I’m sitting at the dining table waiting for my baby to finish crying and drift off to sleep for her nap. I’ve got a half-eaten plate of fruits and Bon Iver playing in the background and as I scroll listlessly through Instagram I happen upon a comic about being in the car with a parent through the years, a short but wrenching comic about love and loss and dreams and sacrifice and the stupid things we do when we don’t know what to do with the unnameable feelings that knock around inside us like mints in a box. And the next thing I know I’m sobbing and my face is drenched with tears and oh? The baby’s stopp ed crying.
The sadness got me thinking again about an idea and image that’s been brewing inside of me – that love is a fearful little thing. I think we tend to think about love as a gushing river, wide and full and honest and true, but increasingly I feel like love is less like the waters and more like the little fish that gather in the still, silty little pools by the shore, frightened and flighty and powerless against the torrents beyond. It’s fear of losing them that makes me lash out at my parents when they make questionable life choices or don’t take enough care of themselves. It’s the terror when I zoom in on the baby monitor and think I don’t see her breathing. The fist tightening around my heart when I see my husband shut off because I’m being careless with the mints in my box, laying brick after invisible brick till his fortress is impregnable.
The little fish, I keep seeing them in my mind. They are a boring brown and have anxious, doleful eyes and little fins that flap relentlessly to stay in the same spot. When did love and fear become two sides of the same coin? Perhaps it has always been the case and I just never looked carefully enough at the coins when I had to pay up.
I don’t think it’s an over-exaggeration to say that Haruki Murakami’s writing was the fulcrum of my twenties. I started when I was at university in London, after I picked up ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’ from a box of books in Portobello Market. It was a beguiling mix of mystery, magic and romance, with elements of both historical drama and the occult (Years later, I would discover that this was the first full novel Murakami had written, and was therefore a serendipitously fitting place to start.) I was hooked. Over the next few years I hunted down everything he had written (and was writing – he is after all, still very much alive). The pile of Murakamis on my windowsill followed me back to Singapore and continued to grow. Fiction and non-fiction, I read them all. I wore my favourites thin, weathered from countless dog ears and being lugged around as reading material for my daily commutes. When I couldn’t sleep, I would crack open a book of short stories under the tungsten glow of a nightlight.
University was an extraordinarily transformative time for me. Most things I knew or assumed about life and the world were being systematically deconstructed, in the rubble of which I had the opportunity and freedom to put together experimental new versions of me. I slid headlong into the identities laid out like clothes on a rack, discovering the spaces available for me to inhabit in the different worlds I revolved through. Art school was the ultimate playground for identity – anyone could be anybody and anything, as long as it wasn’t boring. This kaleidoscopic state of flux was perfectly complemented by Murakami’s intrepid exploration of the self, full of suggestive but vague symbols for the complexity of an inner world. Through the lens of his (often nameless) narrators, I felt like someone was sticking a gloved hand deep into the messy whirlpool of my consciousness, extracting shreds of debris into the light and examining them for meaning.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when the charm of it all began to fade. From the vantage point of my late twenties, the vagueness of the plots that I’d found so enthralling and mysterious became convenient ways to avoid the need for more consummate resolution. The recurring tropes got old. It became clear that most of the female protagonists had serious mental health issues. I wondered if my disenchantment was a function of blossoming clarity, or the death of something from my youth. Or both. And I’m not sure if I liked this new me or not.
Despite all that, I was already stuck in pretty deep, so in the name of being comprehensive I kept up with my record of reading everything Murakami wrote. There were gems, mostly non-fiction. A beautiful and poignant piece in Granta about taking a long walk through his hometown in Kobe. The fiction in recent years, however, has all been quite disappointing. The quietness and isolation so integral to Murakami’s worlds suffer in the light of the constant and unbridled connectivity of contemporary existence. Even the short story ‘Drive my Car’, which became enough of a hit to be turned into an extremely long film, was bland for my taste.
