What a Different Life, 2010 to 2015

Stepping down on the granite pavement, breathing the air that smells of a mixture of smoke, staleness and progression. I walked through Penn Station, waiting for time to pass as I wait for an exchange student that I met in university. Meeting him was not a big deal. Having experience the change in thoughts and relationship was.

We never were close. But we constantly updated each other about life…until about 1.5 years ago. See, he didn’t know that I was in Boston, neither did I know he was in New York until it popped up on LinkedIn. It was a strange and awkward conversation. We talked about the differences in culture, Singapore, US, Canada, fin tech startups, a little about studies. But the conversation did not, could not, take a deeper level. I am not sure what I am into now, or what conversations will excite me. But having relationships that I am comfortable with such as those I have with Rufina Park and Sarah Tan come by few and rare. The surprise is the latter, as we have very different personalities and values. Perhaps there has been a convergence over the years and help us stick together.

I was and still am excited to meet Wang Bin, my friend who studied in Wuhan University before. Hugs, mutual kisses, pleasant generosities, staying at her place...I could not ask for more. Marriage, life, studies, culture…the conversations seem to revolve around these. Updating each other about life, I wonder whether our conversations were any different few years ago. The virtual barriers of doing things out of social bounds seem unacceptable to her heart, yet mutual pleasantries and hopefully a deep love for one another binds us beyond societal expectations.

I look forward to the next day when I can catch up (on work and in my thoughts) and be real. 

Reduce in Number of Layers

This post is long overdue.

As I wrap up my final paper for the semester, it hadn't sunk in me yet. Graduate school is completed. My mind rushes on to the next thing to do, but there was none. I wondered where the writing assignments were. I did not have the veracity to believe that there was none.

I prepared to go to school for a talk. At least, I could do something. I could be active. I could bring a sense of purpose to my being here.

Yet, I felt a nudge in my heart. I felt God telling me that I have been so busy all this while, that perhaps it is time to rest. Perhaps this is unfulfilled nudge within me that prevents me from being happy about my constant stream of Asia Leadership stuff.

I have to get my life organised again, so I turned to Evernote to make a to-do list. And one of them was to clear my log of uncompleted posts.

This is one of them.

--------
March 11th

I could not remember the details. It had been 2 months and 4 days since this picture was taken. The picture showed snow on two sides of the pavement and water puddles in the small potholes in the pavement. It had been two months of dry and peeling skin, black, thick jackets and layers (and I do mean layers) of pants.

For the first time in these two painstakingly chilly months, I was wearing only one (or many none) inner leggings. My legs felt naked without those layers. I could feel my leg hair brush against my pants. The liberation felt on my legs were also felt in my heart, bringing a smile to my face.

I was walking from the law school gym - Hemenway Gym - to the education school. The picture says so. I have experienced the warmness on my face for the past few hours since I made the deliberate decision to dress 'down' for my day. But it was at this moment when the scene captured me - snow still on the bank on the pavements, water puddles forming on the pavements, trees still bare but seeing signs of fruition, the Sun coming out and warming the Earth, brightness and darkness together yet brightness dominated.

It was the end of a long and cold winter. Hello Spring!

[Update: Or so I thought...it was snowing again on April 1st, when I was in Taiwan.]

Teaching and Resting

This marks the turning point in my life. And I want to mark it. I want to remember it.

I have ended graduate school, but I'm still busy. I'm busy preparing for a workshop.

And through this, I learned: that teaching is not just about knowledge. It's about delivery. I have to get out of the mode of delivering content. But engaging in content. I watched lectures such as Monica Higgin's Case Study Master Class. I watched Wiggin's lecture on student's misconception and transfer deficit. All inspiring things to spur me to make students learn better.

Oh Lord. I need a break after this. Please give it to me. If not physically, then in my heart.

Financial Fast Day 2

I have a hyper-aware on how I spend my money these past two days.

I was at a coffee place (Paris Baguette, H-Mart, to be exact) on Sunday. The financial fast has not started yet. It would begin the next day. A financial fast is a commitment to refrain from non-essential and non-emergency spending. This means giving up restaurants, desserts, coffee. Another criteria of the financial fast, crafted by Michelle Singletary, is to use CASH only. Research has shown that if one uses card, we tend to spend 12-18% more.

