Just visited again last weekend and I forgot that there were things I wanted to try there from the last few times I went... note to self, check this next time.
Menu
appetizers:
- otak-otak
- martabak telor
- pangsit goreng
regular dishes:
- bihun
- mie tek-tek (or mie goreng. this is the only place I've seen that does bimie?)
- capcay
- ayam kalasan
- kangkung belacan
- lontong cap go meh
- rendang daging
- sate ayam/kambing/sapi
- pepes ikan
- plain nasi uduk
how did I not see this on the menu:
- gado-gado
- soto ayam/babat/betawai
- ikan bakar
- telor bali
- bakmi ayam
- baso kuah
dessert:
- es teler
- es cendol
when they're in stock:
- bakcang
- risoles
Can't wait till family visits again so we can order ALL OF THIS.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Chinese New Year (but not really.)
published on medium per request.
Chinese New Year is coming this week!
Chinese New Year is coming this week!
Okay, so I'm not really that excited about it. My family has never really participated much in the celebration of it outside of finding it an excuse to eat out [at a most-likely-Cantonese restaurant because we can't get enough of any place that happens to serve pan-fried Hong-Kong style seafood noodles].
...for the record, in case you didn't know already, I'm Chinese-Indonesian (and technically mostly/like 98% Chinese). For some reason people keep thinking I'm Japanese because of my last name (actually an elderly Japanese lady even mistook my dad for one when we were in Hawaii; I guess it runs in the family), except that if my last name really were Japanese, there'd be a vowel between the r and the s, as in the bastardized Japanese spelling of my last name that I used that one year I took Japanese: スワルサ (su-wa-ru-sa). I guess it doesn't help that I actually am into a lot of things Japan-related.
That fact often leads me to feeling in a odd sort of state of what-would-you-call-it racial limbo.
So back in the old days (from what I remember being told anyway- I can't 100% vouch for the accuracy of the following) everyone in my family used to get a full Chinese name, except that sometime during the 1950-60's the Indonesian government instated a new policy that forced all Chinese in Indonesia to change their names to an Indonesian one, and hence the state of my current last name that my grandpa decided to adopt; otherwise my last name would've been Li. (One of my uncles was living in Germany at the time so he was able to get away with keeping his name, and hence everyone in our family still calls him by his Chinese name).
This also meant that everyone born after my parent's generation no longer received a Chinese name, and the government also closed down the Chinese schools while they were still in the elementary school years so that no one could effectively speak or read Chinese either. Indonesia basically became very racially antagonistic to Chinese during those years- such as the violent anti-Communist/Chinese genocide of 1965 as discussed in sources like the documentary The Act of Killing that I saw a couple of years ago- whose effects are still felt today (the government today includes people who participated in and have never formally apologized for it- which is what happens when history is dictated by the winners).What this all amounts to is that for as long as I've known, I've always felt sort of... divorced from my Chinese heritage, to the point where my friends today just basically say that I'm not Chinese. Culturally speaking, I guess they have a point.
But if I would believe the actions and events of the past, I wouldn't exactly be considered "Indonesian" either. I've met actual native Indonesian people in Indonesia, and my family and I don't really look much like any of them... although I also learned recently that are also a ton of widely different ethnic groups represented across the entire country- more than 300 of which 95% are considered "native".
If anything, "Chinese Indonesian" is probably the most accurate labeling, considering that they do have a significant subculture within Indonesia that shouldn't be ignored, with their own cuisine and everything that I realized from this last trip comprises most of the home/restaurant food I've been exposed to. That, and just about every Indonesian I've met in the States is actually of Chinese descent as well. (The natives don't seem to come out to the US apparently... although I might venture to say that the Chinese families in Indonesia are more likely wealthy enough to make the trip over here.)
If anything, "Chinese Indonesian" is probably the most accurate labeling, considering that they do have a significant subculture within Indonesia that shouldn't be ignored, with their own cuisine and everything that I realized from this last trip comprises most of the home/restaurant food I've been exposed to. That, and just about every Indonesian I've met in the States is actually of Chinese descent as well. (The natives don't seem to come out to the US apparently... although I might venture to say that the Chinese families in Indonesia are more likely wealthy enough to make the trip over here.)