Ever the optimist, I started ‘The City and its Uncertain Walls’ – Murakami’s latest – with some eagerness. J is my great ally in Project Murakami – he found me the edition of Granta with the walking piece, and he bought me this book too. I’m not done, but so far it just reads like a poor amalgamation of stories he’s written before. Most obviously, the ominous and near-desolate town of ‘Hard Boiled Wonderland’, with its shape-shifting wall, library of dreams, and herds of unicorns (or ‘beasts with one horn’). The troubled young female protagonist of ‘Norwegian Wood’. The disappearing act of ‘South of the Border’, ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’ and bits in other stories. The dry well and walking-through-walls of ‘Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’. It feels lazy. I’m more than halfway through and I’m still waiting for something new to happen, much less to be gripped by the story like I used to be.
Perhaps this is a premature and unfair assessment, and the second half of the story is wildly exciting and unexpected. The odds are low, but it’s hard to let go of something you loved for a whole decade, so I’ll fly the flag of blind hope and carry along down this increasingly overgrown path. And for all my complaints, if I woke up tomorrow as my 20-year-old self, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it all again, and surely that’s worth something. Onward!
When did dust become the devil? This is a question for me more than anyone else because I am quite the germ freak and a stickler for cleanliness. The baby’s sensitive skin has sent my already frenzied nerves into overdrive, generating a latent anxiety which manifests as a constant need to keep things as clean and dust-free as possible. Perhaps that is all well and good and necessary. Today though, while I was making my rounds across the house dusting all horizontal surfaces, I happened to recall reading Mary Douglas’ ‘Purity and Danger’ at uni, in which she famously posits that ‘dirt is matter out of place’. It’s one of those concepts that are so simple, yet powerful. Soil in a garden is a-ok. Soil that clings to your shoes as you leave the garden and subsequently dislodges itself onto the kitchen floor is not-ok. It is dirt. It must be removed so that a state of cleanliness can be restored. You didn’t mind it in the garden. You didn’t mind it on your shoe. But you very much mind it on the kitchen floor. I remember finding the idea very profound, and still did today as it floated back up from the depths of my memory, but it didn’t change the fact that I continued to fervently hunt down every last speck of dust in my house anyway.
Why does acquisition feel so good? Pondered in context of eyeing a pretty little Sezane handbag but wrestling as usual with the thought of parting with a slightly painful amount of cash. Just the thought of owning something new and coveted is enough to stimulate feelings of joy – why so? Not just with things, either. Acquiring time. Clout. Relationships (people). Experiences. We are all so greedy for more of everything, but in a way that feels perfectly human. Is this because capitalistic tendencies flow through our veins? Or is the drive to acquire stuff simply primordial instinct? It’s worth noting here that midway through the pedicure I went on Shopee and bought 3 pairs of lace socks that I absolutely do not need.
Been spending a few afternoons in the CBD area going to and from barre classes. I usually have just enough time to grab a quick lunch and a coffee before or after class, which coincides with the whole world’s lunch hour. The CBD is such a strange place. It’s crowded, and what a homogenous crowd it is. As I sweep my gaze around Amoy Food Centre, every young office chap in a collared shirt and black pants with spectacles and a lanyard draped around his neck blends into the next. The women are mostly well-dressed, but all in the same way, in polyester Love Bonito dresses and with long brown hair flowing down their backs. Every other person’s face illuminated by the mobile screen they’re staring into. The crowd moving in pulses to navigate a traffic junction, each person’s speed mitigated by the person ahead of them, shuffling along in a manner that suggests that nothing about this is new or novel, that they’ve been heading to lunch in this way everyday since time immemorial.
As a teacher, I used to envy friends who worked in the CBD – envied them their air-conditioned offices (which meant you could actually dress nice and put make up on without either being ruined by a deluge of sweat) and fancy lunch meetings and plethora of food options. Unless you step out or order something in, lunch options on a school day can be dismal, to say the least. However, after a few days of eating extremely mediocre (and expensive) hawker food at Amoy, I think I can confidently say that I would much rather eat the yong tau foo from the school canteen everyday than this.
