A step closer to the homestretch - and a different look at my "home"

I must confess that I haven't done much after finishing the entire draft in August. I returned to Hong Kong to visit my boyfriend and my brother, who was hospitalized for an unknown lump on his back only to discover that it's infection by the mould. How bizarre it is. I had a wonderful time in Hong Kong, following the advice from my supervisor, who believes that I should take a break so that I can have a fresh eye on my thesis.
I took her advice faithfully, ending up doing nothing but spending time dine and wine away my entire vacation in Hong Kong. A good thing to do, I must say. Never in my life can I have so much pleasure and leisure in Hong Kong. Work pressure is outrageous in this little town. With over 7 million population in just about 2000 sq.km, it is not just packed and compact in terms of physical space, but also emotionally, you feel you are entirely filled up. Virtually I work 10 to 12 hours a day. Starting from 10 am to 10 pm. And when I go home, I still work for an hour or two when I get home. This is the awful thing about technological advancement. When all your documents and work is just a click away.
What I am glad about the trip is that at least I could act like a visitor for a while to enjoy something I could barely do when I was in my hometown. And looking at my home city from a new perspective. It is vibrant, it's lovely, at times suffocating, but after all, it makes you feel fully-charged and young and crazy all the time.
Viva Hong Kong!!

10 hours stuck in Heathrow- a consequence of sheer stupidity

You wouldn't be able to believe this. I am now staying at Weatherspoon in Heathrow, plugging in my computer , writing the blog, because I still have almost five hours to kill before boarding on my connecting flight to Glasgow. In fact, I have been in the airport for, let me think..., five hours already.

You may wonder how on earth I can end up getting stuck for ten hours at the airport and how I am going to kill my time. Well, Well, to answer the first question, let me explain a little bit. I learnt from a Glaswegian (Chinese) that there is a good deal traveling to London with a package of hotel plus train that cost around 100 pounds and staying in a hotel close to where I usually hang out (the same old place, Bloomsbury, Covent Garden...). So, I went to that travel agent, only to find that it's a deal offered to two persons. I thought they are decent enough so when I discovered that the BA flight I tried to order is a bit more expensive than my original budget. I called them for help. They gave me a deal a bit cheaper than purchasing online, (around 40 pounds less. But I ended up getting charged an extra 18 pounds...Urgh...)and when I talked to the agent, it was early, and I never functioned properly in the morning. So, I said yes. By the time I came to my senses that I could be in trouble, it was already too late. Because then, I realized I would need to wait for ten hours at the airport. The flight was booked. The damage was done. So, I just cheered myself up that actually, it's not too bad. I could nap and then read and then get online and then do some window shopping. Sounds like a good plan. So, here I am, slept for 5 hours on the plane. (Plus 45 mins at the airport.) Finished the Glamour magazine and half of The New Yorker and plunging in the most-wanted-to-read book of the moment LOOT by Sharon Waxman, I came to my own realization from this self-stranded episode.

Points to note

1.OK. Don’t be stupid enough to save just 50 to 100 pounds at the expense of ten hour jail at the airport. You may end up blaming no one but yourself for gloating at your frugality and cautious spending. But seriously, I need to think I am frugal because I am so totally NOT one, never ever will get close to that word. Believe me.

2.Even though shops are everywhere at T5 in Heathrow. It will drive you completely nuts for not having enough money to shop till you drop when you are stuck here. Seeing all the beautiful things and rating how much you can spend is like you are seeing the divine Pierce Brosnan naked in his best form but can’t touch him

Good things about self-stranding
I bumped into
1)Pamela Anderson, aka the Baywatch babe and best known for her absolutely gobsmacking sex video with her ex, strutting at T5 without any shoes on. She looks exactly like what I saw at Borat. A blonde with a tanned body, nothing amazing really. She is just about my height. Am short. (or may be am just jealous - I am wearing my geeky glasses to hide my bleary,dopey eyes)
2) A bunch of UN Argentinian armies. Wanted to ask them where they are going but worried that they may think I am a freak
3) A total jerk who is totally self-obsessed with his feet and gave me a shot and gushed, "It’s my feet" when I asked him to excuse me and my little suitcase and God knows why the wheels of my suitcase just wanted to attack him. Well, I know. Because when I asked him to excuse me he refused to do so. Fucking jerk I told you to excuse me. What if I am Angelina Jolie? Will you still care about your little feet or will you be down on own stupid knees?
Okok! It’s fun to be stuck here, even though I am dead knackered.

Life without work

I have taken a six-month no pay leave to stay in Glasgow, which is where my niece lives, to finish my draft for the September submission. I have been living in London twice before. First when I did my Master degree and then three years ago, for my PhD. I returned to Hong Kong to finish my fieldwork and now I am here, in Glasgow, trying to save money while writing up my remaining chapters.