Either way, this divorce itself leads a lot to my feeling distanced from most of the ethnic communities I've seen or experienced here. There isn't much a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant community near where my parents lived in California*; I grew up going to majority white schools in the heart of Orange County, and hence it was pretty rare for us to ever actually run into other people of like-descent, and most people we met would mistake us for some generic brand of Asian anyway... except probably not Chinese. When one of my friends back then started making racist comments about Chinese people and I brought myself up, he said he considered me Indonesian so I didn't count... which wasn't really saying anything about Indonesians other than the fact that he didn't know anything about them.
In high school I inadvertently found myself around a lot of Vietnamese people (considering we lived right next to Little Saigon- Westminster) and at one point even accidentally walked right into a Vietnamese Student Association meeting during lunch while talking to some friends and wound up sitting there just because, lol. In college this switched to a lot of mostly Chinese friends, from whom I've gotten a better sense of what it's really like to be Chinese-American in America, hearing their stories of growing up and lot more of the issues current among them today**. At the same time, I find it difficult to participate in the same conversations if only for the fact that I wasn't exposed to a lot of the same in-group cultural issues growing up (other than the obvious stereotypical drive to do academically better than most people... and I guess whatever experiences that come about from being lumped with Asian people).
I get chided or made fun of every so often for not knowing basic Chinese things in spite of my descent: not knowing the correct pronunciation of (or rather just straight up not knowing) words and phrases from a language I was never taught or exposed to; not really celebrating Chinese holidays or traditions; eating what essentially is "bastardized" Chinese food; the fact that the only reason I can recognize Chinese characters is because I took Japanese, and rather later in life at that ("you're learning it from the wrong direction man"); all this coming from Chinese-Americans by the way and not even native Chinese- and all this to the point where sometimes I feel like the bastard son whose family ostracizes him for not being born the same way everyone else did. Oh wait, that's how it's always been historically anyway, so that's okay, right?
If I didn't know any better, I would say from all of these experiences that I'm glad I'm not really a member of a conceited culture that seems to pride itself on being "original" and "superior" to everyone else, that prioritizes honor and merit and appearances at the expense of individual choice and emotional well-being and god damn it other words that I can't even formulate properly because I haven't had the upbringing and experiences and cultural exposure and context to even be able to word it correctly and this rambling thought shows how much I've internalized its repulsive sense of racial supremacism. I would just flat out say I'm glad I'm not really Chinese after all-
...because if I were to admit any desire to legitimately be one, I'd be acknowledging my inferiority to all of those assholes who've called me otherwise.
But the reality is, upbringing or not, my ethnic identity is what it is. I'm proud of my cultural heritage; I think the food of my people is delicious; I find my family's history fascinating; and I'm glad my experience is unique relative to most of my friends and yet traceable back to a culture that I can still relate to and appreciate in many other senses I can't fully describe here. (I've also felt more at home culturally among Chinese-Americans than any other community I know- oddly in some respects moreso than Chinese-Indonesian-Americans, but that's another story and more likely the result of spending most of my conscious adult life among them... and the fact that I rarely run into the latter anyway).
If there's anything that pisses me off in life, it's to have one's identity- mine or anyone else's- derided as fundamentally inferior and denied its self-worth and right to be acknowledged like any other. A lot of people in my circles tend to be vocal about these kinds of issues to the extent that even I sometimes have grown tired of hearing about things like "ethnic identity and racial reconciliation" (my small group in college lol), but the fact is that their voices and concerns do matter and do need to be heard, because people in our society struggle with these issues all the time, regardless of whether or not anyone hears them speak up about it. My story may be unique in its inflections, but it's also common in the same way as anyone else who's had their identity denied to their face, whether it be from strangers or their own communities or their own families or even internally within themselves after being told so by all of the former.
You may say I'm just overreacting to a lot of words spoken in jest by my friends, and that I'm not really being inconvenienced much by any of this- because everyone's a little bit racist, right?- but my own personal feelings aside, I think resorting to that kind of a response sets a dangerous precedent when there are actual ongoing issues and discussions stemming from the clash of races and cultures today- whether it be the recent premiere of the series Fresh Off The Boat that pervaded my Facebook feed earlier this month, the surge of protests in the last few years due to incidents between black males and the police, the shootings instigated by radical Islamists in Europe and the backlash against Muslim communities, and so on.