The coffee options are far better in the CBD, of course. And I’ve discovered – much to the detriment of my barre efforts – that Fat Kid bakery and their delicious donuts are just round the corner. What is work without sweet reward? I hide in shame from my weighing scale. Goodnight!
Not hard to imagine the brainstorming session that went into the naming of this clinic.
The baby has started solids, which was exciting for approximately 2 hours until we realised that the shock to her gut meant waking almost every hour through the night from discomfort. The poor thing – seems a little early to learn that sometimes what you love can do you dirty.
Anyway, there’s only so much banana and avocado that a very small person can manage, which means I found myself with about 3/4 of an avocado and some bananas on the speed train to rot-terdam. Yesterday I decided to dust off my baking tools and spin the leftovers into avocado banana muffins – a great idea, in theory. As I tossed the ingredients together I felt very healthy and winsome and motherly and resourceful, even (perhaps especially so) while spooning vomit-coloured batter into a muffin tin. Only a sprinkle of sugar, no butter, all the good stuff – yes yes, in this household we shall eat clean, and antioxidants shall course through our bodies while we are busy living to a hundred, and our gut health shall be the envy of many. Health, wealth, hwealth – all ours to enjoy.
Perhaps the beginning of the fall was that 6:30am, pre-caffeinated me had spooned not baking powder, but baking soda into the mix. I realised this about 5 minutes after chucking them in the oven. Somehow or rather, they still managed to rise beautifully. Encouraged by their formal perfection I eagerly tucked into one while it was still warm. It tasted green. Not inedible, but definitely questionable enough to get a good grimace out of me. If I were to tackle these again, I would add 5x the amount of sugar, sub the avocado with butter, and basically make a whole different recipe.
Well, at least they looked good on Instagram. Not all that glitters is gold, friends. ✨
When the moon hangs like it does tonight – a shimmering sliver of copper floating on an indigo sea, the ends of the sickle sharp and fine enough to draw blood – what comes to mind is always a piece of jewellery adorning the night sky, adorning the whole world really, something precious and fine that the heavens gave us to share.
I’m currently reading The Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoko Michida and am enjoying it far more than I expected to.
I knew I would like it, because I find Japanese slice-of-life content irresistible, but beyond being just another pleasurable read, the story, though simple, cuts quite deeply into the essence of modern life, particularly the pervasive loneliness of it all. Michida also touches frankly on the imperfect aspects of Japanese culture and society, including the oppressive patriarchy, school bullying, and growing old alone. As the title lays out, the story revolves around a small town konbini, interestingly called ‘Tenderness’. ‘7/11’, ‘Family Mart’ and … ‘Tenderness’? An odd choice of name for a convenience store. Perhaps a victim of translation quirks.
The characters are assembled as a cross-section of society; appropriately so, since a convenience store is where most people in town are likely to, if not congregate, at least pass through regularly. Young; middle aged; old. Married; single; grappling with puppy love. Satisfied with life; disgruntled and pining. Ambitious and hopeful; world-weary and beaten down. All brought together by daily essentials and mouthwatering konbini delicacies like curry dons, strawberry parfaits and egg sandwiches.
(If you’ve been to Japan you’ll probably know that konbini foods are a cuisine unto themselves, and often are of a much higher quality than you’d expect from anything out a fridge or straight off a shelf. I myself fell hopelessly in love with a banana crepe from 7/11 when I was there last summer and still think about it often.)
