“Writing as Therapy”

I was looking around on facebook and stumbled upon a link to this webpage, where i came across an article entitled “Writing as Therapy”.

I fully agree with much that is mentioned in the article, and here’s my favourite part:

“Don’t sniff at the smallness of the experience or the short sentence. As the saying goes, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand; build a mighty ocean and a pleasant land.” The accumulation of your sentences over 3-6 months will give you a collection of things you might have forgotten, and a picture of your feelings. Personal writing is therapy without having to pay a bomb for it.”

it was cold…

Today was the first time that I’ve been in school for a week, and it feels weird. The bell seemed too loud, and my feet looked extra tiny in my indoor shoes.

My life hasn’t seemed like my own, perhaps because I’ve had a friend over for 3 days at the weekend, and it has been somewhat odd having another person around. We don’t know each other well, and I’d been bringing her around too, so there went my entire weekend. I’d been wanting to work on some stuff, but obviously it has hard to do so – I think I’ve taken for granted the advantages of being alone in a quiet house. That’s the hard part about living on your own – when you’re all alone you yearn for another human presence, yet when there’s another person about all you want is to be left alone. Gah.

* * *

The weather took a sudden drop – as is typical of osakan weather – from Sunday, and was 9 degrees outside today. 9 degrees! it was so cold that at one point in time i could see my breath condense as i exhaled. it’s insane, as that only happens in december. it reminded the brit of the weather back home, and i think i held up pretty well given what i was wearing. and i’d actually thought as i was getting dressed this morning that i might have been wearing too much!

It was funny to see the Australians yesterday all bundled up in their coats and scarves! The girl, who’s from Perth, had started wearing a heavy jacket about 2 weeks ago, which is crazy.

I cant help but feel like no one should be dressed warmer than I am, cos everyone else is from a place with colder weather than Singapore! Perth does have a winter, even though it’s perhaps around 16 degrees or so, and gold coast – where the aussie boy is from – gets below 16degrees I believe. And it already isn’t as cold this year as it was last year, haha. I should tell them to head to uniqlo and stock up on fleece tops and knitwear, cos those are really good at keeping you warm.

* * *

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged about this before, but I’ve received the results of 2 tests for my translation and interpretation course. I’m doing ok I suppose – scoring just around the average score – and getting above 70 marks, which is key. The good ones are really good, scoring above 90 marks, while the lowest are getting around 50 marks. I feel though that I’m very very average, as the grammar and vocab that appear in the model student answers are crazy. Way beyond my level. It will be interesting to see who the rest of the course participants are at the seminar in Shiga in early December.

some sense of community

a long time back, i bumped into this girl from my ballet class when i was heading home from the supermarket.

yesterday, i ran into my teachers’ ballet assistant when i was returning from an errand.

today, i found myself face-to-face with another lady from my class when retrieving my parked bicycle.

and it feels rather nice to be around the neighbourhood and come across people you know from here and there. like taking the bus every monday at the same time and seeing the same old lady whom i havent yet dared to say good morning to yet. there’s just this sense of assurance from seeing familiar faces and people with whom you have some kind of connection with, regardless of how tenuous.

perhaps i’ll try to say hi to that old lady next monday…

western idea of beauty

i heard of this blog about Julie in Japan from a friend, and rather enjoy reading it as she seems to really like japan a lot. i mean, i often blog about the things that annoy me, but she focuses more on the things that interest her, and also writes on a range of issues and subjects.

at the moment, there’s an interesting post about whether japanese people aspire towards the western idea of beauty, which supposedly means a curvy figure, big eyes, sharp nose, double eyelids and curly/wavy hair – do take a look at the comments to that post too.

what interests me the most are the comments by Kris and Anonymous #2.

i do wish i had wavy hair instead of my poker-straight hair, and that i had bigger boobs. but that has nothing to do with those being “western notions of beauty”!

wavy hair is gorgeous. it appears styled, it cascades down your shoulders and it looks sexy. i remember the times in jc when i stood during morning assembly admiring L’s wavy hair, but i certainly didnt go, “wow, her wavy hair is so nice because she looks western”. instead, it was just a “wow, she has pretty hair in a way that i can never achieve even if i used a hair curler”.

and the thing about boobs.. come on, boobs are womanly, they make you able to fill out your clothes in an attractive manner and it’s definitely nice to be able to not have extra space in your bra and have something worthy of being called a cleavage. what has that got to do with being western at all?

im not saying that there arent asian people or people of asian decent who wish they had western features like bigger eyes and so on. but what i’m saying is that most of the time, asian girls arent just sitting down there wishing they were western, or wanting a particular feature because westerners have them, because i’ve never associated those traits as being exclusively western ones. believe it or not, there are asians with big eyes, boobs and curly hair too, you know?

this discussion reminds me of another that i’ve once had, about the japanese obsession with being fair. some of my caucasian friends thought that this was to to with wanting to emulate white-caucasians, when in fact fairness is something that has been valued for eternity in east asia, because fairness was associated with being upper-class and well-to-do. nothing to do with white people at all. (and by the way, there are quite a lot of girls in singapore who value being tanned, because that makes you look sporty and outdoorsy. not every asian wants to be fair!)

i’ve also received comments on how straight my hair is and how amazing that is and how they wish they had straight hair like mine on several separate occasions, one of which involved my JTE walking all the way over and asking if she could touch my hair and exclaiming that it was beautiful (yes, i know i’m showing off here. heh. but i was sooo flattered :D).

so no, i dont think japanese or asians in general are jealous of western features or have bought into the western notion of beauty.

