New Years Resolution

1. Spend less time on-line. Tonight is an example of what happens when I stay on-line for too long. I was “researching” hotel accommodation and then went off on too many tangents. I really can’t deal with random information over load. Now I’m suffering from insomnia, know too much about people I don’t want to know that much about and have a very sore back. The two hours of granny yoga (I went to a class run by my yoga teacher at her house and it was full of geriatrics) I did this morning – the calm I achieved…gone!
2. Do Pilates as well as Yoga. Was reading an article about how Pilates lengthens your limbs. Or at least creates the illusion of having longer limbs.
3. Reduce carbon footprint.
4. Be less suburban. Going to granny yoga today made me realise I really should go to the city to do yoga. I want more moves damnit.
5. Have a better sleep routine. I go a bit wacko when I don’t sleep.
6. Learn Chinese again. I have a Chinese tutor (former student). I have to call her in the new year. Maybe I’ll send her a text tomorrow.
7. Not worry about turning down play dates. L starts school soon. He will meet other little people.
8. Avoid buying stuff. I have a lot of stuff. I have way too much stuff. I’ve culled 4 bags of stuff. I am going to empty the junk room and keep it as a guest room.
9. Set up a blog. A real one. Under my real name. It’ll force me to think before I write.
10. Write this friggin draft of an exegesis by March so I can move onto other projects.
11. When i’m feeling fragile, I will avoid conversations with conservative naysayers.
12. I will drink more water and eat more blueberries.

 

Lullabies, kitchens and time challenged.

I was dumped once because I was time challenged.
Dumped by a boy,
who now that I think about it,
is like a big dump,
down the S-bend and into the oceans.
It’s kind of horrible to think of what we’re doing to the waterways
Algae blooms, disintegrated bread and plastic straws.
Bread is okay
It’s organic.
An apple is most unnatural when accurately sliced.

 

Hong Kong…

Just knowing Melbourne and Hong Kong are in my immediate life plan and that I’m going to go to both within the next 6 months has really changed my self-perception. I no longer feel as if I’m a mildly depressed housewife in the outer suburbs of one of a mining city.

I’ve decided to go to a conference in Hong Kong. I don’t get any funding from my university but it’s one that’s directly related to my research. That and I have been thinking about going back to Hong Kong for the past 30 years or so. It’s now or never. There were plans to take hubby and baby, but an 8 hour flight, Disneyland, mummy wanting to do some research/writing/work, Daddy’s first time in a big Asian city… just not doable in 5 days in the middle of the school term.
This will be my first trip overseas in 8 years. I had a really bad flight back from London back in 2002 and vowed never to fly beyond the equator again.
I don’t really know anyone in Hong Kong. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to work and live, but hadn’t really thought too much beyond dreaming about becoming “real” again…which I know isn’t going to happen because I’m illiterate in Cantonese/Chinese.
I’m looking on the map from a brochure I got at Flight Centre…I’m so excited about going, never mind the barbwire looking purple border separating China from North Korea…oh and they’ve left out Xingjiang/East Turkmenistan – which makes it easier to forget the Dateline interview with the Guantanamo Bay Uighurs who were wrongly accused, released but denied entry to most countries around the world, including Australia, because of pressure from the Chinese government.

What I love so much about Perth is what I hate most about it. The isolation.
I’m probably in for a shock.

I’m just looking forward to being somewhere less isolated and suburban. I’m really hoping it will open my mind a bit. I do feel I’ve become parochial and boxed in since I came back to lead the life of a suburban housewife. Sometimes the most exciting thing that happens in my day is having to think on my toes when my kid decides he needs to poo and I don’t have any nappies, wipes, toilet seats, or a toilet around.

I think I will go on this conference even if it’s simply an exercise to take my studies more seriously.

 

I want, I want…

My house is a mess because I have very little furniture! I need storage solutions…

Is this the humble Billy?

Ahh library book shelves…

 

Can’t do it all but that’s okay!

What happened to this post.

Well that’s all…can’t do it all, but it’s okay.

 

A month passes…

I had an interesting conversation the other day about concepts of time, abstract time, internet time, time and writing, how writing takes time.
I managed to get the day off today for some guilt free “me” time. I find that the only time I can have guilt free “me” time is when hubby is looking after the baby.
Since the last time I blogged, I made some changes to my schedule, wardrobe and am in the process of making changes in my kitchen. I spend most of my days at home in that space, so I may as well have a nice space. I have fantasies of having a white modern kitchen with stone bench tops and a kitchen bench workspace.

[sorry stole this from someone elses wordpress file]
It may take some time to make this a reality as tradesmen in this area are so busy and I’m not up for a DIY job. A dishwasher is also part of this fantasy. I spend way too many hours in a week washing dishes.

I dropped a day of work and will drop that final day of work next semester. I’m finding it really difficult switching from mommy-me, to work-me, to uni-me, to wifey-me, to play group-me, dutiful daughter-me etc…..sure I could just be me, but I’m afraid there is not a one-size fits all me at this point. Which is why I really need to streamline my daily activities.

