieve the things I want to achieve fuels me. I used to be quite the competitive person when I was younger and I think coming back to the Malaysian environment has fuelled me yet again.

The growing up, the competitive streak. An explaination? I don't know.

Maybe because I'll be 25 in a few weeks.

crap.

a long time coming

Its been so long since I last wrote anything in here. I miss it.

Everything in my head has become to saturated since. And I realised that I have become a lot more bitchier too. I have gone back to making judgements and not liking a lot of people. Which makes my job a lil' harder.

Talking about my job. I have developed this love hate relationship with it and I am still very on the fence about how I feel about this job. The satisfaction only comes in little burst (when I make a sale). There isn't really much of a high.

You know the episode when Meredith comes out of the OR after one of her first surgeries, and she ask Derek why would anyone want to do drugs? and she was high on what she was doing, her job, operating on people.

The question is, will I ever get that 'high'?

That is just the job front.

Claire and I are moving out. We have decided that the house is too toxic for our sanity. There's too much to elaborate but this is what I can say... suffocation has never really been an issue. I realised that I'm a nomad. A girl with no home. I never felt at home since I got back to KL for good last year. Its been a year now. Nothing has changed. Nothing at all.

I guess in many ways I am very blessed because I have been given the opportunity to step out of the box. View things from the outside. Making decisions and settling on certain point of view from outside the box makes certain things more bearable. I don't know how I survived before moving out for 5 years.

And now, I'm glad I can afford to move out. I wish I has enough money to get Michelle out too. I will. Eventually. I guess its time to be cruel to be kind.

Christmas is 'round the corner again. And we're all heading to Singapore.

Deirdre is pregnant and its a boy. Expected arrival in April. No more "Let's Party!" .. its now "BABY SHOWER!".

Life is definitely changing. But situations somewhat remains the same.

Ain't life just grand?

work update

As interesting as it may get. Some days is just a major bore.

I'm starting to really enjoy my work. Had a chance to go to Singapore last weekend for a commercial property expo at Hilton. Very interesting..

Met some really nice Singaporean and some psycho ones too. But it was all good. I have my gracious colleagues to thank for. On Saturday night, I met up with Nashreen and Tash. Had a pretty good time. We ended up at Tash's usual place, "Attica". Pretty good music. Mixed crowd. Reminds me a bit like Monkey Bar with nicer fittings and better music... the people, similar to Monkey Bar. Brings back oh so many memories.

Anyways, as part of an unofficial initiation thing, we're all going to Sultan Lounge this Friday for Hed Kandi!

And THEN! on the 4th of August, I'll be going for CALVIN HARRIS! at Zouk! Dyan rallied up a group of pumped up people to go so yeah!!! hehehe. AND both EUGENE and RODNEY are really psyched about it!

Now I have to find a way to get a day off. Hmm... its going to be a lil tough since emergency and medical leaves has been tighten. I shall find a way!!

Anyways, its back to work for me!

Ciao!

Boost Up!

I still have my job. And its getting slightly better. Been super busy now that things have been set in stone... so Doraemon, here I come!

Here I am, sitting at Starbucks with my boss and colleague (aka Wynton and Kyle), waiting for our next meeting. As I started my work (too much to do!), I see these two people carrying a green Styrofoam cups.... I recognised those Styrofoam cups ANYWHERE... IT'S BOOST JUICE!!! HERE IN KL! tucked away in a corner in Bangsar Village 1!

PEOPLE! GO GET YOURSELF SOME HEALTHY YUMMY SMOOTHIIEEEE~!

To my delight, I took my purse and off I went to get myself a mango tango crush (mango, passionfruit, mango nectar, sorbet and ice). I am a happy girl...

To make matters better, it is a gloomy day! Hardly any sun... I'm praying it would rain.. then I am officially on cloud9.

I went for West Side Story last Sunday night with the Gohs (Eugene, Dyan, Rodney, Li Ping, Auntie Gert, Uncle Christopher, Uncle Mui and Auntie Mei Ling). It was AWESOME! Money well spent. I have never spent so much for something like this in Malaysia before.. but it was worth it.

On the couple front, Wynton and Astrid got together and my baby sister is no longer single. hehehe.

On the family front, same old same old... The up side is, I finally met Wayne, Adam and Uncle Fred in Singapore. It was awesome. A week later, Wayne came to KL and we partied the night away. Melvin turned 21 and we had in at Uncle Nuebert's place. He graciously allowed us to use his house for the party. That was a good night too...

Anyways.. back to work...

:P

the door of the plane closes.

As I was lazing on the bed this morning, eugene throws me the today's paper and tells me to read it. And on the front page of the middle section is about the kids who don't belong... Here's the whole article..