Reading in Ya Kun this morning over breakfast, I looked up and realised that the scene around me wasn’t all that different from the story playing out in the book. The shop was manned by 4 staff – a man in his 60s, a woman around the same age, and two young men. I wondered if they were a family, but that seemed too unlikely. One of the young guys took my order; he had kind eyes and an overgrown mullet dyed mahogany, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a squirrel. He and the older auntie took most of the orders, while the other young man mutely prepped toast sets. The older uncle was also working on food prep, but was anything but silent. He was constantly barking at the others in a gruff voice, but when I listened properly I realised he was actually being quite nice, like asking if the order-takers needed some help. There was a great warmth and camaraderie in the way they all worked together. I must have looked quite encumbered by the baby carrier because while everyone else had to pick up their food from the counter, the uncle specially brought mine to me, and even appeared again later with napkins. Both he and the auntie seemed very taken with the baby and would periodically send smiles her way. Glancing around, the customers were a mix of business executives, blue collar workers, and students. Some appeared to be regulars and exchanged greetings with the staff as they came and went. Then, a very pretty young woman wafted in. She must have been new to Singapore, because she was unfamiliar with the menu and, well, this is sort of our national breakfast. The uncle wasted no time and barked out a series of menu recommendations at her. Despite clearly not understanding a word of it, she smiled politely in return. Eventually she pointed at something on the menu and the uncle beamed triumphantly.
Convenience stores aren’t so much of a thing here, though I do recall many happy moments from my student days spent huddled at the back of a 7/11 with friends, eating cup noodles and gossiping. Daily essentials are generally more expensive in convenience stores than in supermarkets, so unless absolutely necessary, we get them elsewhere.
Breakfast joints, however, are probably our equivalent to the konbini culture in Japan. On the higher end of the scale, places like Ya Kun, Toast Box, Fun Toast – air-conditioned, reliable, fast, familiar. For something less predictable, there are the coffee shop or hawker centre breakfasts. Regardless of where you land, there’ll almost definitely be sets of kaya toast and coffee or tea being peddled. Singaporeans (myself included) are particular about the variations in taste, portion etc., but honestly, it’s hard to go wrong with something so simple. Even a bad toast set will offer just enough comfort to start the day decently well. At least, that’s what I think. Maybe I lack a more discerning palate, but I make up for it with a disproportionate tendency to romanticise the things I eat and love.
Bad idea to write this up at night, because guess what I’m dying to eat now? Time to go rifle through the fridge for a snack. Goodnight!
One of the things I’ve learnt since becoming a mother is that leaving the house with a baby is a muscle that must be built and exercised. The first time we took the bubs somewhere other than the doctor was to church, which should have been fairly straightforward. Aircon-ed car to aircon-ed hall to aircon-ed car and back, nothing too demanding – or so you would think. I spent the night before running through the schedule in my head – what time’s the feed? When to pump? Working backwards, when to feed? Do we need a swaddle? Socks? Pram? Carrier? Maybe we should just feed formula. Okay so we need the formula. And bottle(s). And warm water in a flask. Sanitizer? Wipes? Diapers? Changing pad? Change of clothes? On Sunday morning itself I spent a good hour and a half packing and preparing, until I was sweaty and exhausted. Needless to say I wasn’t the most absorbent of minds during the service itself, a problem that was only exacerbated by the baby rebelling against the pram and persistently threatening to fuss.
2.5 months on, I’ve definitely gotten better. My going-out muscle (maybe hers, too?) has had training enough for me to feel comfortable taking her out for an hour or two with minimum headache or fuss (of course, this ties in with the establishment of a more predictable schedule for feeds).
And so it is that for the past few mornings, around 10 I strap her into the carrier and trot off for breakfast and a bit of a stroll. Singapore has horrible weather and my baby has horrible skin (the ubiquitous monster that is eczema), so as far as possible I try to float from one aircon-ed space to the next. It’s a nice timing because she gets a cuddly carrier nap, and I get to have breakfast and be reminded that there is a society beyond the four walls of my apartment.
As I gradually shook off the anxieties of going out with a baby in tow, I’ve been able to experience some of its joys. Having her in the carrier is very nice and makes me feel like a koala or kangaroo, although my slightly harried pelvis does protest a bit (see previous post). With the carrier on, I’m also obliged to move at a glacial pace that is surely foreign to most able-bodied adults living in cosmopolitan cities. I go the ‘long way around’ to get to lifts, or to stay in the shade and shelter. Moving this way through brisk crowds, I feel like a boulder in a stream disrupting the flow, or a creaky old spaceship caught in a meteor shower. ‘Ambling,’ my husband called it, then quickly corrected himself, ‘more like wading, actually.’ A slightly laboured trek through imaginary thigh-high waters.
