December Writing Challenge

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. ~ W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

 

 

The December Writing Challenge wasn't even to write a novel - Chicfuschia was not that cruel. For our monthly writing challenge, she gave us two options: one was to write 8 posts in a month, the other was to write and finish one short story by the end of the month.

 I was suddenly giddy: I had been meaning to write a short story all year long, and the fact that it was now a challenge made it so much more interesting. But there was always the first word: the word that was impossible to write.

 To coax my muse (ha! but I actually don't have one), I tried reading short-stories, the types I loved: the ones published in the New Yorker. I read two: one was Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood , and the other was Literally by Antonya Nelson.  I had read Atwood's works before, but that was the first time of my reading Nelson's; I couldn't help searching for more of her fiction on the net. And found one. And read that too. So in total I read three short stories, and did that help me write? No. Yes. No. I don't know.

Writing fiction is so much more difficult than non-fiction, I realized too late. Plus, I longed to write a story in the third-person point of view, which I had never managed before. So there I was under all the pressures: there were only a few days before December ended! I didn't want to lose on this challenge! I wanted to write a story in the 3rd person POV! I wanted the story to be beautiful!

 Desperate to start, I thought that perhaps I could use Atwood's first sentence in Stone Mattress for my story: "At the outset Verna had not intended to kill anyone."  Oh how perfect it would be, I thought, to have that line as the opener of my story, a nice pretty story under which title I would write: "The first line is taken from Margaret Atwood's story, Stone Mattress."  How....romantic. But nothing was happening. I couldn't write a word of my own; for days my story consisted only of those words stolen from Ms Atwood.

 Dang.

 Finally I took out my writing pad, and began scribbling in it. A story began to take shape, a Verna was in it, also a Richard. "Verna" I stole from Ms Atwood's story, while "Richard" was yanked from Ms Nelson's story.

 Into the story I put iron benches, dirty stove, old used bed, the things I knew from real life. It never occurred to me that writing fiction can be so exhausting - I have to admit I cried writing parts of the story, and felt stupid about it, and had to stop writing because it was so hard - and finally admitted that I didn't have enough "writing muscle" to finish a theme so big.

 What I wanted to actually capture in the story was a great loss, and the serenity that came with accepting a loss. Turned out that I'm too inexperienced to write fiction, not to mention such a delicate theme. I hit the "publish" button on my Fiction Blog, however, just for the sake of not losing this month's writing challenge. Ha.

 When I re-read it, I see all the ugly words, all the hastiness of an impatient writer, the theme being drowned in bad diction. I liked my other story, On Things Mother Said, better.  "On Things Mother Said" was written in the first-person, which was easier for me. Perhaps at my ripe old age, writing in the 3rd person is just too difficult. Hm.

 All in all however, it felt good to be writing. It felt good to be writing fiction. Already I am sitting with my notepad, thinking of other things to write about. 

 Ah. At a ripe old age, but hopefully still optimistic, I am.

Power, Imposter Syndrome, and Such

Somebody put a link to Amy Cuddy's talk on Ted.com, titled Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are, in an internet forum I visit almost daily, and I decided to click it.

Of course I like her mantra: "fake it till you make it", and "no, fake it till you become it", and I love that the usual "sit up straight and never, ever slouch" got scientific backing. I love how her research shows that by taking "power poses" for two minutes, your brain will be calmer, your testosterone will increase while your stress hormone decreases. I love the idea that asana, or yoga poses, help people dealing with problems in their lives. I even go as far as contemplating whether praying poses have more significant impacts on our psychological states than we ever imagine. It's not hard for me to buy the idea that "power poses" can help you ace a job interview.

The other thing that also rings true to me is when she mentions her struggles of not belonging in her university, after a car accident that lowered her IQ by 2 standard deviations. Her mentor urged her to fake it, and continue to fake it until.. you guess it: she made it.

Well.

To this day I roam the university feeling unvalidated, feeling like I don't belong. I have colleagues with great minds (admittedly there are also ones with small minds which I prefer not to write about), and I feel a growing fear everyday for having to read yet another complicated textbook or academic paper..understanding yet another highly complex mathematical equation.

There are so many proofs that I don't belong in the academic world, particularly in my field: I don't speak computer languages fluently. I am not inclined to spend hours tweaking maths formulas, not anymore. I absolutely hate long meetings where we talk about curriculum. What I love is reading, and researching at my own pace, and writing..at my own pace. This might mean I'm not cut out for the publish or perish nature of a faculty life.

Still, however, being with my students make me happy. Now that I have been teaching for more than 8 years in this university, I suspect that "I like being with my students" is not a strong enough reason to stay in this job. And, and: being so rational, so logical, I looked at Amy Cuddy's examples of power poses and thought to myself - heck, why not try them?

Let's see: higher testosterone level? I certainly want that, if that will help me conquer my problems and insecurities effectively. Lower cortisol level? Want that, no, I crave that. After all, an article about Cuddy's research in Harvard Business School website says "(cortisol is) the "stress" hormone that can, over time, cause impaired immune functioning, hypertension, and memory loss". Whoa, right?

And the same article points out that  "In addition to causing the desired hormonal shift, the power poses led to increased feelings of power and a greater tolerance for risk."

Very convincing. I have seen the charts and graphs and numbers. There are words like "standard deviations", "ECG electrodes" and I am impressed. Here are the numbers, if you'd like to see:

"Controlling for subjects' baseline levels of both hormones, Cuddy and her coauthors found that high-power poses decreased cortisol by about 25 percent and increased testosterone by about 19 percent for both men and women. In contrast, low-power poses increased cortisol about 17 percent and decreased testosterone about 10 percent."

I timidly (!) tried one of the poses earlier today. It was..well..the Wonder Woman pose. I didn't choose it because I longed to be a superhero with sexy attire, no, although perhaps some 25 years ago that idea wouldn't seem so bizarre to me. I chose it because it was the easiest to do, unlike other poses which requires one to sit back in a chair, feet on the desk.

