On Relationships

Isn’t monogamy and exclusivity scary? The idea that relationships evolved around two persons and only two, is rather disturbing. Why two? Why not three? It baffled me to think that we always refer to our partners as “my other half”. But why am I a half? Why not a third? Or a forth? Can I be “one” too? It seemed that we just instinctively know we need another one person in our lives, and just one person.

I came up with several hypothesis of my own. One of which relates to the physiology and anatomy of sexual or reproduction activities. It takes two to produce a baby (one male and one female, in this case). The baby is somehow a like a “bond” or “contract” between a couple, so the number “two” thus become the default number of persons involved in a relationship. I reckoned that had our anatomies been built differently, and had sexual and reproduction activities necessitated more than two persons then things would be different. Another reason that I came up with, considering the previous hypothesis might not be relevant to homosexuals, is that the selfishness innate in our DNA makes us want to have that kind of exclusive ownership to someone we love.

The reason I have been thinking about this is because of two separate events. The first was I read about polygamy. The second event was that in a Korean movie I was watching there was a love subplot and there was a love triangle in the form of “A and B loves C and C can’t decide between A and B but must do so by the end of the movie”. I always rooted for underdog for some reasons. So it suddenly aroused in me the feeling of, “hey, doesn’t it suck being the rejected one?”. I mean, really, the worse thing that could happen is the moment you thought you found the right person, you realize you are in competition with others or that someone is taken.

Just how are these events related? Well, I strongly condemned polygamy because I didn’t think those women could bring themselves to “share”. I think polygamy is the justification for some horny men out there to sleep with as many women as possible. And then I ask, does that mean, I condone monogamy? Not quite, after watching the Korean movie. Well, if I am the chosen one then I probably condone monogamy but if I am the rejected one, I would say, hey, can we, like … share?

At the end, I don’t really know if exclusivity is a good thing, but as I began thinking about the nature of relationships I realized that finding a partner is basically an extension of economics. Firstly, one operates in a “market”, which, put into the proper context, refers to one’s social setting. Then, one is subjected to the laws of supply and demand. And, as with the concept of scarcity and limited resources in economics, there are stipulations in relationships as well, exclusivity.

The fact that marriage or relationships happened surprises me, really. Maybe it is my singlehood that gave me the notion that relationship does not come easy. But when considering the economics of it, considering that one needs to be at the right place at the right time, I turned into a total pessimist.

As a continuation to my “economics” metaphor, I would like to think that finding love is like businesses seeking customers. Since many businesses fail, I am pretty sure many relationships fail too. So really, the fact that marriage and relationships happened surprises me.

Snippets

1. While waiting for a train a girl walked over and stood behind me. At that instance I felt so lowly of myself. Lowly. Because she was about 5 inches taller than me all I wanted to do at the moment was to tell her how much I hated her. Plus, she has got a pretty face and had mascara and eyeliner on so I was sure she was a model. The moment she got into the train, HEADS TURNED. She was the center of attention. Guys roll their eyes up and down over her entire towering physique and girls dropped their jaws to gawk at her long legs.

2. I am tempting fate, once again. I want to meet the person again.

3. My dad has been quietly doing a lot for me, much more than I had acknowledged. I am the kind of guy who thinks Father’s Day is “just another day of the year”.

4. While taking the train and reading a book, nothing irks me more than someone turning on the mp3 function on the mobile phone and blasting the music out loud, as if that someone is in a private coach of his or hers. All I wanted to do was to blurt out, “Okay, we get it, you like the Black Eye Peas and that’s so cool of you. Now use a earphone, will ya?”. I did just that the other day to an Indian guy blasting Hindi music, albeit in the kinder of words.

5. What can be more annoying than having experience a prolonged tremor threatening to halt your concentration on what would otherwise be a smooth and comfortable train ride? I am upset for two reasons. Firstly one of my fellow commuters decided that he cannot sit with his legs close and have do a capital “V” and so inevitably his thighs touched mine, a contact which I frankly did not enjoy. Secondly, he decided he has nothing to do so he began to shake his legs. Why would someone do that? Wasn’t that the same as, fondling a stranger’s hair or tickling a stranger’s underarms?

6. Now that my closet is out of season, I missed those days where I had money and time to shop.

7. I went to see a doctor and he probably is the most unpleasant person I’ve ever met, so much that I wanted to ask him if he is watching himself, or how did he coped living with himself. Just how unpleasant is he? Well, put it succinctly, he doesn’t answer question, gazes at you as if I was wasting his time, speak less than 50 words with every syllables oozing with disdain, doesn’t have the courtesy to tell me the consultation session is over and instead just went off to another room, and for all these trash treatment, I paid 50 bucks for consultation. Great, I must be so proud of myself.

Poignancy

I was at my grandmother’s place for the recent Mid Autumn Festival. Usually I would go to festivities with a book to read or something to do because I see the whole idea of having a family gathering is to merely show my face. But this time, something has gotten into me. Perhaps it was a guilt of having been disrespecting tradition for so many years. Perhaps I was longing for a get away from all the books that I had since drowned myself into all these years. And so deliberately I left the pile of books that I had gathered at home before I leave.