Okay, so I know my personal issues are not on the same level as all of the above, but I believe that they do all stem from something fundamentally broken and yet characteristically human in all of us: that ubiquitous barrier we experience when interacting with a culture or way of life that appears both fundamentally alien and yet still somehow reminiscent of our own. I am of Chinese descent and yet at the same time culturally something else (Chinese-Indonesian-American-what-have-you), and a lot of people in my life don't know how to react to that other than just flat out telling me that I'm not Chinese at all. And to be honest, it hurts sometimes, to be denied a part of your own heritage. But I know better than to go on listening to them and agonizing over it.
tl;dr: Racism sucks. But races themselves are awesome. Be glad for who you are and what you've inherited, don't let anyone else's words make you think any less of yourself for it, and don't think any less of other people for theirs either.
While not technically on the same subject, I'll end with a quote from this article that I was reminded of while writing this:
We are in a dangerous place when people can be told, to their faces, that they are not real—that their identities make no sense, and that they are impossible Americans.
*aside: don't quote me on this, but I think the Indo communities are generally where the food is- like West Covina, and south-South Bay. I say this because almost every Indo restaurant I've been to in California carries copies of the same magazine that lists all the Indonesian restaurants in the state, and those are where the restaurants are. That it's even possible to list off all those restaurants in a single periodical shows how relatively small the communities are; it also happens to be easier to find Malay restaurants here than Indo ones.***
** I'd recommend my friend Nate's blog - he touches on a lot of these topics really well, from a Christian perspective.
*** Speaking of which, I know I've told people in the past that reading a Malaysian restaurant's menu for me is like reading a bastardized misspelled edition of an Indonesian one (because they use a lot of the same words spelled different - like one of my favorite foods, mie goreng vs mee goreng), but I take that back here. I mean, I like Malaysian food too... just not as much as Indonesian food for the obvious reason being that I was raised on the latter. But it's still great cuisine, and I honestly don't care how they spell their food anyway.
In high school I inadvertently found myself around a lot of Vietnamese people (considering we lived right next to Little Saigon- Westminster) and at one point even accidentally walked right into a Vietnamese Student Association meeting during lunch while talking to some friends and wound up sitting there just because, lol. In college this switched to a lot of mostly Chinese friends, from whom I've gotten a better sense of what it's really like to be Chinese-American in America, hearing their stories of growing up and lot more of the issues current among them today**. At the same time, I find it difficult to participate in the same conversations if only for the fact that I wasn't exposed to a lot of the same in-group cultural issues growing up (other than the obvious stereotypical drive to do academically better than most people... and I guess whatever experiences that come about from being lumped with Asian people).
I get chided or made fun of every so often for not knowing basic Chinese things in spite of my descent: not knowing the correct pronunciation of (or rather just straight up not knowing) words and phrases from a language I was never taught or exposed to; not really celebrating Chinese holidays or traditions; eating what essentially is "bastardized" Chinese food; the fact that the only reason I can recognize Chinese characters is because I took Japanese, and rather later in life at that ("you're learning it from the wrong direction man"); all this coming from Chinese-Americans by the way and not even native Chinese- and all this to the point where sometimes I feel like the bastard son whose family ostracizes him for not being born the same way everyone else did. Oh wait, that's how it's always been historically anyway, so that's okay, right?
If I didn't know any better, I would say from all of these experiences that I'm glad I'm not really a member of a conceited culture that seems to pride itself on being "original" and "superior" to everyone else, that prioritizes honor and merit and appearances at the expense of individual choice and emotional well-being and god damn it other words that I can't even formulate properly because I haven't had the upbringing and experiences and cultural exposure and context to even be able to word it correctly and this rambling thought shows how much I've internalized its repulsive sense of racial supremacism. I would just flat out say I'm glad I'm not really Chinese after all-
...because if I were to admit any desire to legitimately be one, I'd be acknowledging my inferiority to all of those assholes who've called me otherwise.
