the real work has begun

the real work has begun! loving every moment.

Jake: are you graduated already?
Me: yep!
Jake: wow! where are you at right now
Me:just hanging, reading, writing, talking, cooking, cleaning, counting money, and i also wanna do art and craft
hahaha
and random little projects
 
 
that's to paint a very superficial picture of work though. sounds happy and comfortable. but with everything that you wanna do, you're willing to take up whatever challenges that come with it and you'd still be happy. so in a sense, i gues it's comfortable but not.

pancakes and dumplings

Friday night: Maccas close to midnight with stephen, henny, rick, julian, angela & tian yi. laughed a lot. julian kept disturbing angela. stephen was freezing in his garbage bag and shorts. we sat on wet grass outside the state library. Rick fed fries to the seagulls and tried to pull stephen's shorts off because he wasn't wearing anything under.

Julian angela and CK spent the entire night awake playing poker and silly dare games that definitely created memories for the three of them. angela having to go out to the tramstop barefooted and sing hallelujah. julian and ck getting their bodies covered in random words written with a red whiteboard marker...

while henny, me, su-ann, rick and david slept through all their laughter on the couches at toastbar from 4am - 7am, afterwhich we woke up and shared pancakes made by henny, su-ann, ck, angela and myself. (i woke up to angela's roaring laughter asking me to wake up and check out julian and ck's drawn-on abs and soliciting messages on their backs. that night i taught stephen the difference between panties and underwear - that only girls wear panties and they are not interchangeable words. hahaha..

we made pancakes because henny had been wanting to make them for the longest time. so angela henny and i went to get ingredients from aldi.

later on that morning (saturday)  i crashed an accounting lecture with henny and julian. went for lunch with them and chan chai (birthday boy) and i realised how cool it was that all 4 of us were from different countries. indonesia, malaysia, singapore and thailand.

one of the highlights of my full-on weekend was being able to spend that afternoon sharing an umbrella with isabella and yifang as we walked to wing cheong in the rain weather to get ingredients for dumplings. this arose out of a conversation where i asked the both of them what they liked to cook and what they knew how to make. isabella said quite happily that she could make dumplings and i quite excitedly asked if we could make dumplings together some time because i've never made dumplings before. i think it's a huge step for them to both say "game on!" to dumpling-making. their willingness to engage. it wasn't very enthusiastic, but it was still an attempt that i do recognise. and it wasn't as though i was someone they knew beyond a few superficial meetings. the walk to wing cheong was really good when yifang asked me how many boyfriends i've ever had. personal question which i'm really thankful for because that opened up so much more room for us to talk about things that matter more to us. importance of looking good, importance of having boyfriends who look good, importance of confidence and character, difficulty of having long distance relationships..

the next big step was for isabella to open up her place for us to cook. i myself find it hard to open up my own apartment because it's so messy. but after considering the (limited) options we had, she suggested going to her place. so we did (YAY!). and both she and i had a chance to talk about our families when yifang left to dress up for a friend's party. talked about her media lecturer, talked bout china and sg.. when yifang came back, we also talked a bout china and sg. though i can't quite remember a lot of what we talked about. maybe my memory for conversations in mandarin is lower. haha. i also had a chance to spend some time with meng qian and her shiyou gloria. isabella was trying to push meng qian forward, and encourage her to press on with media even though she finds it to be a difficult subject. the girls were all very candid with me which gave me a very warm feeling of being included, no longer marked out as a singaporean girl who is difficult to engage because i speak differently.

the toastbarcampers wanted to go play pool at 11pm. and i simply couldn't decide whether or not i should go because i was really qite drained from the lack of sleep and non-stop action. plus i had a skype date. i went anyway, but left after 3 minutes. because as much as i wanted to share more experiences with them, i knew i was too tired to properly engage anyone, and dong's important too. end of saturddayyy

silei  also managed to wake up for church today (after 11 missed calls from me - i just kept praying that God would wake him up) :D felt like God was telling me that stephen would wake up by the time i was ready to leave home. so when i put on my shoes, i gave him my final call AND HE PICKED UPPP!! he also somehow remembered that it was a sunday and he was coming to church with me! so i told him that i'll pick him up from his apartment. i was truly shocked when he opened the door and his hair was wet. no idea how he found time to shower from the time i stepped out of the house and took the lift down. but he was in a blur rush to get ready and out of the house because he came out of the apartment holding his towel and closed the door behind him. hahaha maybe i shouldn't have asked him why he was holding on to his towel and just let him bring it to church. LOLLLL

julian asked me along for lunch and coffee after church as well - so jul, rick, henny and i shared two umbrellas in the romantically rainy weather. i do treasure these moment and am highly aware not to take times like these for granted. that's why i wanna write all these down eventhough i know it's not the most interesting material to read.