I’m blogging from the library where I just picked up a pamphlet on mental health. It’s mental health week…According to this pamphlet in order to stay balanced once must:
Relax, talk, get involved, see friends, keep active, learn new skills, eat well and organize your time.
I do not do the last one well. I probably will have to make the most of the ical on this mac. I also need to find some more relaxation time and see friends. Thank god for facebook or else I’d have lost touch with a lot of people. I think I’m doing okay in the other areas though I have to admit I have been feeling a bit unbalanced lately because I’ve not been eating well.
Thankfully, I’ve discovered the PItango range at Coles. Pre-packaged organic meals. I wish there was a local range because I’m a bit xenophobic when it comes to imported foods. Still, I guess NZ is just across the ditch.

Found this interesting blog article by Justine Larbalestier on white privilege in publishing. It’s something that’s at the back of my mind as I plod along with my writing. I feel a bit discouraged by what she said about agents only taken on one writer of colour (token writer). There’s the argument that the more the merrier because then you have context for your writing. i.e. the fact that there are now PoC writing and getting published means that I don’t have to go back to the basics when writing about PoC – i.e. spelling everything out in black and white. I didn’t go out of my way to write about being Asian. In fact I hate the descriptor “Asian” because it lumps me into a category with people I have very little in common with. For me, it’s more of a physical descriptor – i.e. the way hubby would be described as “white”. After MJ died, I thought about how crap his music was in the later years as he tried to beat “thriller” and achieve higher record sales. I really liked “Off the Wall” and remembered what MJ being so sad that he only won the one Grammy because it was not a mainstream (white) album. So I just started writing something that was a bit closer to home. Now I’m thinking, I haven’t really written something that falls into the “third world home” – sad/bad/oppressed “first world home” – good/freedom narrative. In fact, it’s more of a “shit happens” type of narrative. Anyway, I’m rambling here – after reading Justine’s post I don’t feel very confident at all about finding a home for any of the stories except in “multicultural” specials. This article on the marketing of AA fiction was interesting.
So I’m moving onto my next project, a longer project I started a year back. A YA novel – which is how I ended up reading blogs by YA authors – and now that question creeps in again. Do I whitewash it? Can a PoC write about a PoC without getting into discussions on cultural identity?

I read Rey Chow recently. Ethics after Idealism. In her essay “The Facist Longing in Our Midst” she writes about “The Story of O” – not the French BDSM slave, but the token third world looking but middle class academic who fudges her way through an academic career by appealing to fetishists. I sometimes get so sick of looking at identity politics, cultural studies, race etc…but I can’t seem to avoid it. Chow’s work is the closest I’ve come to finding answers for my own questions. The problem with a lot of the previous theorists is that they write in a very different context to the one I’m interrogating. Let’s face it, I could have been O had I not given up on my Honours project.

At the same time, because of my complex background, aristocratic ancestors marrying povo ones, educated ones mingling with uneducated ones, slaves, landlords and the fact they were all sojourners, I can identify with both O and the third world she pretends to be part of.

I love Spring.
I really want to go outside and cycle around the coast but hubby is not in the mood.
Seems too nice a day to be locked up with my own thoughts and books.

Am feeling slightly neurotic but supervisor 2 said it comes with the territory. Welcome to the club.

 

Interracial dating…and how I met my husband…

I had an interesting conversation recently with a friend who is internet dating and says that only older, ugly guys or clueless, so not in his league types ask him out. He asked me  whether my dating experiences as a single, hetero, Asian female were similar. 

I was always very wary of dating yellow hounds when I was single. Maybe things are different now but back in my single days if you were an Asian woman with long hair, you would get approached by strange and mostly older men who thought they could get you to wrap your hair around their cock. I remember thinking, “for fucks sakes. Why do these freaks think that they even have a chance? Why don’t normal guys ask me out?”

I felt that being Asian meant that if I did not date within my culture, I was left with the slim pickings of dirty old men with mail order bride fantasies or nerds with small dicks who thought an Asian wouldn’t mind sleeping with a micro-penis. 

With hindsight it was probably because I had a “fuck off, don’t come near me” look about me and only stupid, egocentric, clueless people would approach me.I was so paranoid about being a fetish object to the point where I rejected people if they mentioned they had an interest in Chinese culture – which if I think about it now is a bonus since I do too.

**

Then, I met my husband through a friend. When I saw him I completely fetishized him. He looked like someone who stepped out of a Giorgio Armani ad. Then when I spoke to him he was too good to be true. He was either a genuinely nice guy or a complete fake. When I saw that he was just the nicest guy I’d ever met, packaged into one hot Milanese-esque package and felt the chemistry zing, ping and zang between us, I ran into the bathroom to check that I didn’t have raw salmon between my teeth. I knew upon first meeting that I would marry him and have his children. I even told my dying grandmother that I had met the father of her great-grandchildren and invited him to her funeral. He now regrets not saying yes. But we did not get together straight away.  He grew his hair too long and I met a couple of boys with shorter hair. Two years later we met up again, he had shorter hair, he was funny, he sent out signs that he was interested but not desperate, he smelt really good, he had good personal hygiene, he played up to his exoticness and I mine. We both wore contact lenses. After playing cat and mouse, we fell in lust, then in love,  confessed that we had poor second language skills, moved in, got married and ditched the contact lenses. No one talks to him in a funny accent about spaghetti anymore.

When he walks into the room I am always excited to see him. He makes me laugh but I make him laugh harder. His love for me is overwhelming and my love for him is infinite. He is also an amazing dad.

Sometimes you meet people and you feel a connection. If it’s not right it feels like a dull ache. But if its the right person you do feel the sparks and you find yourself grinning like an idiot even if you have raw salmon in your mouth.