"Lowering cortisol by 25 percent!" I told myself, hands in hips. (And feet apart). "For only two minutes!"

A few seconds passed. (Did I tell you this happened in the shower? I still haven't got the courage to do the Wonder Woman pose where another human being might see me). Okay, this is getting awkward, I later told myself. Before it was even close to 1 minute, I gave up. Not only that - I started thinking about a paper I had to thoroughly read for a student's research project, the problems with the journal I am managing -
all the reasons why I needed to panic and felt powerless.

Dang. Fake it, I told myself, fake it fake it fake it. Now sitting upright at the desk, I promise myself that it wasn't my last Wonder Woman pose. We'll see.

We'll see.

The Left Turn

I sure wished it wasn’t real, but it was: the traffic wasn’t moving. I repeat, was NOT moving at all. There I was, sitting in the car, in a one-way street chock-full with cars and motorbikes. It was 4:15 PM, an hour had passed since I left the campus. I was supposed to pick R up at his school at 4-4.30ish, and there was still a mile between the school and where I was.

I got a bit worried because, although traffic jams occurred in every part of Jakarta every hour of the day, this small back road that I took to R's school was usually spared.  I texted him, then called him, telling him that I would be late.

An hour later, I was still in more or less the same spot.

Two hours later: there was an improvement, I had now moved 10 meters forward, and stopped again. I turned off the car engine, and fiddled with my phone trying to get some info on what was happening in the road ahead. It seemed that there was a big bus breaking down some 500 meters ahead, and that was it. That was it. There was thankfully no flood, no landslide - yet I was so puzzled as to why this darn bus could cause a traffic jam so massive.

Three hours later: managed to move 10 meters further. By then it started to rain, and R called asking whether he should come look for me.  He thought he could get a motorbike ride to where I was, so at least I'd have some company in the unsettling traffic. You wouldn't be able to get here, I told him. The traffic jam was so bad not even a motorbike could move, and I wouldn't was us both to get stuck.

It occurred to me that perhaps I would be stuck there until midnight, but somehow for those first three hours I could keep my calm.  I fished out a magazine from the back seat, and started flicking through it.  But then it got dark and I was left completely alone. I couldn’t read, and I couldn’t listen to the radio either, because I had decided that I needed to turn off the car engine completely to save fuel.

By 7:26 PM I could move forward about 30 meters, and stopped again. Driving for 30 meters however made me so happy, I thought soon enough I would go past the darn bus and meet R. Not so soon, though. An hour later, at 8:31, I was still at that same spot I stopped at, and panic started to build up. 

“What is going on?” shouted a guy driving a truck next to me, to a passerby on foot. “Traffic jam in all directions!” the passerby said, “There was no getting out of here, at least until midnight.”  

It was then that I broke down; my exhaustion finally reared its ugly head. There was no way I could afford getting stuck there until midnight. For the life of me, at 5.30 AM the following day I had to go to the campus. There was a research report that was due, and a class to teach  - and I was hungry and simply overwhelmed. 

It was around that time when traffic at my left cleared up, and although I actually had to turn right, I called R right away and told him I would go left.  I simply couldn’t bear the thought sitting in an unmoved car any longer.  Switching to the left lane took some maneuvering; I gritted my teeth and told myself I could do it. A few more maneuvers in the small road with cars blocking my way and finally: home free.

It was so exhilarating to be able to drive at 60km/hour after 4.5 hours of the worst traffic jam I had ever had to endure. R, who had been waiting in a mall about 2 kilometers away from his school, met me at a gas station and took the wheel. Seeing him arriving at the gas station was a relief – I decided not to tell him that I had a breakdown earlier.

The rest of the journey home took less than an hour. The following day, despite my tired brain, I managed to turn in the research report and teach my class. It was the critical turn to the left, I told myself, that made the difference.  Taking  the left turn when you thought you were supposed to turn right, was sometimes the very thing that saved your day.

Between October and November

I found a lump.

In the days thereafter, followed what I would remember as a silence gripping my throat. Cancer runs for two generations above me, and this was enough to put me in my primitive survival mode: I researched and researched, trying to put a name on whatever it was that suddenly became a part of me.

There were unnerving tests. Cold, rude and dismissive doctors whose mannerisms prompted me to ask myself: am I ever that rude to a person in need of my knowledge? Have I ever told a student off simply because he doesn't understand my explanation the first time round?*  There were a lot of time spent nervously waiting - for test results, for appointments, for a kind word to assure me that this thing had a name, and its name was benign.

There was a time when after leaving the consultation room, R said I looked like I needed to sit down - so I did, and broke down instantly. The rudeness of the doctor was beyond my comprehension, and to this day I am trying hard not to even play out that scene in my head anymore.

There were days when I walked around the campus feeling everything was trivial: who needed theory and calculators when you knew something foreign was growing inside you? There were times when a panic attack surged: I tried hard to focus on my breath for fear that at one time I would just decide that it didn't matter whether I inhaled or not.

There was a day when I had to pitch for a continuation of my research project, and the reviewers tore me apart in roomful of strangers and colleagues. I sat and realized that I did not mind the fact that some old professors had taken the liberty to publicly call me stupid and worthless. I might be stupid and worthless as an academic, and the one thing I was sure of that evening was that I carried three lumps, not just one, in me.

At the height of my insanity, I reached out to my siblings, something I had never previously done whatever hardships came my way. Kind words, I learned, were what helped one through difficult times. Kind words.

I reached out to a stranger in Twitter, who had been through the rough journey herself. I wasn't sure what I was looking for: wisdom, knowledge, advice, kind words - perhaps all of them.  She offered every single one, and even asked to accompany me during the ordeal. Her messages to me were:

"Hey, please let me know if you need company. I would like to be there with you. In person. *hugs*"
"Anytime you want to have coffee, do let me know. My thoughts are with you. Chin up! :)"
"Just thought I let you know that I am thinking of you. Please keep me updated. *hugs* "
"Hey, you! How's it going? What's your update? Care to share with me?"