But the reality is, upbringing or not, my ethnic identity is what it is. I'm proud of my cultural heritage; I think the food of my people is delicious; I find my family's history fascinating; and I'm glad my experience is unique relative to most of my friends and yet traceable back to a culture that I can still relate to and appreciate in many other senses I can't fully describe here. (I've also felt more at home culturally among Chinese-Americans than any other community I know- oddly in some respects moreso than Chinese-Indonesian-Americans, but that's another story and more likely the result of spending most of my conscious adult life among them... and the fact that I rarely run into the latter anyway).
If there's anything that pisses me off in life, it's to have one's identity- mine or anyone else's- derided as fundamentally inferior and denied its self-worth and right to be acknowledged like any other. A lot of people in my circles tend to be vocal about these kinds of issues to the extent that even I sometimes have grown tired of hearing about things like "ethnic identity and racial reconciliation" (my small group in college lol), but the fact is that their voices and concerns do matter and do need to be heard, because people in our society struggle with these issues all the time, regardless of whether or not anyone hears them speak up about it. My story may be unique in its inflections, but it's also common in the same way as anyone else who's had their identity denied to their face, whether it be from strangers or their own communities or their own families or even internally within themselves after being told so by all of the former.
You may say I'm just overreacting to a lot of words spoken in jest by my friends, and that I'm not really being inconvenienced much by any of this- because everyone's a little bit racist, right?- but my own personal feelings aside, I think resorting to that kind of a response sets a dangerous precedent when there are actual ongoing issues and discussions stemming from the clash of races and cultures today- whether it be the recent premiere of the series Fresh Off The Boat that pervaded my Facebook feed earlier this month, the surge of protests in the last few years due to incidents between black males and the police, the shootings instigated by radical Islamists in Europe and the backlash against Muslim communities, and so on.
Okay, so I know my personal issues are not on the same level as all of the above, but I believe that they do all stem from something fundamentally broken and yet characteristically human in all of us: that ubiquitous barrier we experience when interacting with a culture or way of life that appears both fundamentally alien and yet still somehow reminiscent of our own. I am of Chinese descent and yet at the same time culturally something else (Chinese-Indonesian-American-what-have-you), and a lot of people in my life don't know how to react to that other than just flat out telling me that I'm not Chinese at all. And to be honest, it hurts sometimes, to be denied a part of your own heritage. But I know better than to go on listening to them and agonizing over it.
tl;dr: Racism sucks. But races themselves are awesome. Be glad for who you are and what you've inherited, don't let anyone else's words make you think any less of yourself for it, and don't think any less of other people for theirs either.
While not technically on the same subject, I'll end with a quote from this article that I was reminded of while writing this:
We are in a dangerous place when people can be told, to their faces, that they are not real—that their identities make no sense, and that they are impossible Americans.
*aside: don't quote me on this, but I think the Indo communities are generally where the food is- like West Covina, and south-South Bay. I say this because almost every Indo restaurant I've been to in California carries copies of the same magazine that lists all the Indonesian restaurants in the state, and those are where the restaurants are. That it's even possible to list off all those restaurants in a single periodical shows how relatively small the communities are; it also happens to be easier to find Malay restaurants here than Indo ones.***
** I'd recommend my friend Nate's blog - he touches on a lot of these topics really well, from a Christian perspective.
*** Speaking of which, I know I've told people in the past that reading a Malaysian restaurant's menu for me is like reading a bastardized misspelled edition of an Indonesian one (because they use a lot of the same words spelled different - like one of my favorite foods, mie goreng vs mee goreng), but I take that back here. I mean, I like Malaysian food too... just not as much as Indonesian food for the obvious reason being that I was raised on the latter. But it's still great cuisine, and I honestly don't care how they spell their food anyway.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Kishi Bashi + String Quartet
Hearing Kishi Bashi open a set with Manchester by conducting his own string quartet with a baton he pulled out of his pocket (well okay, that may or may not have happened at the beginning, but he did do that later on to everyone's amusement), is probably the most personally euphoric music moment I've ever experienced... since maybe FYF last year anyway, but that was under unusual circumstances. I can't recall the last time I felt so giddy hearing a song performed live, considering that I wasn't even that excited in anticipation before I got there. (in my piss-poor defense, I was sleep deprived and preoccupied with trying to beat Sammy at freaking Trivia Crack. ugh.)
