Sleep-deprived ramblings of a postgrad student

Almost 5am and I am labouring on data analysis for my thesis, taking a break by writing this. What on earth made me think I could write a thesis, I wonder. Then I remember that I never thought I could or couldn't. I just registered for my Master's and the thesis was part of the package, a part I never questioned. There wasn't an option for coursework only.

I am seeing my supervisor in 12 hours -- at 5pm. I don't chide students for being last-minute, for the simple reason I have always been the quintessential last-minute student. I don't think I do it because it works for me, although certainly if it didn't work for me I'd probably try something different. Granted, being 1,400 words into Chapter 4 and having barely even started is beyond last-minute, even for me. I am sure I won't be able to complete the whole chapter by 5pm. There's also work to be gotten through, for one thing...

At this point I am certain that anyone who undertakes a postgrad degree needs their head examined, and I'd be the first to volunteer. Why am I doing this to myself?! Oh right, I wanted to teach. Although I am not sure how producing a 30,000-word document qualifies me to teach. What's the connection?

Nelly Furtado's Spanish album "Mi Plan" is playing in the background. I bought it for RM9.90 in Speedy Video earlier this evening. At that price, you can't test the CD, and I'm not familiar with her music although I recognised her name. But I took a gamble. One of my better ones. I've never been up to speed with popular music, so I find myself always trying to catch up. But the good thing about being behind everyone else is you can then pick up CDs for cheap. Others I got tonight at the same price include Maroon 5's "Hands All Over" and Kelly Clarkson's "My December".

All the noise about SOPA and PIPA is annoying me because the companies that are ferociously trying to bring down pirates outside of the US aren't making their products digitally available outside the US. I have the Kindle app on my iPod Touch but can't buy ebooks for it because I live in Malaysia. Yes, I know there are ways around that, but why should I have to try to circumvent the system just because I want to get a legitimate ebook on my device? Isn't that almost the same as pirating (also another way of circumventing the system) except that the writer and publisher still gets their dues?

In December I was frantically searching for the instrumental mp3 of a certain song my cousin had set his heart on for his wedding. And I found it on iTunes, but of course I couldn't purchase it because -- again -- I don't reside in the US. Book, movie, music publishers and producers: I really don't want to hear you moaning about IP and copyrights and lost royalties when I cannot get a product legitimately even when I want to. If you don't make your stuff available to consumers, and the consumers want it, then guess what? They'll take steps to get it in any way possible. Fair means or foul. Kindly solve this problem, THEN go after the pirates. Kthxbai.

When the dream ends

Lately I have been reading personal accounts of people who have lost their jobs due to the current economic crisis in the US. I read this story and thought, That could be me.

One day you have a job and a house and a car and food to eat; the next day you don't. I thought about the state of our economy and what might happen if things crash over here. How prepared are we? I just bought an apartment.

It seems preposterous, doesn't it? I sit in my zippy car, drive past yet another mall in the making, take a seat in a crowded restaurant where people at the next table are texting on their iPhones or fiddling with their iPads, and I wonder, how long will all this last? What if it all vanishes tomorrow? What if we lose it all? No such thing as unemployment benefits here. How will everyone survive?

"In just two years I've gone from being financially stable with a secure retirement to being one step away from being homeless with no hope of ever being able to retire," another lady writes. I think about the government messing around with our retirement funds, using those funds to provide housing loans to people who can't get loans from banks. I have sympathy for such people but the point is that if the government wants to help them, why are they using/risking OUR retirement funds?! Not that these funds will be sufficient for anyone to retire on in 20 years' time, what with the rate of inflation and rising cost of living. But at least they will be something. If the economy tanks, what will happen to EPF?

The middle-class in this country have it good at the moment. Yes, they do. I'm one of them and I know it. Mr TDH told me I'm lucky to be able to afford an apartment of my own at my age, and I agree: I am blessed. But sometimes I think my peers take it all for granted. Wanting more and more and ever more, feeling like we are entitled to stuff, like it's our right. We deserve it, because we work hard, because we're educated, because we're young and energetic and creative. We deserve the recognition, we deserve the pay, we deserve... oh, so many things. Especially the lifestyle. No, we don't. Every day I am amazed that I have a car to drive! Do you know how many people have no choice but to rely on the dismal public transportation system?! If we lose our lifestyle, will we lose ourselves?

I have been trying to imagine it. If I am laid off from my job, if I have to give up my apartment, and my car, and move back in with my parents... if I have to take up a blue-collar job, or a menial job, something that is "beneath" me, that pays much less than I am used to think I'm worth... will I survive? Yes, I will. Will it be embarrassing? Yes, it will. Will I ever get back what I've lost? Maybe I won't. But it is a world so far removed from what I have right now that it's difficult to picture. We all imagine that things will continue the way they are, forever.