___________________________________________________________

Who am I?
By CHAN LI-JIN


Having a foot in different countries gives children a wider world view. But they could end up feeling they don’t belong anywhere.

SO tell me, are you born and bred here?”

Barely seated comfortably yet, I was taken aback by Ruth Van Reken’s question as we settled down for an exclusive interview in Petaling Jaya recently.


Ruth Van Reken: ‘No one talks of the loss that comes with the closing of an airplane door.’
Even as I replied “Yes”, I knew it was a simplified answer. How could I explain to this foreigner that I was born in Johor Baru but had spent the last two decades of my life in Kuala Lumpur, yet my father was from Penang? And why would these details matter anyway?

As the interview progressed, however, I found myself telling Van Reken more and more of myself and the Malaysian context of our discussion. It was easy to sense that this 64-year-old author of two books, Letters Never Sent and Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, was as interested in knowing me as I was to know her.

This is hardly surprising, as Van Reken has been listening to others’ stories for the last two decades since Letters was published in 1987. Written as a journal and initially titled Letters I Never Wrote, the book was written in the form of letters to her parents, beginning with her first night at boarding school, when Ruth was six. It continues through the years when her parents stayed on in Nigeria after sending her back to the United States (her mother’s birthplace) at the age of 13.

When she completed the book, no publisher thought the story was worth any money, Van Reken recalled. So she published it herself. And when it hit the stores, she started receiving tons of letters from readers who said they could relate to her pain and grief of being a third culture kid (TCK).

So what exactly is a TCK?

Simplistically, it refers to the children of people who live and work abroad, away from their passport country. Research shows that these children who lead highly migratory lives tend to battle issues of rootlessness, restlessness, fractured relationships, cultural imbalance and lack of belonging, even though they were also developing a large world view, multi-lingual abilities and friendships with people from different cultural backgrounds.

In Third Culture Kids, Van Reken and sociologist co-author Prof David Pollock profile the practical, emotional and psychological benefits and challenges in the reality of what they refer to as “growing up among worlds”. The major challenges of this nomadic lifestyle are related to dealing with the often hidden losses and the perpetual search for identity.

The first edition of Third Culture Kids, published in 1999, became an international bestseller very quickly. Readers sent her heart-wrenching, humorous, sometimes thought-provoking stories describing their migratory lives. They ranged from military families to those in the foreign service, children of missionaries, and even children of multiracial families, immigrants and minority groups.

“That’s when David (Pollock) and I realised that the topic covered a much wider scope than we imagined,” Van Reken said. The revised version ofthe book, released in 2009, continues to draw global attention from people who feel they have finally found the reason behind their lifetime search for answers.

The revised version expanded on the TCK term, and included definitions for adult third culture kids (ATCK), cross cultural kids (CCK), and even people moving within their own country who feel ostracised by the differing cultures, social practices and unspoken community rules in each different state.

Their different experiences notwithstanding, they all share the same dilemma: Who exactly am I?

Van Reken explained: “TCKs always feel out of place and abnormal, especially when teachers ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ They face problems filling forms where they need to mark ‘race’ and ‘nationality’. Having to explain what they fill poses another problem!”

She speaks from experience. Growing up as a white person in Africa, she always knew she didn’t “belong” among the dark-skinned children. “Kids on the streets used to call out ‘white girl, white girl’ and tug at my clothes on the streets,” she reminisced.

Her parents were teachers and ran a small school for African children, so even as a little girl she knew she was among the privileged back in those colonial days. But she also knew she would leave one day, as her mother kept a small table at the end of the classroom where she was taught American culture to prepare young Ruth for the inevitable repatriation.

“But there’s only so much you can learn from books. When I first arrived in the United States as a young teenager, the first question my classmates asked was, ‘Where are you from?’ Having lived in Africa all my childhood, I replied ‘Nigeria’.

When her friends exclaimed with disbelief, “You don’t look African”, she realised it was the wrong answer.

“But Nigeria was my home for the first 13 years of my life – all my friends, my nanny and my world were there. What was I supposed to say?” Van Reken said, smiling at the recollection.

Although she now looked just like everyone in her predominantly white, mono-culture school in the United States, once again she felt that she didn’t belong.

“I never learnt to swim like everyone else, yet I could bargain really well in a wet market. My first attempt to get a hamburger was a huge embarrassment. I didn’t know there were extra tax charges so I only brought exact change.”

Identity crises tore at Ruth. By the time she turned 14, she no longer told anyone about her African childhood. She studied nursing, married a paediatrician at 22 and went on to have three children.

