Wednesday 26 March 2014

On money, again

The other day I wrote a post on the money's code of silence. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I will not aspire to something so ambitious as cracking this code because (1) I don't know how to, and (2) I don't really want to speculate, you know, for various undisclosed reasons that are primarily directed at my desire to avoid misunderstanding. There has been a few times whereby I was incapable of writing in a way that is understood in the way that I intend it to be. I would love to say that other people have an uncanny ability of taking what I said a little bit too literally during the most unfortunate moments. But it is mostly attributed to me not being bothered enough to explain myself, let alone my meanings. I feel so grown up; ten years ago, that sentence would never have crossed my mind.

Money is a fascinating medium: it can be so much more than its purchasing power alone. Money can change the dynamics of your relationships with people, money changes how people look at you, treat you, befriend you, money makes people behave differently, choose differently, live differently. People may even love you for your money, or stop loving you for your lack of money. It is a sad, harsh reality of life. I am tempted to run a social experiment whereby I declare myself a lottery winner and see how many people 'suddenly' want to catch up with me. I have not won the lottery yet, and given that I have written about this experiment here, chance of me running it is like pretty much zero.

It is not about my refusal to spend my money or even share it; it is about how others simply expect me to spend my money on them. This is something I find incredibly annoying: what makes you feel so entitled to other people's money. If I have to pay for the pleasure of your company, that is a fact that I prefer to know upfront, thankyouverymuch. Even when I had the desire to spend money on these people, their sense of entitlement usually puts me off. Seriously. Have we forgotten what it is to be courteous, or not even that, how about just being... socially acceptable?
 
Thankfully, these days I am no longer fronted by this issue on a regular basis. People I call my friends are those people who have been raised well and they would never, under any circumstance, demand that I spend my money on them. And if I do spend my money on them, because I am nice like that, they have the courtesy to accept and then return the favour. The last bit is something they don't have to do, but they always do, and this is something that is independent of how much money they make (or at least my estimates). 

Because of what I see in my friends, I like to go on living life, and observing other people's lives and coming to the conclusion that who we are (and more importantly, who we are not) has nothing to do with the size of our bank balances, savings account and investments. The older I get, the more I realise that, whether that is true or not, I am not so sure anymore.

I get judged on my monetary decisions on a very regular basis, by friends and strangers alike (case in point: buying lunch). If I were to be completely honest with you, I have also been on the other end of this judgment stick: I am guilty of judging people's spending habit. And when I say people, what I really mean is my friends, not so much some random stranger. (Although there was this one time whereby I got a compliment on the necklace I was wearing, which was like some random necklace I bought at a flea market, which was unlikely to be vintage, only to hear the same person calling me fake because in her opinion, those stones are not real turquoise. Bitch, seriously? After being affronted by something so unexpected, I cannot not judge.)

Because I don't care about what some random strangers are buying - it is their prerogative. However, if you are my friend and you have gone shopping with me, chance is that I have judged you based on what you buy. Lest you think that this is a bad thing, let me kindly remind you that I am not the sort of person who would let you make a bad choice. Seriously. If something makes your bum looks big, and I love you enough, I will tell you. I may even choose something more flattering for you. You're welcome.

Okay, yes, we can go shopping together! You can contact me via Twitter, @drbelles. You've worked out what Twitter is by now, yes? You can find a more superficial side of me in my other blog, and snippets of my life on instagram. You may even get a glimpse of the fake turquoise necklace!   

Wednesday 19 March 2014

On being a child and on getting married

AKA Why parents should NOT tell their kids to get married. And other things.

Being a child is hard. Child as in, being someone's child. You have a lot more responsibilities than you ever realised. People always say that it is harder being a parent, but there is no competition here. Being a child is hard, even when you are not held into unrealistic standards of filial piety, there is always this part of you that would forever perpetually seek approval from your parents.

The irony is of course these are the very people who claim to love you unconditionally, and some even go as further as saying that they know you better than you know yourself. While perhaps it is true, since most of us are in this never-ending journey of self-discovery, it is also not true at the same time because this is the journey that we have ourselves, something that our parents may not be privy to. Unless, of course we tell them, and they listen. Most of the time, they don't, or only pretend to. Because they think it is just a phase. It may very well be a phase on the grand scheme of things, and this phase is relevant for now, and that is the point.

It is easy for me to say this because I am not a parent and so therefore I have absolutely no idea when it comes to what parents feel about their children. This is absolutely right: I don't have the slightest clue, and I am not going to pretend that I do. We are all here in this planet as someone's child, and growing up with our (biological) parents or not, we are all someone's child, and we don't get to pick who our parents are. We got given these people as people who were supposed to feed us, clothe us, provide shelter and hopefully teach us some life skills in the process. These people are not professionally-qualified to do that, they are just life-qualified to do that. How cool would that be, if there is a school to be a professional parent?