When I look at the world and then look at Malaysia, and look at our government and their mismanagement, I wonder how long more we can sustain things as they are. I wonder what will happen when the bubble bursts. We are not prepared, no, we aren't. Not at all. For some, it might even come as a great surprise. A rude one. But maybe that will finally break all the "Malay-Chinese-Indian-Other" nonsense that is going on in this country, when our backs are thrown to the wall and we are forced to fight for survival and face what is really important. Perhaps it might not be so bad after all. Perhaps it might save Malaysia.

In the minority

Today, a friend of mine tweeted a link to an article: "How to see when someone unfriends you on Facebook". And I thought, Really? Why would anyone want to know?

I mean, in the first place, if someone unfriends you and you didn't notice, or you can't tell which of your so-called "friends" it was, then obviously they weren't very important to you in the first place. And secondly, knowing who has unfriended you often only leads to drama... which is what I told my friend. Who hasn't said anything to me since, but as we're not Facebook friends, I don't need to worry about getting unfriended.

I know people who unfriend others at the drop of a hat, for nothing more than having a different opinion or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It's the Web 2.0 way of "I don't friend you anymore!" and stalking off. Seriously? Are we still in kindergarten?

This social media thing... meh, I'm not a fan of it. Yes, I was an early adopter of Twitter (April 2007) and Facebook (May 2007)... well, not so early if you consider that Twitter launched in March 2006 and Facebook opened its doors to the public in September of the same year. But still, early enough that they weren't so "in" or "popular" at the time.

But I digress. What I meant to say is, despite being an early adopter, I never liked Twitter -- in fact I found it confusing. As for Facebook, well, I posted some pictures there but mostly used it to play Scrabble using the Scrabulous app (now known as "Lexulous" after the developers got sued by Scrabble).

So the joke now is that I have 97 people following me on Twitter (most of whom don't even tweet anymore) and 895 "friends" on Facebook. I've been active on Twitter in bursts lasting months at a time; the latest burst started in mid-January. Meanwhile, I've been adding people on Facebook but hardly ever posted any updates until recently.

The truth is I know social media is the current Big Thing, but I don't think it enhances my life in any useful way. I use Twitter to get tech news and interesting stories or writing tips, and yes in some ways these are good but then sometimes I also feel inundated with information and I question myself: if I weren't aware of any of these things, if I didn't have any of this extra knowledge, would I be worse off? Probably not. The amount of stuff I read or want to read is overwhelming, so much so that I hardly absorb 50% of it. Most of my retweets consist of things I want to remember.

Facebook, though, is harder to dismiss. It's a sad fact that if I don't read people's status updates, I don't know what's going on and get left out of my friends' lives. No, not all 895 of them are friends friends, if you know what I mean! Some are my students (current or former), others are acquaintances or colleagues I met through my previous jobs, and yet others are people I got to know through mutual acquaintances or blogging. But many of them are people I feel I ought to keep up with for one reason or another. At the same time, it disturbs me more that a lot of so-called communication with so-called "friends" is only via FB status updates now. I treasure friends like Alan who haul me out of my cave every once in awhile for dinner and a two-hour chat :)
 
 
 
If you still want to know who unfriended you on Facebook, I give up; here's the link. That's all you wanted anyway, right? *sticks tongue out*

On preachy stories

"... reading is an end in itself, and what fiction has to offer isn’t lessons but an experience, a revelation, a sudden expansion of the spirit. Like any art, it can teach or motivate, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s often better when it doesn’t."
--Laura Miller, Stories don't need morals or messages

Be who you are

I read an article a few days ago that started off talking about how people want to make their dreams come true, and it reminded me of this video (also by Dr Brené Brown, whom I mentioned two posts back). In the video, Dr Brown says she and her husband made two lists: first, they listed down all the things they wanted, things they thought would make their lives more comfortable, would make them happier. Then they made a second list of all the things that have happened to make them happy, the times they were most joyful.

When they compared the two lists, they realised that the evidence pointed to the fact that having the things they wanted would not make them happier. The second list showed that "less work and more time" brought more happiness, whereas the first list suggested that they needed to work more, earn more money, be more successful in order to be happy. They had been living under a fallacy.

In fact I think a lot of us live under similar assumptions. We are seduced into thinking a certain lifestyle is THE way to live, and we fall into it without a second thought. It doesn't occur to us to question if this should be or not; we take it as if it simply is.

Last Monday I posted on Facebook that the incrediby hot and humid weather over the past couple of days was making me wish I had installed air-conditioning in my bedroom. My friends reacted with shock when they found out I don't have air-conditioning in my home! They kept urging me to get a unit installed.

