The Backup Plan

My mobile phone died right before Christmas and I had to quickly replace it. After I got my new phone, I was trying to import my existing contacts to the new phone. However, as usual, with a wrong click of the mouse due to my misunderstanding of what I should be doing, I accidentally wiped all my contacts out. So I ended up with a new phone with no contacts, which defeated the purpose of getting a new one quickly to stay in contact. I managed to recover some older contacts from my computer but then my phone book is never the same.

When I told my friend about this, she asked me “Did you not back up your data?”.  When I thought about it, yeah I did, but only to some point. Life had become so busy that “backing up” is no longer on my priority list. When I was a student, I usually back up my essential files very frequently. But as life takes over, a lot of things, including backing up have fell through the cracks and being forgotten.

Backup, an interesting but often forgotten concept has been on my mind quite frequently lately. With the recent and sudden passing of my grandmother, I kept thinking what happens with me when my time ends? There is no backup option in life. We cannot put away a chunk of our lives and when the time comes retrieve it and live it all over again. Life is like a bird without legs. It just keeps on flying away with time and when it lands it is the end of it. We always said we only live once but as you grow older, time seems to run out a lot more quickly than we wanted to.  I remember when I was a kid I dreaded the time it took to get to the summer holidays and the Christmas breaks. But now, workweeks flew past and so does my life.

Most of us have plans for our lives but sometimes I do wonder how many of our life plans do become reality and worked out in a way we wanted. In one of my previous blogs, I discussed about expectations and options. We could be as flexible as we wanted to, but the one cold hard fact is that there is no back up for life itself. I tried to live my life carefully and responsibly but sometimes I do wonder whether I was too careful and responsible that I missed out other opportunities that were presented to me. I took leaps of faith from time to time but then I could not go back to a certain point in my life to live through it again when things did not work out in a way I want. All I could do is to soldier on and think of other options. The so-called “Back up plans” or “Plan Bs” are in fact just options to resolve current situations.

Sometimes with the advance of technology I did think whether one day we would be able to “back up” a number of years in our lives so when things did not work out we could go back and relive those years and make different choices. Some people might think this would make life less meaningful as what makes life so special itself is because of the fact that we only live once. But for me I would love to have a second chance in life as a back up just to find out how it would go if I made a different choice. Being able to do so in my opinion would make life more interesting. Further, since it is a back up, we would always have a choice to whether we want to use it or not. So for those who would prefer to live life only once, they still have a choice not to use it and live a meaningful life as they see fit.

Obviously this is not going to happen at the moment and I would need to continue to soldier on with what I have today based on the choices I made in the past. The fact that life has no back up plan did make me to make more careful choices, but this does not remove the fact that I would be very interested to know what would happen if I did make different choices at particular points of my life. Maybe I am getting a bit too sentimental because of recent events around me or maybe I am really growing older than I would like to think of myself, but at the end of the day life goes on and I will still need to be responsible for my choices because I do understand that there are no back ups in life.

The Farplane

9 January 2013 is a weird day. This is the day I received the first printed copy of my new novel from Amazon.com, and it is the same day the news of my grandma’s passing was broken to me.

Grandma has been sick the last few days. According to mum she was still very healthy last week. Then she caught a cold on Friday and suddenly it just spiralled over the weekend into an acute case of pneumonia. From falling sick to her passing, it was just merely 5 days. This is how fragile life is. She was a very strong will woman who would try to get herself out of tight corners no matter what. She had been through the wars, experienced the losses in the Cultural Revolution, and survived several major surgeries and recovered in her elderly years. She had a fall a few months ago again but after physiotherapy she managed to walk again, though not as good as she used to be but at least she managed to get back on her feet. Even during the last moments, mum told me that she was hoping to hold on to see everyone before she went. Her heart beat stopped and then rebooted for a little while again without any help, but she eventually did not manage to get herself out of this tight grip of life this time.

It is really weird. Someone you know just pass away like that. All of a sudden traces of her disappeared permanently in this world. We all know it is a matter of time in the last day or two but it was still hard to swallow the fact that someone whom I knew all my life is now no longer here. I had been to other people’s funeral but attending one for your immediate family would surely be an uneasy task. At the moment I am still dealing with the whole matter hundreds of miles away, but I do not know how I could deal with it up close and personal when I hit home.