I didn't want to buy anything. My normal, typical behaviour. But because the financial fast would start on Monday, I thought I should spend first. I bought myself bubble tea. And that cost US$5.30. OUCH.

I realise that my non-essential spending includes spending when I go out with friends. I do not value the coffee/tea/dessert that I eat, but the relationships that come with the typical 'going out to have a coffee' talks. I realise that I am fine not spending the money and just catching up with friends.

On the other hand...I was craving frozen yogurt today. I told myself that I will go to Yogurtland to sample some yogurt to satisfy my craving. On my way there, I was thinking to myself: this is a non-essential spending. How many people can categorise having fro-yo as essential to living? I spend my money on satisfying my cravings, the food I like. The things I like to eat. I spend my money treating myself to something I like. I spend my money treating myself to the occasional restaurant meal just because I have the means to.

I realise now that having a meal at a restaurant is such a treat for those who don't get it regularly. It can be a form of blessing to them. I used to think that rich donors who treat children to a good restaurant meal per year are just wasting their money. Why don't they use the money to feed more people. But this can be a form of blessing. It is nice to be pampered. It is a moment these children will remember and hold closely to their hearts. It's showing the children that they are worth more than the simple meal that they eat everyday. 

New Orleans ice cream shop

I wonder what will happen the man in the ice cream shop.

It was a hot afternoon. It has been awhile since I've felt heat like this. Sweltering, the type where you will sweat within minutes of being in the sun. I relish it, as it feels like home. We were chopping down weeds in one of the lots near the church, and another team was doing the same at an adjacent lot. We were progressing - rows of weeds and bushes were reduced into holes between fences, where we can see each other's faces.

It felt good. Our sense of contribution was swinging between high levels of contribution to just darn nothingness. How does clearing lots contribute or impact the community that we were in? Will people in the neighbourhood, with 52% unemployment, get jobs with what we were doing? We couldn't understand, but our hearts were open to learn.

The people in the neighbourhood has experienced gentrification. It is possible that the people have moved from another neighbourhood that experienced revitalisation and thus was too expensive to live in. They possibly moved to this neighbourhood as the rent is cheaper - the place is poorer. The neighbourhood that they are in now will probably undergo it too, as it is close to the city. We have not talked to a soul in the neighbourhood, but we were learning that the facade of the neighbourhood was important to let the society and other people know that the neighbourhood is progressing, that there are people here living - too many empty lots are signs of a deteriorating neighbourhood.

The dilapidated ice cream shop stood in between the lots the two teams were clearing. Discovering that the building was an ice cream shop gave us the answer to the many chip bags found among the weeds in the lot. It had chips and ice cream painted outside of the now dirt-filled white-washed building - the building with the blue roof. There were no doors - light shone through the doors and illuminated the house. Tyres were lying on the ground - probably 12 of them. The house must has been abandoned for a long time, as there were vines growing from above and from the ground of the building.

I heard whimpering from within. I jumped instinctively, thinking that a dog was inside. I realised how wrong I was after what felt like a minute or two. My husband said that there was a man inside. Being a curious cat, he went inside the building to check it out before we started work on the building. I couldn't believe him. How could what sounded like a dog be whimpers of a man? How could someone stay in such a building? I couldn't believe him.

Jeff was summoned. He went into the building, and confirmed my husband's statement. I still couldn't believe him. I had to see for myself. Without the thumbs up from Jeff, our team leader, my husband, Jenny ( a fellow co-worker), and I went to the back door to check out what or who it was.

I was afraid. What if the person pounces at me? What if he had syringes in his hand, ready to prick it into my skin? What if I get HIV from my silly act of bravery? I had my husband with me. I'm not afraid.

I shuffled my feet towards the back door. There I see him - a black guy with sunglasses on, lying on a pile of rubble, seemingly enjoying his day. His posture looked similar to a person lying on a beach. He could have been enjoying himself, and we wouldn't be able to tell have it not been for his whimpers.

