A look back

Dear Me on 1 January 2004,

Did you ever imagine you’d start a magazine with two other people, let alone write and publish it yourselves? Did you think that you’d have to change your telephone number because the government, pressured by a jealous non-rival, was calling to harass you about shutting it down? Did it occur to you that you’d be the only one to doggedly go on, publishing online and getting What’s On Xiamen to regularly appear on the first page of search results for ‘Xiamen’?

Did you think it was possible to be depressed for such a long time over being unemployed? Why did you never think of approaching that fashion company that seems to have hired every expatriate in Xiamen at one point or another? Did you think they would think you were even qualified to work for a fashion company, considering the way you normally dress? Did you think wearing long sleeves to work every day in the summer was even possible?

Did you satisfy your web design ‘clients’? Did you think one of them would try to rip you off in a poorly transparent manner? Did you satisfy yourself while constantly re-designing your own website?

Did you, ever in your life, consider that you would be with one person for almost three years (and counting)? Had it occurred to you that it was possible to be in love with one person for this long? Did you imagine that seeing this person grin at you could make you smile day after day? Had you thought that being held by this person continues to be, by far, the best feeling in the world?

Did you think there would be that many people hectoring you to get married? Did you think there would be people even assuming you were married?

Whoa, scary!

Here are my wishes for 2005. I resolve to be kinder and more thoughtful. At the same time, I also resolve to be snarkier, because that is a different thing altogether. I hope to see more of my family next year. I very much would like to be able to make it to a very special wedding in a faraway land. And eat more cheeseburgers.

Love,
Me on 31 December 2004

Why is it always three?

Well *sigh* okay…

Three names you go by: Andrea, Ing, Cheeky Bam

Three screennames you have: serialdeviant (of course), andrea_see, jetgrrl

Three things you like about yourself: how easy I am to entertain, my enthusiasm (when it’s sparked), my calf muscles

Three things you dislike about yourself: my attention span, my (true) eating habits, the scar on my belly button from two failed navel piercings

Three parts of your heritage: erm… Xiamen (or thereabouts), Chaozhou, Fuzhou

Three things that scare you: monsters (roaches) in the kitchen cabinets, losing my keys, breaking stuff

Three of your everyday essentials: woolly socks (it’s cold right now), tea with lemon, yoghurt

Three things you are wearing right now: blue jeans, black jumper, Doc Martens

Three of your favorite bands/artists (at the moment): Maroon 5, Snow Patrol, Ben Folds

Three things you want to try in the next 12 months: more crafting of some description, getting and using an elliptical trainer at home, making more websites

Three things you want in a relationship (love is a given): honesty, kindness, good conversation

Two truths and a lie (random order): love computers, hate computers, poor hand-eye coordination

Three physical things about the opposite (or same) sex that appeals to you: short hair, taller than me (not hard), nice smile

Three things you just can’t do: eat liver, cook without extensive help, stay away from the computer

Three of your favorite hobbies: playing with website layouts, writing stuff and nonsense, reading a good book

Three things you want to do really badly right now: have a pee, find a heater, get a hot drink

Three careers you’re considering: volunteer extraodinaire, webmaster, top shagger (just kidding about the last one)

Three places you want to go on vacation: Australia (across the Nullabor), New Zealand (Gisborn – hi Reuben!), Venezuela (Wee Derek’s dead popular for this post)

Three kids names: Ross, Neil, Dave (of course)

Three things you want to do before you die: run a marathon (may never happen), climb a mountain, snowboard

Three people who have to take this quiz, or not: Neil, Bailz, Terry

Beyond belief

As the death toll tops 117,000, there’s less and less one can say. ‘Heartsick’ just about covers it.

Donate, donate, donate.

Grrrrrr. Aaaaaar.

As we all prepare to celebrate the New Year, what better way to observe Hogmanay than dress as a Viking and set a ship on fire?

And things will probably get worse

An estimated 68,000 now dead in the weekend’s earthquake and tsunamis. Being fairly young and Singaporean, therefore unaccustomed to natural disasters near home, I’m struggling to imagine the scale of destruction and the heartbreak that has been caused.

As it has been clearly emphasised in all the news stories, the grave danger now is disease.