It’s not an unpleasant experience. Slowing down means I pay more attention to the world around me, instead of experiencing it in fast-forward mode like I usually do. People staring vacantly into space, or, more commonly, vacantly at their phones. Yves Saint Laurent espadrilles on the young office lady standing in front of me on the MRT. Colours and designs on manicured nails. Older couples sipping coffees across the table from each other, immersed in a comfortable silence (or boredom). Young couples, brimming with passion and excitement, hands all over each other. The skinny branches of a tree, brilliantly green, sparkling in the sun and rustled by a sudden breeze.
It’s been 32 years of milling about this tiny city, and yet there still are fresh things to see and discover. It just takes a slower pace, with or without a baby strapped to the chest.
Two weeks ago I experienced one of the more humbling moments of my life thus far.
Against my better instinct (and breaking a promise I’d made to myself while pregnant to never run again), I embarked on an evening jog. I’d been seduced by a gloriously cool evening breeze and the magnificence of sunlight dappling the river.
It wasn’t difficult per se. My muscles were surprisingly compliant and only put up the feeblest of protests. I managed a 2km loop in 15 minutes; just slightly brisker than a brisk walk and a shadow of the pace I used to keep. By the end I was barely panting and genuinely felt quite good and alive.
The problem was that – quite unfortunately – from start till end, I was uncontrollably wetting myself. 15 minutes straight. A full quarter of an hour. Every time my feet hit the gravel a little bit of wee was shaken out of me; think tabasco being agitated out of its bottle. By the time I realised that the growing warmth and damp in my shorts was not, in fact, sweat, it was too late (the route was a loop, remember). In for a penny, in for a pound. On I plodded, aghast and amused and ashamed. A sweet mercy was that my shorts were black and the knowledge of my predicament was confined to just me.
Clearly, my pelvic floor was (is) still reeling from having carried, then ejected, a small human being. Undaunted by the bout of humiliation I tried a jog again two days after. This time, I came prepared in period undies, which are basically adult diapers. As I heaved down the path I had to laugh at how far I’d come from my Lululemon days.
And so the adventures of pregnancy and birth continue. No one day has been the same as the one before it and I’m constantly charting new ground, but for every low moment there is a joy to counter it and for now that is enough to keep me going, even in wee-wet shorts.
A couple of months ago I was added into a Telegram chat containing everyone in my 8-person group of college pals, minus YM.
‘Hey. Have you seen YM’s story?’
I darted into Instagram and flicked through his stories, a nearly identical series of content from a gig in Taiwan. Nothing out of the ordinary, until I reached the last page, plain white text on black announcing the death of his mother. He continued that he would be flying home that night, followed by details of the wake.
My heart plummeted. Our parents were of similar age and while not young, they certainly weren’t expected to be knocking at death’s door. The Telegram chat buzzed with collective fretting: was it illness? An accident? Had anybody heard anything before this? No one knew. We quickly made plans to gather at the wake the next night.
We were an odd sight, a hodgepodge of characters spanning worn tees and flip flops to office formal. I was also 8 months pregnant and massive. In Chinese custom, it tends to be taboo to attend a funeral while pregnant, as it’s believed that the negative energy (a simplification) will bring misfortune to mother and baby. I didn’t buy into the superstition, and felt it was more important to show up for moral and emotional support. Still, I was an aberration, to say the least.