It was hard at first to do absolutely nothing, because barely 5 minutes into sitting down on the couch staring at relatives arriving one after another and saying hi to some while avoiding eye contact with others, my hands were itching for something to do, so I grabbed the newspaper and began reading. But I managed to put it down a while later. Newspapers these days can’t be read, especially those with an overtly pro-establishment agenda. That’s another blog post altogether.

There is a sense of emptiness that pervaded my heart that night. Nothing seemed to excite me. Such gatherings felt different each time I attended them. We have a very big family and my grandmother has about 7 children and each of these children in turn have their own children. As a child I was really looking forward for such gatherings. So many people, so many conversations, so much joy. I once designed a house where we live together under one room and each nucleus family had a section of their own. But for the past few years, the number of family members had become countable. Grandfather had passed away in recent years. My cousin brother whom I grew up with is studying in the US. A few cousins got married to somewhere far away. A few can’t make it home for some unknown reasons.

Even among those present, we increasingly grew apart. A few cousins entered the teenage years and would rather stick their Ipod earphones to their ears rather than mingling around. My dad and uncles have their own issues to talk about as adults. The kids are busy with their games and playful acts. We simply grew into our own world.

I watched as the young kids of the family light up the candles (a Mid Autumn Festival tradition), burning anything like dry leaves or papers or basically anything within their reach. I remembered doing that as a child. Together with my cousin brother who was about the same age, though he was older, we were the notorious duo of the family. I remembered that childhood urge of “annihilation” when I was a kid. The enthusiasm had indeed waned over the years. I don’t feel like getting my hands dirty anymore. Watching from afar and rekindling the olden days were more than enough to overload my heart with a kind of poignancy and yearning for some unreturned nostalgic childhood events.

The family had indeed outgrow itself. I am now a young adult and I have my own things to care about. Ambitions, challenges, career, and future was all I think of. I could no longer stay carefree as I was as a child. Same goes to the teenagers, the adults, and the older ones. We were all compartmentalized in some ways. It was as if we had all been assigned roles by society, trying to live by the rules that the roles stipulate. In the absence of someone to talk to, I sat next to my grandmother. I don’t talk often with her anymore. We rarely meet up and even if we do, she has hearing problem can’t seem to hear what I said. She rarely spoke. She just sat at a corner and watched people.

My grandmother watched everyone, and that was somehow enough to put a smile on her face. She derived fulfillment from the mere presence of the family members, even though there are less conversations with her, less laughters about her. Listening to their voices, watching their faces, and knowing that they are still here and in the pink of health was her source of amusement. Out of nowhere she would tell me cousin X is taller now and cousin Y has grown fatter. Oh, I was also told I am now a good looking young men *brushes hair aside* which I am *clears throat* used to anyways. Grandmother was perhaps the most ardent audience of the family’s growth and changes. She perhaps understood more than me that changes is inevitable and the present is transient, gone in an eye blink. And she is quietly savoring every single moment of it.

As much as I like changes, there are certain things, certain good times that I wished could be eternized or immortalized. Such was what I felt about those good old days. Indeed it is now gone, existing only as immaterial state of mind, resulting in an emotional vacuum in the bosom of my heart.

The moon cakes tasted a little different that day. But it adequately fills the void in my stomach, and my heart, as I put each one of them into my mouth, knowing that very soon, modern day innovation would rendered the future moon cake in a different shape, smell, color, and content. For that, I savored every bite of it and indulged in the sweetness oozing out of the lotus paste. Just like how my grandmother had savored every moment of our presence.

On Language

As an ethnic Chinese who speaks both English and Mandarin, I must say there is indeed an unofficial “hierarchy” in the community that divides the English speaking ones and those more fluent in Mandarin. As it turns out, the English speaking ones are generally viewed as a class above their Mandarin counterpart.

When I was little, I attended a school where the medium of instruction was Mandarin Chinese. I recalled vividly that for some reasons I love writing essays in Mandarin. I would often take great lengths to incorporate Chinese idioms or words that screamed “verbosity” in my various composition.

Then, I went to high school. The medium of instruction was no longer Mandarin Chinese and it was of course a less homogeneous schooling environment. Mingling with people who spoke English with relatively high degree of proficiency admittedly aroused my inferiority complex. As a result, I constantly strive to improve my English proficiency. In the last few years of my teenage years, I had officially became westernized. I swapped Hong Kong drama for American TV series. I read all things English and shunned all things non-English. I mingled with English speaking people. I initiate conversations in English. And ultimately, my thoughts are couched in English. In the process, I begin to develop some sort of disdain for people who cannot converse well in English.