She told me a wealth of information: names and contact numbers of specialists. How to best approach the first screening. More importantly, she showed me there was a way to deal with this calmly, composedly. I admit to looking at her picture in her Twitter profile longingly, hoping to possess her elegance, and time and again I find myself surrendering to her serene tweets.


I know for a fact that it is not easy to talk about this - even being asked about it might push a wrong button. Therefore I opt not to talk about this with "real-life friends", instead I find comfort in the company of my "internet friends".

A month has practically elapsed, and now I am almost sure that I will be fine.  There are still appointments to go to - and perhaps follow-up tests standard to this condition. However the panic attacks are no longer here. I have begun thinking about writing again, a thought that never occurred to me in the month of researching and tests and hospital visits. I am trying to forgive ill-mannered doctors, and hoping to never exude such wasteful rudeness myself.

This November will see me in several places: I vow to finish reading 10 books this year (apart from school textbooks) and am now on my 8th. I will present my research in a conference at the end of the month. With the writing pact I made with my close friend of 25 years, I am hoping to write more. And, and: of course I'll begin shopping for worldly stuff again.

My constant companion for the bumpy ride was of course R, who suggested coffee to celebrate the word "benign" scribbled across my lab result. What I have always known was this: no matter where you are in the world, the sun is there - if only you knew where to look.




* (I took solace knowing I never did, and openly apologizing for my mistakes in front of the classroom is something I have done more than once.)

Looking Both Ways

Sometimes it is so clear that you are crossing a one way street - all the cars will be coming from one direction only - yet you stop and look both ways.

I look both ways often - into my brain and into my heart - when I know for a fact that I need to look only at one direction. For career choices I need to look hard into my brain - yet my heart often goes in the way.
For a long time I have known I love writing (I will always be the first to admit my sin of not writing enough), and I have known that I long to teach since I was 7.  My brain has guided me all along to my current job, but at the end my heart says the job just isn't enough.

I'll tell you what my day is like: in between classes to teach, students' projects to supervise, an academic journal to manage, my own research projects and the required volunteering/civil service, I am forced to mingle with colleagues whose company I don't enjoy. My brain will tell me to toughen up: they're called "colleagues" and not "friends" for a reason. But my heart tells me daily that since I spend most of my days in their company, one day I will wither. The price to pay seems too high - I am constantly stressed out about being in the same room with so many of the most boring, petty, old-fashioned people ever.

Something needs to be done, says my heart. My brain says nothing other than 'toughen up', for it knows I need to be here for another 5 years. It tells me that it's a one way street: there is no way I could get off it but to go with the flow. My heart however - it knows that I may wither - and suggests that I start my other longing: writing. Not academic writing though. No, that one is always done because I have to. The writing my heart suggests me to do is the type I've loved since childhood, but find no time to do: the writing about absolutely nothing, and everything.

After looking both ways I messaged a dear friend who also aspires to write, and made a pact with her to write four posts in our blogs this month. Doesn't look like much, I guess, but hey, it's a start.


Already I feel good about this pact, and its potential to get me writing again. I guess it pays to always look both ways, even if in your deepest heart you know you are on a one-way street.

DAY 31: What This Feels Like

By "this" I mean the writing of 31 posts, which is way more than my average of 1 post per month.

It's hard, but it's also something that is always on my mind as I go around doing my other daily tasks. I would do some house chores, thinking what to write when I have 30 minutes to spare. Then of course I decided that I didn't have those 30 minutes, hence some pieces were posted way too late.

I was also surprised finding out that I could string some words together despite having "no moods to write", I guess they're right about hunting down your muse and grabbing her by the hair. I hate some posts, but I do like some of those written after clubbing my muse and chaining her to my desk.

They also say the more you write, the easier it will become; and this hasn't quite happened to me. Somewhere along the way though, I develop a scary idea which is to start another blog. Scary, I told you. Maybe they should add that the more you write, the more ideas will flood your brains...and if you're not careful, you might develop Scary Ideas like starting a new blog.

DAY 30: This Sure Is Not Easy

I do have an idea all along that writing everyday is not easy. But I didn't expect it to be super hard, which it turned out to be.

I still long to be a freelance writer..but I think I am keeping my day job.

DAY 29: MAKING YOUR MARK

Last March marked my 8th year of being in my current job, a faculty member in a university. I cannot say whether I am happy or sad about the fact. The other fact is: for the next 5 years I have to stay with this university because it has paid for my schooling, back in 2007-2010.

People (career "experts", job counselor, your aunt) readily advise you to look back from time to time, thinking whether you have made significant contributions to your workplace. I rarely do this, out of general laziness mixed with long lists of things to do daily.  And when I do, I realize with horror that nope, I don't think I've made enough contributions to the workplace where I spend so many of my waking hours at.

All these years I have been focusing only to study more, becoming better at my field. I have set goals for myself, without thinking about the faculty at all. Of course I realize that when I get external research grants, the faculty gets credit too, so I guess that's some sort of contribution on my part. But what I have in mind for whatever project I am working on, is to build a bigger, better CV so that one day I can flee this place and work in a better place.

So there. Whenever you see me working diligently, typing a research proposal madly or doing endless simulations for a research: I am not seeking to contribute to my current workplace. On the contrary, I am preparing for a job in a better place. Ha.

Day 28: Making Mistakes

Things could always be worse; for instance, you could be ugly and work in the Post Office.~ Adrienne E. Gusoff


I made a mistake at work, again.

I just found out, halfway through marking the midterm-exam papers of my students, that I made a mistake of writing down A = B*C on the board a week before the exam. In my presentation slides however, I had correctly wrote A = B*D,  but still, a mistake is a mistake. Several students used the wrong formula in their exams, and it broke my heart knowing that no matter hard I tried to prepare my classroom materials, I still made mistakes.