Granny was a very sociable and out-going person. Despite dementia started hitting her the last few years, she still tried to get the most out of it. She might be hard to deal with sometimes, but then it was the dementia that actually was affecting her. Sometimes she had no control over what is happening and she felt frustrated she lost those basic controls in her life. Despite me living overseas in the last 10 years or so, every year when I went back to see her, I treasured my time with her as after all she was still a role model of how strong wills and determination can help you live a life you wanted.  Taking care of her in the last few years was not easy and sometimes was quite a challenge. But looking back at this I am glad that I had the opportunity to be with her and spent time with her. For at the end of the day, it is the time you spent with the living that matters.

I was hoping to show her my first published book to her in my next trip but now that is not possible anymore. It was just so much more disappointing that when this goal was within reach and it slipped away like that.

I am sure a lot of family members and family friends will moan the lost of a vibrant and determined woman in the house. My friends always talked about how impressed they were with granny every time they saw her. Granny loved company and I am sure at her funeral all the family and friends will be there to walk the last mile with her.

It sounds cliché but I do believe the impressions she made on other people while she was around will stay on. Nobody wants to see someone’s passing but at the same time we all know that death is something none of us could escape. I wish I could carry on with my granny’s strong will and determination in life as my ultimate tribute to her so she would be proud of me somewhere in the universe when I met my time one day.

This is my tribute to my granny and now I dedicate my book to one of the strongest woman I have met in my life.

I dedicate this book to my beloved granny.

May the Lord be with you

Capricious Perks of Being a Wallflower

One of the best things about the Christmas break is that I can take time to catch up with my outstanding movie catalogue. There was one movie called “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” that I had been planning to see since I saw the trailer. Luckily it was still in the theatre before the main avalanche of Christmas blockbusters rolled out so I managed to catch it before it dropped off the screens.

Classifying “Perks” as a coming of age movie is a huge oversimplification, for it deals with some quite serious stuff here. The movie dealt with how a teenager tried to fit into the high school culture, but behind the simple façade of this was something more deep rooted and haunting. I personally did feel for the main character as he was being set aside because of medical reasons. How could you get back to your normal life when you were practically living in a hospital for a year and completely disconnected from the people whom you used to know.  I did know someone with chronic illness back in high school but I never felt as strongly as I did now when I watched the movie. Maybe I was too young to understand. I did feel bad for them but I don’t think I did feel for them, which is something quite different.

High school days are scary for most people as this is a time where everyone tries to establish himself. This is a time when we are like curious cats trying to find out everything around us without considering the dangers involved. Some would establish themselves by treading over other people’s corpses, while others might try to live a simple life by staying out of other people’s way. As for me I picked a role I liked and stuck with it. I decided I didn’t want to be considered as belonging to any “groups” so I treaded along the middle line as much as possible. The good thing is then you dodge a lot of bullying bullets because every group knew that any group could come to your help. Not that I would need it as I was quite a feisty piece of work myself at that time with all the raging hormones inside me. Of course taking up that kind of role would mean that you might not get anywhere in terms of status in school but that was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to be someone I was happy with and I couldn’t care less about what other people thought of me, which is still kind of whom I am nowadays.

In my very teenage worldview at that time, high school was a bigger playground that provided me all the space and facilities I needed to explore who I want to be. The price was comparatively small when things did not work out so it would be silly not to take full advantage of it.  I did have a blast at that time and a lot of things that I learnt and liked still form a solid part of my life now – and that include acting, playing music, being creative and thinking critically. Some people might not agree with me but I firmly believe these aspects of me have made me a more complete person.

In “Perks” the main character had a vision to become a writer to recount his story during this time of his life and eventually he did, although the journey was not a particularly easy one. As for his two best friends, they had their own problems, and they went through a similar ritual but through some different pathways. They might look strong on the outside but they were as battled as the main character in the inside. How did you balance what you want with what you can do? The whole ability side of thing was so abstract at that age that one bound to be disappointed at some point – and to handle those disappointments are quite some lessons to learn. I had my fair share of disappointment during my high school years too, some of which at that time I thought I wouldn’t have survived but then I lived on.

Maybe it is a bit too “tooth achy” when it comes to coming of age especially when we look back at them after we grew up. This is because it felt like that you were the only person feeling a constant pain that nobody else could feel and understand. But the question I kept asking myself is that does this mean this is of any lesser importance? Watching the story of the three main characters in “Perks” unfolding before my eyes reminded me that those were some real issues no matter from what angle you look at them. The most obvious question for me is if we failed to find our place in the world as we grow up, what would we become? That stormy patch in the sea might look like a small tide in the future, but we ought to surf through that to be able to look back.

