Why Are You My Clarity?

It was mid-September 2017, and I didn’t expect anything the afternoon I turned on the TV to, I think it was Episode 11, of Hospital Ship. I knew at the time that it was Ha Ji Won’s (HJW) first new drama in about 2 years; since she’s my favourite K-actress, I had a vague interest in watching it. I had absolutely no idea who the actor playing the male lead, Kang Ming Hyuk (KMH) was, although I had heard of CNBlue (he’s the drummer, and I am NOT THAT OLD).

While it may seem from social media that I am an avid pursuer of K-dramas, most of the TV in the house has for a long while featured animated characters, usually talking animals or vehicles, and annoyingly positive messages about helpfulness and being kind to others – I’m sure I’ve complained about it enough of late. I’m lucky if I can keep my eyes open after the kids are asleep and I’ve finished putting the kitchen to rights to catch an episode and a half of Queer Eye, so you can imagine that committing 2 hours a week over four months or so to a drama is well-nigh impossible.

So there I was, thinking to myself that I would just watch Hospital Ship whenever I was ironing or it happened to be showing when I had a moment or two to spare, never mind if I ended up catching only about 20% of it. There have been precious few K-dramas, in the years that I have watched them, which have captured my attention, much less my heart, and in the past few years, I have been forced to be more selective than usual. 20% is still better than nothing.

Hospital Ship turned out to be only the second drama, after Secret Garden (funnily enough, another HJW drama, the viewing of which was instrumental to my finally working up the courage to leave private practice), to totally capture both my attention and heart. I was hooked from that first episode I watched: I caught up on all the episodes I’d missed as soon as I could, revived my Soompi forums account so I could join in discussions about it as the latest episodes aired. I followed live recaps (that’s when people, some with a knowledge of the Korean language, watch the drama as it airs on Korean television (sometimes illegally) and provide text updates about what’s going on) on Wednesdays and Thursdays, then streamed the week’s episodes once they were subbed in English (definitely illegally) a few days later. Jon tells people that he had to take his dirty laundry with him on his business trips during that period, and get his laundry done at the hotel he was staying at. (He was only sort of joking. Who ask you travel so much?)

I didn’t realise it then, and it sounds awfully lame and juvenile to say it (still, it must be said, because it is a crucial part of the background to all this), but on the day I caught up on all the Hospital Ship episodes I’d missed before Episode 11, I started falling in love with the pairing of HJW and KMH. HJW kicked ass as Eun Jae, of course, but there was, to me, an undoubtable, undefinable something about her and KMH’s Hyeon. I missed watching and commenting on Hyeon and Eun Jae’s first kiss when it aired; when I got round to watching the episode (14), I thought the kiss was Absolutely Beautiful. The behind the scenes (BTS) takes of the scene, when they were released, gave me such feels that I had to tell myself not to be pervy and rewatch the video more than once. Those in the Soompi Hospital Ship thread had by then moved on to discussing Why there was a kiss so early in the drama. Most were in favour of the (rather far-fetched) theory that the producers and scriptwriter were testing waters because the pairing had generally not been very well-received (K-drama land can be a cruel, cruel place), and they wanted to see if the audience would be receptive to Hyeon and Eun Jae’s romance*.

*For the record, I disagree with this theory. I think the kiss was written in so early for no other reason than that it just was. Also, due to some new advertising rules (though I’m not certain about this), each episode of a K-drama on the free-to-air channels in Korea is now half-an-hour long. Each week, four episodes are shown, two episodes per night, so nothing about the format really changes.

And just like that, I was on my way to being on the MinWon ship, despite what netizens were saying about the age gap (HJW is older than KMH by exactly 13 years), KMH’s relative lack of acting skills (not for want of trying and diligence though, I’ll give him that) and, above all, despite feeling that I was really Too Old For This S**t. I mean, come on, check out the definition of shipping here. Really? I had also been on and off the Hyun Bin-HJW ship post Secret Garden, and while I didn’t care either way after a while because there wasn’t anything much to link them together after that drama, and I hadn’t found the kiss everyone was so enamoured by (the one set to You Are My Spring in the last episode) anything to shout about, I had done my fair share of following a Tieba thread in MANDARIN, no less, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to dive into the world of shipping again (read: Too Old For This S**t).

***

Looking back, all this rather bizarre behaviour (if I do say so myself) could have been due to the fact that I was entering drafting hell when I fortuitously tuned in to Hospital Ship that Saturday. By the time the drama ended, I was deep in its depths.

I’ve always thought that having been in private practice, even though it was only  for two years, had given me an extremely high threshold for nonsense. Telling myself that it could be worse, I could still be subject to billing targets and have to do BD, has over the years helped me get through many a Super Sian moment at work. I’d also like to think that I am a fairly optimistic and undemanding person when it comes to my job. Let me have the flexibility to be there for my family, go to the gym at lunch, and I will be happy doing almost anything, sai kang included, that you ask me to do.  