As apparent from the first sentence of this post, this was not my first mistake. I once made a typo in a problem set for a class' midterm exam, years ago, and it freaked me out because of course the whole class couldn't solve that problem. Come to think of it, I made that kind of mistake twice. Or three times.

I am still sorting out why I feel so bad about making this kind of mistakes. I know it will be majorly embarrassing to own up to it in front of the classroom next week - telling some 40 students that what I had boldly written on the whiteboard was wrong. I also know,  that my students (or some of them) can understand the fact that even lecturers make mistakes, and can actually forgive me. However, I know some of them will feel helpless as in "Now how can we tell if what she is writing on the board is correct or incorrect?"-- and I know some of them will even talk about this behind my back, to my supervisor, to my colleagues, and continue to talk about it between themselves, long after I myself forgot about it.

All of the above may be the reason why I feel so bad right now, but there is something else: with every mistake I make, I feel like a failure. I know this might not necessarily true, but still. Plus, I have this strange need to appear as if I were perfect.

Now that I've written that last paragraph, I've gain some perspectives on this. Yes, next week I'll have to publicly apologize for that mistake and it'll be a major pain in the neck. Yes, some or even all of them might mock me, accused me of being incompetent, talked to my supervisor who would fire me because clearly A = B*D, etc, etc. But for the sake of my sanity, I have to be kind to myself and just quit trying to be perfect.

And whatever ugly path my students will put me through for making this mistake, I need to remember that quote from Adrienne Gusoff.

Day 27: To Do

Alleviate lower-back pain once and for all.

Put on my make-up any way I please.

Stand up tall, walk briskly, showing the world I have no fear. (Or: faking courage and confidence).

Reaching for a book instead of my phone, every single time.

DAY 26: Coaxing A Research Out of A Tight Corner

My research has finally found itself into a tight corner, refusing to budge.

I know I've been unkind to it: I purposely neglect it, go on with my routines, always thinking that somehow the research will unfurl itself beautifully before my eyes. And a research paper will magically write itself, and then I'll blissfully and elegantly will send it to a prestigious conference which committee will accept it enthusiastically, requiring no revision, even thanking me for sending them such a glittering piece.

Alas, that's not happening. I have only until May 8 if I want to participate in a conference in Bandung, and the research is still stuck in a tight corner. I am as usual swamped with my routines, and only started to look at it again about two weeks ago. I thought I needed to decode A = B + C + D, where B, C, D required lengthy calculations on their own. Then last night, when I finally figured B, C, D out, it turned out that I still couldn't get A. So there: stuck in a tight corner.

I got quite angry with it, but I figured there wasn't much to do. I would need to attack it through a different route, probably by using Seamcat first. But then there were so many questions flooding me - and I got angry again.

Maybe it just requires more of my time - the way a pet or a plant or a hobby requires one's time - before it agrees to leave that tight corner.

DAY 25: Lugging Books

It's not really Day 25, but you already knew that.

I watched a video of Susan Cain's lecture for TED yesterday, in which she said she once carried a bag of books to a summer camp.

Something in me stirred: I used to carry a book everywhere, too. Nowadays I rarely do, because Twitter has poisoned me so badly I almost lose the stamina it takes to read long passages. Every day of course I read textbooks and long articles to help me prepare my lectures, but what I really long to do is to read satisfyingly good, in-depth works of fiction. There is something serene, something calming I associate with reading fictions, particularly those categorized as "literary".

I finished reading a book of fiction in early February, so I have been going without my supply of fiction for almost two months. I wonder if that is why I feel very restless. Did I say I use to carry a book everywhere? I really did. There was always a (fiction) book in my bag whether I went to a mall, or to work. I used to book Saturdays for chats over coffee with friends, and while waiting for them in the coffee shop, I would devour my book. This was long, long before the era of smartphones.

One memory stays vivid inside my head: I once brought a Harry Potter book along to a job interview. It was an interview for a lecturer position in a newly opened college, and I was made to wait for more than 15 minutes for the interviewer. Of course: I opened my bag, took out my book and started reading. The interviewer walked in while I was deep in Hogwarts, and I believed she was surprised, or concerned, or both, when she saw my reading material. I still remember that interview, the chat with interviewer while my heavy hard-cover book was sitting nearby inside my bag.

Now, definitely need to buy more fiction books to accompany me around, if not to interviews, then to malls and coffee shops.

PS: I succeeded in that interview, a proof that reading a Harry Potter book before a job interview brings you good luck.

DAY 24: REMINDED

I opened my lunch box just now. It is now about 7 AM in the morning, April 24, so it's not really my 24th day of blogging.

I cheat. So well, uhm.

R put the lunchbox in my bag this morning, and in it I found a thickly buttered slice of bread (this nice bread is called Matahari in a bakery near our house), and several pieces of my favourite wafer.

I am reminded that he is a very kind man, and this kind man probably loves me.

DAY 23: QUESTION AND ANSWER

Who does the most cooking at home?
Who takes care of the garden?
Who spent hours scrubbing the bathroom two weekends ago?


Not me.
Not me.
Not me.

DAY 22: NO VIRGINS

I just watched a video of Lesley Hazleton, giving a lecture titled "On Reading The Koran."

Her voice is so beautiful, I think I could listen to her all day. I am mesmerized that one would actually take the time to properly read the Koran, compared the translated versions that is, when one was not even a student of philosophy, not even a muslim.

She really got her point across: that there were so many things we didn't understand about the Koran. On that famous quote about 72 virgins in paradise, she said, there was no mention of a virgin in the Koran. She also said there was no mention of the number 72. Paradise was defined as garden watered by running stream, 36 times. She said it made perfect sense to her, because she lived on a houseboat on the running stream of Lake Union. "But the thing is, how come it's news to most people?" she asked.

