A situation

It has been 2 days since I discovered that at least 2 people are struggling as an indirect result of me leaving and travelling the world. I know I shouldn't feel responsible, but I do. If not for me, 2 people would probably be happier now and be able to grow in their fields. I like these 2 people, very much so, and as with most people I like, I always wish the best for them. So it is heartbreaking to hear that they are not doing so well after my departure.

But then again, they are adults and I can only be responsible for them up to a certain extent. At the heart of it is this impossible question - should I have sacrificed my own happiness so that 2 other people can be happy? Sometimes I feel I have done an incredibly selfish thing just throwing everything away and galloping into the sunset. And yet again, sometimes I genuinely feel that it was necessary for me to do what I did for my own sanity, selfish or otherwise.

How many times have I heard people say that suicide is not the answer - there are always solutions. And yet, when I embark on a solution nobody seems to understand. And more appallingly, what I do to try and achieve happiness is never something in a vacuum, it inevitably has effects, one way or another, on the people around me.

The wall of certainty and self confidence that I so carefully built over the past 6 months is already starting to crumble after just 2 weeks of entering into society. But I still have another day. According to my experiment I need 3 days to get over a situation. 

I hope tomorrow, Day 3, I will have the strength to decide that what I did was what was best for me, and in the final analysis, as selfish as it sounds, that's all that matters.

"Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond, call me what you will!"

I never really wanted to have a career. At least, it started out that way. And then, the better I got at what I did, the more I thought that a career was what I wanted all along.

When I resigned, the question I asked myself was whether I could see myself doing the same thing I had already been doing for 10 years, for the rest of my life? And the answer was a resounding NO. 

I take more pleasure in telling people tales of my travels than tales of my work. That should mean something. I do not want to become fused with my profession so that if I am suddenly without a job or if I retired, I would be a nobody because without my profession I am nothing.

Knowing now for a fact that I could have had a career is sufficient for me. I do not want to be known for my trade. Some people end their lives being the top persons in their fields. Good for them. It's not for me. For me, a job is just to earn money to do what I really want - to explore the world. It's a means to an end. 

I want to be more than just the work I do. I want to be a real person. A citizen of the world, so to speak. Maybe I lack ambition. Maybe I'm a dreamer. Maybe I'm just burnt out. Maybe I am looking at the world with rose-tinted glasses. But if I am happy being this way, am I wrong?

4 things

I brought my mother to the supermarket last week to buy cheese cake and I waited for her in the car. I took the opportunity to blast rock music and sing at the top of my lungs with great panache as if I was the front(wo)man of a rock band and I was so engrossed with my role that I failed to realize my mother knocking the window and asking to be let into the locked car.

Upon which I did some thinking and as we drove home I mentioned to my mother that there are 4 things from my childhood that I still practice till today and that is 1) listening to rock music 2) reading books 3) devouring detective and crime stories 4) loving animals. To which my mother promptly replied, "you forgot being mischievous".

Leaving her observation aside, these 4 things are all that I have left of my childhood. I had many other interests as a child but as an adult I didn't always have the time to continue practicing all my interests. Work takes up a lot of your time, and in due course I had to give up a lot of the things I enjoyed doing, including doing nothing at all. 

Somehow I managed to cling on to these 4 things which to me are more than just things I enjoy doing, they are remnants of the person I was, and the person I like to be. They give me great comfort, as they always did. I feel like if I could only continue holding on to them, I would be ok. The day I stop doing these 4 things is the day I am not me. 

The long drive back

The last time I drove back to Kuala Lumpur, I was a bundle of nerves. The future was so uncertain. I was about to embark, for the first time in my life, on a solo journey half way around the world, a non-English speaking part of the world. But it was a good kind of nervousness because all fears and worries aside, I actually really enjoy travelling and in many ways I was looking forward to what was in store.

I drove back to Kuala Lumpur today also a bundle of nerves, but for diametrically opposite reasons. I start a new job on Monday. And this, to me, is scarier than my solo journey across the seas because whereas the latter brings me closer to my true self, the former tends to change me into someone else. The change is an evolutionary process so that you don't really realize that it's happening to you, and then one day you wake up with wings instead of arms and you ask yourself how the hell did that happen and how come I never noticed it before? 

To alleviate my fears, I keep telling myself that I can quit my job anytime, the moment one feather appears on my arm I can quit and do whatever else I want to do. The problem is, I told myself that 10 years ago too when I started my first job. And then I stayed 10 years. This really scares me.

"Forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much."

I conducted a small experiment the other day. Someone pissed me off with their comments. It took me 3 days to get over it. 3 days!

This is definitely something I have to work on. I realize that I'm too sensitive, that I get too easily affected by people's comments, warranted or otherwise. Whenever I hear something I don't like, 3 things may happen. 

One, is that I accept what they are saying because I know it to be true, and even though I don't like what they say I am calm, accepting, perhaps apologetic if the occasion so requires it. This is not a problem.

