tired

I'm tired of waking up in this haze of some parts despondency, apathy, despair, and general mutedness. I don't even care to figure out the percentages because these are just feelings, illusory and ephemeral. Logically, I should be able to just wave them away with a fluttering of my hand, and get on with life.

Got to bed at 1:40am. Will try again tonight.

problem

I have a very real problem. I cannot get myself to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. Every morning, I wake up vowing that when *this* day ends, I will be disciplined and put away my tablet or ebook and just close my eyes in bed next to my daughter and go to sleep by 11:30pm. Yet every day for the last two weeks, I have been sleeping at 2am or 3am. It's exhausting, may be part of why I have been so depressed and morose, and does not do my sense of life any favors.

Why do I keep doing this? Why can't I seem to stop?

Could it be just a symptom of how unhappy I am with my life right now? How I can't stand to just roll over and admit the end of another day in which I have done little that brings me personal joy? Could it be that I've just given up on fighting for any semblance of a disciplined life? That I have given in to slothfulness?

Trying again tonight to sleep at a more reasonable hour, and trying to make that stick for the next seven days. Sigh.

an interlude by a writer's block

So of course last night's tranquility was not to be taken for granted. I very rarely stop looking over my shoulder during times of relatively more ease to just enjoy the moment. I did so last night. Then I remembered this morning that I have a document for something due sometime today. I am an extremely slow typer in Chinese, not to mention my insecurity about more formal Chinese grammar, etc. Now it's 11pm and I've just managed to sneak out of the mosquito-netting-encased bed wherein my son sleeps and in which he still insists every night that one of the parental units must be present at least until he falls asleep. It took him about 1.5 hours tonight. I was getting a backache and very little done in the bed, so I must now brave the hungry mosquitoes that had hitherto been whining longingly on the other side of the net.

Must get document done...must...argh...

On the bright side, I finally rearranged Declan's toys and books vs. my ad-hoc "kitchen" area as well as changing the lighting elements around the apartment so that everything feels more efficient/neater/more aesthetically pleasing. Hooray for that. Too bad we didn't do it this way right from the start. Live and learn.

Back to writing...

savoring a brief moment of victory

It's only nine pm, and yet both kids are in bed after 30 minutes of storybook reading. The living room and makeshift kitchen areas are relatively clean, and all the dishes have been carried to the shared kitchen down the dorm hall and washed and drying.

For dinner, I used the leftover spinach soup from yesterday--which is exactly the amount I needed--to cook a batch of couscous (it's amazing how quickly couscous become ready to eat. I'm honestly surprised it's not more popular outside of Middle Eastern cultures). I accompanied the couscous with used vegetables I'd cooked and frozen before we left for Chinese New Year break; after thawing out the sweet potato and garlic mash and carrot and turnip juliennes, I added them to some freshly chopped green pepper and cilantro and sauteed everything together until it smelled like they'd absorbed the dash of soy sauce and pinch of sugar. The whole dinner prep took about 15 minutes. Everyone ate everything and no more leftovers!

The above details may be rambling and insignificant to most anyone else, but I'm taking the time to chronicle an all-too-rare night by the end of which I do not as usual feel defeated, like a failure, and dreading another day of futility. Instead, I actually feel like I'm winning right now. At running the household, at spending quality time with the kids, at providing nourishing food affordably. A far cry from even just a few hours ago when I felt harassed by Petra's terrible twosomeness, her peeing on the couch and then stripping naked and refusing to get dressed again (and lots and lots of other things), and I was struggling with some online accounts, and I was feeling ordered around and snapping at Daniel... Things turned around really quickly, and all I can say now is: praise.

Tomorrow is another day.

back home

After I rode a Greyhound-equivalent bus back to Hsinchu from Kaohsiung yesterday afternoon, I did some lesson planning with three other people at my local church for our youth group. This morning, I caught the city bus to the train station, where I was supposed to meet up with a South African expat who'd agreed to sell me her blue ukelele. For some reason, my cell phone didn't charge overnight, so I scanned and patrolled the small station for 20 minutes after our appointed time before I gave up and caught the city bus back to campus.