(not so) short note

on monday, i bought a photo album, the type where you peel off the plastic layer and stick your photos onto a sticky base.

in the beginning, we took quite a few purikura (aka neoprint), and i’ve been searching for something to stick them in. my mum and friends have also sent me a fair bit of things, and i’ve kept all the nice stamps that they’ve used too, and hope to keep them somewhere safe.

so, the thought came upon me some days earlier to make a scrapbook of sorts. it’ll give me something to do, help me consolidate the various scraps of paper and ticket stubs etc that i’ve collected, and will work better than a blog to show others if i ever need or want to talk about some highlights of what i’ve done in japan.

i started taking out all the neoprints that i’ve taken, and somehow there dont seem to be as many as i thought i’ve taken. perhaps it’s because i’ve stuck them on various things, like on the edges of notebooks and my mirror, but looking at the, i’ve started thinking about what i’ll write in the short accompanying note, and it’s making me recollect what i’ve done and how things have changed in the year that has passed.

i’m starting to really look forward to working on this scrapbook. i was looking through some of my china pictures that i havent put up yet, and i want to develop them so much because they’re gorgeous. i think i will want to develop one photo, or include something related to each of the places that i’ve visited too, if possible. maybe it’ll make me feel better to lay out all the places i’ve visited before me, to remind myself that my time here hasnt really been wasted. either that, or the lack of places would make me want to make fuller use of my remaining time in japan.

finally - and i think i should add this into the preface to my scrapbook too- i’ll like to say that inevitably, some people will feature more in this book than others, and regardless of what the future may bring, i will not shy away from including them in it. after all, those experiences are what is my time in japan, and no matter what happens (perhaps especially if something does happen) i want to remind myself of the beautiful times that we’ve had. 何があっても、大切で、深い思い出を作ったから。絶対に忘れたくない。

differences (and similarities?)

i was out today with W.Y. who’s in nagano and his 2 singaporean friends who’re here on holiday, and for the first time in a long while i was out with a bunch of people for dinner on a weekend and there was no alcohol involved at any point in time.

i do like my alcohol, but i dont drink when no one else is drinking. and of course, since i enjoy it quite a bit, if someone’s having a drink i’ll have one too. but it just occurred to me that drinking has become so standard that the reflex is to sit down, order a drink, and then order food.

perhaps japan, and hanging out with caucasians, has trained me well.

after dinner – which i will blog about another time – we sat down and chatted over coffee and cake, and one of the guys said something which made me realise that hey, this is what i used to do all the time back home. we used to socialise over food and drink, rather than socialise over alcohol. it just didnt register quite so clearly that singaporeans hang out over coffee and stuff, cos i’ve gotten so used to chatting with people over alcohol after a year here.

and it’s nice too. there’s something different about hanging out when you’re sober.. you get none of the cheeriness that comes as an influence of alcohol which affects your attitude and behaviour, and conversations arent quite as loud. in a way it’s more calm, relaxed.

it might also be because it’s singaporeans whom i was hanging out with. somehow things are different. not quite as stressful, and the conversation just flows, and there was never a point when i was bored or feeling like there’s a cultural reference that i’m not quite getting or having the sense that i’m not quite ‘in’ the conversation.

and writing that, it occurred to me that i never really had as much trouble talking to guys back home as i do here. it’s not quite ‘trouble’ per se, but it seems like here, unless you’re a lot like them or have the same interests – mainly games, computers, movies (perhaps tv shows too) and women – there isnt much you can do to get into a conversation among guys. whereas i never felt this way back home.. men seemed to just talk crap about random stuff which i could contribute to and enjoy, and oh. it makes me feel like i’m missing out on the comfort and familiarity with which conversations occurred. no stress whatsoever, nor boredom.

people are always saying that singaporeans dont know how to have fun and all that, but thinking about it, i’m not sure i’m having more fun per se now either. it’s definitely a different kind of fun; senses are heightened in some ways due to the alcohol (and dulled in other ways too, of course), and there’s this enhanced sense of gaiety that perhaps leads one to think that they’re having more fun. but there’s something simple, direct and real about the interactions that i had today, and probably the interactions that i used to have when i was still in singapore too. and that’s extremely enjoyable too. it feels meaningful – probably because among singaporeans, we sit down and we talk about stuff, while among caucasians you socialise, flitting from person to person and mingling with most of the  people present.

i dunno.. i cant imagine living in singapore forever from the time at which my JET contract ends, but living somewhere else would mean more of those interactions that are interesting but sometimes somehow not quite fulfilling in some ways.. which makes things difficult!

i really am looking forward to going home in december… will probably view things with new eyes and have lots to reflect upon!