I have never thought a “coming of age” film such as “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” would have such an impact on me but here I am babbling on about my toothache teenage years.

An Education

It’s almost the end of the year. I was trying to take advantage of the holiday break to catch up with as many friends as possible. The other day, during one of my catch up sessions, a friend of mine read an article about why kids were put in schools. The gist of the article was around “adults were not built to live among kids 24/7 and thus kids were put in school under the banner of “education” so that adults can get on with their work and be productive”. The article was written in 1930s. The discussion led me to think about: “what is an education to me?”

I told my friend that I think the article might have a point but I do think the argument is circumstantial. This is because the article was written in a period were the world was trying to recover from the great depression. So I think there might be a circumstantial agenda – to make parents feel better leaving their kids at school to go to work hard for the money and be ‘productive’. The whole concept of education was not invented in the 1930s but it was at that time that someone thought about the ‘purpose’ of education in such a way. The view of ‘putting kids away so adults can get on with their work’ might still be valid for the current time because living had become so expensive that both parents in some cases would need as much time working as possible to support the family. But to name this as a purpose of education, for me is over generalisation.

As for the real purpose of education, I think a lot of governing entities are still trying to find the answer. Some people see education as a way to indoctrinate kids to comply with the society’s values instead of developing kids into unique individuals. I personally did not see this as a huge problem. The society does need a set of core values to be maintained to continue to exist, so indoctrinating these values into kids through education is a good way to do it. However, that does not mean I support the old school communist brain washing ‘education’ campaign that turned everyone into a single-minded robot. I am just an advocate of subjects like ‘social studies’ where kids were taught their rights and obligations in the society and the school acts as the venue where these concepts are strictly enforced. This means as much as a brat a kid could be at home, when the kid goes to school, none of the parental-leniency applies and there will be consequences when rules are broken. I could be wrong but I do believe if we put context into rules, the chances of these rules being comply with could be higher.

My friend and I also discussed about curriculums being taught at school. I was not brought up in Australia, so I am in no position to make any comments on the Australian curriculum. But personally I think language skills are extremely important. For me literacy provides the power to an individual not only to express himself but also to inform and be informed of the world around him. Language proficiency also encourages critical thinking, so kids can question issues from an informed point of view. This, in my opinion, is essential for the continued growth of our society. I am also a big supporter of subjects like cultural studies, history and geography. These subjects promote mutual understand of our and other people’s societies and cultures better, and thus could help reducing political correctness and political incorrectness alike.

As for maths, well maths, I cannot deny the importance of maths in life, but I do have mixed feelings for this subject. I personally think that basic maths skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, are very important, but beyond that I am not so sure. As a kid, I always questioned why did I need to learn algebra and simultaneous equations. Certainly I think geometry is interesting and useful to a certain extent, and also the ability to calculate time, not to mention I am able to calculate discounts in shows quickly. But I always felt that sometimes maths is teaching me things that I knew I would not be using in the future. My interest has never been in science, so maths being a compulsory subject until year 11 was a bit too much for me. I got a credit for my open exam but I never enjoyed it. Naturally it was one of the first subjects I dropped when I moved on to year 12.

It seems that I have been equating education with schooling, which is definitely not my intention. I believe education can be achieved in different formats; each party involved should find the one that best suits him or her. For me an education needs to be able to equip you both socially and intellectually. Lacking either one aspect of that makes an education incomplete for an individual. Do I have the answer to how it should be done? Well I do have my own set of philosophy but that doesn’t mean that it is the answer to everyone’s situation. Still I would like to reiterate that how education should be delivered should cater to individual needs and circumstance so that it fulfils its purpose – which is to provide knowledge and to prepare oneself as an individual and as part of the society.

The Inner Gollum

With the new “Lord of the Rings” movie coming out, it was the time to revisit the old ones. As I was watching them, I suddenly developed quite a bit of pity for Gollum. I used to hate that character – it’s ugly, scheming and annoying. “My precious” is funny simply because it was stupidly annoying and cliché. However this time round, after several years more of life experience, I suddenly feel for the character in a very different way.

Gollum was obsessed with the ring – even though it was not meant to be his. He killed his cousin to obtain it and from that point onward, he thought he found what he wanted, cling on to it and descended into obscurity. Watching his downfall in a marathon manner made me reflecting on certain things around me in my life. I began to question myself: “How different am I from Gollum?”

Looking back my life from this point, there were prominent moments that I thought I found something that was mine. And the reason? Simply because it was nice, I liked it and I had always wanted it.  Once obtained, I tried to apply all measures to hold on to it even when I knew very well that I should have moved on or let go. I myself have become the Gollum that I used to hate with a passion.