I must say that living with my family has its pros and cons. On one hand, I finally got to reunite with my niece, who had spent most of her life in my family. She was practically raised by my parents. Befoe she moved to Glagow to study, she returned to her parents' home for a few years. Then she got married and had lived here for more than 15 years. We spent long nights pow-wowing and gossiping about the people and events in Glasgow. Trust me, you can spend endless nights catching up with someone who grew up with you, and you can have endless topics to talk about.

But then, the problem is that you will just have nothing but only social activities, day after day, especially she has a six-year old son, who is such a joy to be with. I spend Saturdays looking after him. And this summer, we spend time swimming and going to the park. I cook for him and we talk so much. It's wonderful to be able to help raise a boy and to be part of his life, albeit it's going to be really short time. I haven't had such a domestic bliss since both my parents die a few years ago.

And I have to finally get to go to a wonderful church. I have finally got to experience how a wonderful church is like. Wonderful service and the people in that church is so filled with love. The church is such a children-friendly church where you see how the church-goers go and talk to every single child. This is the testimony of a Christ-like community.

Life without work is fun. I really enjoy some time by myself and I get to work on my own stuff. But then I do miss Hong Kong and my friends and especially my work. I miss my colleagues who are also my friends, I miss the collegiality. I miss my students. And most important of all, I miss my boyfriend who is now by himself. This is kind of romantic for a while and it's a wonderful litmus test to our relationship. I get to put things into perspective and I cherish him more.

Without work, life is still pleasant. But I guess it will be nice if I have work, but not too busy and I can still have a life. And I can just spend some time with my boyfriend, just doing nothing but be with him. This is something I am really looking forward to. In two weeks time, without work, just me and him, by ourselves.

Life without writing the blog ....

I must admit that life without feeling the urge and the need to write the blog is not as liberating as I thought. I grew lazy and tired after my last bit in the blog about my thesis because I am actually, and still, writing my thesis. I am not living in limbo. And I am not living my life without writing. I am just living a life writing exclusively on my thesis as I will need to hand in my draft very soon. I am frantically typing and reading every day. And keeping my fingers crossed for being able to finish before the deadline so that I won't need to pay the full fee, i.e. 12000 pounds. Instead, I could pay the continuation status fee, which is around 700 something pounds. So, my life now in Scotland, which is where I am living but not where I am studying, includes writing and reading and writing and of course hanging out with my families. Nothing exciting really.
I pick up the pen (well,... not in the literal sense as I am just hitting the keyboard of my computer...) and resume writing the blog mainly because my boyfriend teased me about linking my blog to my university website and the last bit was so obsolete that it was written eight months ago. I just thought: if any of my students read my blog. That may think I am a looney or a weirdo which I am neither of that, so I might as well write a bit about how I feel without writing the blog and trust me, my student, if any of you reads my blog, at least you know the outline of this. OK! Here it goes, at least for the coming few weeks, I will focus on talking about some of the extraordinary discovery about my stay in Scotland, which is totally novel to me. And then how the Chinese community works and how I adjust my anti-social sentiment to the kind-hearted, helpful and lovely group of people here. How bad is the British economy here that people have to be really aware. How I am planning for the conference next year which hopefully could be a wonderful holiday with my boyfriend.
I guess now I can leave my heart at rest and get back into bed.
See you

Revelation from my India trip

I have stopped writing the blog again!!! This time is like for the entire life!! Not really.... In fact, I have only stopped writing for a few months. A few things I have done in the past few months: I have got myself a boyfriend, which is good and uplifting because he is quite a good catch (LOL), at least in my opinion. I went back to London to show my second chapter to my supervisor, and it turned out not bad. I have also managed to produce a paper for a Feminist and Geography conference, which is organized by RASPAS of ANU and the Delhi University. I wrote on self-reflexivity in feminist research. And it was so unexpectely good. Because I found out a few things about myself and about India.

I went to India once and that was ages ago and I didn't spend much time hanging out as I was just visiting the Delhi bureau. This time is the same: I went there arrving Tuesday night and left on Wednesday night (blah!!). That was a really awful experience as the plane left not until 23:00pm, which is 1:30am in the morning!!! So, again, I didn't get a chance to see Delhi myself.

But then along the way to the university, I saw camp after camp along the construction site for the commonwealth game. At first I thought that was for the construction only. But then later on I saw naked kids running around the camps and when I asked about what that is. An Indian student told me the poor lived there at night. And the construction site is for building better electicity network for the commonwealth game. Upon arrival at the university international residence, I was so shocked as I saw electricity didn't run as freely as in the cities I have visited in the past. They still required a generator to regulate the electricity we used. I thought that happened ages ago and should have been better. Well, obviously, there is lots of room for improvement.

The conference was great. The Indian students are efficient, smart and hospitable. I had a great time there meeting people from different places and getting a sense of what my future would be like. Going to conference after conference and trying to get my papers and books published. Well, not bad. It's scintillating and it's absolutely necessary if I don't want to get alzheimer when I am old. (I hope not frail :P).