But this particular bunch of clients left me completely and utterly defeated. The kind of defeat that came from attending a meeting where I had to force myself not to cry, and be civil and grown-up and mature even though Andrew had HFMD (again, at the time) and I’d kept Daniel home from childcare in case he infected his class. And I’d begged my also very tired mother to come and look after them for a couple of hours so I could attend the said meeting – whereat I soon realised that no one had bothered to give a single ounce of consideration as to whether the (much-needed) overhaul of the lengthy documents they requested a legal review of, which overhaul I had done for them, should be adopted. It’s not appropriate for me to say here why they didn’t do so, but a suitable euphemism would be “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?”**

**That being said, I feel like I need to say that this is not, by any stretch, an accurate representation of the attitude of public servants. A good majority of the people I have worked with these past 5 years care about they are doing, and value legal input they have asked for, to the benefit of their cases and projects. Unfortunately, as 1 Corinthians 5:6 says, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”

That was just one incident in a string of incidents that eventually led to my disillusionment with The System (being vague on purpose). I have as of now more or less learnt to live with it (part of that process involved me bursting into tears during a HTHT with my boss, how embarrassing), but it was in retrospect clear to me that Hospital Ship came into my life at a point in time when I really needed it. It kept me sane, being as it was a reminder that there are, after all, things in life as predictably comforting as there being a new K-drama every time one ends. Things like God, love, and that God’s faithfulness means he knows exactly what each of us needs to clear any emotional blockages we may have, no matter if we feel that whatever that is is “awfully lame and juvenile”. Yes, I also just used the phrase “emotional blockage”. For “…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)

I guess I just happen to respond to K-dramas starring HJW.

***

Hospital Ship ended in early November 2017, at which point I was still somewhat in denial that I was shipping HJW with KMH, and that perhaps what I had seen onscreen was them, not Hyeon and Eun Jae, falling for each other in real life (this is not a totally far-fetched thought to have – as I have said, KMH is not a very good actor, but he was excellent in all the Hospital Ship romantic scenes).

I had rooted for Hyeon and Eun Jae throughout the drama (as if there was ever any doubt they were going to end up together!!!), but I figured that they were just going to be my OTP (One True Pair) for as long as the drama was on air, and I was going to have to get over them after it ended. As much as some of the commenters on the Soompi Hospital Ship thread seemed inclined to ship HJW with KMH, we were by and large a bit doubtful about the ship ever sailing given their real life age gap. But one of them, with some encouragement, ended up starting a Soompi #0628couple thread for them, and I joined in wholeheartedly because she was such a sweet and earnest person, and most of the other people who joined the thread were pretty nice to talk to. Jon takes the car once a week, and I remember climbing to the upper deck of the bus, totally worn out and rather depressed, slumping in a seat near the stairs and posting long, emo posts in the thread on the way home. I was also spurred by various clues which I shall not detail in this post because if you are a shipper, you will already know what they are and perhaps have them all laid out somewhere in chronological order (I’m not saying whether I have one of those chronologies. Ha ha ha), and if you aren’t a shipper, you wouldn’t care. AND if you are a good friend in real life, I would have forced some on you for analysis, whether you liked it or not.

Shortly after the special episodes of Hospital Ship (those are episodes where they interview the cast about their favourite scenes, and show some more BTS cuts), I got to talking to V, one of the shippers from the Soompi threads, first on Instagram DM and eventually on WhatsApp. Despite our being in different time zones (the my afternoon is your wee hours of the morning kind) and our 12-year age gap (less than HJW and KMH! But Jon has not let me hear the end of it), she put up with my long, rambly messages when I was confused about what I was feeling, and was the first person I told when I finally emerged from the fog and realised that I was well and truly on the MinWon ship and I wasn’t getting off anytime soon, even if, like so many other K-drama ships, we were eventually going to be left with a dearth of clues and be made to rewatch BTS cuts and shipper-made videos on YouTube.

I had fallen in love with them, and was fairly certain, then, that I had witnessed them falling in love for real.

***

“Falling in love” is a feeling I never thought I would forget, but eventually and inevitably did. After all, the last time I had that feeling was 11 years ago. That’s not to say that I’ve fallen out of love over the years – if anything, I’m certain I love Jon more than I did when we first started dating. Still, there is something very special about the feelings in those initial stages of getting to know a boyfriend/ girlfriend/ potential spouse (if you were infected by the I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Not Even a Hint bugs, you should know that you must date with the intention of marriage or NOT AT ALL), and while those feelings can’t and shouldn’t last – I can’t imagine living in such tormented rapture – there is something about their ephremality that sharpens their poignancy, and they are not any less wonderful for it. Back in early 2007, I think those feelings lasted about two weeks, tops. I distinctly remember journaling about it at the time, asking myself how long they would last, recognising that they couldn’t last forever, indeed I didn’t want them to, and at the same time determined to enjoy them while they were there. 

I remember when exactly it was that I started having the feelings I just described: Jon and I were sitting at arms’ length (really!) on a bench at the top of the hill near what I must now refer to as “my parents’ house”. I was wearing a brown jersey dress with sequins on the neckline that I had bought from the now defunct Flowers in the Attic at The Heeren (I assure you the dress looked nicer than my description), and I think Jon was wearing his Guiness T-shirt (which he still has!) and jeans. It was all very sweet and lovely and innocently passionate and so proper, quite unlike my experiences in other relationships.***

***The moral of that story is listen to your mother, time will prove that she knows best about these things. Although maybe some of those things are best experienced first-hand. 

It was nice to feel like I was “falling in love” again, to be reminded of how new it made the world feel. As Eun Jae said, the sky was bluer, the trees and grass greener – it was like living in brilliant, saturated technicolour, the beauty of even the most mundane things enhanced manifold.^

^I am aware that days with no rain and no cloud cover in Singapore can also lead to this effect.

Sometime in December, when HJW was on her Manhunt promotion tour, she gave an interview to a Hong Kong magazine. She was asked about the feelings she drew on when she acted out the different love scenes in Manhunt and Hospital Ship (at least, I that’s what I understood from the Chinese translation of the Korean). She replied that she still did not understand love fully (对爱还是一知半解 was the Chinese translation), but rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb watermelon. I cannot remember exactly what it was she said about the feelings she drew on, for I was flummoxed by the first part of her answer. If I believed she had finally fallen in love for real, how could she say she did not understand love fully?

I couldn’t sleep properly the night the translation of that interview was posted on an Instagram fan account, thinking about it.

