nOw, cOunT wiTh mE..

dont be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

vegetarian restaurant, Lentil is anything, Melbourne

dear jess,

Have you ever been one of those indecisive people? I am. Or at least it takes me hours if not days to decide or come to a conclusion that appeases my own spirits and many others. Maybe that’s it. I just try to please too many. On days when I bother too.

I’m in the midst of one right now. I don’t want to be somewhere and I hope that Monday might open options to work on a shoot (yay a small part in a tv series I don’t know what its called) so I don’t have to say yes to going. And if it doesn’t, do I say no because I simply don’t feel like it or say yes and go to please a few or yes because at the back of my head going may be good for me, bearing the few days of loneliness and having people who rarely see me ask me my most dreaded question “what are you doing?”

Speaking of dreaded, there is this one ‘boy’ who smirks at me when I say I teach creative dramatics. *smirk* whats creative dramatics? *smirk smirk* How can you teach drama to a bunch of 13 year olds? What do you really do full time? *smirkkkkkk*. This is what happens when people return from overseas and get the same pay here. So don’t go telling me that being overseas is always good.

Okay, now that I’ve focused my energy on other peoples weaknesses, as I was saying. Decisions.

Sometimes it would be nice if decisions were one of those 5 second stomach pangs that Malaysians get for eating the wrong food up north. 5 – stomach hurts like mad, 4- you tell your driver to look for a toilet quickly, 3- driver steps on it, 2 – you look for toilet paper, last 1 second you run to the toilet like crazy and squat. This happens several times over my next two days in such pain (and I’ve had way too many in regards to that area) that is beyond unbearable.. my tush felt raped (sorry to be too crude it’s the only describable way).

So if those 5 second decisions were made, like jumping up to dance on the grease stage, or sing like no ones hearing and act like no ones watching, wouldn’t that be nice?

As I write this to you, seconds ago I almost drank a cup of one week old coffee as my right hand reached out for the cup, instead of my left, where the fresh coffee sat.

Maybe some decisions should be thought out.

I still love my in a heart beat decisions that make me dance harder and be less conscious simply by telling myself, I wont be here one day, I wont see this people anymore.

The truth is, I hate being on tv. Im super conscious of how I look. But maybe my new motto in life these days is to do everything once. At least. Well, maybe we can minus out that almost drinking fermented coffee, with a layer of only heaven knows what on top.

just give me another 5 seconds,

jess

roAd tRiP babY yeAh

the survival of humankind is not based on how much we know, but how much we are willing to learn.
jessica ong

dear jess,

hungry. nothing unusual there.

leaving you a note to tell you that im going on a road trip up north with the cousins, and the usual expectations of crazy fun and stuffing my face with good old fashion food.

you know. ive been thinking (with the usual hazardous results to that) i usually think of myself as someone honest and blunt and amazing vividness to tell you how i feel about you. its funny how if i turn the tables on that that can seem somewhat obnoxious. and that if the opposite person to me was the same, they would have equal amounts to say about me. sure i can't stand a load of people who think a certain way and dress a certain way and judge me in a certain way.

for example. how i never cap my 'd' in the dear jess and in every sentence begginings in this letter and i think thats cute, but the "geek" (there i go judging again) i know may say its messy.

sure there are alot of other people less smart than me and more annoying than me, but im definitely less smarter than others and more annoying than most.

one step closer to self actualization? no way. im still the self centered person you know. this is what happens when i think on an empty stomach.

yours on the way up,

jess

mY 15 seConDs oF coNTeNtmEnT

who of us would want his or her life summed up in one moment, one act?

- the father, Six Characters in Search of An Author, Luigi Pirandello

dear jess,

i walked in the rain today, with my big blue file over my head, after being interviewed by over 10 people under a 30 second interview. What was seemingly threatening turned out to be a pleasant day out rethinking my life.

As I was playing ‘shuffleboard’ (the true nature of the activity has been edited out for the possibility of being accused of being ‘wrong’) with the cousins, drinking coffee, and in need of absolute sleep due to the 3 hours of sleep the night before, I felt contentment. It was that moment where you don’t want to be somewhere else, you aren’t rethinking your past, worrying about the future and in that singular moment, you are happy and fully there.

Usually this is attributed to the cooling rainy weather, awesome company and the sudden lack of pressures in my little unshaken world.

Pirandello questions the attributes of reality, our roles in the world, as the play unfolds, the characters in the script come to live, arguing out the actors who play them on stage and question the script writer and director.

He says “can any of us be certain of our identity when others hold radically different perspectives of our actions, on who we are?”

And so, it is time to stop. To stop figuring out who I am, and even more so letting people tell me who I am and who I should be. If I never wanted to travel, and enjoy the fact that I would work at a job I don’t dread waking up to, come back in the afternoons and play shuffleboard with two other people who know me intimately and watch the birds go by that’s alright. Or if I wanted to go and leave all that is so good and sweet behind that’s okay too. But most of all if I’m at a point where I simply just don’t know and that’s fine by me.

I can’t and shouldn’t let people tell me that being somewhere else is better than being here, or that being here is better than being somewhere else. I may or may not find that out. But wherever I am, and in that piece of land that I consume I must in all its difficulty find little moments of contentment. If I can’t find it here, I wont find it anywhere else.

yours,

jess

dOinG iT wRonG, riGht?

dear jess,

Doing the right thing as they say is hard. Telling on a friend, the miraculous possibility of a clean politician, not being bribed, giving bribes or attempting to sneak away from a bribe. You know. Being Malaysian.

But doing the ‘wrong’ thing can be equally as hard, if not harder. Coming out and telling your parents you dig women instead of men, and vice versa, letting them find out that you’re smoking or have tattooed your oh so precious bum with a picture of a skeleton, coming into the office wearing funky pink and flip flops, dating and marrying someone who ‘doesn’t deserve you,’ not buying an apartment and settling down before thirty… the list goes on.

Socially wrong I would call it.

I suppose ill always be mystified and angered as well as complicated of being tired of living up to being and doing the right thing. In a turn of unexpected events I told someone today that no one influences what I do and who iam and that what I do is out of my own choice. Of course I do things that are “wrong.” And like all “socially wrongers” out there, we live behind the invisible shadow that we look like we are doing what’s right.

Doing the right thing is as easy as daisies in the social world. Find a job, a wife and an apartment and most of all don’t be gay. Don’t smoke, don’t be out till late on a weekday, and once in a while be seen at starbucks.

There is a thin line in the world of social innocence. Most of the time it is build by what our parents, friends, wives and husbands want us to be. Most parents will throw their hands in the air and go I cant do anything if he is a son, gasp in disbelief and blame your pals if you are a daughter; wives will threaten and sulk, whilst husbands will disapprove strongly.

Perhaps the hardest ‘right’ thing to do is to accept people for who they really are and stop trying to make them into that imaginary girlfriend, husband; ideal wife, boyfriend; perfect son, innocent daughter.

Perhaps the easiest ‘wrong’ to do in the world today is to live in our little untouched bubble named denial. In the meanwhile I’m thinking a tattoo on my cute tush to be somewhere else. Perhaps.

yours,
jess

fiRSt couSin onCe removed, remOved couSins fiRst?

dear jess

Its funny how we fervently protect things we don’t even know. Or didn’t even know if we knew. If you happen to be a Eurasian, have Eurasian friends or family, you will inevitably, I dare bet a lot of money on it (if i had alot of money), that at a Christmas, a wedding, a luncheon, or even in the toilet you most likely would’ve had or heard this conversation.

He’s your second cousin. No. he’s my nephew. First cousin once remove. Second cousin once remove. Nephew. Cousin.

It happens. So many times that if I hear it again, I thought my head would blow. The funny thing is I never hear it from my Chinese side, who all accept that my cousins son is my nephew.

Its funny how we fervently protect the truth we have no basis for.

Finally. I decided. Im going to end this debate to which, not a single Eurasian can tell you what exactly this son of my cousin is to me but can fervently tell you that he isn’t my nephew.

Its funny how this bunch of western heritage have implanted semi correct information about genealogy’s that come from western ideas. And somehow I get the feeling that this whole my nephew needs to call me ‘aunty’ is a Chinese thing with a lot of ‘respect’ embedded into it.

Results from my very reliable internet research has proven, that I am now nephewless. And I have a first cousin once removed. Hi, ian, first cousin once removed, wanna play ball, first cousin once removed, hows life first cousin once removed?