bible study was eye-opening as well. makes me wana read the first 5 book+joshua again cause i feel like i missed out a lot.

having all these relationships forming and growing around me has been the most delightful. and these are the tangible fruits of toastbar. i'm wondering what next semester would be like.... what i want next semester to be like..

new people

left home at 7.45am for a jog with Rick and Isabella. i thought running to princes for one round and back would be bout 4km. we ended up not having enough time to do even half a round because isabella had a 9am class (and i had a 9am breakfast date with yao yun).  even then, we actually covered 5km. haha. woops. underestimated the distance! twas a good jog despite the frigid cold.  especially good because it was with people i wouldn't normally go jogging with.

i've been speaking a lot more mandarin recently as well :) i think if i were to start learning mandarin now, i'd actually do better than i used to.

i had a foretaste of working in the kitchen with the penthouse guys around last night when we were all cooking our own things in the basement. it was rather uncomfortable. dont know how much i care, but i know i care a lot less now. which is a good thing. also, i hope this wont happen, but i can see how bitterness can grow as a defence mechanism. no use just plainly hoping without actively stopping ey.

it was quite frustrating having the conversation with S about how i should confront them and tease out what the matter is, to resolve everything. as if the whole period of wondering was not draining enough. as though i didn't try. as though i can confront whenever i want to. there comes a point where the ball is in their court and i wont chase. and i'm past that point. i wont chase.

life's been sweet.  Erica and i cooked green curry on monday and we served out about 40 portions. that was good fun, because we were just chopping stuff and chatting, and it was no stress.

ice-cream after neighbourhood dinner last night with angela, rick, si lei, rudy, henny, ming fei, su ann, gavin and brandon. when people who've just met get together and not worry about completing a task, or small talking but just enjoying the warmth of good company in the cold, on damp grass covered with autumn leaves, licking creamy goodness off our ice-cream cones.

14 days till stephen leaves for good. 5 months till i may not see these people again for a long long long time (if i see them again ever). not that i'm attached to them. but it certainly does put our time together into perspective. henny kept asking me not to leave after this year on our way home from ice cream in the park.

now that yao yun's also leaving in about a week and a half, i am numbering the number of breakfast conversations we can have before she leaves. not many.

what would you say to someone who's leaving for a long while?

having the eyes to see

i rock up at toastbar, plop on a sofa, and David comes over to talk. i tell him a few stories that Johannon was telling at monica's birthday party just 20 mintues prior. testimonies of God's hand moving. followed by a disengaged silence, before he suddenly starts confiding in me. and i am conscious of these little pockets of gold where conversations are happening. i feel like i'm holding something fragile and precious that i cant drop but i dont quite know how best to handle. increase in me, You.

awake till the break of dawn

thursday night, i was up till 5am chatting with stephen about the things that money can do in china, about materialistic girls, the pursuit of money and status, our relationships,  clubbing, sleeping around and toastbar.
conversations like that energize me.

caught up with julian today too, and we ended up talking for 3 hours about the importance of self-awareness, peer pressure in a materialistic environment, the subjectivity of success, our desire for purposeful lives, how he's changed because of his youth mentor, how a person can give up fame and fortune for family, the single baggage we carry that can break our arrogance when it's brought to the surface, parents letting go of control to make room for children to learn from their own mistakes, the way a painting can trigger an exploration of the artist's thoughts, that lazy people gotta be a lot smarter than hard workers in order to get something done, opening up a franchise and being your own boss, paying attention to detail when you plan your own cafe including the number of lights, the different types of chairs etc, being able to put yourself in a dad's shoes when he tells you about his relationship with his son, valuing a person not through what he wears or owns, but by his character, the importance of recalibrating yourself and frequently setting your path on the right direction again, how superficial 'conversations' can be rather enervating, the way we always seem to be striving so hard to meet other people's expectations of us, the way we dont really know what we want, we dont know how to spend, how risk is like a running river and we gotta put one leg in, how a boy can score well in a prestigious course and be seen as successful yet still be miserable and lost because he doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing, the way churches can be condemning when it should be a place of refuge and grace.

again, conversations like that make my day. and he's only 18. he reminded me a bit of my little brother.

on  a much less serious note, i was down here at toastbar wanting to get some writing and reading done, but han cheng kept asking me questions, and telling me random facts. i eventually gave up on reading and writing. haha.