When I woke up the next morning, though, I realised that you can

look at love from both sides, now

from up and down, and still somehow

it’s love’s illusions [you’ll recall]

[you] really don’t know love, at all

I played the song a few times while I was, surprise surprise, ironing that morning – it was the morning of Jon’s brother’s church wedding, and later in the day, when we were in our car, parked on a hill (near our house this time), the boys fast asleep in the backseat, I was telling Jon about these things and my feeling flummoxed and all the time thinking how much lamer can I get but surprisingly, he just said yes, he agreed, we will never fully understand love. Not in our time on earth, anyway.

He asked if I remembered that when we were talking about whether to try for the baby that was Daniel, he’d told me to consider whether I really wanted to have children, because if I didn’t, then if anything happened to him because of the tumour, I could remarry more easily. I told him, truthfully, that I didn’t remember that at all; the only thing I remembered about that discussion was that I had really wanted to have a child because if he really died, then I would at least have a child to 做纪念, be a remembrance.

Love is, fundamentally, merely a series of choices. We cannot know what choices we will have to make before we have to make them, and will thus never fully understand love. Each choice we make brings us a new understanding of love; when we choose the people we want to spend the rest of our lives with, we are pledging that the choices we will make for them in the years to come will be choices that bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things, that we may be part of the many who have gone before us who have demonstrated that love never fails.

We then talked a bit about how the tumour had affected our lives. It’s something we don’t actually talk about very much, whether to each other or to other people; for me, one of the reasons is that given how everything turned out, I don’t think that we could necessarily be said to have endured a lot of hardship and I don’t like feeling that I am playing the C-word card. Not that people generally mean to do so, you know, but I have always said that Life Must Go On, and have tried my best to live that way. It’s not that it wasn’t horrible at the time – and I now have a morbid fear of medical check-ups, both mine and Jon’s, so much so that he has stopped telling me when his are until after they happen, otherwise I’d worry about it non-stop in the days leading up to it – but we were very, very blessed. I have not forgotten the kindnesses of the people around us, and all the coincidences that could only have been arranged by God.

We agreed that the discovery of the tumour, and what followed, had actually taken away something from each of us; later, he lost more of himself to work, and I lost more of myself to Motherhood. To avoid making this just another trite statement about “losing oneself”, I thought about what that really meant, and for the purposes of this post, I would define “losing oneself” as the state a person is in when they have yet to accept that whatever their loss, great or small, there has been a gain. Maybe the gain is less than the loss, maybe it’s greater, but it’s still a gain, a step towards maturity, and as a Christian, I would say sanctification.

Jon lost the youthful entitlement to take his health for granted, which entitlement had enabled him to whole-heartedly follow wherever the ambition that drives young men in their careers leads them without much of a second thought. I lost sleep, the figure I had before I had children, the ability to go for my favourite instructors’ classes at the gym after work, the freedom to work late and work weekends. It doesn’t sound like much, I know, and in fact it seems instinctive that those sorts of things are to be the first to go, when push comes to shove. Our lives, the foundations of our selves, are made up of the most facile things. Yet how intensely we yearn for them when we must give them up, how hard it is to accept that we had to.

Almost exactly five years after Jon’s first surgery, a K-drama led us to the realisation and acceptance that we had, in fact, gained a deeper understanding of love; a great, great gain, worth far more than the loss that brought it about, no matter if it was only a poor, meagre glimpse at the unfathomable depths of God’s love.  

***

My sailing on the MinWon ship was not always smooth. As V says, we got a lot more hints than many other ships, and I agree with that. For me, the rough parts were when I was emotionally involved in fan wars between shippers and a subset of KMH’s fans. A couple of days last year, I had to literally sit on my hands to keep from keyboard warrior-ing (I wonder how many people who are reading this secretly do it, though. It’s way too easy. Haha). I know, you’re thinking that I was probably about twice as old as the perpetrators of said fan wars, but V and I decided that there were a key few who were likely to be around my age. I just didn’t understand how anyone could be so petty, they made me so angry with their comments and actions. At the time I am writing this, there is one particularly tenacious girl who is still at it. The number of usernames she has come up with across social media platforms is quite something, despite moderators having banned her from the Soompi #0628couple thread a couple of times. She doesn’t seem to realise that her way of expressing herself gives her away immediately (she is clearly not a native English speaker).

We came to refer to that subset of KMH fans as the “Oppa-Is-Mine”, or OIM for short; V came up with it and the name is self-explanatory. HJW has her own version of such fans, of course, the “Eonni-Is-Mine” (EIM), who are somewhat similar to the OIM but are motivated by different things (as they are usually also straight females). Witnessing the fan wars, which were mostly between the OIM and MinWon shippers, was enough to give me an additional reason to want to stop at two children. If I have one more I risk it being a girl, and if she ever exhibits behaviour like the OIM and doesn’t show signs of growing out of it by the time she’s finishing secondary school, I know for sure I would not be able to deal. I’d be like (imagine Daniel and Andrew, their voices in perfect, eerily similarly pitched whininess): Why? Whhhyyy? Whhhhhhyyyyyyyy?^^

^^Which is not the way to deal with anything, that sort of thing especially. You would do a better job, I’m sure.

The good that came of my being on the ship has nevertheless far outweighed those rough moments, as evidenced by the section before this. Also –

I stopped killing myself trying to sub-2 at last year’s GEWR, and am strangely enough not sure, yet, that I want to give it a shot this year. ME! Who, just over a year ago, was hung-up and obsessed AF (pardon the French) about achieving this particular goal post children.