As a group, we’d celebrated with each other at weddings, births and other happy occasions, but a funeral – this was a first. As we squeezed our plastic chairs around a rickety table piled with small snacks and packet drinks, the awkwardness was palpable. We were used to boisterous, alcohol-fuelled gatherings full of lightness and laughter. Here, we were compelled to be morose and sombre, speaking in hushed tones. After 15 minutes or so, YM finally made it round to our table, smiling and thanking everyone for coming. I was confused; no red-rimmed eyes, no sniffles or the sickly pallor that comes with a sleepless night. He seemed perfectly fine, buoyant even. He still sported the grey contacts, earrings and nail polish that had come to define what we not-so-secretly labelled his mid life crisis. He told us matter-of-factly that his mother had succumbed to stage 4 liver cancer, which she’d been diagnosed with a mere 4 months ago. The faces around the table all wore the same expression: how did we not know? YM had been running all over the world for months, pursuing a career in talent management; we hadn’t once sensed that his personal life might have taken a troubled turn, and he never let slip. He hadn’t been in the country when she passed and wasn’t at her deathbed. He told us all this without so much as a tear in his eye, though I’d known him for long enough to know that this flippant demeanour was sometimes a mask for more uncomfortable feelings.
As we filed past the coffin to pay our respects, I was struck by how suddenly life can deal you a bad card. I looked at the kindly face in the photo frame and wondered if she’d worried about the two sons she was leaving behind. She would never see them marry, never hold a grandchild in her arms. Never take another holiday or relish another good meal. I remarked this sentiment in brief to one of my friends. As we stood sadly by, another relative of YM’s swooped over to offer us more packet drinks.
We reconvened at our little plastic table. Gradually, the conversation spun off into less solemn topics: how’s work? When are you leaving for that trip to Japan? Did you see so-and-so’s post about her new boyfriend? Before long we’d rebounded into the usual savage jokes and raging gossip, though we did try our best not to laugh too loudly.
We’ve been friends for 15 years, and we went from seeing each other in school all day, everyday, to just a couple of times a year as our lives spiralled out in different directions, our schedules groaning under the weight of other relationships and responsibilities. Although the circumstances of this gathering were grim, I couldn’t help but feel a certain gladness from seeing us all in one place, full attendance. It took an untimely passing to summon us all at short notice; for a couple of hours that night we were not girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, fathers or mothers, but a bunch of freewheeling 17-year-olds again, rubbing shoulders around a table and giggling about one inane thing or the other.
In a world where lives can intersect so fleetingly, I’m proud of us for sticking by for so long, and hopefully for many more years to come.
At 3:45am last night I stumbled out of bed and headed, bleary-eyed, to the storeroom to gather the logistics for a dead-of-the-night pump session. I tapped the switch for the overhead light in the storeroom and it immediately blew with a loud pop, sending the whole house into a power trip. 20 minutes later, J had tried all manner of tinkling with the circuit breakers to no avail, so we dialled an electrician, lit some candles and sat together in the living room to wait for rescue.
Mercifully, it was a cool night, and the sound of the trees rustling in the dead of the night was like a massage for the soul. The light breeze gradually picked up until gale force winds were howling like banshees through slits in the windows, the trees crunching noisily in tandem. As the electrician tottered on a ladder to fix the circuit breaker, the winds turned into a rainstorm that would continue lashing till the morning.
Just before the rain came, I stood at the window while the wind whipped through my hair and stung my eyes. The air was so cool and the neighbourhood so deserted; I was transported to the memory of walking along pre-dawn suburban streets to my coffee kiosk job in London, waking at 4:30am to be out the door at 4:45am and in the kiosk by 5am to get the coffee machine warmed up. In winter, this was tantamount to torture, and I would shiver violently as I tucked my chin as far as I could into my snood and willed my legs to keep moving as fast as possible. The shop had no heater and I would continue wearing my puff jacket late into the morning, bones rattling within. I look back on this time in my life with great joy and amusement. The job and the people I met while at it were some of the best parts about living abroad.
Soon the electrician’s magic took effect, the lights (and importantly, the air-con) came on again inside, and I popped right back to bed comforted by a wonderful memory of winter mornings that, ironically, was as warm and fuzzy as a hug.
Medium Delirium 