twilight summer.

You know how there are days when you’re having so much fun that you don’t have time to record those sensations and the new experiences you’re going through? That’s how this summer has been for me; I think I made a unofficial pledge to stop blogging and write only emails so I could be more specific and personal about this huge transition phase I am undergoing. But moving here last Sunday, to the South-east of DC has made me run back to blogging again. Too many new things I’m going through, too many stereotypes that I have to break through.

I just came back from taking the bus at 10 PM, its a first for me, as I’ve managed to avoid taking public or walking back home at night. I had my bike with me and although it was a short ride back from Amy F’s house, I heard too much about the shootings nearby that I didn’t want to risk it- So I took the bus and boy, was it overcrowded. Somebody asked me on the way back if that was my bike in front of the bus on the rack, and I said, yes, (how did he know? Coz I was the only non-black?) and he said, why didn’t you ride back you could have saved space..And my first response was I am such a small person anyway, how much space could I take up?

So easy for me to be angered. So quick for me to fear. I keep on thinking if only i have a car, but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

It’s been a great week nevertheless, one full of reflections and intimate nights with fellow interns and wonderful hosts from our workplace who invited us to their house for dinners.

So much to give thanks for, and so much to pray about: 1 death, 1 unemployed, 1 lifestyle change, but many more promises ahead.

transitions

I am amazed constantly at people’s durability. Here I am, struggling to get “settled” in a new city, new house, by myself, yet I go to work with 16 other interns and 40 others who are going overseas very soon during training week, and we are mostly in the same boat..It’s been a while since I wrote on my blog, maybe I need more encouragement through “comments”, hehe, but the truth is because I have been either too busy or decided to commit more to personal emails. But I want to freeze this moment and remember that during this transition phase, here are a couple of things that I can praise God for and feel completely blessed:

1. The ex-military elderly man who gave me directions around this neighborhood yesterday, who started comforting me and giving advice on overcoming homesickness (he was very intuitive)

2. Fellow co-interns and everyone else in the entire organization that clearly shares and articulates my faith and belief in social justice

3. Friends scattered around the east coast, who are undergoing post-graduation blues too.

4. The fact that once I stopped self-pitying, I realized how much need there is in the people around me..and how much I can also relate to them due to this greater humility that I have during this period.

Ask the loveliness of the earth, ask the loveliness of the sea, ask the loveliness of the wide airy spaces, ask the loveliness of the sky, ask the order of the stars, ask the sun, making daylight with its beams, ask the moon tempering the darkness of the night that follows, ask the living things which move in the waters, which tarry on the land, which fly in the air; ask the souls that are hidden, the bodies that are perceptive; the visible things which most be governed, the invisible things that govern—ask these things, and they will all answer you, Yes, see we are lovely. Their loveliness is their confession. And all these lovely but mutable things, who has made them, but Beauty immutable?

-Augustine ‘Sermons 214.2′

Great post-college questions

This amazing person became a millionaire before she turned 18. Check out the interview on Washington Post’s blog for recent graduates, but I excerpt here as well, questions we all should think about.

Farrah Gray: In this economy where the media is ducking using the word RECESSION, it is important to identify your area of excellence. Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What comes easy to me, but harder to others?
2. What would I do for years, and years and not be paid for it?
3. How can be of service?

Once you are able to answer those three questions you will find your niche. The world and the marketplace will open up for you, your gifts and your talents. After being a guest on ‘Oprah & Friends,’ and being featured in O – The Oprah Magazine, I believe that she (Oprah) applied the answers to those questions to her life!

an observation

I went for the forum on the American presidential candidates’ stances tonight with 4 different professors on the panel, and it was fascinating for me to see how race and identity politics played out among the panelists as well, as they themselves answered the questions. The Race-matters question was asked about Obama and Clinton, and immediately Prof Price, Govt’s African-American professor answered the question, and I was tempted to ask the other 3 white professors to contribute as well ..However, when Prof Moon did answer in response to a student’s question, Price shot in and after that, no one else answered for the rest of the questions on race and identity.

To top off my wesleyan experience..