Clearance of the emotional blockage I referred to earlier meant that I finally had the emotional capacity to read and appreciate Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility, probably the first proper piece of literature I had read in a while. Potboilers and detective mysteries don’t count, you know that. Reading books that you know will really get to you isn’t a walk in the park.  

I finally took a break from Jon AND the kids, the first in more than three years, when I went to Manila by myself to watch the last of CNBlue’s Between Us concerts. The delightful feeling of irresponsibility when I went to the airport by myself at 2am to catch a 4am flight, leaving my children sleeping and blissfully unaware of my departure, is one I will cherish for a long while.

I agreed to go to Jakarta for a weekend with just Jon for his colleague’s wedding, when no number of impassioned pleas on his part had hitherto done anything to make me agree to take a short trip with him.  

Jakarta, December 2017

I made a number of Internet friends and met up with two of them in Bangkok when we all went for KMH’s fan meeting (it was in Korean with Thai translation, I was soooooo bored), and I still message V with astonishing regularity. Sometimes I am amazed by how many things we find to talk rubbish about. I was even complicit in Jon’s #YOLO and agreed to spend way too much money (because we booked everything so last minute) on our 2017 year-end family holiday to Taiwan.

And I also made one real-life friend at work, someone from another division, whose friendship has been a real blessing and was a source of brightness during an unusually dark period at work.^^^

^^^My being affected by Jonghyun’s suicide deserves a mention here, too. I wouldn’t have thought much of it if I hadn’t at the time been so into the K-scene. It was such a terrible waste of talent – I would have liked to have heard him sing Breathe ten years later. He struck me as a fragile soul who may have been better off writing and producing, away from the limelight. And yet he probably wouldn’t have lived his life any other way, and there wasn’t any other choice he was willing to make at the very end. It made me think about my take on suicide, as a Christian; to be honest, I don’t think I will ever have an answer that satisfies everyone, but I hope and pray that God had mercy on Jonghyun, on HJW’s brother, on Kate Spade, Anthony Bourdain, and all the other people, known only to their families and loved ones, who despaired of finding purpose in life, or saw no meaning in it any longer, and so decided to remove themselves from it.

***

As I am running out of steam (like that how to quit job and write full-time?), in this last section, I will proceed to paraphrase a bunch of people.  

I have no idea what the rest of 2018 will bring for the MinWon ship. Will we get an announcement of anything on 28 June? Does it really matter? My feelings about it have inevitably settled into a sort of demystification of an existing reality, much like my own real life love – I have readily accepted the beloved object in all its common reality, and simultaneously retained its sublime status. It is a love that is not painted with false colours any longer, as I have summoned the strength – or rather God has given me the strength – to translate the sublime vision into everyday practice (Slavoj Žižek, circa. 2004)#.

#I didn’t read Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, but it appears that Luca Guadagnino did, and quoted what I paraphrased in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Call Me By Your Name. I am acting yige cool only.

这一生志愿只要平凡快乐, 谁说这样不伟大呢? To wish, only, to lead an ordinary, happy life – who is to judge that as not being noble? (Mayday, circa. 2008, translation mine) 

But if HJW and KMH do one day announce their marriage, you know who will be unashamedly proclaiming it from the rooftops (ok, the modern day equivalent). Whatever OIM may (and will) say about their age-gap, whatever the EIM will have to say about KMH being a callow “idol”, the years have shown me that it is exceedingly difficult to find someone you truly love, that is, someone whom you would be more than willing to make the right choices for, someone you would keep on choosing for the rest of your life. If it was more than a fleeting fancy, if it really is true love, what right do any fans have to make such judgments? 

I know I said earlier I wouldn’t bore you with the clues we got (or I think we got), but it feels fitting to now leave you with one of them, because I know you are kaypoh like that, and perhaps like all highly delulu (that's shipper-speak for "delusional", by the way) persons, I need to share my delulu with others. Based on an informal straw poll of maybe the four friends whom I made to have a look at this, those who saw a blue and black dress have a better chance of seeing the reflection in the wine glass. 

Picture credits: On the left, @nainay1023, from @hajiwon1023

 On the right, @leejungshin91

Just One Last Time

For the past three weeks, no matter if my Fitbit tells me that I've had more than seven hours of sleep (yes, I am en route to becoming a Person With a Sleep Disorder Because My Fitbit Says So), I've woken up feeling like I'm hungover. I know, I talk a lot on social media about needing a drink, but most of the time I don't actually end up having one - unless you count the swigs which I took on Friday the 13th of April from the bottle of sake in the fridge I keep for when I'm feeling fancy about cooking (sake sake as distinct from cooking sake, which I also have a large bottle of and which costs a fraction of the price of the former and which I do not drink for fun. I have not sunk so far. Yet.). I  haven't even baulked at spending S$3.10 on ice lemon tea siu dai from Fun Toast at Star Vista almost every day of those past three weeks because it's the nearest place to the office that sells decent, proper gao gao ice lemon tea; on one memorable day I even drank it twice*.

I put it down to the fact that despite having my mum around some days of the week to help out - she doesn't stay over, though - and letting Them watch Paw Patrol, Max and Ruby and Dora the Explorer on Nick Jr from 7.35pm to 8.50pm most nights (I should do a review of cartoons soon; Ruby from Max and Ruby is, in millennial speak, I cannot) while I get the 1001 other things I have to do done, this #soloparenting business really does take a lot out of you.

*It also costs only S$2.20 at the Fun Toasts in the CBD. Why is this so? Also there is one particular uncle at the Star Vista branch who, out of all the staff there, is the best at mixing the ice lemon tea siu dai. I always feel like I have struck the lottery when he's on the morning shift. Some days, if I can hold out, I'll wait till he's around in the afternoon to get my fix. 