DAY 21: How They Write

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)

I read somewhere that John Grisham wrote his first novel longhand, on the train while commuting, using a yellow legal pad. Jaclyn Moriarty wrote in her blog that she wrote one of her books partly at home, partly in a cafe, and sometimes she sat in a cafe reading Gothic novels and books on drumming and woodwork. She called this research, a word so delicious I smacked my lips when I read that.

Before becoming a full-time writer Jaclyn Moriarty was a lawyer, and she has a PhD in law. She wrote her books while she was doing her Ph.D (or at least her first book), and that fact alone stays in my head ever since I found out about it. I spent my three years of PhD complaining about every little this and that. Some days, I was so depressed that getting out of bed was my only triumph of the day: I couldn't imagine somebody had the power to finish her PhD and write a fiction book at the same time.

And the commute to and from work: I spent at least 3 hours commuting every work day. I drive, so writing while commuting is impossible, but I cannot even conjure up a plot in my head while driving because it is..too much work.

Maybe I am just plain lazy. No wonder I am not published. Writing is sheer hard work, and yours truly still needs to grow a lot of muscles to do it.

DAY 20: ONE OF OUR POTTED PLANTS HAS DIED

I blamed the cats, but deep inside I think I am partly to blame.

Day 19: Driving Around

In the morning R drove me to work, it is his mid-term holiday week. He needed the car to go to the tax office, I was having a half-day work because later in the day I had to go to a workshop.

He agreed to pick me up from the workshop. What we didn't know was that flood from the day before was still at rage in places between our house and the university where the workshop was held.

I waited in that university, watching other people leave. Almost completely alone save for two college girls, when he finally arrived. And oh, the driving home took forever.

We went the usual way, and found out that it was heavily jammed due to flood. We took the highway: the sign said "Airport".

Only we didn't go to the airport. It was a long way, "west outer ring road", another sign said. I touched R's shoulder, telling him I didn't know where we were.

What I didn't tell him was that I felt safe, and as long as it was with him, I didn't really mind not knowing where we were.

Day 18: Trying To Sleep

"I'll tell you a story so boring you'll fall asleep in no time."

"Okay."

"This is about how they transported light in the 1800s. Using a bucket with a hole on its lower side, filled with water and they used this oil lamp -"

"But that couldn't have been an experiment about transporting light."


"Okay."

31 Days of Blogging, Day 17: The Mailbox

Alone at home last weekend, I heard a little girl approaching our gate, apparently to take whatever was in our mailbox. As her parents tried to get her off the mailbox, she inquired loudly: "Why don't we have our own mailbox?"
And suddenly I burst into tears. I indulged myself for two minutes, then went on with life.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 16: Trying To Listen

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. ~ Wilson Mizner (1876 - 1933)

Sometimes I think I am too noisy, I forget to listen to R. Deliberately for a few days I tried not to speak, not to start a conversation, so that he could start one. This had instead left a lot of spaces in our days, where we were both silent. A lot of things, however, were best left unspoken. Who wanted to know about my crazy middle-aged colleague? Or my crazy young colleague? And just as much as I wanted to know whether he had crazy people as colleagues in his relatively new workplace, I had this bizarre longing for him to tell me about them without my having to ask.

I do understand how genius it is wanting to know A but not asking about A because I think he has to tell me about A without my asking. Anyway.

Trying hard to listen to his silence, I got bits and pieces about his going to a concert a long time ago, when the electricity went dead halfway through. I learnt that the exhibition exam had so far gone well. I figured that life for him was going well, and unlike me, probably he was never worried about a thing.

I figure if I can keep my quiet and listen to him, this worry-free attitude will smear a bit on me, and then life will be all okay.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 15: Making The Words Appear

I am home alone again, R has to go to school again. No, it is not a Sunday school. He has to go because of the exhibition exam, again.

I am sitting at The Desk. Which is actually a dining table. Next to me are a bottle water R bought for me (so that I remember to drink plain water, not only coffee, throughout the day), textbooks for work, and empty yoghurt container. I am nervous about making the words appear, so I try to calm myself down by putting on my current favourite eau-de-cologne and red lipstick.

I think a nice scent and red lipstick on you will help sort out any mess. Now I wonder if they help to make words appear.

But now that I have had three paragraphs and am typing a new one, it is apparent that they do help. Now I need something to help me with my short stories. My short-story blog is very lonely.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 14: Without Coffee

This post wasn't really written on Saturday, but on Sunday.

On Saturday R had to go to school because his students were taking this exhibition exam, and I woke up early to see him off. I don't usually wake up early on weekends. (And neither does he).

I wanted to make us coffee but found out that we didn't have any in the house. No coffee in the whole house. I was devastated.

R left. I was left at home with a pounding headache, a result of no coffee and too much sleep on Friday. (On Friday, they let me go home at 1 PM because they were afraid the rallies protesting the fuel price hike would turn into riots). I managed to finish typing up a presentation for my Tuesday class, but the headache was very bad. Very bad. I couldn't go out to buy coffee because R took the car.

I just knew I had to be patient for just a few hours: I knew R would bring home some coffee in the afternoon.

I was right: at around 4 he arrived, with 4 small bags of coffee, and I slowly recovered.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 13: A Walk in The Rain

I walked through the rain yesterday, a heavy rain accompanied with harsh wind which sent too much water my way.

"Are you going home," asked people, standing under the roof of a smaller building which stood between my building and my car. Funny question, I thought, but answering nonetheless: "Yes I am. No I don't need an umbrella, thank you."

The rain was so heavy I got very wet right down to my bag and shoes (I had to walk through puddles to get to the car). I thought of a time when Mom bought me boots so I could walk in a puddle. I still remember those boots: red outside, colourful stripes inside. I still remember what it felt like, splashing in a puddle wearing them. I got into the car, thinking how different walking in a puddle felt when you were all grown up.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 12: On What He Says

"You'll want to try smacking your lips repeatedly. Like This. You know you do. You'll try it, when I am not around. When you're driving to the city, alone."

