Monthly Archives: March 2009

The Worth Of A Good Night's Sleep

My aunt — the youngest child of my grand­moth­er — has been here for weeks. She stopped tak­ing her clients at work, and has been over­see­ing my grand­moth­er’s treat­ments, as well as mak­ing deci­sions on her behalf.

They sleep in the same bed now, which I think is adorable, like regress­ing to some child­hood time, except the roles have been reversed. Yesterday, she told me my grand­moth­er had the best the night of sleep in a long time. She attrib­ut­es it to my grand­moth­er’s hap­pi­ness that my dad and I are here.

This has already made the entire trip worth it.

Accepting My Baggage

Sometimes, I won­der what my life would be like if I did­n’t have so much bag­gage. How my rela­tion­ships would be dif­fer­ent. Which ones would have worked, and which ones would­n’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s mul­ti-faceted won­der, lev­els, and types, is nev­er a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleet­ing and con­di­tion­al at the same time. Other peo­ple have the lux­u­ry of tak­ing love for grant­ed. They assume they’re loved. How com­fort­ing it must be. For me, it’s always been a strug­gle for sta­bil­i­ty. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t prac­tice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t fin­ish your din­ner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skin­ny.”

It feels like I haven’t sur­vived my child­hood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when try­ing to fig­ure out the source of my issues that it’s start­ing to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped iden­ti­fy my issues, but it’s still tak­ing work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of oth­ers. I’m begin­ning to ques­tion why peo­ple would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much eas­i­er if they did­n’t have to deal with my inse­cu­ri­ties.

This City Lets Me Feel

I’ve been stand­ing on the bal­cony of the fourth floor apart­ment, watch­ing peo­ple walk around in the mid­dle of the night. If there’s one thing that’s always defined Hong Kong to me, it’s the con­stant traf­fic you hear when you’re sleep­ing, most­ly light bus­es run­ning on diesel, and taxis. Across the street, the rooms of the St. Theresa’s Hospital are light­ing up one by one. The sun has­n’t crest­ed yet, but the streets are becom­ing busier by the minute as the sky bright­ens in notice­able degrees.

Boundary street balcony — sunrise

Practicing Tai Chi usu­al­ly helps me sleep and cen­ter myself, but today it’s only a reminder of how painful­ly sore my hip sock­ets are from run­ning around air­ports with all my lug­gage. You nev­er tru­ly appre­ci­ate the short form until you try prac­tice in a Hong Kong apart­ment.

I’ve been up for hours now, and I’m exhaust­ed but wide awake. It’s the jet lag, the med­ica­tion, a rest­less mind, or all three.

Those who know me know that I’ve always felt that Hong Kong is my home­land, even though I was­n’t born here. But for some rea­son, it has­n’t sunk in that I’m here yet.

I guess I’ve been going through some hard times. I nev­er real­ly thought about it until some­one brought it to my atten­tion. The heart­break, the col­i­tis, the grand­moth­er, the dis­il­lu­sion­ment. Somewhat major things, I sup­pose, that weren’t in the front of my mind. Maybe I haven’t been let­ting myself think about them. Or maybe they’ve been affect­ing me with­out real­iz­ing it.

The writ­ten word appears to be the only reli­able thing I have left. My friends are all away. Everyone’s asleep, and I’ve been cry­ing. I’ve been cry­ing in the heart of this beau­ti­ful city.

This city brings my guard down. This city lets me feel.

Death And Turbulence

For some rea­son, I’m always seat­ed by the wings of planes. It suits me fine, as I like to watch the dance of flaps as the pilots check their instru­ments and con­trols. It makes me think of how beau­ti­ful flight is, of what an accom­plish­ment of human­i­ty it is to get this giant con­trap­tion off the ground.

The cap­tain issues a word of cau­tion over the loud­speak­er in his gener­ic voice about cinch­ing up our seat belts because it’s going to be bumpy until we reach 20000 feet. Leaving at 1pm and arriv­ing at five in the after­noon, it remains day­light for the entire flight, as we’re chas­ing the sun around the hemi­sphere.

Flight infor­ma­tion flash­es in pairs on the TV screens:

Ground speed: 857k/h. Time to des­ti­na­tion: 14h 12m.
Altitude: 8000km. Distance to des­ti­na­tion: 15289km.

The man next to me reads People mag­a­zine to take his mind off the sud­den drops in alti­tude. He clutch­es his ster­num every time the plane dips sud­den­ly, and fum­bles around for the vom­it bag. Eventually, he set­tles his head on the upright tray.

Every shake and sud­den move­ment is a reminder of your mor­tal­i­ty.

I used to be scared of tur­bu­lence. Now I can’t tell if I’m used to it, or the fact that I’m going to die some day.