***

There's a poem called The Last Time which kept popping up on my Facebook feed a while back. I won't reproduce it here, but it's easy enough to find using Google (it's the one with the unknown author, and it's also likely to pop up on your Facebook feed again at some point in time). I identify with the sentiments expressed - briefly, you don't know when will be the last time your child will "need" you, e.g. to comb his hair, give him a bath, hug him to sleep, etc., so treasure each time they ask you to do so as if it's the last - but it has on occasion made me feel like rolling my eyes a little, and I have always wondered why there haven't been similar tributes to the last time parents, and mothers in particular, got to do certain things; things they can't do after they become mothers or fathers, whether by choice or circumstance. I'm sure there are, but they don't seem to be as widely shared as this poem and other articles of its ilk. Or are there? Have our own needs and desires become so inconsequential in light of our children's? Is it selfish of me to think this way? Has my Fitbit started controlling my subconscious? (A "lol" would be appropriate at this juncture, so, LOL.)

Last Friday, which was also the fourth consecutive day that Husband was out of Singapore and the fifth consecutive day that we hadn't had dinner together, I failed to find anyone to have dinner with, and so ended up at Roadhouse at Dempsey with Them because I felt like They deserved fries for dinner for having been fairly well-behaved throughout the week, and I couldn't bear the thought of eating McDonald's. I was driving to childcare after work and feeling a bit lonely and missing Husband and feeling some weariness at having to deal with Them alone again, and as I was waiting for a traffic light to turn green, I idly got to thinking about what I would have planned to do if I didn't have Them. The answer to that was easy, of course - it would have involved going to the gym and reading Donna Tartt's The Secret History, uninterrupted, thereafter**. Which got me thinking about how I didn't know, when it was the last time, that it was the last time I would go for K's 6.45pm RPM class at Paragon on Fridays. By the time I have the bandwith and time to go again, will the class still be on? Will it still be taught by him? I don't even remember when that last time was, or what songs were played. I do remember, though, that G used Laserlight for Track 3 at my request, at my second-to-last Tuesday lunchtime RPM class before I had Daniel, because that was supposed to be my last class before I popped. I remember the very last spin class by R that I ever took, on New Year's Eve 2013, and that he told us that he'd chosen all his favourite tracks, and the one he liked the most was Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love.

**I know I was supposed to say that I couldn't imagine life any other way, and while that is somewhat true, to say that I actually fully felt that way would be a big fat lie. Also, I'm very slow, but what an excellent book.

Small, inconsequential things, but nonetheless important and fondly remembered as part of my life Before Them. I do think it is important to remember who you once were, don't you? But that being said -

I didn't know when it was probably my last ever court appearance as counsel, in black and white, because I fully expected to have a few more court appearances before I was suddenly given medical leave during the last few weeks of my pregnancy with Daniel. I didn't get to sit in our Picanto one last time before it was traded in, or take a photo with it; that dear, obiang, orange little car, our first car, which served us so well despite it having less-than-stellar reviews. It took me a while to realise just how much I wore black and white for the first four years or so of my working life and that not needing to go to court meant I could buy more clothes!; I didn't dare to drive our current Avante until about 3 months after we'd gotten it. Too big. To this day, I still cannot parallel park it with the ease with which I parallel parked the Picanto - and all too soon, it will be time to say goodbye to it as well.

Before I confirmed my pregnancy with Andrew, I made sure to take note of every run I went for - what I was wearing, the weather, where I ran to - and every time I ate sashimi or drank alcohol, just in case it was my last. I remember the last run before I peed on a stick was in the morning, I ran one side of the Ulu Pandan Park Connector and crossed over the other to the office, and I was wearing a blue Adidas singlet. The last time I ate sashimi was with S at Sushi Goshin at Vivocity.

It just wasn't the same, though.

***

I don't know why I felt that I had to to write about all these things tonight, except that I did - a long overdue tribute to my lost Last Times, if you will. I feel something I can't quite define in words - regret, perhaps, at my not-knowing; futility, because those times will never come again. Is there a point remembering these things in such detail, and despite what I've said, a point in remembering who we once were? Not clinging on, you understand, because I am quite sure I am not, not anymore.

And yet.

Whispers of tomorrow echo in my mind
Just one last time

Taipei: YOLO with Two Small Children edition

Most, if not all of the articles which Google suggested when I searched “taipei with toddlers” were written by mothers who had put a great deal of effort into planning a trip well in advance of said trip. Their posts contained reviews of indoor playgrounds, the Taipei Zoo, and a ton of other kid-friendly activities and places to eat. Clearly, keeping the kids happy was the foremost consideration.

Those posts are well and good if you are the type of parent who is conscientious about planning family holidays and taking leave, and if you are generally more concerned about your child’s well-being on holiday than your own. However, three and a half years or so of being parents has shown that Husband and I are definitely not that type of parent; obviously, this is not going to be one of those types of posts. I should also add that we chose Taipei because I knew I was going to end up live-streaming the MBC Drama Awards on 30 December (I had special reasons for wanting to catch it this year – yes, okay, judge me – I acknowledge my facepalm behaviour) and I wanted to go to an Asian city so that there would be the right vibes when I watched it. Seoul was out of the question, somehow, because it was just too cold and it didn’t feel right to go at the time.  

Anyhow, for what it’s worth, since this was my first trip with the boys that I genuinely enjoyed (the first holiday we had as a family of four was to Bali, earlier in 2017), I thought I would write about it in case you have small children and are suddenly struck with a case of the YOLOs. Of course, if you’re reading this and intend to do some sort of “planning” based on our “itinerary”, you won’t achieve the same sort of YOLO, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The key to enjoying a trip with small children, I have found and as you will see, is to generally DGAF about certain things (there is no other way to say it but in this crude millennial way. I apologise for any offence this may cause).

I set out as follows a detailed summary of the events leading to the trip, and each day of the trip itself.

***

3-4 weeks out: Husband comes home from work one day, declares he is tired, and that he has applied for what will be his second block of long leave for 2017. Soon after his declaration, his leave is approved. Husband says, “Let’s go on a trip!” He is persistent, asking almost every day, sometimes multiple times.

Although I feel slightly resentful and put up a protest because I’ve lost so many work days during the year to HFMD (Andy Lau got it three times in 2017. THREE. TIMES. All mild, but the quarantine periods add up to more than a month of work days), other viruses, childcare centre closures and grandparents going on holiday, and now that Husband is finally on leave I can catch up on my work while he takes over some childcare duties, I eventually agree because I know in my heart that this is something God wants for me and the family. Despite the fact that I am also deep in the depths of drafting hell and all my other work has suffered greatly as a result and I have no idea whether I will be able to get documents out before the holiday.

N.B. I went to Manila the second weekend of December for CNBlue’s Between Us in Manila, and to Jakarta the third weekend of December for Husband’s colleague’s wedding, but those were just weekend trips, and much needed ones at that. If you had told me at the beginning of 2017 that I would have taken so many trips in December, I would have laughed in your face and told you you were mad. I had come to hate travelling, because of post-holiday laundry and a fear of terrorists and plane crashes. God had blessed me with a period of all-encompassing emotional release (I will write about this when the time is right) in November last year, and in such an unexpected manner; if I didn’t agree to this holiday, then what was the point of His opening my heart to simple joys such as this?

1.5-2 weeks out: I accept that I am still in drafting hell, and that I am falling sick because I am constantly worrying about the documents but also fed up with the entire project. I convince Husband to go to Taipei because it will have the end of year vibe the both of us are looking for, and point out that we have already been to Bali earlier in 2017. I am honest with Husband about the MBC Drama Awards and why I am probably going to live-stream it. Collectively, Husband and I baulk at the price of air tickets to Taipei, but purchase them anyway. I get my brother to research hotels in Taipei with the hope that he will be able to get us a family rate. He says that the only hotels where he can get us said family rate are too far out from the city centre, and because he is nice enough, he then helps me to search for a more central hotel.

Again, Husband and I collectively baulk at the room rates, but agree to get rooms at The Landis Taipei.

Five days out: Go to Uniqlo to purchase cold weather clothing for the boys.

Day of trip: I send drafts to my boss at 2am. I wake up to pack (the flight is in the afternoon, thankfully), and acknowledge that I am a bit sicker than I was before, and that my jaw hurts like crazy because I probably clenched it through the night worrying about the documents. As we get close to take-off, I decide that it’s time to start the DGAF-ery, and the taxi ride to the airport is a happy one.

N.B.: I did not pack the boys’ toothbrushes. They did not brush their teeth for four nights.

Taipei, Day 1: Nobody sleeps on the flight; although Husband and I do our level best, THEY do not let up. Daniel watches in-flight TV for most of it – he watched an episode of some cartoon I cannot remember the name of about 4 or 5 times, but it was a decidedly boy one, and then he insisted on an episode of Elena of Avalon or whatever it’s called, which I was secretly horrified by because it’s a show for girls! but a desire to get him out of my hair won the day. Again, I think he watched the same episode about 4 or 5 times, chortling every single time. Oh, to be three again.

Andrew lies down at our feet on the aeroplane, and also takes great joy in playing with the stuff in the pocket behind the seat. I neglected to bring hand sanitiser. However, as these activities occupy him for fairly long stretches of 10-15 minutes (my concept of time is warped), I shut both eyes to it (but not to sleep).

It’s around dinnertime by the time we get to the hotel, so we go to a nearby beef noodle place for dinner. Hospital Ship is showing on the TV there. The beef noodles are so so, but seeing Ha Ji Won and Kang Min Hyuk puts me in an even better mood. Husband is not amused.

Neither Daniel nor Andrew’s hands are washed before dinner, and both use their hands to shovel rice which fell down their fronts into their mouths. Daniel also eats rice off the slightly greasy table. The adults each have a traditional pastry for dessert, from a shop further down the road which sells savoury tau huay, jian1 bing3, and other such delicacies.

We return to the hotel, everyone has a warm bath and gets into bed thankfully.

Level of DGAF-ery for Day 1 (out of 10): 10

Taipei/ Taizhong, Day 2: After breakfast at the hotel, we head to Zhongxiao Dong Lu (made famous by the Power Station song) for a walk. We chance upon the Xiao Hei Ren Mee Tai Mak stall, and the adults have a bowl each. It is very good mee tai mak.

Best part of this activity: Lustily singing Zhongxiao Dong Lu Zou Jiu Bian over and over again with Daniel, and being together as a family in a foreign land. So much like Singapore, and yet so different.  

Daniel becomes fixated on taking the gao tie, so we decide to go to Taizhong. When we get there, we hop into the first taxi in the queue, and tell the taxi driver we have some idea of going to try some famous soy bean stall (which Husband visited when he went up for Y’s wedding earlier in the year). En route, it becomes apparent to the taxi driver that we have no plans at all, so he suggests we visit this Rainbow Village, then go to the Gaomei Wetlands, and end the day at the Fengjia Night Market. 

Seeing as we truly have no plans at all, we agree. Taxi driver insists that Taizhong is THE place to go to to “play”, so you may wish to bear that in mind the next time you plan a trip to Taiwan.

Rainbow Village: Only worth going if you are looking for a new place to take selfies. We spend less than 10 minutes there and take a token photograph because our taxi driver was so excited for us to go and we didn’t want to disappoint him.

