Happy New Year

A little bit late, but hello 2013!! Twenty one days have come and gone, and yet I'm still tearing out the wrong year on my parking coupons (since I no longer have reason to write the date, I don't get that wrong anymore). Does this mean I would subconsciously rather be in the past? Maybe. Maybe not. Twenty Twelve was an up and down year. Lots of UP moments, but also many DOWN times. But let's focus on the good shall we? Here's to a happier, brighter year ahead. No point to this post at all except to express a desire for moving forward, and of course to remind myself that I was blessed in many ways this last year. MAZAL TOV!

Top Ten Tips to Surviving China

So I just got back from China a couple of days ago, and even though it was a pretty decent trip where I stayed in an excellent hotel and had excellent tours planned out for me and my family, I arrived back home in (beautiful, clean, safe) Singapore thinking to myself "Thank goodness I survived it". So I decided to note down to myself just in case I find myself headed back to China again the top tips I need to remember. 

My biggest gripes about China are three things: 

1. The food

2. The people

3. The toilets

Firstly, the food tends to be overly oily and salty, maybe if you eat out all the time it's no big deal, but for someone like me, whose mom is an amazing and healthy cook, this is a helluva big deal. Especially if you head over to the regions like Sichuan (good luck to you mate) or the more mountainous regions, the palette is completely different. 

The people, well there are two sides to them. One side is the smiling and demure bunch who you interact the most with in the service sector. They're the ones who greet you in the hotel lobby or the tour guides who bring you around. The other side belongs to the rest of the locals, especially those from the big cities who are tourists in their own country. They push and shove and talk really loud all the time, even in theatres when the show has already started. 

Now the toilets, are definitely an improvement from when I was younger and first visited China. I remember them not having any doors, and the smell was so bad I would gag every time I visited the bathroom. Now most have doors, though don't count on them being able to close or lock properly. Obviously the ones in hotels and restaurants are fine, but the public ones.... watch out. 

Top Ten Tips (in no particular order) 

1. Always carry with you hand sanitiser. It'll come in handy after you visit bathrooms (when you find you need to hold the door to keep it closed), after you've handled money (their Yuan looks like it's been around 30 years), and definitely before mealtimes. 
2. Pack some of your favourite snacks into your suitcase, maybe throw in some instant noodles for good measure. These will be a lifesaver, best for those times when you're so damn sick of eating mala-everything, or when you feel like oil is about to spill out your nostrils. 
3. Chinese tea is your best friend (when all that oily food is giving you a queasy feeling, the chinese tea like pu-erh will wash it all away), but also your worst enemy (you will need to go to the restroom constantly after you drink it)
4. Wet wipes and tissue packets are essential, maybe more so than hand sanitiser. The public toilets rarely come equipped with them, so you'll definitely need it. 
5. A small vial of perfume/deodorant goes a long way. The smell of a heavily frequented bathroom is enough to knock anyone's socks off. Spritz a bit into the front of your shirt/sweater/scarf and pull it over your nose before you enter. 
6. If you do not speak the language, you definitely have to learn a little bit of basics. Otherwise, be super at charades, although it's hard to imagine how you would tell the locals you need a toilet... 
7. Pack along shoes you don't mind throwing out after the trip. Those brand new converse sneakers are a no-no. They'll end up being so grimy you won't wanna touch them with a stick. I learned it the hard way with my shiny silver glitter Toms. 
8. Always have Yuan on hand. Not all places accept credit cards, or to be more precise foreign credit cards, and more often than not cash is the way to make payments. 
9. Carry bottled mineral water everywhere! Sometimes in restaurants the water is from the tap and your foreign pampered tummy might not be sturdy enough to withstand it, even if it is already boiled. 
10. If people shove you, shove them back. My favourite rule is this one-- if people shove me to get on the bus/train quicker, you have to learn to shove back. When in China... do as the Chinese do. 

All I can say is, damn I'm happy to be home in Singapore. 

Gather Up Your Tears, Keep Em In Your Pocket

Dear Cousin, 

This time last year you left us so suddenly, and now it has been a whole year, and you are still forever missed. Every time something reminds me of you, there is that constriction in my throat and the burning sting of tears. I'm sure you are in a better place, a heaven, if you will. How could you not be?? You remain one of the kindest, most generous and patient person I have ever known, always armed with a dimpled grin that was surely always infectious. If anything I wish we were closer, but you were always a big brother to me. You were the one who brought me and my girlfriends into members at Zouk when it was my first time clubbing there, and you bought us drinks but shooed us home when we got too tipsy. You encouraged me reading graphic novels, giving me great ones such as Persepolis to read. You let us girl cousins come over and win you at Wii and Raving Rabbids, you never got angry with us, despite the constant teasing we showered upon you at every Chinese New Year Dinner. You were a great cousin, a great brother, a great uncle, a great friend and most importantly a great son to your parents. You were a great man. Even when I was a kid and you were a teenager a whole 10 years older than me, I'll never forget how you always had time to answer my incessant questions, and gave me your Archie comics in the stacks. You have a special place in my heart, always and always, cousin. 

10 July 1979 - 18 December 2010

In Loving Memory

Good Rainy Days

So its pouring as usual in Monsoon-Season-Singapore, and I'm home after coming back from lunch with my momma. I'm reading one of the books I had to read for an South East Asian Politics class back when I was on exchange in the UW. I only read the required chapters when I was taking the class but I figured its a pretty good book to finish reading from cover to cover. My mother is downstairs playing Canon in D on the piano even though nobody has played the piano in a really long time, and I can hear her fumbling with some notes but she plays right through anyway. She stopped 3 minutes ago, and my phone vibrated. She bbm-ed me from downstairs to remind me that I have to email her something, and then when I replied "ok" she starts playing again. Then I am told there is the pink variety pomelo that has already been peeled for me in the fridge, and I run down and gobble it up in the kitchen. I end up playing the piano for an hour, practicing only two songs that I can read and remember-- Ballad pour Adeline and Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Its been over 5 years since I last played a complete song, and my weak wrists hurt when I finally close the baby grand. Today is a good rainy day.

There and back again

I am a fickle person. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, then I am clearly a rolling stone. Doing almost absolutely nothing (oh the joys of unemployment) has led to yet another phase in my life where I feel like blogging on a constant basis again, so we shall see where this leads me. Maybe I'll be Singapore's next big blogger (one can always dream or entertain delusional tendencies) or maybe I'll get bored again in 3 months as I always do with everything and shut this down. Whatever may be may be, the future's not ours to see. HELLO nonexistent readers, my name is Jiayi, some friends call me Charli some friends call me Betty, and this is my new pet project.