We prayed for him outside the building. For us to know what to do, and for him to be safe. Thank you Wendy, for leading the prayer. Jeff made a phone call to the church, asking them what they would do with someone they have discovered in an abandoned ice cream shop.

I subconsciously wondered throughout the day on what will happen to the man. Will the church help him get out of the ice cream shop? Where will he stay? I asked Jeff at the end of the day. He mentioned that the church will not do anything in such as case. The man was not causing any harm, and even if they called the police, the police would also leave him as he is, because he has not committed any crime.

My morals are summoned. I do not know whether that was the right thing to do, or whether I would have done differently. I continue to wonder what happened to the man in the ice cream shop.

New Orleans Super Sunday Indian Parade

For the first time in months, I could feel the heat on my face. It reminds me of the weather back home – constant heat every day. This was the best weather anyone could have got – the Sun radiating heat and the Wind was feeling cold. This could possibly be the best day in ages – the Boston cold has sunk deep into my skin for two months and fourteen days.

Waiting for the parade to start, we wondered what’s its purpose. Perhaps it is to celebrate a history. Perhaps it is to celebrate a tradition. Perhaps people know how to have fun here. This was never the case back home. We enjoy parades – one with floats going past, with small Styrofoam pops making up large cat structures. But it was never purely for fun. It was for a religious festival…Wesak Day maybe, a public holiday that I never bothered to fully understand the underlying meaning of.

As we walked inwards on Washington Ave, we saw many vendors lining the street. Seafood platters, crayfish pie, ice cream, and oh, the alcohol – how could we forget that. Heineken, liquor, etc. Men walking along the streets were holding on to alcohol bottles. The bottles were whispering to me, asking me to buy them and consume the liquid that was inside.

The smell of humidity and smoke was in the air. The thickness of the air was satisfying. Yet having too much of it was suffocating. I wondered where the smoke came from. People had cigarettes in their hands. It probably comes from there. Galvin pointed out that the smoke may be marijuana and not tobacco. I breathed in the stuffy air. It smelled sweet. Like shisha in Doha, Qatar. Perhaps the smoke wasn’t from the cigarettes. Maybe they were, but marijuana was wrapped inside the roll of cigarettes.

The parade was walking towards us. Each team had a different dominant colour. I was attracted to the orange one – it reflected the colour of my top that day, and I could easily blend into the parade to be one of them, to take a photo with them. I wondered about the significance of the parade. Google says that each team represents a different native American tribe. My eyes tell me that 90% of the paraders are of African American decent. Was the parade ever dominated by native Americans? I questioned.

My mind was hallucinating then. The heat was getting to me. I was seeing men in feather costumes marching, unknowing of what they represent. Perhaps this sense of unknowness is shared by the passers-by too.

As we walked towards a street that was quieter, we saw people who were sitting outside just chilling around. We see  broad houses beside narrow ones, posh houses beside delapitated ones. We do not know which represents reality.

New Orleans has so much character that it is too much to bear. You can’t put it all in one box, you can’t characterise it as quaint – the poverty jumps out too much. You can’t say that it is a fun city – again, the poverty jumps out too much. You can’t say that it is a poor city – it has too much character to be characterised just as that. O help me please, describe what New Orleans is. Maybe it’s all of the above.

The worse snow (I hope) has come

Buried in this winter morning with wind speed reaching 100kmph, I wonder what lies ahead of me. We have had three snow storms before this, two of which resulted in school closures. I lament at the closure, as the second one (where the school was closed for two days) can be attributed to the inefficiency of the city or Boston government for not clearing the snow faster.

Things are different now – no longer wishing for off-school-days so that I can ruminate on endless thoughts – I want to participate in a large learning community. I do not want make-up classes. I want my plans to go as planned.

Thank God that it is President’s Day tomorrow (you’ll realise that US has a very high nationalistic holiday to religious/culture-based holiday ratio), so the school does not need to intentionally close just because of the snow.

Regardless, we had a fun time yesterday at the Social Enterprise Conference. Volunteering together, Galvin running around taking videos, and I as an usher who popped in and out of panels while directing people to washrooms, lecture halls and Harvard Square.