Gaomei Wetlands: Andrew lay down on the floor of the taxi a couple of times on the way there, because the drive was so long. We half-wondered if it would be worth our while because the meter fare was quite steep, but whaddya know, we had an excellent time. The boys ran around to their hearts’ content, we had piping hot fries and fried chicken and grilled squid in the cold, and I allowed Daniel to drink Lemon Duo Duo (sort of like Lemon Yakult) from a straw which had fallen on the floor a few times because I essentially just gave up on maintaining hygiene standards in that regard.

Fengjia Night Market: We didn’t eat much, but Husband and I agreed the food may well have been better than what you can get at the Taipei night markets.

All in, pretty much a perfect day. Even though Daniel had to be cajoled to take the gao tie back to Taipei because he inexplicably developed a fear of it on the way to Taizhong, and on the ride back to Taipei, Andrew lay on the floor of the train.

Level of DGAF-ery for Day 2 (out of 10): 15. For obvious reasons.

Taipei, Day 3: We find out that W and YL are in Taipei too, and meet them in Ximending, where Ah Zong Mee Sua is had and enjoyed by all adults. We make plans to meet for hotpot at night. After lunch, Daniel asks to go back to the hotel to sleep but I’m in the mood for walking around so I go with Andrew to the main Eslite Bookstore where I purchase Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson) and The Noise of Time (Julian Barnes) because it has been a long time since I purchased any hardcopy books. For some reason, I feel like I’m on exchange in Beijing again, 31 going on 21 going on 22, walking back to my apartment at the tail-end of winter with J after we had ma la tang on a whim after dinner, from a dodgy roadside stall, sharing a can of Qingdao. That remains one of my best memories of that time. My feet are aching like they wouldn’t have ten years ago, probably from baby-wearing my fat baby, and I will never again have that lack of responsibility. But I marvel at how this is the first time in a long time, probably since we found out that Husband had that cancerous tumour (end of 2013), that I have felt so keenly in the moment.

I buy a bowl of savoury tau huay on the way back to the hotel. The pieces of you tiao have expanded and softened by the time I get back, but the taste of it is familiar, a cold morning in Chengde at a roadside stall, or it may have been night time – but does it matter? The clang of the cover of the pot as the stall owner removed it, the steam rising and disappearing rapidly in the cold air. Soy sauce, chili, fresh coriander leaves, a metal spoon with a shallow bowl.

We go to Man Tang Hong Ding Ji Ma La Yuan Yang Guo (Songjiang Lu) for dinner (W managed to get a reservation). Skip the Haagen Dazs ice-cream, the other brand of ice cream (it’s no longer Meiji and I didn’t take the name down, unfortunately) is better. The chocolate and fruit flavours (save for the pineapple) were good, the  latter having the right balance of sweet and tart.

Level of DGAF-ery for Day 3 (out of 10): This doesn’t need to be considered anymore, because I clearly gave up maintaining hygiene and being shocked by the lack thereof on Day 2. There were thankfully no episodes of diarrhoea on the trip so building immunity in this manner may not be such a bad thing, really.

Taipei, Day 4: Husband was worried that it would rain – we wanted to go to Danshui. I told him I was sure that God wanted us to enjoy this time together, and I was confident it wouldn’t.

The sky was somewhat overcast on the way there, but when we reached Danshui, and for a good three to four hours thereafter, the sun shone brilliantly, there was just the right amount of wind, and the boys, again, got to run around to their hearts’ content. We ended up doing the historical walking tour quite by accident (i.e. we just walked around and suddenly found ourselves at the attractions), which offered us some nice views of the bay (from Fort Domingo). We even “visited” Jay Chou’s high school (other tourists were talking about it loudly and excitedly). We ate some of the usual rubbishy things – quail’s eggs on a stick, pork wrapped chives on a stick – tried Castella cake with cheddar cheese (neither of us saw what the big deal was), Daniel got to try shooting a BB gun at some balloons, and after walking all the way to the Fisherman’s Wharf and taking a taxi back to the Danshui Old Street (I plead aching feet and baby-wearing), we ended our time at Danshui with a late lunch at Ah Xiang Ah Ji – homemade fishballs filled with lorbak, lorbak rice, smelly tofu and Taiwanese-style oyster omelette.

Everyone co-operated by falling asleep quite quickly when we got back to the hotel. I streamed the MBC Drama Awards while chatting with V on WhatsApp and eating beef noodles which Husband bought back, followed by Toblerone from the minibar. Ha Ji Won won Best Actress in a Miniseries for Hospital Ship and got a hug from SAEMONE, and it was a nice end to the holiday.

***

I think this holiday provided affirmation of some of my earliest ideas about being a parent, namely that it would take time to build a relationship with your child, because they are ultimately separate people from us, and that keeping at it through the downright horrible and exhausting times, choosing to love them and to be patient with them, pays off just as it does with any other relationship. I woke up one day and realised that I no longer thought of them as parasites but as people, and that was what made all the difference. 

At Fort Domingo

We Found Love

Last week marked the halfway mark of my following the Train Like A Mother Half-Marathon Own It! training plan. It also marked the week I decided to stop following said training plan because I was finally able to be honest with myself, and my goals. I realised that I wasn't enjoying running anymore, and my body was feeling the strain from the lack of cross-training. The training plan itself wasn't terribly demanding, with two hard and two easy weekdays with the option to skip one easy day, and one long run on a Saturday, but I had to stop RPM and cut down on yoga to have enough time to fit all the mileage in, get strength training done, and get some rest days. Jon was right, as he always is about these things - the point, really, is to enjoy the movement. I will still be running the GEWR in mid November, but I'm not going to tire myself out trying to sub-2. There's always next year, when I will be better prepared. 