Our society is rather strange that way, and I am not the first person to say this: you need a license to drive on the road but you don't need one to become a parent; all you need is an egg fertilised by a sperm.

***

I recently got married. The months leading up to the marriage were a very interesting experience, mainly because of my parents' pressure for me to get married. What can I say, they are old school like that. Apparently, for parents, having their children get married is such a GREAT life achievement, almost bigger than having a child itself. This one event is something they take so personally that they are so ecstatic that words can't even begin to describe this particular life achievement.


I think marriage is a very strange institution and our society places too much importance on marriage, or being married. That aside, sure, seeing your children happy is quite possibly one of the most important thing in every parent's life. All is fine and well, if they are happily married.  Or at least, if they are miserably married, they are oblivious to that fact, or ignorant of their own ability to enjoy marriage in a more... happy way.

There is this implicit assumption that the act of marriage will guarantee a lifetime of happiness, you know, the happily ever after and all that stuff. Because every story has to end this way, right. I know because Disney told me so whilst I was growing up, and Hollywood tells me so whenever I see a movie. Besides, there is nothing wrong with aspiring to a happy ending, right? It makes the suffering leading up to the grand finale more bearable.

I am all in for hard work, effort, and all of that jazz to make yourself happy. I do not believe that marriage is an end goal for the individuals involved in the said marriage, in fact, it is only the beginning of an on-going commitment to work on making it work. Marriage alone does not and will not guarantee you happiness. Marriage with the right person may result in that. Thus I personally believe that instead of pressuring their children to get married, parents are better off trying to increase the chances of your children marrying the right people, perhaps by giving them time to decide on their own.

Or in short, giving them some space.

God forbid of course that there are children out there who succumb to their parents' pressure for them to get married. Yes, there are, and there are plenty - that's what arranged marriages are. If these marriage work, in my opinion, that is because the two individuals who are stuck with the arrangements have decided to make the best of it, and therefore make it work. It does not only mean that their parents have chosen well; choosing well is only the beginning.

Besides, if it is true that parents regard their children's marriage as their life achievement, then it is only fitting that they take their children's failures in marriage as their life failures too. Especially if the reason that their children get married quickly is to keep them happy. It is only fair, no? You can't just cherry-pick the good ones whilst discounting the bad.

Of course parents will never say that their children's marital failures are their fault. I am yet to come across any parent who would take responsibility in the role that they play in their children's marriages, even when if it weren't for them, their children would not have gotten married in the first place. They just conveniently forget that it is at least partially their fault that their children were such in a rush to marry, and in the process, married the wrong people. Somehow, in their own twisted minds, parents just expect their children to just know that the persons they were about to marry were the right persons. And in the after math of the disintegration of the union, the parents response would be: why did you marry him/her if you didn't think he/she was the one?

Because you rushed me into it. Do you have amnesia?

Marriage is such a personal decision. It is an event that is celebrated because it is a big decision and your ability to make that decision is worth celebrating.This decision is yours to make, you and you alone can decide for yourself whether this is really what you want.

And if you don't want it, at least you can be honest with yourself. 

This story is too good not to share, and has been sitting in draft for months, enduring edits after edits and does not resemble what it was in its first draft. You can tell me your thoughts via Twitter (@drbelles). For other lighter stuff, head over to my other blog. Or for happy snaps, visit my instagram!

Tuesday 11 March 2014

In which I struggle to find a title, but we can generally call it self reflection

Something happened when you turn thirty. Or maybe I should say, when I  turn thirty.

And this thing is no ordinary thing.

The last time this happened was when I turned twenty one. I described it at the time as "I stopped caring". About a lot of things. I never knew I was quite the worrier. I swear it's not just about being an adult, or anything along those lines. In fact, the legal age here in the land of oz is eighteen. When I turned eighteen, well, it wasn't as exciting as I had hoped it to be.

Look, don't get me wrong ok. The celebration was nice, some of my friends rocked up and I am forever grateful. The rest of the people that rocked up was a combination of err.. let's just say other people. People that I may not recognise on the street today or tomorrow. Let's just leave it at that. But that's not the point. The point is that there was hardly any emotional growth on my part.

That growth started happening at twenty one. Dare I say this out loud: I only started liking myself at twenty one. I swear this has nothing to do with my losing weight and slimming down, then again, I would not be so quick in writing that achievement off. It probably has something to do with wrapping up an honours thesis and then graduating with honours. Oh those prestigious two words. I could have settled with "with distinction" but hey, what's one year of your life in exchange for "with honours". Yeap, I thought so.