Tokkien characters are very real because they learn to live with their goods and their flaws. For these characters life is always a fine art in balancing the two sides. Gollum is an unfortunate character that eventually his flaw, which he was well aware off, took over his good. It is easy for me to judge Gollum, but am I seeing the peck in other people’s eyes without knowing the log in mine? I believe some of us did have occasions that we want to hold on to things that are no longer belonging to us. In Gollum’s case it was quite straightforward – the ring possessed him – he felt compelled that he had to keep the ring in close guard. So when he lost it and later found out Frodo had it, he went to the distance to try to re-claim it. Of course there was a period that he came to his senses briefly but his desire for the ring had completely corrupted his mind and drove him to his final demise.

As I think about some scenarios of my life so far, I must admit that I did have quite a few of these Gollum moments myself. Be it a relationship, an item or a job, there were different occasions that I wanted to hold on to something that I know very well that I should have let go. Now thinking about it I was quite “ugly” in terms of a person during those periods. At times I even resent myself as a person. Giving up or moving on sometimes is hard. This is not only because you are “losing something” you held dear but also because of the uncertainty in how you anchor that part of yourself in the future.  I guess there are always breaking points that you know you can’t do anything but comply with the situation. But complying is very different from willingly let go. For me compliance hurts much more than a free will decision to let go. But I guess as you grow older you would probably have a bit more tricks up your sleeves to deal with these situations, making it less painful maybe.

I think compared to Gollum we are a lot luckier in a way that we were not actually “possessed” (although we might sometimes want to think so just to justify our actions). The fact is no situation in our lives is absolute. We can’t even guarantee we would wake up from our sleep the next morning, let alone holding on to people we like, possessions we hold dearly to or a job we love greatly. There would always be a possibility that we need to part with them and I think learning to part with them gracefully is a life long process. Humans are emotional beings. We get attached to people and things, and sometimes that’s how we support our own existence. This inevitably makes the detaching process a lot harder. However, looking at the bright side (which I tried to remind myself to) is that you never know whether better things would come along if you don’t let go of the present. Thinking along this line provides me the token to exchange present for the future. Fool, some people might think I am, but if it works for me and provides the positive energy I need to live on, I will stick to this “philosophy” of mine. Also when you look back at a later stage, you would start to re-evaluate how “precious” actually were those “My Precious”.

I believe we all have our “Inner Gollums” but the question is how far would we let our “Inner Gollum” to take over. This is something I am still learning case by case and day by day.

Great Expectations

In Great Expectations, Pip was treated a taste of wealth with the expectation of becoming a gentleman in the society. When things eventually did not work out and the reality was a lot colder than he expected, his life fell into ruins.

I was having drinks and chatting away with a few friends the other night. During the conversation, one of my friends told us that he recently signed up with an online dating website to try his luck with love. It has been a few months now. Apart from occasional messages with others, he hasn’t found anyone yet and he started to feel frustrated. The conversation led me thinking about the role of expectation in our lives again. Similar to Pip we consciously or unconsciously expected a lot of “things”, either on others or on ourselves. We live in a society that is so tightly knitted together now that sometimes it feels like we are just constantly spending our lives fulfilling each other’s expectations.

When we grew up we were expected to behave in certain ways (and sometimes rightly so) and eventually we learnt to build expectations on other people. When I was a kid, I expected to be rewarded whenever I did something good or did well in school, I expected to get good grades if I worked hard; I expected people to like me if I treated them well. Of course at the same time my parents expected me to behave like a responsible kid, expected me to do well in school and expected me to be generous and kind to other people. Life became a constant exchange of expectations with different parties. In an ideal world, this exchange of expectation would balance out each other and we would all be living in a rose garden. However, the reality is that a lot of times, the gaps between the expecting and the expected are so huge that it is just a void of endless disappointment.

So how much is too much when it comes to expectations? Or should we even attempt to expect anything? Or should we just stop expecting but start doing? In my friend’s case, of course I have heard a lot of success stories with online dating, and I had witnessed quite a few myself. But at the end of the day, we are dealing with real human beings no matter how virtual they sound on the website. Online dating website for me is a cluster of expectations being posted publicly hoping to achieve a balance with other expectations through the text of individual profiles. No matter how virtual the website is we are still dealing with reality here. Of course the chance of meeting the right person could be higher because expectations were laid bare on the profiles like products on the supermarket shelves. However, this still does not guarantee a fair exchange of expectations between individual members on the site and someone bound to be disappointed. At that time I suggested my friend to lower his expectations (in terms of success rate) so he would be less disappointed.