There isn’t really anything I can say about making donations without sounding like an arse, so here’s a link to Network for Good instead, which links to many aid agencies who have mobilised to help the victims.

Update: from Kristen in the comments, here’s a link to the International Rescue Committee’s donations page — one of their benefactors will match donations dollar for dollar (up to US$1,000) until 31 December 2004.

You could hear a pin drop in here

Yeah. So. It’s been pretty quiet around here.

I honestly thought no one noticed, then I got this comment from Paul, asking if I’d given up posting to this site. *Sniff* Someone cares!

No, I haven’t given up. I’ve just been kind of blocked in the writing part of my brain lately (let’s not even mention how blocked I’ve been feeling in other parts of my body). Mainly because the time I used to use absorbing the sights, sounds, and quirks of Xiamen is now taken up by that pesky thing known as a job. Which, I suppose, is a writeable topic in itself:

Why is it that when one works in Xiamen (or is it China in general), THE BOSS, no matter who they are or where they’re from, because they pay you a salary, they own your arse? All 24 hours of your day belong to them to use as they please, it seems.

But enough about that. My more recent observations in China are a variation on things I have covered before, so I’m hesitant to waffle on much further about them. Anecdotes, I have many. Long pieces musing on living in Xiamen, I have none.

One thing I was terribly amused with this morning was watching a man dash across the street, three lanes on either side, but pausing mid-stride to hock up a big loogie and turn his head to expel it.

Thanks to Dan of The Shanghai Diaries, I now have a name for the absolutely delightful practice of blowing your nose onto the street (tissue, what’s that?) — snot rockets. The other thing to do with boogers requires testing of the following hypothesis: do Chinese people grow their fingernails long and unsightly because they think it looks good, because it’s better to pick their noses with?

There are a lot of roaches in my office. Not a day goes by without a colleague shrieking (or squeaking) about discovering a nest of little roaches chilling out in, say, an inkpot (this actually happened). There is not much food lurking around the office, so the one species of bug I hate the most in the world feeling so attracted to this one room where I spend a lot of time leads me to suspect a conspiracy of sorts.

As for conspiracies, I suspect fashion companies not only want to make consumers feel unairbrushed and desirous of retail therapy, they do the same to their employees. My colleagues seem to take delight in telling one another (I am not spared) how to dress, how to match their clothes, what shoes to wear, and so on. I did not carefully cultivate my wardrobe colour choices (all the better for getting dressed in the dark) for them tell me that I should wear [this colour and style] with [this colour and style].

One of our favourite Chinese (Sichuan) food restaurants is clearly a family business, from grandmother sitting dowager-like outside the restaurant to the little rugrat dashing about and being, well, a rat. A friend calls him ‘The Little Shitter’. That whole public defecation thing again. Just the thing to get you in the mood to tuck into some hot and spicy strips of dry-fried beef.

This morning I heard a member of a local council on the radio claiming that the state of roads in its area, potholes and damage notwithstanding, was not its responsibility — it was wholly the responsibility of the residents to watch where they were going. Try to get away with that in the US!

A bunch of us saw an unidentified flying object last week. It sure as hell wasn’t a plane, and as far as I’m aware, Xiamen is not a launchpad for the Chinese space agency. I was hoping for a missile (and wondering where Taiwan was located relative to where we were), but my imagination was dashed when I was told it was moving too slowly. Rocket? Missile? Aliens looking to outsource their production?

Um, you can go back to what you were doing now.

It’s not me, it’s you

People I can safely dislike: those who walk into a Xinjiang Muslim noodle house, order a pork pancake, and express utter disbelief that it’s not available.

World’s largest relief effort needed

The death toll from the tsumanis has passed 22,000, with thousands more still missing. I heard a secondhand eyewitness account last night.

A friend of a friend survived the tidal wave in Phuket. He was on the beach, and he actually saw the wave coming. He hightailed it to his hotel and ran up the stairs. The floor he ended up on was flooded, but not devastated. He saw a woman smashing through a glass door. He saw entire families being sucked away in the waves. He saw blood everywhere. He is incredibly lucky to be alive.

At this point, I’m sort of glad that I’ve never been into beach holidays.

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