Two, I get angry because I know the statement to be untrue and my emotional white blood cells go into overdrive, rendering me seething with anger or disproportionately defending myself by way of a counter attack. This is something that I have to work on, but it does not concern me that much because I have actually become more patient over the years. The smallest thing used to send me into the mightiest rage and like a tornado, there was no stopping me until I had my revenge. I hardly do that now (that is to say, I still fly into rages, I still plot and scheme my perceived enemy's downfall, but I hardly ever execute - which I think is a step in the right direction) thanks for the most part to the teachings of Buddha and Confucius and "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves" and forgive all your enemies and all that. But this is not my immediate concern because it rarely happens these days, so for the most part I think I have it under control.

My immediate concern is Situation Three. Which is, when someone says something to me, solicited or otherwise, warranted or otherwise, and I am not sure when it is said whether what is said is true or false. Then this statement remains with me for (according to my experiment) 3 whole days. Most of the time I decide I am right, but it is by then too late to tell the person off or justify myself to the person. Sometimes I decide I am wrong (very, very rarely) but it is too late to do anything about it. And sometimes I decide it doesn't really matter what they have said. Whatever the outcome, I hate that it takes me 3 days to get over it. In those 3 days, I would ponder, eat, sleep, breathe, chew, spit, regurgitate the damn statement before I come to any form of decision.

I know I have to learn to let go. But I have no idea how. Anger is easier to deal with, sometimes I just have to run in the park and it goes away. But Situation Three is much more tricky. I think it is to do with confidence. I should have conviction in my own actions and words. Which means that I should think more carefully about what I say and do before I say and do it, so that when I say and do something and someone tells me I am wrong, I am immediately able to justify what I said and did because I had actually thought about it, and I was convinced that this was the best possible thing to say and do at that particular time. 

It takes a lot of practice I guess. But I have to start somewhere. I really don't fancy taking 3 days to get over a statement, especially if said statement is unwarranted or untrue.

The (in)significance of New Year's Eve

To usher in the New Year this year, I had planned to have a quiet evening alone with a good book and my new bottle of single malt whiskey which I bought in KLIA upon my return from South America. I had recently read in a book, a story of detectives working in Ireland during winter time, that there was such a thing as a 'hot whiskey'. I have no idea what a hot whiskey is nor have I tried it, so I was planning to experiment, and perhaps imagine that the cold bout of rainy weather we've been experiencing here is winter time in Ireland.

Until very recently, I thought that it was pathetic to spend New Year's Eve alone. Now, for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to spending New Year's Eve by myself. "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance," said Oscar Wilde. I am 36 years late. But better late than never.

Unfortunately it was not to be. I was, and still am, stuck in Kuantan due to the closure of the East Coast Highway as a result of massive floods in the East Coast. I never knew highways could be flooded (I thought they were named HIGHways for a reason); the only way back to Kuala Lumpur are convoluted, pot holes-ridden trunk roads that requires a 7 to 9 hour drive. How dreadful. And yes, I don't mind 26 hour journeys, as long as I'm not the one driving. If I'm driving, 3 to 4 hours is the limit of my patience. Anything more, I become restless. 

But it was a pleasant New Year's Eve anyway, eating ikan bakar petai with my family (of course, it could've been better if my younger brother was there too, but I'll take what I can get). It just goes to show, that sometimes the best laid plans can come undone by forces beyond your power. And sometimes, that may be a blessing in disguise.

List of books - 2014

My annual list of books read (and re-read) in the year 2014:

1.     Broken Skin - Stuart Macbride

2.     Cross and Burn - Val McDermid

3.     The Wicked Girls - Alex Marwood

4.      A Room Swept White - Sophie Hannah

5.      The Other Typist - Suzanne Rindell

6.      Lord of the Flies - William Golding

7.      The Metamorphosis and other stories - Franz Kafka

8.      After the funeral - Agatha Christie

9.      The Grave Tattoo - Val McDermid

10.     Wire in the Blood - Val McDermid

11.     Lovely, Deep and Dark - Amy McNamara

12.     Little Face - Sophie Hannah

13.     The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith 

14.     The Torment of Others - Val McDermid

15.     The Salem Witch Society - K.N. Shields 

16.    Hurting Distance - Sophie Hannah 

17.     Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

18.    The Secret of Chimneys - Agatha Christie 

19.    The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

20.    And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini

21.    Guilt - Jonathan Kellerman

22.    The Point of Rescue - Sophie Hannah

23.    A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah

24.    The Ocean at the end of the lane - Neil Gaiman

25.    Sorry - Zoran Drvenkar

26.    The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

27.    The Telling Error - Sophie Hannah

28.    Veronica Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

29.    Portrait of a Killer - Patricia Cornwell

30.    The Body in the Library - Agatha Christie (re-read)

31.     Lexicon - Max Barry

32.     A short history of the Argentinians - Felix Luna

33.     Broken Harbour - Tana French

34.     Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn 

35.     In the Woods - Tara French

36.     The Last Temptation - Val McDermid

37.     The Farm - Tom Rob Smith

38.     Andrew's Brain - E. L. Doctorow

39.    The Secret Place - Tana French

40.    One Two Buckle My Shoe - Agatha Christie (re-read)

41.     Evil Under the Sun - Agatha Christie (re-read)

42.     Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

43.     Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie (re-read)

44.     A Little History of the World - E. H. Gombrich

45.     Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie (re-read)

46.     Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie (re-read)