"Do you want spaghetti? Aren't you bored with it yet?"

"It is okay. No, you don't like it when I say that. It is not okay."

"It is okay."

"I love you."

31 Days of Blogging, Day 11: Loft

"Cityloft" I read that word to myself, a word printed across a big building not far from the office.

"I don't know what loft means", I told myself. "Maybe it means really small apartment." I then proceeded to tell myself that yes, indeed it meant a small apartment, but very expensive. Because it stood on the most expensive area of the city. Of course then I told myself that I could live there, in the "Cityloft" and then maybe I wouldn't have to leave at 5.30 AM to get to the office on time.

At the office I went to look for the meaning of "loft", and among others it was said to mean "a high place." Now it seems even more interesting. Imagine people asking "where do you live?" and being able to answer "In a high place."

31 Days of Blogging, Day 10: Shopping for Shoes

It was only in the last 2 years that shopping for shoes became a chore for me. Perhaps I have grown more stingy over the years, not willing to pay more than peanuts for shoes. Alas, I realize that shoes cannot be beautiful and comfortable and sturdy and cheap at the same time.

Especially if you have big, fat feet.

The quest for new cheap beautiful comfortable sturdy shoes started around October last year. I circled a big shopping mall with no result: all the beautiful shoes were expensive, or uncomfortable. The comfortable, sturdy shoes were ugly and expensive. Of course the cheap ones were both ugly and uncomfortable. Next, went to a market famous for its various shoe-stores. Nope, couldn't find exactly the beautiful-cheap-comfortable-sturdy combo, and by that time I had fully realized how ambitious I had been to come up with that list of criteria.

However: I ended up buying two pairs of shoes, cheap and nice looking, and they were even comfortable to wear. I knew that they weren't exactly built to last, but I figured that being able to wear them for 4 months or so was worth the money.

Last weekend I said goodbye to one pair, as it was broken beyond repair. I bought another pair, another cheap and good-looking and seemingly comfortable one. They might not be very sturdy, but by now I have grown to love shoes-shopping, so I won't mind shopping for another pair in the near future. Ha.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 9: On What to Wish For

As it is tiring to merely wish for a house in a clean suburban area overlooking a manicured garden, one can wish for a Monday free of traffic jam. And when it actually happened: the roads were almost empty, the rows and rows of cars nowhere to be seen, one got freaked out.

Where is everybody? I wanted to ask. Apparently they were too afraid to go out, the TV and radio stations kept hinting that riots were in store, too many rallies threatening the government not to raise the fuel price.

I drove along the empty road, thinking of 2005 when the government raised the fuel price by 80%. It was also the year when my salary was significantly raised to compensate for it. I didn't quite know what to wish for: perhaps for the government not to raise the fuel price, and my salary to be raised significantly again, and a Monday with no traffic jam. Wishing for them all seems greedy.

In the back of my mind a house with a manicured garden popped, and I told myself that maybe I was greedy. Strangely, admitting that didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 8: On Remembering

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.~ Woody Allen (1935 - )

R forgets things, as I do. But it seems to me that he forgets much more than I do. It is with horror that I witness his leaving the house with the keys still on the door, his forgetting to take home our laundry basket from the laundromat. Sometimes he asked what we did the previous weekend, not remembering anything about it. I am on the other hand obsessed with remembering, and with keeping track of time. If possible, I want to remember every movie we went to, down to the date and place. I keep ticket stubs, restaurant bills and such, to retain the memory of an event for as long as I could. I want to remember as much as I can about the time we spend together.

The things R seems to forget are the simple trivial things: he never forgets the way to a place, for instance, even if he only went to that place once, and that was more than 10 years ago. He never forgets which classes he has to teach in a day, which means he is unlike some professors who enter a classroom asking whether it is his class. He remembers details about his students.

I wonder whether forgetting things is in fact normal, and I am the one being weird for wanting to remember everything. Sometimes I think my obsession to remember every little details of our daily life means I forget to live the moment.

I suspect life is what happens when you are too busy to remember its every little detail.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 7: A Walk Inside

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be able to literally "have a walk in the park."

We don't have parks here. Actually there is one about 3 kilometers from our house, but I don't quite see the point of driving to a park before I can start walking in it. I suspect I am not making sense here, as usual.

Anyway. If you don't have a park, and you don't have a yard, and you don't have a garden, you can talk a walk inside the house. No, I am not mad. Well, I probably am, but people are still paying me to give lectures to youngsters, so I guess I am not that mad. Not yet.

How does one take a walk inside? Well, by getting off the chair and start walking, of course. I usually walk around the house with a broom (see, this is one way to avoid looking like a truly mad woman, but you can find other ways, such as, walking around with a mop). Our house is only 42 squared meters from the inside, including the bathroom where I don't think I should walk in with a broom. So this walk usually takes about 30 minutes.

This solitary walk isn't proper if you don't look all tranquil and dreamy. So, I will do it from time to time putting my best dreamy face, by imagining a life of a full-time writer.

You get to stop the imagining if you decide to actually use the broom and sweep the floor. I do that too, from time to time. But, but: I think once you get really good, you can do both in the same time. A full-time writer doing one hell of sweeping, someday I would be.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 6: The Distraction

You know the days when you're so stuck with one sad/scary thought all day, or many days, and you know that you just need to snap out of it at once? Maybe you don't. I just know, anyway, because that happens to me lots of time. An ugly thought will sometimes stick itself merrily in my brain, refusing to budge. After an hour or so, I will usually tell myself to "snap out of it". Only, it is never easy. (Maybe I am just not good with snapping out of anything.) However, it can be done. Sometimes.

One good way to get an ugly thought out of your mind, I happily report, is by thinking of a happy thought. Ha! The hard part is, fabricating a happy thought is sometimes tiring when you've been bogged down by the ugly thought for days. As I often lack the energy to create a really, really happy thought with an ugly thought stuck in my brain, I just use my distraction.

