My Baby at 5 Months

Beautiful, isn't he? I know, it's not so modest of me, but I can't help it. I love him.

Growing Pain - Part 3

When I had the sudden inspiration to write about Michelle a little while back, I didn't intend to drag this story out like this. I happened to have mended some uneven patches with her just then, and I wanted to blog about it so that I can organize my thoughts and feelings after the occasion. If my thoughts and feelings are organized, I'm not sure, and sadly, I'm a little too swamped with things at the moment to care. So this is the last blog on this subject matter:

I wrote in Part 2 of the story that life was good and exciting. Well, it wasn't THAT good. My marriage of two years to David wasn't going well. I got married at twenty one, you see. I had been awful in love with David and got married quickly after having met him in New York. Then to follow him to Hong Kong was a big undertaking. I was too young and unstable to handle big issues we had in our relationship. We decided to separate for a try. To facilitate the decision, David took a six months sabbatical to Israel while I stayed on in Hong Kong to continue on with things.

After David left for Israel, I realized I felt suddenly relieved from horrible burden from my failing relationship with David. I am much better at dealing with things head on now, but back then, I used to love putting matters aside in favor of frivolous denial. Surely, going out with Michelle for a night of wild fun seemed much more in vogue than mulling things over alone at home. After a month or so of living it up, I've decided that partying is what I wanted, not a serious relationship that gave me pain.

Michelle and I went out night after night in search of pleasure, and quite frankly, of men. I was living a life of a Hedonist and and an Escapist. As a default, so was she. Looking back, Michelle didn't know exactly what she was doing. I influenced her in a big way and she basically followed my way. She was younger than me, and perhaps I should have protected her from all the craziness that went on. Michelle began experiencing social confusion and financial trouble. she seemed to blame me for the bad relationship dynamics she got herself into with real asshole types rampant in Hong Kong playground. I knew even then that she was trying to distance herself from me after she started seeing me as the source of distress in her life. This fact bothered me very much because in my limited ways I thought I was being her real friend by introducing her to the life that she was curious about at that time. The truth was, I myself needed so much guidance. I was young and vastly lost from my past endeavors and marital failure.

Eventually, Michelle got herself together and took off for a fancy job in Singapore. By that time our friendship was close to non-existence, but I was still hurt when after all the youthful camaraderie she moved without bidding me farewell. What happened to me is another story, but all in all, I got back together with David after a few years separation.

I continued to hear about Michelle through a mutual friend until one day she got married to an English block and gave birth to her daughter. I had mixed feelings when I received from her, after a long period of absence, an email with pictures of her daughter. A haphazard words of congratulations was all I could muster up without sounding like I didn't care. Since then though, Michelle continued to send me regards, emailing periodically and sending me SMS on my birthdays. Then I myself gave birth to Liam. Giving birth made me mature in a few unwarranted ways. One of them was the desire to sort out the past doings. I sent an email (Thank god for emails!!) to her initiating a talk and she replied like a real grown up that she is. It was great to act so maturely for once. Fin.

Liam drools on David

These are my boys.

Growing Pain- Part II

So thereafter, Michelle and I became quick friends. We went everywhere together. She showed me all the cool local hunts and I showed her my expat friends and Lan Kwai Fong. We would cut class and go yam cha in a quaint dim sum restaurant in the old Sheung Wan district. Then when the school's over for the day we'd go to Lan Kwai Fong for a grown up cocktail or two. We'd eat Thai in the Central's outdoor back alley, shoulder to shoulder with other city dwellers. Sometimes we'd take Star Ferry over to the mainland to venture in Tsim Sha Tsui shopping. Life was good and exciting.

My New Jazz Age Haircut

I wanted a change badly, so I took a risk and had a bunch of my hair cut off. I felt a small tinge of separation anxiety when I saw the hairdresser assistant swept the long chunks of my hair off to the side of the floor. But voila here is my new look and I'm happy! It's meant to be more "This Side of Paradise" than a flipper. I know, I know, I made that up. The way it's going now without blow drying for the third day in a row, it's going to end up looking more like a junior high girl's hair before she found her own style. Well, anyhow i love it.

Growing Pain- Part I

I met Michelle T. when I was twenty three in the Hong Kong University coffee shop. I was still new to Hong Kong, and as an undergrad transfer student from New York, I felt out of sort amidst the younger Chinese university student colleagues. I saw myself as old and unfit to be there. Imagine that? I'd die to be twenty three again now, but that's how I felt then. I was already married yet I was still a kid, and comparing myself to the other naive kids who may have still been virgins I had mixed feelings of superiority and shame.

It was may be the first or the second day of school, I don't recall exactly. Exhausted from the class hopping in the new environment, I made my way to the coffee shop on the main square on campus. The venue was crowded with hungry people hunting for food and seats. I maneuvered my way to the pay station with a tray of toastie and a Diet Coke and snatched a table quickly shamelessly demonstrating my competitiveness (and perhaps rudeness) a la Korean style. Once seated, I opened the can of Diet Coke- the drink of choice by me in those days, always dieting- and lit a Marlboro Light, ready to start people watching. This was the moment I spotted Michelle T. And she spotted me too! It was a classic moment of friendship at first sight. I recognized the uncanny coolness in her looks and demeanor right away. She stood out like a rose in a bush of weeds, like a flamboyant soul among, let's say, a bunch of bankers. And as for me, well, it was clear that she also noticed me because she actually came up to my table and said she had noticed me earlier on campus would it be OK if she sat next to me.

Truth Be Told

The thing about blogging is that I'm a little confused about who my readers should be. Originally I decided to start blogging in order to keep track of myself as well as to keep my friends and family posted on what I'm up to since I'm never in their lives by the default that is where I live. What I didn't realize was that friends and family and myself was too big of an audience group to satisfy.
The question of subject matter surfaced when deciding to whom among the "friends and family" I let known the existence of my blog. I mean, what if I want to talk about the future move to Korea and some of the family members aren't supposed to know about it just yet? Maybe I want to write up on kinky thoughts or on ex-boyfriends? Eventually I decided that my blog will be a "clean" blog. Nothing dirty, nothing I wouldn't hang on my laundry line out the window.
But that's about to change now. Now, I WILL talk about everything I want. I WILL banter on friendships gone wrong; I WILL go on and on about the shoes I saw at the mall the other day; I WILL talk about how awful it is to work on a make-up gig in Israel because the people involved are so horrible; and maybe if I'm in the mood, I might even write about my political inclination or the lack there of. The only "family and friends" reading my blog posts are Michelle and David anyway. (Hello! and hello!)
So to celebrate this *bold* move, I'm going to write about Michelle (No not the one I mentioned in my earlier post.), a friend from Hong Kong in the upcoming post. (I am going through a growth spurt right now-- I'm mending things from the past.)