Even better though was to have that followed with a Talking Heads cover (original - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)), and then later a Beirut cover (original - A Sunday Smile). Probably should've figured since both covers are also on his 7" Singles set; not necessarily so spontaneous like Yo La Tengo pulling off a random Sun Ra cover on the spot just because there happened to be a poster of him in the store.
The most similar or comparable experience that I can think of is Andrew Bird, as both of them are talented at creating music simply by recording themselves while performing or improvising on the spot with different instruments, and then electronically looping those recordings on top of each other, almost like a one-man band/orchestra... only this time with a string quartet as backup. and a guy using a banjo as a percussive instrument. and another female singer. Okay, this analogy isn't really that simple anymore.
It's like going to a classical music concert that's really a psychedelic indie pop gig in disguise with Japanese American overtones... that otherwise makes you feel like a high-class hipster snob because you're sitting most of the time in these fancy cushioned seats in the Palace of Fine Arts (which also has a really nice pavilion in the back that looks inspired by Roman and Greek architecture) instead of standing on the floor like most other concerts. The last time I can recall seriously sitting for a concert was for Godspeed You! the first time around... which also could draw some comparisons to a classical concert.
That said, around the middle everyone got up for an "exercise set" featuring the more energetically danceable songs off of his latest ("...by latest I mean second") album, the aptly mispelled Lighght. There were several opportunities to sing-along with the mic turned on us (the ooh-o-ooh-o-o-o-o-o-oh's from Philosophize With It! Chemicalize With It!- and later on at the end of the concert, the ai-e-ai-e-ai's from It All Began With a Burst) that were fun. And before the last song, after the rest of the performers had left the stage, Kaoru asked the audience permission to improvise something first, and then decided midway through that he liked what he was making so much that he had to record it ("sorry guys, this is really unprofessional... but this is how my albums get made.") Of course, none of us minded; it was really cool to watch.
Everyone came back for an unplugged instrument improvised performance right up close in front of the audience that led into Bright Whites. I'm not sure if it was just the aural/acoustic quality of the theater we were in, but it sounded almost as if the entire audience was humming along the melody with them. It was like we were all collectively sitting in on a comforting campfire folk song.
Only other thing I have to add is that Kaoru is kinda awkward on stage, though in a cute and earnest kind of way, enough so that everyone in the audience laughed along with his nervousness ("I'm swear I'm not high.") and still cheered him even as he was having trouble finishing his scrambled-thought sentence-joke-statements. He said it was partly due to the fact that he's accustomed to having a drummer provide the beat as support rather than trying to improvise conducting a string quartet ("the fact that they're still touring with me..." he never quite finished that statement), on the spot with a metronome on his smartphone that didn't always agree with him.
This wound up being one of my favorite concert experiences, honestly. I haven't felt this alive in a long time.
(Above is from the Chicago concert, which conveys the gist of Manchester done by quartet + Kishi, although the quality obviously doesn't match seeing it live.)
Setlist.
Even better though was to have that followed with a Talking Heads cover (original - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)), and then later a Beirut cover (original - A Sunday Smile). Probably should've figured since both covers are also on his 7" Singles set; not necessarily so spontaneous like Yo La Tengo pulling off a random Sun Ra cover on the spot just because there happened to be a poster of him in the store.
The most similar or comparable experience that I can think of is Andrew Bird, as both of them are talented at creating music simply by recording themselves while performing or improvising on the spot with different instruments, and then electronically looping those recordings on top of each other, almost like a one-man band/orchestra... only this time with a string quartet as backup. and a guy using a banjo as a percussive instrument. and another female singer. Okay, this analogy isn't really that simple anymore.
It's like going to a classical music concert that's really a psychedelic indie pop gig in disguise with Japanese American overtones... that otherwise makes you feel like a high-class hipster snob because you're sitting most of the time in these fancy cushioned seats in the Palace of Fine Arts (which also has a really nice pavilion in the back that looks inspired by Roman and Greek architecture) instead of standing on the floor like most other concerts. The last time I can recall seriously sitting for a concert was for Godspeed You! the first time around... which also could draw some comparisons to a classical concert.