For a government class today, we rolled on dirt and used human bodies (each other) as experimental pillows. As part of a interdisciplinary effort to integrate the best parts of each discipline, my university has launched a semester-long program/initiative called ‘Feet to the Fire’ where science and dance has merged in some classes, and in others like my GOVT class, my professor has opted to recruit the resident dance artist to teach us how to explore “civil society” in other ways outside of the academic texts we have been reading. This class, called ‘Civil Society in Comparative Perspectives’ has been most helpful to me through the discussions and experiences of the other students, which is a new thing for me to experience as I have always depended on scholarly articles and the professor’s input to “teach” me. However, as the class is wrapping up now at the end of the semester, I realized that I have really enjoyed best the fact that we have grown to know each other through our discussions and reactions from the academic text, and after the last class, we have also explored the physicality of our beings together. It was almost surreal, to lie on the grass outside the tranquil Japanese garden at the East Asian Center, eyes closed, feeling the spring air blow through your air and the noise of the traffic beyond. I have never been so close to the dirt grass before, and the point of the exercise was to bring us to new understandings of ‘Global Climate Change’. It sounds bizzare to say this, but this exercise was definitely more effective for me, in terms of respecting my environment, than if I had read an academic text about it.

Nevertheless, it was difficult for me to transcend the boundaries of “civility” that we do have. I was paired up with my professor on the exercise for pillows/sleepers where one person uses the other person’s body as a pillow and I had to let go of the idea that this person is my respected professor, and to understand the common physicality we share underneath it all. It was definitely a new understanding for me.

no ‘imagined’ Chinese past

It just dawned upon me something, that as a Chinese Malaysian, I’ve lost my Chinese heritage a long time ago due to the ‘integration’ policies of Malaysia. Without having gone to a Chinese medium primary school (grade/middle school), without having a ‘imagined’ or real past where I can construct my Chinese identity (English spoken at home, fed on Western media, taught in Malay at school),  it is no surprise that I have embodied the stereotype of a ‘banana’. Learning Malay history as well as Malaysian history (the former marks the ethnic group, the latter is the newly constructed country in 1957), one would expect me to be proud of my Malaysian roots. And yes, I am after having lived abroad, but with the increasing repression of cultural/religious freedom with recent govt measures, (and in retrospect, my childhood) I can only imagine how my children’s identities will be even more fragmented. But it’s not only that, I am conflating the issues here. What I wanted to point out is that if I don’t ‘feel’ Chinese, what does my ‘Chinese’ identity signify? A construction of identity placed upon me, so I can be easily marked on a census?

Is my Chinese ‘past’ something I want to rediscover? (Yes) But I certainly am aware that as in every pursuit, it is a conscious effort to learn more about your origins in order to claim an articulate/cohesive identity for the future.

“i dont know what to do with myself”

Even my thesis advisor has started commenting on the slangwords i used.

I like your malaysian english eg “get cracking” “concocted” etc.  Though you use “vis–a-vis” a bit too often.

I don’t know how to tell him that it’s just me, and not Manglish. And  I can’t even use my ordinary excuse that it’s British English because he is from England!

Travel bug bit you ?

This is one of the most concise and honest-to-truth review of travelling in several countries that I’ve ever read. It’s also hilarious. Read Long Way Home’s scoreboard,  which are ratings given to all the countries cycled through by a Malaysian recent graduate from Dartmouth who cycled from USA to Malaysia fundraising money for a charitable cause. (OMG, I so want to do something like this!!Anybody else??)

At the core of it..

From Sojourners’ 

Similarly, understanding the facts of racial injustice in our society does not naturally lend us knowledge of the felt experience of oppression. Unfortunately, I have seen too many white Christians walk away from difficult discussions about race discouraged because they wanted the cut-and-dry, “just the facts ma’am” answers, and instead their black or brown, brother or sister insisted on sharing the emotional scars and deep-seated wounds of their daily lived experience. It is right then for Obama to point out that, “…the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

Read more.

I’m still pondering the repercussions of the Obama race debate (and all the history that goes with it) and how it is  translatable to Malaysia’s state of race relations/political discourse. (!!)