I received the news of completing my PhD exactly a week before I turn twenty five. I rushed off from work to catch my PhD supervisor who kindly waited for me to rock up so that he could deliver the news in person. I love that man. That was a pretty awesome day. I mean, really, this day beats graduation day any day. In fact, graduation was ... errr... graduation. Being the second time around, Dad was not very enthusiastic. I don't blame him. I was not very enthusiastic myself. I think it was because my then-boyfriend brought me flowers.

So. When you're like twenty five and you got that one two syllables two letters word in front of your name, that is like, uhm, well, FRIKKIN AWESOME, but mostly ... scary.

Truth be told, if I were to live my life again, I would do it differently. This is not to say I regret my life and how I turn out bla bla bla, for fuck's sake, can I not choose to have different experiences? What is the whole point of second chances if you do exactly the same shit but expecting a different outcome?

I spent the first few years of being a doctor feeling like I was too young to be one. I don't doubt my skills but I was made painfully aware of my lack of experience, something that comes with being young, and really, at the time, was not something that I could change instantaneously. I mean, it is not like I could enrol in the school of experience and then graduate a year later with experience. There is no remedy to this other than well, living life yourself. And hopefully gain some experience in the process.

Having gone through all of that, I despise people who fault others for their lack of experience. It is like these people forget what it feels like being inexperienced because you are young. I have not come across anyone who is both young and experienced.

Turning thirty was the first time that I truly reflect on what my life has been all about and the person that I wanted to become. I guess it only took me almost thirty years to realise that I haven't quite asked myself this question to be able to answer it truthfully. It helps that I have someone who asked me to marry him at this stage because for the first time in my life, I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is something more to life.

A substantial part of turning thirty is overcoming this thing called fear. Of course when you actually turn thirty, it's not like you break free and you fly without fear. It's more like, okay, I am thirty and I am okay. I am actually more than okay. I mean, I am no Einstein, but I am not a junkie on the street either. So, I can't be that bad, right?



The thing is this: whether it's good or bad, it really is up to you.

At some point in the not too distant past, I stumbled upon a (real life) discussion about the moments that define you. In an era whereby our successes are often blown out of proportion (and thus modesty is fast to become a rare virtue), it is so easy to define someone by the things that they have achieved and how long it takes them to achieve them. To a certain degree, I believe that this is somewhat responsible for the five year goal question - what do you hope to be in five years time? More often than not, if we were to be completely honest with ourselves, the answer is this: I don't really know just yet. But if we were to say that, we are guaranteed to be deemed as clueless and unfocused, in addition to being unambitious. Sometimes, honesty is not the best policy.

I know how hard it is to answer the five year question, because there was a period of time during which I had to answer that question over and over and over again. Practice often makes perfect, or at least, almost perfect. You don't get used to being asked the question, given that, if you think about it, such question is incredibly confronting in nature. Its answer requires a lot of thoughts and once you've decided on the goals that you'd like to achieve in five years time, you actually have to put in the effort to achieve them. And the next thing you know, five years have gone by and you ask yourself this question: have I achieved what I wanted to achieve in the past five years.

At this point, it may sound like I am this over-achiever individual who has a tendency of over-analysing things. And perhaps it is true that I am, given that my friend recently told me to stop thinking about things, and instead, relax and go with the flow. It is no coincidence that every time I speak with her, I get the same advice over and over again, and it baffles me that she is not sick of giving me the same advice (motherhood may give you a higher patience quota). I am on the thinking camp, and I need to remind myself, that in addition to thinking, I need to ... live. A thinking life is ... useless unless you live it.

Recently I was asked to write a short bio on myself, which a seemingly simple exercise which required me to give a summary of what I've done in the past ten years. My resume is unconventional (imagine a (a)typical Gen-Y resume). And for the first time in my life, I realise that I quite like it. It is not just a summary of what I've achieved and where I've been, it is also very much me.

Throughout our lives, we have report cards to tell us what we've achieved and where we can improve. And then suddenly, there is hardly any report card to track our progress; but we have to start writing our own, this document called the CV, resume or whatever you want to call it. You have a lot more control than you think. If you are ever at a loss as to who you are, and what you would like to become in five years time, go back to this document and remember where you've been, and see if you like the person you've become.

Whatever it is you choose to do, just make sure that you'll like who you've become in five years time.