As rational as I might sound, I still had times that I put myself into dangerously bad positions when my own expectations failed me. For example, when I didn’t get into the law school I wanted after months of studying extremely hard, I nearly just gave up my study life right there and then. Eventually ration kicked in and I peeled myself off my bed again and registered for another course at the eleventh hour. That incident was a cold hard reality check that taught me I could work as hard as I could and expect as much as I wanted to, the truth is nothing is within my control. Expectations then started to become a reality check mechanism for me. They became outcomes or options I could expect, but then I would always need to have plan B, C and D to buffer my fall if my original expectation did not come into fruition. I also constantly remind myself I should expect less to be disappointed less. Does that mean I am immune to disappointment? Certainly not, I still get disappointed with myself, or things happening around me from time to time. But the time I needed to peel myself off my bed now is certainly shorter.

For some, the tactics of “Expecting less to be disappointed less” might sound a bit pessimistic. But for me it is a survival skill that pragmatically balances goals and ambitions with reality. The less painful the disappointments are, the higher the chances of me getting back on my feet and look for options to rectify the situation I am in to achieve my goals. 

Let the Music Play!

Been playing in a band for a local musical production lately. Originally seen as something to take my mind off things around me lately, it turned out to be a more enjoyable experience that I expected. The experience reminds me how much I missed music making, something that once played a huge part in my life.

I learned to play flute when I first started high school and since then it has become a part of me. I love music and have always been so (although I was so overdosed by my parents’ love for Beatles and Elvis that I became extremely rebellious against their music). Learning to play a musical instrument opened my eyes to how music came about and deepens my love for this art form. I spent most of my high school years playing music, practising music, and learning about music. Most of the afterschool and lunchtime activities circled around music.  Music always allows me to take my mind off things, at times unpleasant or stressful things, in my life. When I am playing music, it is all about the musical notes on the page and how to express them. It is no longer about me for the music comes first.

As I grew up and slowly moved towards adulthood, music seemed to have slowly faded away from my life. In the early years after high school, I still played music from time to time but certainly not as much. The university years were about setting myself up for a career, and music certainly was not one of the options for most Chinese kids in Hong Kong. I was even informed that if I wanted to take music as a minor, I would need to find my own money to do that. So music study was completely off the table. Once I started working, as with most other people, music became something I appreciate but no longer get involved. This is a bit ironic in a way that because my first ever pay cheque was obtained from playing music for a series of instant noodle commercials. At that time, my only channel to stay in touch with music was through the church choir where I sang as one of the few first tenors. But I never got as much kick out of it as I did in high school.

Participating in the band of this musical reminds me how much I missed this part of my life. In the band there are two young members who are currently studying music at the university. They told me how much they enjoyed the collaboration process with like-minded people day in day out.  Also there is a music teacher whose day job is to teach music, something she said she dearly loves. I never had a chance to study music in a structured way. I love it, so I play it and learn things I need to know along the way. Surely I studied music theory so I understood the complexity of this art form but I never had a chance to study music as a discipline. I did have an offer from a university to study music as a minor but as pointed out earlier, it was out of question from my parents’ point of view.

Music for me is something that you can appreciate as much as you want, but it is nothing compared to actually being part of it. I think this is similar to the theatre and me – I love going to the theatre but I prefer to be part of it.  There is nothing better than to feel the music from a first person perspective. The labour you put in to achieve the technical requirements is nothing but satisfying. The ability to hit a certain impossible note, or to achieve proficiency in a serious of ridiculous notes that could break your fingers because of the unrealistic fingering demand for the instrument are some of the reasons why making music is so addictive. I must admit that I was quite rusty when I first picked up my flute again and started practising for this musical (at times I was in panic because I felt like I had lost touch with the instrument). However, as the weeks went by, things started to come back and like a bush fire it just keeps on burning and burning. Certainly comparing to the professionals in the group, there is still a long way for me to go, but at least I know I would not be sinking the ship for them (hopefully). Also the comradeship in the group provided some much needed confidence for me understand that I do belong to this band.

I do not know how long this feeling would last when the show finishes in mid December, but for the time being, I want to enjoy this lost world of mine as much as possible and let the music continue to play on.

The Venetian Twins - Playing now at the New Theatre, Sydney, till 15 December

I am in the weekend band