That said, around the middle everyone got up for an "exercise set" featuring the more energetically danceable songs off of his latest ("...by latest I mean second") album, the aptly mispelled Lighght. There were several opportunities to sing-along with the mic turned on us (the ooh-o-ooh-o-o-o-o-o-oh's from Philosophize With It! Chemicalize With It!- and later on at the end of the concert, the ai-e-ai-e-ai's from It All Began With a Burst) that were fun. And before the last song, after the rest of the performers had left the stage, Kaoru asked the audience permission to improvise something first, and then decided midway through that he liked what he was making so much that he had to record it ("sorry guys, this is really unprofessional... but this is how my albums get made.") Of course, none of us minded; it was really cool to watch.
Everyone came back for an unplugged instrument improvised performance right up close in front of the audience that led into Bright Whites. I'm not sure if it was just the aural/acoustic quality of the theater we were in, but it sounded almost as if the entire audience was humming along the melody with them. It was like we were all collectively sitting in on a comforting campfire folk song.
Only other thing I have to add is that Kaoru is kinda awkward on stage, though in a cute and earnest kind of way, enough so that everyone in the audience laughed along with his nervousness ("I'm swear I'm not high.") and still cheered him even as he was having trouble finishing his scrambled-thought sentence-joke-statements. He said it was partly due to the fact that he's accustomed to having a drummer provide the beat as support rather than trying to improvise conducting a string quartet ("the fact that they're still touring with me..." he never quite finished that statement), on the spot with a metronome on his smartphone that didn't always agree with him.
This wound up being one of my favorite concert experiences, honestly. I haven't felt this alive in a long time.
(Above is from the Chicago concert, which conveys the gist of Manchester done by quartet + Kishi, although the quality obviously doesn't match seeing it live.)
Setlist.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Japan
So I actually typed this up the week after the Japan trip, but put off posting it till now cause I was hoping to maybe add some pics to this desperately long post first... but that never happened, and I doubt I'll find the time to sort through all of them AND post them in one go. I'm busy enough with other stuff as it is.
Instead, I'm leaving that job to the also somewhat-stuck-in-2013 photoblog and putting this up as is.
Just arrived home on Sunday (11/9) and I already want to go baaaack.
Highlights and other thoughts. This is gonna be a long one.
1. FOOD. SO MUCH FOOD
2. Places
3. Memories
4. Anime/Manga/Video Game merchandise.
5. General notes on traveling:
6. What I'd hit up next time:
Instead, I'm leaving that job to the also somewhat-stuck-in-2013 photoblog and putting this up as is.
Just arrived home on Sunday (11/9) and I already want to go baaaack.
Highlights and other thoughts. This is gonna be a long one.
1. FOOD. SO MUCH FOOD
2. Places
3. Memories
4. Anime/Manga/Video Game merchandise.
5. General notes on traveling:
6. What I'd hit up next time:
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Ladybugs
Lately I've been finding couples of ladybugs hanging around the toilet in my bathroom. I smacked one of them only for it to fly-fall onto my pants-leg AHHH MAKE IT STOP.
I'll have a more substantial update later. Between traveling and work and the new Durarara!! and being obsessed with [looking up] books, I haven't had time to do much else... and now I have to wake up for a 6 AM meeting. -_-
Till next time.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Plane Crashes
Air Asia QZ 8501 vanished early this morning local time, somewhere to the east of the Indonesian island of Belitung while en route to Singapore from Surabaya. The plane is still yet to be found.
This feels uncomfortably close to home right now considering my family and I just flew the opposite route (Singapore to Bali, specifically - but they're pretty close) two days ago, and we're flying Air Asia tomorrow to Jakarta.
I used to have a major phobia of plane crashes over large bodies of water and air turbulence during flights (ironic considering the number of times I've been on a plane in my life: too many), but lately I've been feeling mostly apathetic about it, considering that the likelihood of dying in a plane crash is statistically much lower compared to dying in a car crash. It's just that it's easier to picture escaping from a car crash compared to a plane crash (especially from a plane going into the ocean), and the crashes this year have been more high profile than usual even though the overall frequency was lower, so it seems a lot scarier than usual.
(Then again, I haven't experienced any turbulence on a flight as bad as one particular trans-Pacific flight from 8 or so years ago that apparently caused planes smaller than the one I was on to shift a few thousand feet... I thought I was going to die on that flight.)