And about myself: My Indian counterparts told me that I actually look like an Indian, which is all too greek to me. I have been told I look like: Indonesian, Filipino (you have our faces), Nepalese, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese and now one more: Indian from the north-eastern province. I guess this is good to work as a journalist with such a trans-regional face. Now, I am no longer a journalist but an ethnographer, perhaps I will test how this could work for me in the future when I conduct fieldwork outside my own place. It could be lots of fun. At least, I am keeping my fingers crossed.

The cost of my PhD - stress, nothing but stress

This is my third year and hopefully, marching slowly but surely towards completing my entire thesis of 100,000 words. Well, the cause of writing never did run smooth. I just came back from London, with my first chapter done, at least for the moment. But then when I think of the five remaining chapters ahead. I cannot help but shiver. After all, those are demanding chapters that require absolutely meticulous details. Since I am doing gender studies/anthrpology research, I am already in an area where writing and carving out chapters requires sweat and blood. What does it mean? Writing thesis on discipline such as communication is demanding in terms of the research process but then chapterwise they are standardized. Whereas for what I am doing, I may end up moving my chapters a lot and that's my worst fear. I can see what the stress has done to me. To be fair, it's more both my work and my study are give me stress. More from work though as my superboss is a bit....eh.... mad at the moment for whatever reasons. When someone is unreasonable, it's a plague, it affects everyone.

Coming back to my study. Why then do I want to do a PhD? For practical reason, I need it to have a job in the academia. As for others, I think it's a challenge to one's stamina and intellect, as well as perseverance. I have always thrived on stress. Whenever there is a deadline, I produce stuff that of absolutely sensational quality. You may think three to four years is a helluva time. But I tell you the truth (haha. this is what i have picked up from bible study. Whenever Jesus wants to make his case, he will always start with "I tell you the truth"). If you are really aiming at doing a thorough, rigorous research, three to four years is a pretty short time. And I have already passed the second and marching towards the third time. The clock is ticking and I am still quivering at the very idea of handing in my work in Mid-September. What to do? What to do? I don't know.

Well, I guess from now on I will need to change my strategy. Instead of thinking how I thrive on stress, I will just write whatever comes to my head to make enough words at least for the full draft next September so that I can buy one more year to fact-check and edit the entire piece. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to do it.

Celebrating the advent of power 40? really?

Have stopped writing the blog for a month because I need to finish my first chapter of my PhD thesis. It's quite an agonizing but also exhilarating experience as it's like giving birth to my baby. Once the first chapter is done, it's like I have got my first baby out and am waiting to see if it turns out to be with mild defects or, seriously impaired. Await Judgement from my supervisor.
To me, stages of Life mean trials after trials. In the past three years, I have been through a lot: my mother's death on the day I left for London for my study, and then my divorce, two months after my mother's death, and then my return to Hong Kong for fieldwork and moved to the village. Then, my father's death and now will need to move back to London for six months, next year.
Another thing that haunts most of the people, I guess more to women, is aging. It reminds me that I am coming to another stage when I have to act like a sophisticated, cool, well-educated lady. I try, but, believe me, it's not really what I am in person. Unlike other women who are very concerned about the age thing, I have never felt this threat until I see my hair turning grey, strand after strand. It's a genetic thing. But it also tells me that my doll face would perhaps need to be more well taken of.
This is shared by my friends who were with me since high school. We were celebrating the 10th wedding anniversary of one of our great high school friends. And then during the buffet lunch, we lamented at how time flies. And how we were marching close to 40, with one already passed that. And Mine is coming soon. I wasn't too worried about that. Perhaps because I really didn't change that much. But I guess it's more to do with the consolation from those women magazines. I recently read two articles from two women magazines (well... one women and one tabloid). The quintessential Vogue age issue was talking about Christy Turlington and how she has reinvented herself as an activist from a model and of course, with her perennial good look, one couldn't deny that you can still look good and graceful and even more powerful at 40 because of your experience and intelligence.
And then across the Atlantic, there is Hello!, which features the fab bodies at 40 with Cindy Crawford, Carla Bruni (aka Carla Sakozy), Jennifer Lopez,Nicollete Sheridan (who looks the least desperate with her killer body). It's certainly a boost to an ordinary woman like me who is aspiring to be close to one of them, even not one of them, by exercising rigorous regimen (healthy diet; sports and regular exercising)
eh...em.. But to be honest, Even though I love to look pretty and young, I love myself more. Believe me, I will try to keep up. But life is more than just looking good, I want to have fun and I want to be happy. So, I will still exercise because I love sports, but for food..... well... sometimes, occasionally, I want to feel good by savoring a delectable meal. Well, you know how Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden? It's because of an apple, again, food!!! And coming to age (forty), I would love to have more fun than just winning the jealous eyes of men and women. Vanity, thy name is no women, at least not me.