And I was so getting used to being called aunty.

Yours, losing a nephew, gaining a first cousin once removed, damn the person who thought this up,
jess

tHis muSt be GoD puNIshiNg mE foR beInG aN ATheiSt

dear jess

The sore sullenness of nothingness. Whilst people aim at the ultimate nothingness I live in it day after day, after day, after day and it doesn’t seem like nirvana to me.

As I lie in the uncovered sheets of my pillow, a sudden seriousness strikes me. One that lives without the drama, without the need for pity, one that tells me perhaps in reality there is really something wrong with me. Perhaps truly I live in depression day by day.

Have you ever noticed how your tongue becomes absolutely tasteless after a bad case of flu and nothing you eat or smell gives you pleasure. My life seemingly takes on that form these days. Everything I’ve claimed to be passionate about passes me by insignificantly. I don’t know what I want to do and perhaps worse still I don’t care.

Nothing excites me. Not the drive of a new venture, the attention of a boy or two, the claims of love and possible security, the possibility of changing, being, doing. Absolutely nothing.

It’s almost as if I’d be better if I was in the jungles of amazon looking in the eye of a cobra about to bite me as I think back about how much I’d rather be here.

I tell myself its time to grow up to get trapped in the world of nine to fives and that passion is a thing of the past that I should be thankful happened at all. Everyone does it -they go into the office, back home, a holiday once in a while and in a blink they’re ten years ago.

Ten years on. Ten years back. I’m indifferent to anything and everyone right now. And since I feel impassionate about anything in my life right now, I really can’t be bothered what you’re doing with yours. I’m sure its better than mine.

Perhaps it’s the realization that I haven’t anything to write, not even a mundane story of how work sucks and my boss should eat my shoes.

unfortunately yours,
jess

dRunK on DiaPers

dear jess

It’s the dawn of Thursday morning again. And the dawn of Thursday mornings always represents something. The wonders of my procrastination of the lack of planning for classes due in less than 12 hours time.

On grey’s anatomy today, Meredith talks about being an adult and responsibilities and asks how to make it stop.

Being an adult does suck a lot. And although it represents the wonders of choices that you can make without having to bother much about what the folks think, of course that’s just in theory, as always karma lives to haunt us.

Free sex means aids, single by choice means being ostracized, driving means paying for the accident yourself, working means paying back. The list goes on.

Of course once in a while we get lucky and dodge a few bullets, other times, like little children we just hide all our wise adult choices under the carpet and hope no one sees them.

And just like the adult I am, one of the things I probably fear the most are the decisions I made yesterday when I thought I really was an adult that will come back to bite me in the butt tomorrow, the day after, ten years later, when I do turn to become a real adult.

change me please,

jess

jiNGLinG noNa, Yo kErE kAzA

Dear jess,

I had an indescribable weekend that was filled with joy, laughter, anger, jealousy, awareness, fear, flattery and love. Its almost like a roller coaster that would’ve been better to watch than to be sitting in one.

My much anticipated weekend of Portuguese wedding (any Portuguese wedding is always anticipated) started and ended with four hour journeys each way of what usually is an hour and a half. Hence, me and my cousins found ourselves risking our eyesight’s as we made up in the car, and changed in jam packed highway toilets!

The wedding was awesome, with 1200people dancing, drinking and as usual making fools of them selves every once in a while. My jaw hurt from laughing and even the after parties were great.

The night was a downer with some misunderstandings that were eventually overcome. We left some people angry, some jealous and others just confused. But that should never be written.

Me and the cousins sat on the hallway at 4.30 am, after our failed attempt for early in the morning chicken ball rice. That’s when we heard the sound. Yes, a sound that wasn’t quite human. We took a one minute stare and we ran back in the room. Our hearts were beating fast and our hair stood on end and for those who will doubt me, it wasn’t a human-ish sound neither was it coming from someone else’s room. In a way it was a pretty cool and scary experience.

I love the beranyu’s (dances/dancing) and now, we can line dance to achy breaky heart that happens at almost all Portuguese-ish events. Cant wait to do it this Friday at the usual pubbing hangout for eurasions.

We guarantee a less than 5 minutes lesson of the dance steps. See you there?

Yours,
jess

prettyyy girlssss and me :)