I cannot fully explain my intransigence against having an air-conditioned bedroom, except to say that to me, it is a symbol of how easily we fall into a certain type of lifestyle. I like my creature comforts as much as the next person; I love going to hotels beause of the super-comfy beds and air-conditioning (and the fact that I don't have to do any cleaning!). But deep down I sometimes wonder if we aren't getting too comfortable, and taking too much for granted. Many of my peers cannot imagine living without air-conditioning, without Astro, without a car (okay, I admit this one is tough for me too), without a live-in maid to help babysit, cook and clean.

A friend was talking to me recently about having a 10-year plan: Finish your Masters, he said, take a year's break, then start your PhD; graduate in five years, move up the ladder, write a few papers, become an associate professor by the time you are 44. And you see, it made perfect sense to him because that is what society thinks is good and desirable.

But I do not want to do the accepted just because it is expected. When people hear that I am an English teacher, they often suggest that I could give English tuition to students on the side because it is a lucrative enterprise, or tell me to go to China, since English teachers are in demand over there and I would be able to command a higher salary. Even Christians say these things, as if it is natural that we should want to make more money, and try our best to do so. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that I might not want to make more money. What an alien concept!

That's why I think that identity is such a fundamental issue. It's so important for us to we know who we are. If you don't know who you are, you will end up following the crowd blindly, or listening to anyone who comes along. You will be seduced by society's concept of "success" without realising that true success is being true to yourself and faithfully fulfilling whatever it is God has called you to do. You may never be contented, because right now the world we live in keeps telling us we never have enough, that we deserve more, that bigger is better and newer is nicer.

It's not about having or doing, but about being. Achieving our dreams of having more, doing more or becoming more won't make us happier because we will only be fulfilled when we are the person whom God made us to be. Each of us has been made unique. Instead of trying to be like everyone else -- or better than everyone else -- we should seek Him; seek to be like Him, seek to fulfil His purpose for our lives. And always remember: God is bigger than this.

Luckily I gave away the duplicates

Mom (looking at my bookshelf): "What, you have so many Agatha Christie books?!"

Me: "She was a prolific author!"

Dad (to Mom): "She was a prolific author, and this one is a prolific buyer..."

The challenge of vulnerability

Without vulnerability, we can't make authentic connections with others. The problem is that we yearn for authentic connections and deep relationships -- we want to know and be known -- but we are afraid that if people were to know who we really are, they wouldn't want to connect with us. This shame causes us to fear vulnerability and run from it, thus sabotaging our ability to forge the very relationships we most long for. It's a vicious cycle.

This fear that we're not worthy... Dr Brené Brown suggests that everyone has it, and I agree, having struggled with it a great deal myself. She says we need courage and compassion: courage to be imperfect, and compassion to be kind to ourselves first, then others. We have to be willing to let go of who we think we should be, in order to be who we are.

I now understand why when I first started writing about my thoughts, struggles and experiences, people used to tell me I was so brave. I didn't realise at that time that what I was doing was being vulnerable. It came naturally to me; it was nothing special. But I realise now that my writings inadvertently demonstrated a level of vulnerability that many people are afraid of. And by being vulnerable, I gave others the courage to be vulnerable too. They would say, "Hey, I've been through the same thing" or "I'm so glad I'm not alone".

The thing is that there are no guarantees; vulnerability leaves you wide open, and while it invites people to be vulnerable with you, it can also repel others who, feeling threatened, use it as a means to hurt or even discredit you. Over the years it has become, to me, something to fear more than something to celebrate or embrace. That's why I so rarely write public posts like these now.

From the time I was a little girl, I always wanted guarantees because I didn't want my parents, specifically my father, to become upset with me. If there were clear-cut rules, and I were to follow them perfectly, then I would not go wrong, and everything would stay wonderful. The problem with life (and God) is that both are singularly unhelpful in this respect. Life comes with no guarantees, and the only guarantee we get from God is that He is in control, He loves us and is with us through it all. The result of this has been that life itself makes me feel wildly vulnerable at times, and even walking with God makes me confront vulnerability daily because I am naked before Him at all times: "Before a word is on my tongue, You know it completely" (Ps 139:4). While He is in control, I am at His mercy, and He usually doesn't tell me His plans!



In the video above, Dr Brown talks more in depth about vulnerability and how we try to escape from it. I resonate with what she says because I know I have often tried to run from the danger of being vulnerable. With God, I don't mind so much, because for the most part I trust in His compassionate lovingkindness. But it has become harder and harder to allow myself to be vulnerable with others. Even such a simple thing as posting a video of myself playing the piano -- I put it up on Facebook, then took it down 10 minutes later for fear of the kind of comments I might get, or what people might be thinking but too polite to say. Part of the fear stems from my own insecurities of my playing, of course. It is going to be a challenge to do what Dr Brown suggests: "Let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen."