10 Things I Did In 2010
- Became more than just another client at Studio 23. Became a fizfit assistant and came to really appreciate what a positive influence the place and people brought into my life.
- Shaved my head. Again.
- Was on TV twice, both for RTM1′s Kuppa Kopi. The first time was for an episode about reading and local authors, the second was about getting shaved again. Also shot a video for Go Bald.
- Saw my first Broadway musical, which also happens to be the first musical I was introduced to. I never did write a follow-up post about it. (Next year, I’m seeing The Lion King in Singapore!)
- Went back to school, and sat for two exam papers at the end of the first semester.
- Performed a drastic measure to get my finances under control. And to see if I could do it.
- Went on a holiday outside the country. Walked into and out of the craziest traffic I’ve ever seen. Swam in the ocean after a short display of being chickenshit.
- Went on another holiday in Langkawi & Penang with a backpacker we met in Vietnam. Took a chance on each other, but it worked out better than we hoped. Also took a flying leap off a cliff to go down a 60m zipline.
- Worked out and watch my eating harder than I ever did in my life. Pushed myself further physically, considering more running for exercise, and got infatuated with vegetarian food (of the non fake meat variety).
- Took more risks.
Car accident
On my day off a couple of weeks ago, my car got rear-ended by a pick-up truck at the intersection at Tabuan Jaya. I was the first car, stopping because traffic was still heading my way when I got there. By the time the driver behind me pulled up, traffic cleared. She kept going, and I was still there. It was a good thing the traffic did clear, because her pick-up pushed me into the main road.
This was the second time this scenario happened. The first time it happened, I had a lot more things on my dashboard and the entire collection leaped into my face. I didn’t even know what just happened. This time round, I only had two things in the open and both were behind the gear box. My Starbucks tumbler jumped into the passenger leg space, and my phone dived into the garbage bag.
I just sat there processing all this and the lady came to check if I was okay because I was taking too long to get out of the car.
We both got out the survey the damage and quickly found out that we didn’t share a common language. Perhaps just enough to get by. But we were both calm. Nobody lost their temper, or raised their voices, pointed fingers. There was no drama throughout the whole thing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I thought you were gone,” she said, still speaking Mandarin.
“That’s a common enough mistake,” I said. “Now what?”
“We go to your mechanic.”
I tried describing where my mechanic is but the language barrier wasn’t the only problem. She only recently moved here from Sibu. I decided to call my mechanic and let him give her directions.
She asked if it’s okay if she went and pick up her son from tuition first.
“Go on,” I said. “I trust you to meet me at the workshop.”
Not only did she meet me at the workshop, she got there before I did.
My mechanic assessed the damage and told the lady that he can only get an accurate quote by the next day. She was very attentive and asked all sorts of questions. I could only follow half of it, but I can tell she is no pushover. Neither was she trying to shirk responsibility or shuffle blame.
They will have to replace the bumper, the reflective strip, license plate, straighten out the dent and re-spray it. It will be in the ballpark figure of RM1,000. I know I wasn’t paying, but I cringed anyway.
Another mechanic helped me patch up the license plate so it won’t fall off before I delivered the car the next day. He was laughing that I had a roll of masking tape in the car. I told him I was cat-sitting a couple of months before.
Before I left, I tried my best to tell the lady that I’m sorry that this had to happen to the both of us.
“I’m the one who should be sorry. I hit you,” she said.
My mum was full of concern that the lady would simply vanish, leaving me with the bill. To tell the truth, I wasn’t the least bit concerned until then. Sometimes you just want to have a bit of faith that people will do the right thing. I spoke to the lady and had a good feeling that she will honour her word. My mechanic also said the same thing when I dropped the car off.
Since she and her family were new in town, they haven’t found a mechanic and was letting mine fix her car after my car was done.
I was car-less for four days.
For a few days after I got my car back, I was bracing for the mechanic to call me and say that she never turned up.
A few days ago, he called. When I picked up, there was a pause on the other end.
“Oh! Sorry, sorry! Wrong number!” he said and hung up.
Work, Fitness & Balance
There was something in the June 2010 issue of Marie Claire Malaysia that struck a very loud chord with me. An article called’ Global Energy’ by Tan Lee Kuen talked about what six women from around the world do to stay healthy and preserve their well-being. One of the women is a nutritional therapist Alia Almoayed from Bahrain, who said something that stuck with me although I only glanced through the article at the time.
On the topic of exercise, the yoga enthusiast said:
“I’ve noticed over time that as life got more hectic with work, kids and duties, exercise was always the first thing to be dropped out of the daily schedule. So I decided to work my life around my yoga routine.”
You can download and read the article over at Alia’s blog.
Do you see how she makes perfectly good sense here? The kind of sense that smacks you in the middle of the forehead with the truth that most of us refuse to acknowledge?
We all have one or to important things in life. For most of us, it’s work. Not family, health or personal development. A lot of people thinks they can’t even afford any of the above without drawing a stable income.
Admitting that work is not your top priority in life makes you sound unreliable and undesirable as an employee. I imagine that most traditional employers feel more comfortable hiring someone who’d swear up and down that they will live and breath their job for ever and ever until they die regretting that they couldn’t have spent more time at work.
What kind of life is that?
I think the reason why I can relate to Alia’s exercise philosophy is because I’m kinda already doing it. Putting fitness above expected priorities like work.
Three times a week, which is pretty amazing because I was a very sedentary creature and happy about it until last year.
Crazy Monkey Defense (CMD) is on Monday, which is the day we all agreed on. I ended up being irregular a month in because of work, but after talking to my immediate boss, he doesn’t give me night functions on Monday any more. I usually get early ones instead, but it’s fair enough.
Kettlebell on Wednesday. There’s only two of us regulars in the class, so both of us feel obligated to show up so the other doesn’t have to suffer alone! No night functions coz Thursday is my day off.
And ballet on Friday, also a day off. This is the last month of class. I might replace it with something later on.
I make it a policy not to talk about work on my blog, because people who did that in the past usually find themselves awkwardly inconvenienced and/or unemployed, but I’ll bend it a little here for context.
Around June, I found myself thinking about work and where it is going. I didn’t feel challenged. I get a lot of assignments that I felt was inconsequential and plain boring. I knew that I could easily change that by having a quick work with my immediate boss, but I held back for some reason I couldn’t identify at the time.
I asked myself some key questions. Do I want to do the hard stuff at work so that I can go home feeling like my article might change things and people, maybe win recognition from my peers or even awards from Shell Kenyalang or Petronas?
No, I don’t. I’ll leave the real work to people who know this is their calling, and the awards to people who need the recognition or prize money to validate their existence. I just want to go home with time and energy for family, friends and me. Especially me.
Having easy things to do means that I’m not creatively exhausted at the end of the day. This is important because I’m trying to work my way back to a place I’ve lost and have been fighting to get back to since I started this job. I think I finally got there, but that’s a story for another day.
I am not and don’t want to be the best reporter in town. I want to be the person I can look back on with no regrets, no matter what I happen to work as.
After all, nobody lies on their deathbed and wishes they spent more time in the office.