he told me this random fact about how  much energy it required to break apart an atom. heaps and heaps of energy is involved. and if you were to break apart all the atoms that made up a person, that would be enough energy to destroy the world over and over again.

han cheng: you know how i know that it involves a lot of energy? you can see the energy from the explosion. just ONE ATOM. *serious face. stares at my tummy* Elisa, you're getting more dangerous everyday. STOP EATING. you're gonna destroy the world.

gee thanks. hahahahaha. i thought that was pretty epic.



he asked me this:
if you could take something from the present time and travel back in time to ten years before, what would you take?
(i misunderstood his question for 'if you could take something from 10 years ago and travel to the present, what would you bring to the present time?)
me: uh... erm.. old toys?
*han cheng stares at me, looks away and goes: people lik eyou shouldn't be given a a a lamp. shouldn't be given a genie lamp. you'll just abuse your chances.

i also had a blonde moment:

hancheng: what's the fastest moving continent in the world?
me: huhhhhh continents can move???
hancheng: australia. it moves 1m towards the southpole every year.
me: whuuut?? no way.. 1m??
hancheng: ya!
me: that means.. that means that from the time i was born to the time i die, you mean australia would have moved ONE KILOMETER?????

i really couldn't believe i said that. i dont know how i arrived at that conclusion.

another blonde moment:
han cheng explains that many new species of fish were discovered after the tsunami. and he was trying to describe them..
han cheng: they have eyes.. and mouth..
me: really?
han cheng: ya..
me: oh ya, obviously -_-'




I GUESS THAT SORTA CANCELS OUT whatever deep conversation i have with people. LOLZERS...

a whole different culture

Wednesdays with Erica are always packed with stories and stuff to learn. My Wednesdays literally function like weekends because i feel like i rest the most on wednesdays. 

Highlight of the day was making tangyuan with henny and rick who brought his friend John. then rudy came in, angela came in, and i got both of them to start cooking (EXPERIMENTING) with the noodles. ellie and wency  were in the kitchen cooking up stuff as well. it was greeeaaatt.. i had quite a lot of fun. all new people, from indonesia, singapore, malaysia, china.. WHOA. seriously. and i really wanna get to know Chinese people more. I realise i dont quite understand their culture. i do find it intriguing. and confusing. the chinese girls i've tried to engage dont seem to respond very well. today, Yifang, Isabella and Meng qian didn't eat very much. and when rick and i were taking out the trash i asked him what if they were unhappy. But he explained that it was because they felt bad for not helping with the cooking. so they had their own dinner and didn't eat much at neighbourhood. and i was like "omgggg... whaaaat' and headed towards them cause i wanted to tell them to eat more but he pulled me back and insisted it was alright. 

stephen is a funny one. he can handle my weirdness with a straight face. and he's just game for almost anything. he might be leaving for good end of the month though. and i realise how much i really don't want him to leave even though i've just gotten to know him for 2 weeks. he adds such a unique flavour to toastbar. 

i had the most heart-warming conversation ever with Henny today. She is such a sensitive, sensible, empathizing, caring, bubbly, funny, sporting and lovable girl. she insisted on walking ming fei back home because she would otherwise feel really really sad about someone walking home alone. She also insisted on knowing what happened in may that made me feel like crap. we talked also about how studying shouldn't be a competitive thing, but it should also include life education. reminds me of what Tim said about learning to make life choices. Sensible girl. im very inspired by her haha.

security

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing - Helen Keller.


yes.

good conversations are my red bull

red bull. haha i was gonna title the post with "coffee", but toastbar just started selling redbull and red bull came to mind.

i stepped out of my room looking at my list of reasons for being here in 2012, picked one, and kept reminding myself of  the reason i was gonna focus on today - build up.  i was really glad when A came over and started talking while i made a drink for a customer. we talked about how he dreams of travelling around the world with nothing holding him back from enjoying the luxuries of the different (comfortable) cultures. about how he's doing work with usana now because he sees that as a way for him to buy time in looking for a job upon graduation. his savings from working with usana (he hopes) will tide him through for a while and lower the job hunting pressure. we talked about how i dream of opening up spaces for good conversations and relationships to be formed and how i see that being done in a cafe (and how my work at toastbar is essentially me having a crack at working out my dream. we talked about how sometimes people are too smart for their own good. they keep limiting themselves by giving themselves a long list of "needs" that have to be ticked off before they can pursue their dreams. and we talked about how i didn't have anything when i started toastbar. just someone who was serious about me pursuing my dream.