On the ride home, I noticed all the extremely old people waiting at the bus stops and boarding the bus I was on. They moved with small, slow steps and fast-twitching head or hands. Their skin were shrunken, lined, and mottled with age spots. They all seem to know each other, greeting each other as they got on and off the buses at the stops. Hsinchu has the highest monthly government stipends (akin to Social Security in the US) for its senior citizens, and it's where my own paternal grandparents and now my two oldest paternal uncles lived. I know that Hsinchu doesn't have a good reputation for tourists--or even the locals. The people who work in the Science Park earn a ton of money, but for the rest of us, it's a small sleepy city that's a bit run-down without any flashy public transportation. Having spent the last 10 days in the metropolis and urban wonderland that is Taipei, my industrious yet also fantastically nature-focused hometown of Kaohsiung, and the historical and cultural center of Tainan, Hsinchu really seem quite sleepy and uneventful. But I had missed it, because it's where my immediate family lives, where my husband works, where my son goes to school, where my paternal side of the family escaped to as political refugees in 1948. I'm sure at any point, we could be uprooted and replanted somewhere else, and then that place could also easily become home-like. We've moved around so much that I'm used to that more than the alternative. But it's still nice to have a home base for now, no matter how unsophisticated it appears to those just passing through.

So for Chinese New Year this year, I observed the following traditions: Traveled to visit the most senior generation of my family tree and had New Year Eve's Dinner with four generations under one roof. Stayed up until midnight and listened to the firecrackers to herald the new year. Returned to my hometown to visit my parents and my dad's sister. Brought gifts for my elders and red envelops for my younger cousins. 

The traditions of cleaning out the whole house before the new year....I was not successful. Because I got sick at the last minute. Yep. Only reason. Yep. I also didn't go to the temples to light incense for the gods or turn on the kitchen stove to welcome back the kitchen god, but I did have to explain for the kids why so many people were burning paper money along the streets.

It's nice to catch up with relatives who have felt more and more distant every year I've been out of the country. Being able to celebrate Chinese New Year with them this year has been a privilege. I was also thankful for being able to hike Elephant Mountain on the first day of the new year, courtesy of the MRT station to get me to the foot of the mountain quickly. Other highlights include running around Da'an Park, the kids playing there with my mom, strolling along the Love Rive in Kaohsiung with my mom and Petra while admiring the Lantern Festival installations, celebrating my mom's 60th birthday in person with her and my dad and surprising her with a small cake. The last time I did the last event I just mentioned was over 10 years ago. I hope I am finally becoming a better daughter.

Declan in his silk qipao, bidding everyone peace on Chinese New Year's Eve

cny 2015

So far still in the midst of Chinese New Year celebrations. Day two of the new year, and the national holiday continues until next Tuesday. Lots of mainland Chinese tourists visiting here, and some Japanese ones still. Too bad one of my best friends currently working in Beijing chose to vacation in Cambodia and Japan instead. Boohoo. I've been in Taipei since New Year's Eve, in time to pay respects to my grandparents. There's something quietly amazing about four generations of one kin eating a big home-cooked meal to mark another year of a 5000-year-old tradition.

Still suffering the effects of a terrible cold that laid waste my body on its first full blown day last Sunday. It's been about five days, and I've gone hiking and running the last two days because I'm tired of the cold slowing me down. My whole body aches now. I'm definitely weaker right now, but rallying.

I've been running regularly since the Western calendar's new year, about 7-8 kilometers every other day. Now I want to work on going to bed by 11pm nightly instead of often only finally sleeping at 2 or 3am because I was gorging on personal time. That probably affected how I came out against the cold virus during this latest round.

new year resolutions 2015

My unofficial new year resolution is to push the boundaries of socially acceptable venues for yoga pants-wearing. Too much talk of said mission will sabotage the mission's success, so let's move on.

Resolutions (that are good to start, today being just as good a time to start as any):

1. Spend 30 minutes daily studying, respectively, Hebrew using Hebrewpod101 and French using Duolingo
2. Spend 30 minutes daily first thing after waking studying the Scriptures, journaling/reflecting, and singing praise songs.
3. Run ~3 to 5 km every day at at least 7km/hr pace (which usually takes about 30 minutes for me to sneak out and back from home and my running routes).
4. As much as I can, wash the dirty dishes/utensils immediately after the particular meal that required their use. This bad habit of letting things pile up is getting too annoying.

Okay, four resolutions are good enough. I know it's quite popular now to bash this tradition/habit of making new year resolutions, and my cynical side does find it amusing to see the large crowd at the gym slowly peter off after two weeks or so. However, my idealistic side continues to applaud the valiant attempts towards making more of ourselves. I wish everyone a good new year.