In her mid-20s, she returned to visit her parents in Africa when her husband was posted to Liberia. All at once, she was hit by the familiarity of the warm earthy tones, the pungent smells of cooking, the animated sounds of the Hausa language among the locals.

But it was no longer the same. Her parents had moved to a different place. She also had two siblings whom she hardly knew.

“My old house was gone, together with all I knew and loved. It hurt me deeply to know I’d lost them forever. I never even said goodbye.”

Van Reken stayed in Liberia with her young family for a few years until political unrest forced them to return to the United States. At every point, she always took everything in her stride, going with the flow until she turned 39 and went into a deep depression.

“Suddenly I was questioning everything that had happened in my life and why I felt this void deep inside. I didn’t understand why I felt such deep sadness when I had had such a happy and loving childhood surrounded by parents, grandparents, relatives and friends.

Van Reken’s books triggered a flood of response from readers who could relate to the pain of being TCKs.

“That was when I started Letters Never Sent, as part of my grief therapy. They were mostly letters to my parents, talking about everyday events and wishing they were there, as a six- or 13-year-old who had just been sent off to a faraway school. By looking back at my experiences, I discovered what I needed was a closure to my beautiful childhood days, which I’d tried to suppress since moving back to US,” she said.

“Whenever people mention loss, what always comes to mind is the loss of a parent through death or divorce, a loved one, a pet, a best friend. No one talks of the loss that comes with the closing of an airplane door, when one leaves a place.

“A part of me died the day I first flew out of Africa. And I needed to mourn the loss in order to overcome the grief.”

Since then, Van Reken has been travelling around the world to counsel and talk about the impact of high mobility on TCKs to teachers, parents and policy makers. She was in Malaysia recently to conduct similar programmes for some international schools in Petaling Jaya.

Her mission now is to help TCKs and their families deal with the challenges so that they can use the many gifts in their childhood as well.

“With their international exposure, travelling opportunities and cross-cultural upbringing, most TCKs have excellent social and adaptive skills. They are also more likely to see people beyond colour, race and nationality and have a broader world view.”

She points out that these benefits can be harvested to benefit the child’s wholesome development instead of being allowed to fester into a life-long sense of searching for a place to belong.

So does Van Reken feel “at home” in Indianapolis, where she lives now?

“Yes and no, because I’ve got little bits of me all over the world. I’ve learnt to make myself at home anywhere in the world. All that matters is making the best of things right here, right now. I don’t try to fit in any more, now that I know where I stand as a TCK.”

As we parted ways, I thought of what Van Reken said about not knowing what to cross under “Race” in official forms. My children are of Chinese and Malay parentage, and I often wonder what they should fill in this section. Then again, I thought about us Chinese “bananas”, second- or third-generation Chinese Malaysians. Most of us cannot read or speak Chinese any more; we attend Malay national schools, yet think, read and write in English.

Then there are the people from Terengganu, Kelantan or Sabah who have settled in Kuala Lumpur or other parts of the country. Their children will very likely never speak the dialect distinct only to their state, and many will never know the culture and lifestyle of their parents and ancestors.

Are these children TCKs too?

Definitely. In today’s highly mobile and complex environment, perhaps there will come a time when every Malaysian is a TCK in one way or other. Except here, we have a different term for it – 1Malaysia.

■ ‘Third Culture Kids’ can be obtained through Navigate Together Sdn Bhd (navtogether.com). For enquiries, e-mail admin@navtogether.com or call Mike Cannon at 017-200 3685.

_____________________________

I have to say. Its been a long time since I read a really good article from our local newspaper. Well.. I liked it anyways. I know I have only been away for a very short period of time. But by the third year I was away, I began to feel alienated from my own country, some of my friends and even sometimes, my own family. I feel like I'm now beginning to learn to ropes of my own birth country again.

I have no clue about what have been going in the last 5 years and I'm slowly (but surely) learning about it. I have friends who are sick and tired of the Malaysian night life while I'm slowly beginning to enjoy it again. It's like my growing up process in Malaysia took a back seat while I explored life in Australisia.

I miss being away from home. There are times when I wish I was going back to New Zealand and enjoying a cuppa and a cig with Jess and Janice in Governors or visiting Elaine and Darren in Wellington or going fishing with the boys or just bumming doing absolutely nothing on a super boring monday night with CC and Eugene. Come to think of it, maybe its not so much the place but the lifestyle in general.

Maybe I'm still getting used to the working life while missing the student life of being away.

Now one thing is for sure, I'm moving out. Just the matter of when and stabilizing my finances then I'm outta there.

ps. Melvin turned 21. Tristan turned 2. I'm going to Langkawi. I still have a job. Amen.