Vindicated

“In this day of search engines, ubiquitous physical and virtual encyclopedias, and increasingly powerful handheld computers, nearly all required and desired information can be retrieved almost instantaneously. Just as the book made photographic memory a luxury, current computers render forced memorization even less important. And if one believes that it is desirable for individuals to memorize speeches or poems or melodies, such an exercise should be done for its own sake (“it’s beautiful, it’s satisfying”), and not for the will-o’-the-wisp goal of improving general mnemonic capacity” – quoted from a book by Howard Gardner

A simple paragraph like this goes a long way in explaining why I rebelled against my parents, teachers, classmates and the national education system and decided to detach myself from all the things that they do and teach at school. All they teach is memorization and how to ace exams anyways.

So when I decided I will not memorize, will not do good for nothing school homework, and will take my education on my own hands, people think I am destroying my own life and chose to become dumb. And now reading Gardner I wonder who the dumb ones were.

Who do I help?

There was a street in the city that I frequented as part of my journey to my workplace. Just outside one of the posh hotels along the street, there was a man, completely bald on the left side of his head. An unpleasant skin texture enveloped the bald spot, suggesting he was a burn victim or was exposed to some kind of corrosive acid. He knelt before a small basket containing a few sparsely distributed coins and cash. holding to an harmonica trying to make a song.

Further down the street, there is an amputee, like others, making full use of his “unique selling point” to evoke the sympathy of the pedestrians. And occasionally, there is an old woman carrying a malnourished baby on one hand and fluttering her other hand.

The Problem with Shoes

I owned a pair of black working shoes. Because I regularly commute to work via public transport, I have to walk in the working shoes for quite some distance. Recently, I discovered that the shoe fabric linking to the heels was slightly torn. But my past experience had alarmed me that it is a matter of time before the heels detached itself completely from the shoes.

I find this very disturbing. It is like walking around with a time bomb that will explode soon, without me knowing when. Just why it is a time bomb? Why does it bring me so much vulnerability? Well, for one, having a broken shoe is unlike having a torn t-shirt or pants. You can show some skin and still try to conceal it, albeit discreetly, and act as if nothing is wrong. But a broken shoe will have you limping all the way throughout the journey, how very obvious and embarassing, especially so when you consider I work in this chic place that people go to be seen.

Lizard Encounter

Few days ago, while reaching my hand out to turn on the light switch in my room, I experienced a sudden twitch and immediately I took my entire physique a few steps backward. The switch buttons were just adjacent to the door frame, and affixed on the door frame was a good old baby lizard.

Being so close to a lizard (well, it is just inches away from my wrist when I was reaching out to the switches) was more frightening than seeing a ghost. I have always hated lizards. And animals, for that matter. Not the I-want-to-destroy-all-animals kind of hate, but I generally don’t want to touch them or be in any form of contact with them. I waved my hand in the air towards where it adhered itself, hoping that my (seemingly) threatening gesture would prompt it to leave me alone.

I am on Youtube

… finally?

It had been almost a year since I contemplated posting some YouTube videos of me playing the piano because it seemed everyone is doing it these days, and plus I would obviously love to share my work with a wider audience. But the YouTube account that I set up had been gathering dust and spider webs, possibly because of my round the clock busyness and my reluctance to get into the whole video and audio editing mess (I am a perfectionist, so my videos, if I post them, had to be perfect!)

Today I spent one solid day to get some videos up and running. So what prompted such a change in behavior? Well, last Saturday I did some piano performance and was asked if I am on YouTube. I said I did not. And while I said that I made a note to myself that it is about time I do just that.

Preparing the videos were …arduous, and the mere thought of it was enervating: Converting videos, editing audio, transferring files from the thumb drive and SD card, restarting the entire computer three times when the computer refuses to acknowledge the SD card as a hardware, constructing a video in Windows Movie Maker. That lastly mentioned task truly deserves a special mention. Windows Movie Maker decided to make life difficult for me by refusing cooperate. It freezes the audio and video at its will. I literally felt like torching the entire computer, throw all items on my desk to the ground, screaming my lungs out, “WHY WON’T THE SOFTWARES JUST … WORK??”

Somehow I persevered and ended up doing lots of extra, tedious work. The videos are up. No subscribers, not many view counts yet. But hey, Rome wasn’t build in one day, and once I figured out how to oil things up, “streamline” the process and get efficient – from the black and white keys to YouTube, I am hopeful that things will change. Or you can contribute to my number of subscribers and view counts by clicking on my YouTube channel and viewing the videos. And a comment or two make my day too!

The King And I

9.30am – the watch on my left wrist read. It has been 9.30am for quite some time. I wanted the performance to be over as quickly as possible, but as with all bad times, every second in the backstage seemed like an eternity. I stood mechanically in the backstage while resting the violin on my left shoulder complete with complex wirings of a remote microphone. But my calm façade was misleading.

Increasingly I grew conscious of the air gushing in and out of my nostrils as I recalled the grandiose reception for “the man” that I witnessed earlier of the day. Ushers bowed on their knees as he graced the red carpet accompanied by sweet sounding gamelan music. He then stood before the edge of the VIP viewing chamber. As the police marching band performed the national anthem the audiences below the VIP viewing chamber realigned themselves to front him, a dramatic scene not unlike the movie poster of the Disney’s Lion King depicting a lion roaring above the cliff while its subjects concede its authority.