You see, a distraction does not have to be a happy thought. You can think of a face cream, for instance. I do it quite often. I read the ingredients of many face creams, to the point where I can almost memorize them by heart. I am well aware that almost all over-the-counter face creams share the same ingredients, so it is very amusing that each cream claims to be the secret to youthful skin/clearer skin/younger looking skin/anything.

Still, I find them very adorable. Face creams, I mean, not the claims that they make. I love the jars, the colours, the textures of them. And the promise that after just a week of usage, you'll wake up with a new face all youthful/clear/young/anything. And of course, I buy them from time to time.

Now. How do you use this kind of distraction? I mentioned it could help chase away ugly thoughts from inside your brain. Here is how you do it: when you feel that tinge of sadness, when an ugly and sad thought forms inside you, and when you recognize it gets bigger, almost swallowing you from the inside, think of one face cream, let's call it Face Cream A. Think of its TV commercial. Can you remember its tagline? Then you search for it on the internet, and read all of its ingredients. Those ingredients may be written in Latin or Greek or Kazumbwa (e.g: Myristic Acid, Decyl Glucoside) which make them even more useful as a distraction.

After that, think of another face cream, let's call it Face Cream B, and google its ingredients. This will help to prevent tears from forming in your eyes. Next, compare the ingredients of Face Cream A and B. How many of them are the same?

You see, now you're thinking that the two creams are almost the same, and you have been officially distracted. Your ugly thought has been pushed aside a bit, by the thoughts about Face Cream A and B.

Oh, oh. What if, after this, you're still sad and bothered, that ugly thought still find ways to spread in your brain? What if you start thinking of Face Cream C and D, and still you're consumed with grief, the distraction cannot compete with the sadness? I am sad to say that this may happen too.

That is precisely why I know all the ingredients of almost all over-the-counter face creams.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 5: Failure

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style. ~ Quentin Crisp

Failure, it is when one flunks an exam. When one doesn't get the job one has been eyeing, has been working hard for. When one runs after a bus and falls flat on one's face. When one works and toils and researches and does one homework dutifully and still does not get what one is after. Because the stars and the planets refuse to align, and there are too many stars and planets up there, I think I will never get them to align the way I want them to.

I think I know it intimately, failure, I know its ugly face so well. I thought about it while driving home from work yesterday. I know it so intimately I know when it has about to decide to visit me, I can hear its footsteps and smell its faint scent.

I am still thinking about Giuliana Rancic (and Marilyn Monroe). I wonder if they thought they were failures. I suspect they never did. "It's just life", I imagine they'd say, and then they'd go on drinking their coffee, looking gorgeous.

That's what I've been trying to do all morning. "It's just life," I've been saying to my coffee cup. And I went on to drink my coffee, although I am not looking gorgeous. Not at all. But it's just life.


I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. ~ Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962)





image from http://tips4health.net

31 Days of Blogging, Day 4: Serenity

Naturally serene, not me. Some people seem to walk, talk, move about with this air of serenity, I imagine they are that way because they have this perfect self-acceptance.

I imagine they look at themselves in the mirror every morning, accepting that their hair is too oily, or too dry. And that their skin is too oily, or too dry. That way, I imagine, they will be able to walk down the street to work looking serene, because they won't be thinking: damn my hair is too oily. Or too dry. You get what I mean?

Perfect self-acceptance, a concept so strange to me it hurts. But I do know how to fake looking serene: it is by holding an imagery of a garden in my brain. That is what I think about, walking down the street or standing in front of my classroom. A rose, a tigerlily. Perfect bushes and rhododendron.



I just found out (too late), that Giuliana Rancic has breast cancer. On top of the struggle with infertility. I wonder how she keeps her serene look. I also read that she has opted for a double mastectomy. I wonder if she has perfect self-acceptance. Or if she walks around, one step at a time, thinking of roses and rhododendron.


image from http://mostbeautifulflower.com

31 Days of Blogging, Day 3: On Imagining Things

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)


Drive to work everyday at dawn. No, before dawn. It's always dark when I start the engine, but it will get brighter about 12 kilometers later, when I drop R at the highway rest-area to get his taxi. Then it is just me, and 24 more kilometers of crowded roads, or intersections, or toll booth, or narrow lanes, or busy people getting of the bus. Every kilometer of the way, I imagine things.

Flowers growing in the yard. Magically. Without intervention. Didn't I once spend hours in the yard, planting flower seeds and hoping that they would bloom? Of course they didn't bloom. Those were forget-me-nots who didn't like the harsh sun of Tangerang.

Working in a nice buildings, having my own private office with wide windows overlooking a garden way below.. Didn't I use to work in such a building? It didn't last long, though.

Living in a strange city, where I didn't speak the language. This has partly happened. Would love to experience it again, as an adult. In the strange city, R and I will work down-town (which means we live in the suburb)but we commute to work by train. Like John Grisham, I will write long-hand on my yellowpad during the commute, producing stories after stories. Oh, I will furiously write everyday! Then on weekends, I will type the stories on my computer, at home where flowers bloom in the yard. Where I sit in my home office, facing my big glass windows. Which of course, open into the garden. Yes, I can call the yard a garden in that strange city. Because the yard is full of flowers, you see? And of course, my stories, they get published.

Busy roads, people getting into and off buses, motorcycles criss-crossing narrow lanes. Into an old unkempt building I drive into, where my cramped office is waiting for me. Not to worry, though. By tomorrow morning, I shall visit my home office in the strange country.

31 Days of Blogging, Day 2: Keeping Track of Time

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

I am obsessed about time. If possible, I want to remember exactly what I did on a particular day, or even a particular hour of a day. Between mid 2007 to mid 2010, when I was back in school and didn't have a rigid 7 to 4 schedule, the obsession grew so big it swallowed me whole.