Consequently, tomorrow is a rest day. The kids are fast asleep, Jon is on a business trip, a washing machine cycle is ongoing, and I am going to catch up on two episodes of Hospital Ship before going to bed. I could, of course, just log on to Dramafever right now, but there are words that have been on my fingertips for over a month now, demanding an audience. So here I am, trying to get all that I want to write about down before I have to hang up clothes and before Hospital Ship starts at 12.10am.

***

It has taken about three years, but I am finally starting to feel normal again. Whatever that means. 

***

About two months ago, I was idly scrolling through Facebook (when is scrolling through Facebook ever not?) during an ugh-I-am-so-sick-of-this-document moment, and it just so happened that I was met with a deluge of posts about babies and small children (or maybe the algorithm is biased. Maybe). Some of them were celebrating a birthday, others were just giving whoever was holding the camera toothless, beatific grins or starting to toddle about on chubby legs. So sweet! So cute! So loving! Don't grow up too fast!

Now, I have nothing against these posts. It is nice to see pictures of other people's cute, sweet, and chubby children, and it is nice to know that people you grew up with (but don't talk to anymore in real life, haha) are settling down, and experiencing the joy of having a child. 

But then I got to thinking about Daniel's birthday, which was coming up in September, and idly wondering what I would want to say on social media about him.

I came up with nothing. I couldn't think of a single nice thing I wanted to say about him. All I could think about, in that instant, was how my skin crawled the night before as he tossed and turned and fussed and kicked me, as he reached out his arms and demanded that I bao bao him. The battle we had had before that over the simple act of brushing his teeth. How all I wanted, desperately, was to be alone somewhere, preferably in a hotel room with snowy white sheets and a firm bed. Alone, and left in peace to fall asleep on my own terms. Was that so much to ask for? 

***

I was obsessed, in the year after I had Daniel, with getting back to the gym and running as soon as possible (if that has not already become apparent to you). There was the issue of vanity and wanting to "get back in shape" and also have social media bragging rights (being completely honest here. Don't tell me you have never felt this way). I felt somewhat similar in the course of the year after I had Andrew (that year having just ended in July 2017), but it was after I did the Income Eco Run earlier this year that I started to realise something was wrong - I wasn't finding joy in working out anymore, and it didn't bring the peace and satisfaction it used to. This was due largely to the realisation that I may have been free, truly free, to be alone with myself for an hour, or three, or four - does it matter? - but when I got home, I had to deal with Real Life. I couldn't accept it. It felt terribly anti-climatic, after the anticipation of a good workout, a race, the wonderful feelings during the activity itself, to come home to Lego everywhere, books strewn all over the floor, cushions piled up in a dusty corner, and in the case of the CSC Run, a crushed piece of Styrofoam (i.e. there were small white balls all over the living room floor). It wasn't so bad in Daniel's first year because he wasn't as inquisitive and destructive, but now it's like he and Andrew solemnly swear that they will get up to as much no-good as they can before Mummy comes home. I felt like I was being punished, in a way, for not being around to deal with the morning whining and milk-making. Why do small children insist on waking up in a temper and making their mothers deal with it? 

(Jon said my discontent and lack of joy with working out was due to a lack of rest days and perpetually low blood sugar levels from not eating enough. Maybe.)

(Yes, okay, that too).

And then, last week, after I'd finally given myself a break from running and had time to think instead of just surviving from the start of the day to my lunch workout to fetching the boys after work and coming home to cook dinner then deal with dirty dishes and bedtime then repeat the whole routine again for days on end, I realised that what I had always been seeking, been yearning for these past three years, wasn't the races or workouts themselves, but the feeling that I had before we had kids, the feeling before I got pregnant perhaps. When I was truly free to do as I pleased: the luxury of recovery after a hard gym session, a good night's sleep, a movie in a movie theatre at a moment's notice, staying up all night to finish a book, an uninterrupted meal with Jon. When it was okay to be irresponsible and sleep at 3am after watching one too many episodes of The Big Bang Theory because there was no one to worry about but myself (Jon could more or less fend for himself, and anyway, he was working way too hard back then. Which meant more gym and reading time). It's a feeling I will never have again, as long as I live, because I now have children. Sure, there will come a day when the boys will be able to clean themselves up after they poo, have their own mobile phones without any restrictions or checks, buy alcohol if they want to, move out, get married. But they will always be my children, and to some extent, I will always be responsible for them. Even if it's just something as simple as keeping them in my prayers and checking up on them once in a while, though I do hope we will be closer than that. 

Jon pointed out that a lot of the above was due to my refusal to hire a helper, to which I responded that it had, after all, been worth it. I never thought about the type of mother I wanted to be before I had children, save that I knew I would probably let them eat french fries and chocolate ice cream for dinner sometimes. Now I know that in addition to that, I am the type of mother who doesn't really mind cooking and washing up, and would maybe even prefer to do it herself. Most of the time. The best part is that it gives you the moral authority to let your children watch TV, shove and snatch toys from each other and generally kick up a ruckus over the sounds of the Dinotrux building something to save the day while you blithely ignore it all because hey, you have stuff to do in the kitchen and that's the only way to keep them occupied while you make sure that your husband has a home-cooked meal and a shirt to wear to work the next day. 

***

I did think of something "nice" to say about Daniel on social media eventually, although it was more "neutral" than "nice", and I didn't post it because it felt trite when his birthday finally rolled around, exactly a month ago. It was this: I prayed that he would learn to be obedient to me and Jon not because it pleased us, but because such obedience pleases God. 

Happy Belated 3rd Birthday, my FBC. Jesus loves you and didi, and is always with the both of you.