It's really more like a "I won't be paranoid about it until it actually happens" kind of feeling though, since if it ever does happen I probably won't be worrying about it for very long anyway. Que sera, sera.
Still, for the families awaiting news on the fate of that plane... Lord have mercy.
This feels uncomfortably close to home right now considering my family and I just flew the opposite route (Singapore to Bali, specifically - but they're pretty close) two days ago, and we're flying Air Asia tomorrow to Jakarta.
I used to have a major phobia of plane crashes over large bodies of water and air turbulence during flights (ironic considering the number of times I've been on a plane in my life: too many), but lately I've been feeling mostly apathetic about it, considering that the likelihood of dying in a plane crash is statistically much lower compared to dying in a car crash. It's just that it's easier to picture escaping from a car crash compared to a plane crash (especially from a plane going into the ocean), and the crashes this year have been more high profile than usual even though the overall frequency was lower, so it seems a lot scarier than usual.
(Then again, I haven't experienced any turbulence on a flight as bad as one particular trans-Pacific flight from 8 or so years ago that apparently caused planes smaller than the one I was on to shift a few thousand feet... I thought I was going to die on that flight.)
It's really more like a "I won't be paranoid about it until it actually happens" kind of feeling though, since if it ever does happen I probably won't be worrying about it for very long anyway. Que sera, sera.
Still, for the families awaiting news on the fate of that plane... Lord have mercy.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
interim
Leave it to the end of a good trip to make me feel existentially depressed all over again. (Nothing to worry about; just another one of my usual mood swings.)
1. I don't often talk about a lot of the emotions I really feel throughout the days, or rather aside from whatever ends up reported here, which is more like a tiny sample of what I really experience. For the record, I'm an F by Myers Briggs standards [ignore if you dislike Myers Briggs; I understand lol]. I don't necessarily talk about my feelings that often with people, but I generally go through the same motions mentally as a lot of other F's I know who tend to be more vocal about them. Most of the time I don't think my emotions are worth voicing aloud, as they tend to feel shallow or naive in retrospect; I can get jealous over the stupidest little things and upset over issues that aren't worth getting riled over.
But I still feel, and I can't help but experience feelings that I regret having later on down the line... like becoming over-possessive of my friends. There was once a time when I become so obsessive about how close I was with people that in one circumstance I just had to have a conversation with the same particular person everyday or else I'd start growing paranoid about growing distant from that person (which I uh... tracked using our chat logs during a time when AIM didn't automatically store them) and it progressed to the point where we kinda grew sick of each other and stopped talking for a year (which might've been considered abnormal at the time). This was only with a friend though- I still worry about what would happen in a romantic relationship, like I might turn into one of those jealous and over-possessive boyfriends.
It's partly why I've kinda kept my distance sometimes from friends when I might not emotionally want to otherwise- because I'm afraid of growing sick of someone whose presence I used to enjoy or likewise alienating them. I don't want to repeat the past again.
2. I worry about becoming so preoccupied with the little things I tend to obsess over (for the last few weeks it's been Pokemon again >_>) that I grow more distant from the people I do get a chance to see, because nothing else going on in my life happens to be relevant to them at the moment. This also means that when I do see signs of the closeness of other people's relationships, I randomly feel jealous pangs inside, even though it's no business of mine and really my own fault for letting my own relationships wither anyway.
Not that they're really withering right now... but for lack of a better term, I don't feel as "connected" to most of my friends as I sometimes wish I could be (and other times I just feel apathetic about it). Sometimes I come and go in people's lives for various reasons, and then the next time I see them they tell me that it feels like they haven't seen me in ages, even if it's only been a month. This last month being Japan, two weeks of jetlag and sickness triggered hermiting, Fog City Stomp, Thanksgiving in Socal, and then Tahoe. I've kinda lost what consistency in seeing people that I had even a month ago... although my current life-flow might be considered normal by some people's standards.
3. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going through auto-pilot motions even when I'm around people now. Like I'm going along with whatever plans happen to come up as another means of keeping me distracted from the little things that might otherwise demand my attention... like my future, which I keep putting off to some later date when I'm not occupied with trips (Indonesia and NYC coming up... I know, I travel a lot) or the weekly/bi-weekly movie night-swing dancing-small group-sometimes game night routine I had going earlier before everything got all jumbled up. I don't know what will happen in the coming weeks either.