Ok, that was really long. You're still here? Congratulations! Any thoughts you'd like to share, please head over to Twitter. If you're in the mood for something that will make you smile, then head over to my instagram (warning: you may end up leaving hungry). Otherwise, head over to my other blog, whereby I talk about less intense stuff like fashion and shopping. Thank you for reading. I promise I will not write something so long in future! And yes, I've been told that I need to be more concise.

Friday 7 March 2014

Gratitude

One

Every so now and then, I get an unexpected me-day and find myself with some space to write. Me-days are getting rare these days, you guys, because I suddenly find myself in situations whereby I can't quite easily see the people that I love; unplanned interactions with these people are suddenly a thing in the past. I mean, it's somewhat manageable given I am a natural planner, but I do miss those days whereby we would just hang out, you know, for no apparent reason other than, well, we can. The remedy to rare me-days is to schedule a me-day (duh!). This year, one of my non-new year resolution is to spend more time with people I actually like, so I have begun the not-so-simple task of sharing my me-days. Hey, sharing is caring, right? Right? I have never regretted this move and hope to continue in future because these people bring so much joy and laughter into my life. I am lucky, yes I know, I am grateful, every day. Not all day every day, because, I do other things too, but every day.

Two

I have been really ill for most of this year, which is incredibly inconvenient on one end, but terribly nice on the other end. I often say that my family fusses over me when I am sick and I am home, but I don't get this privilege whenever I am not home. I get love from le husb, but he is not always around, you know, he's got stuff to do. However, when he is around, he does so much for me that I am actually tearing up as I write this. Like recently, my stomach has been playing up (my digestive system is very ... weak, for lack of a better description), and consequently, I lost my appetite. So, he took me out on an impulsive date nite to this restaurant that was recommended by a foodie, got me to pick the things on the menu that I wanted to eat, ordered all of them, and the amount of good food just broke the spell: the next day, I could feel that my appetite returned. Not so much with a vengeance (getting back to running would do this trick), just enough to get me excited about food again. The said stomach issue, however, has not been resolved yet - that would take time. One step at a time, and  being excited about food is a good start. As they have always said, when you love life, you love your food. Or something like that. Or it may be something that I said, actually. Oh well. I am thankful for marrying this person who loves me more than I love me. I know this because he loves me even when I don't like myself that much.

Three

The majority of issues that I have are of first-world nature. I have been told that I should feel privileged for having them, but I don't wish to seek feeling privileged in a way that screams desperate more than grateful. Human contentment is a muscle, an emotional muscle, according to me. And just like any other muscle, it takes regular exercise for it to be strong. Without such exercise, it will become weak and useless. I am glad that I have the chance to exercise these muscles on a regular basis. These are not the best of times and often leaving me feeling empty and worthless, which are not nice feelings, even when they are felt only momentarily. I wonder if this is what depressed people feel continuously - plus helplessness for not being able to snap themselves out of it. I am lucky to have examples in my life whereby I get to witness people who passionately fight for their own happiness. These people may not be saving the world, but they are saving themselves, one step at a time. I don't know if there is anything else more powerful that you can do for yourself. I have a lot to learn from these brave souls.

Four

Amongst the five languages of love, a lot of people mistakenly identify mine as words of affirmation. Their reason is errr... I don't know; but baby, let me tell you this: words of affirmation is not my love language. I don't care how many times you tell me that you love me, because I think talk is cheap. When you show me that you love me, by cutting fruits for me, for example, then I would feel loved, by you; it doesn't matter that cutting fruits is such a trivial thing for you (in fact, it is actually better because minimal effort for you, maximal impact for me). Yet recently I unexpectedly derive a lot of joy from these so-called words of affirmation. I realise that I have a soft spot for is people who write me cards - and no, they are not the generic form of "Merry Christmas - have a great one" or "Happy birthday, you old fart", but they are the blank cards filled with words that are written from the heart, the ones that you know perfectly encapsulate what you feel at that point in time that have been immortalised on a piece of paper. I know this because I have been the recipient of such cards lately, the kind that made me tear a little bit, and smile in remembrance. Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be a card, it can be a blank piece of paper, or even electronic ones: text message, an email or my favourite lately, whatsapp. Such a simple gesture can mean so much; simple may not always be the best, but the best must be simple.

Ok, now it's your turn to think about what you've been grateful for in your life. You can tell me about it via Twitter. Or even better, you can write about the things you are grateful about in your life, and then tweet me the link - use @drbelles. I am thinking of doing gratitude writing on a more regular basis, because I think there are a lot of good stuff in my life that I don't really notice, and even God forbid, take for granted. I am ashamed to admit this, but it happens despite the best of intentions. To see my attempt to un-superficialise myself, visit my other blog, and for happy pictures, my instagram.