Tomorrow's neighbouhood dinner. i usually dont cook. i quite dislike cooking, because i dislike cleaning up. plus i have not much interest in cooking. but in the past week, i've met a fair number of new people. xin nan, yi fang, meng qian, rudy, stephen. and they're all chinese.. cept for rudy who's from indonesia. and i'm cooking with all of them tmr. LOLLLLLL seriously. i hope we have fun.
it all started.. perhaps with a cup of free hot chocolate and a free cupcake. then rudy offered to help me do the dishes! and then he asked if he could have free dinner tomorrow. which led to me asking if he and stephen wanted to cook together. and he got all excited about cooking fried noodles. SO.. i encouraged him to keep talking and thinking bout fried noodles and told him i'll buy the ingredients and he said we'll all chip in for cost and it'll be dinner from the three of us! omg i love it. i love how things like that just spring out of no where and there's leadership in that. i see it. there's enthusiasm, generosity, spontaneity and respect. golly. it's easy to miss these beautiful things. me naming them is my effort to not take these things for granted. so lovely.

stephen aided me in serving out laksa today too. and we sold out within half and hour. he was just so willing to help out. ah. i am encouraged.

tonight was also a random free hot chocolate night. because i said so. haha.
funny how a cup of hot chocolate can lead to people feeling taken care of in a place. and how it has catalysed the formation of relationships. SO...(yes another big 'so')...  i ended up gathering xin nan, meng qian and yi fang (and henny) to make tang yuan together for neighbourhood dinner. hahah. they're really not confident in the kitchen. like me. and they dont believe they can do it. But... i've had fun making tang yuan even though i'm not a kitchen goddess. and i think they'll have fun too! i'm genuinely excited about kitchen work for once. but not so much that because of the food that we'll be cooking, but because we'll all be trying something new together. new people, getting their hands dirty, serving out. WHOOOP! lovin' it.  i think i'm so energized i wont sleep till really late again tonight.



side note: sue-lee took me to proud mary for breakfast today!! FINALLY. after 3 years of wanting to go to proud mary. the chai latte there is the bomb.

really tired from preparing and selling laksa today. there was a power outage that affected Arrow and the surrounding buildings today. that was quite exciting.

it's about time to start casting vision and working out details for Toastbar next semester. Starting to be intentional about investing into people. doesn't come naturally to me though, i dont think. I dont quite know how. But i want to.

i didnt realise i expected my relationship with jhann & kv to be reconciled until just now when a hunch told me that the relationship was not ok, and i found myself reacting in a "wth what's going on why why why this sucks" way. but on a positive  note, i've been very conscious whenever i fall into that mode, and im snapping out of it a lot quicker. i'm more frequently reminded of why i'm here in arrow this year.


Han cheng loves fishing. LOVES. and he just randomly looked up from his math revision and told me a fun fact about grouper fishes. and this is the conversation at follows.
Han Cheng: do you like stingrays?
Me: yup
Han Cheng: what do you know about stingrays
Me: uhm.. they taste delicious?
Han Cheng just stares at me like i'm a cannibal.

people think marketing is the problem. but marketing is not the problem. people are the problem. i am my own problem as well. jon lee said last night that i've gotta stop fighting myself. but i think i need to keep fighting myself because i know there are things about me that are not by nature good, and so those bits - i sometimes try to go against. dinner conversation with jonlee yesterday highlighted the way i'm always caught in the middle. i'm always kinda like a rubber band trying to hold two diverging interests together. at times, these are two separate groups of stake holders, at times it's me[now] vs me[whereiwannabe].

i had a very frustrating conversation about profit sharing with doreen yesterday. and a very frustrating conversation with david on marketing. first of all, the function/definition/meaning of money was [once againnnn..] challenged, because doreen kept asking me why i personally wanna share the profit with volunteers. why why why wth how do i know whyy.. some things are just like that luh. marketing suggestions.. i am a marketing graduate, won a marketing challenge.. but right now i just feel like saying "screw marketing".  dont get me wrong. i actually do appreciate that david is thinking about these things and coming up with ideas. it's a form of him taking ownership, and i recognise that as a good thing. so it's not him that frustrated me.. it's the whole marketing discussion [AGAIN]. Marketing is not the problem. yes. repeat. marketing is not the problem. so stop talking about it for now.

 then again, both conversations could have been frustrating because i was tired. (prepared and served out popiah and charkwayteow yesterday). i get exhausted after big cook outs like the ones we had yesterday and today. i also realise that when we do meals, i can't talk to people. i end up just being really busy on autopilot. no more engaging, no more embracing, no more empowering.
meh.

golly. what a grumpy person i am right now.