I need a break from life to figure out my life, but that's probably not that feasible without pulling something drastic like arbitrarily quitting my job or something but I don't intend to go there.
But in the meantime... I'm keeping my calendar minimal for the next couple of weeks. I need room to breathe and think again. I was starting to forget what it was like to pay attention to my own thoughts till now.
-- I also went snowboarding this weekend for the second time (and for the record it was exponentially better than this depressing post because I took a lesson instead of trying to free-form learn and failing), but that's another story. Kinda knew this already, but I find I enjoy activities a lot better when I actually understand how to do them properly. This will sound petty but I still feel a little bitter about that first experience... but that's what I get for not preparing for it ahead of time.
1. I don't often talk about a lot of the emotions I really feel throughout the days, or rather aside from whatever ends up reported here, which is more like a tiny sample of what I really experience. For the record, I'm an F by Myers Briggs standards [ignore if you dislike Myers Briggs; I understand lol]. I don't necessarily talk about my feelings that often with people, but I generally go through the same motions mentally as a lot of other F's I know who tend to be more vocal about them. Most of the time I don't think my emotions are worth voicing aloud, as they tend to feel shallow or naive in retrospect; I can get jealous over the stupidest little things and upset over issues that aren't worth getting riled over.
But I still feel, and I can't help but experience feelings that I regret having later on down the line... like becoming over-possessive of my friends. There was once a time when I become so obsessive about how close I was with people that in one circumstance I just had to have a conversation with the same particular person everyday or else I'd start growing paranoid about growing distant from that person (which I uh... tracked using our chat logs during a time when AIM didn't automatically store them) and it progressed to the point where we kinda grew sick of each other and stopped talking for a year (which might've been considered abnormal at the time). This was only with a friend though- I still worry about what would happen in a romantic relationship, like I might turn into one of those jealous and over-possessive boyfriends.
It's partly why I've kinda kept my distance sometimes from friends when I might not emotionally want to otherwise- because I'm afraid of growing sick of someone whose presence I used to enjoy or likewise alienating them. I don't want to repeat the past again.
2. I worry about becoming so preoccupied with the little things I tend to obsess over (for the last few weeks it's been Pokemon again >_>) that I grow more distant from the people I do get a chance to see, because nothing else going on in my life happens to be relevant to them at the moment. This also means that when I do see signs of the closeness of other people's relationships, I randomly feel jealous pangs inside, even though it's no business of mine and really my own fault for letting my own relationships wither anyway.
Not that they're really withering right now... but for lack of a better term, I don't feel as "connected" to most of my friends as I sometimes wish I could be (and other times I just feel apathetic about it). Sometimes I come and go in people's lives for various reasons, and then the next time I see them they tell me that it feels like they haven't seen me in ages, even if it's only been a month. This last month being Japan, two weeks of jetlag and sickness triggered hermiting, Fog City Stomp, Thanksgiving in Socal, and then Tahoe. I've kinda lost what consistency in seeing people that I had even a month ago... although my current life-flow might be considered normal by some people's standards.
3. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going through auto-pilot motions even when I'm around people now. Like I'm going along with whatever plans happen to come up as another means of keeping me distracted from the little things that might otherwise demand my attention... like my future, which I keep putting off to some later date when I'm not occupied with trips (Indonesia and NYC coming up... I know, I travel a lot) or the weekly/bi-weekly movie night-swing dancing-small group-sometimes game night routine I had going earlier before everything got all jumbled up. I don't know what will happen in the coming weeks either.
I need a break from life to figure out my life, but that's probably not that feasible without pulling something drastic like arbitrarily quitting my job or something but I don't intend to go there.
But in the meantime... I'm keeping my calendar minimal for the next couple of weeks. I need room to breathe and think again. I was starting to forget what it was like to pay attention to my own thoughts till now.
-- I also went snowboarding this weekend for the second time (and for the record it was exponentially better than this depressing post because I took a lesson instead of trying to free-form learn and failing), but that's another story. Kinda knew this already, but I find I enjoy activities a lot better when I actually understand how to do them properly. This will sound petty but I still feel a little bitter about that first experience... but that's what I get for not preparing for it ahead of time.
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