I was so worried that I spent so much time "doing nothing" and "not making enough progress", that instead of doing my research, I browsed the net for time-management tools. The browsing, of course, took hours off my working time. Oh the irony.

Anyway. There are so many time-management tools on the net, and I tried several of them. I tried Joe's Goals, but it was very terrifying after only a week or so, because there were so many goals that I set for myself but didn't meet.

After a lot of stumbling around the internet (and wasting valuable time), I finally set to use the Pomodoro Technique, or using the freely download-able Instant Boss.

Oh and good old journals. But of course. I have 3 journals at a time, most of the time. One for my to-do list, and the other two for scribbling stories, thoughts and what-nots.

With so many time-management tools at hand, does it mean my productivity level hits the roof? As you've guessed: the answer is no. However, the tools feed my obsession nicely, and I don't use them to increase my productivity anyway. I want to remember how time moves. I want to consciously feel what happens when. With my tools, I can safely tell you that I remember my days well.

So, what did I do on, for instance, February 2, 2009? Of course I remember that day well. July 3, 2009? Also on record. I told you I was obsessed. Ha.

31 Days of Blogging, Day One : Warming Up for A Moleskin

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)



Here's the thing: I tell people who matter in my life that I long to be a writer. I tell them not once, not twice, but probably a zillion times. Some of them would nicely ask what I write, and I'd stumble for an answer. One or two of them, nicely still, would say that if I really want to be a writer, then I'd stop talking about it and actually write.

Admittedly I am guilty of not writing enough. I blame this on my fear of looking stupid: I wonder why it matters so much to me not to look stupid, when day-in and day-out I already project to the world how stupid I am by my usual foot-in-mouth actions. I want my writing to be impeccable, no typos, no grammatical mistakes, backed up by nice observations (!), all words sitting prettily next to each other with perfect coherence.

This fear can be paralyzing, especially when I don't really have to own-up to my laziness. It's not like an academic advisor would be scolding me if I didn't submit an article on time, or that I'd be dropped out of uni if I didn't finish a thesis after a definite time-frame (this was mainly why I could finish all my schoolwork on time: not because I definitely loved my research, but because I loved deadlines so much it helped me to forget my fear of producing imperfect manuscripts.)

Sometimes, I also blame academic writing. Writing academic papers and research proposals took a lot of my time outside teaching hours, and yours truly are too lazy to write at home. This means, according to a dear friend, I don't really want to be a writer. A writer makes time to write, this friend noted, a writer does not makes excuses not to write. To which I am guilty as charged.

So far, aside from the academic writing with their nice deadlines, I only wrote 1 tiny essay for a magazine, a short-story which was published 3 years ago (!), two blogs which are updated about 3 times a year. Yeah, that bad.

R bought me nice notebooks, actually, so that I could write long-hand, anywhere without a computer. I only started to write in the first notebook 3 months after he bought it. And the other notebook? Still empty, tight-wrapped, almost 7 months after he gave it to me.

This other notebook, is a Moleskin, my first Moleskin and I admit it scares me a bit. Everybody seems to buy Moleskins right and left, I know, but to me a Moleskin is...sacred? Especially because when he handed it to me, he just had to remind me that it was the exact type of notebooks used by Ernest Hemingway. Ouch.

Okay, nobody is comparing me to Ernest Hemingway. It's all stupid thinking that I'd be that accomplished, but I did spend time to think up a "theme" of the essays I dreamed to write longhand on that notebook. And of course, the vicious cycle continues: I got too afraid of writing I ended up leaving the notebook untouched.

This has got to change. So here is my masochistic way of straightening up my act: I am going to blog everyday for the next 31 days. Gulp.

And the fact that I fear looking stupid actually helps me in this project. Publicly saying (although, again, only 2 people read this blog but they are still...part of public) that I'll blog for 31 days straight and not delivering equals falling flat on my face. And that counts as looking very, very stupid.

I am hoping that once I strengthen my writing muscles enough, I'll be able to fill up that Moleskin. Somehow I even dare to hope that strengthening these sagging muscles won't take as long as 31 days.

And to that, I raise my glass.

A BANG

That is what I would have liked my 2012 to open with: a bang.

A loud one. Bang! A research proposal approved. Bang! Won a holiday to Hong Kong. (Why Hong Kong, anyway? But it's another story). Bang! Woke up with delicate, creamy skin, or a completely new set of brains, anything, perhaps even a booker's prize. Yeah, I can be immodest that way.

But no. Not a bang, no nothing. I can barely remember the first day of 2012. It was a Sunday, of course, and I remember watching fireworks until the night before from the window of my old bedroom. I remember how on Saturday the renovation of the bathroom in our house was finally done. But I don't remember anything particular about, I'd say it again, the first day of 2012.

It was with heavy heart I went through the whole year-end holiday. A colleague has purposefully postponed acknowledging my students' final project proposals, and things like this always cause me to lose sleep.

She did not want to sign the proposals, my students said, because "the proposals are muddy." I stayed up all night thinking of muddy waters, re-reading the proposals they wrote under my supervision, recognizing blurry sentences here and there. But muddy? Muddy, I thought to myself, was an evil word. Still I stayed up many nights trying to save the proposals from false accusations.

Anyhow.

I am happy to report that I managed to buy The New Yorker's short-story anthology to devour. For a long time I thought I was able to write short-stories, but read mainly novels. And like last year, I promised myself that this year I would really, really write short stories.

Deep inside I know that chances are, I won't write those stories. Out of the many resolutions I made last year (writing fictions included), the one I got around to do was getting a pap-smear. Which was not that bad an achievement, actually.

If I managed to write those stories, then at the end of the year I'd say, the year ends with a bang.

So here it is for all to see (okay, I understand that only 2 persons at most read this blog, but still), I shall make the time to write my fiction, and although the year started eerily quiet, it shall end with a bang.