Just an update

So here's the situation. I quit my job yesterday.

(Cue cries of shock, surprise and anguish)

Honestly, this has been going on for a long time in my head. I'm not leaving for a better company or for better pay, I'm just leaving to be happier. My present colleagues are a joy to work with, in fact, it was the thought of leaving my team that made it so difficult to put the letter in. If there was anything holding me back, it was my office mates.

But I've done it, so yes. There you go. 

And so here comes the tricky part. I don't have a new job.

It's all very scary right now, but I have a vague-ish idea of what I'll be getting up to. I'll be doing my own stuff. I'm mysterious like that, but things'll get clearer as we go along. Not only will I be travelling and writing more, I'll also be writing more of the stuff I actually want to write about. And that has to be a good thing.

My family is supportive, but my friends have been incredible. It's amazing when your friends have more faith in you than you do yourself. I don't know where they get their fancy ideas from, that I'll be okay, that I won't end up eating cold instant noodles for the rest of my life. They're insane and deserve to be slapped. Me? I just want to be happy.

So I'm looking for a photo of myself to show how freaked out I am about all this and I can't find any. The thing about me and photos is that I'm always grinning in them, and that doesn't exactly represent how I feel about the future, as exciting as it may seem. 

So as much as I would prefer a photo of myself going berserk and looking scared out of my wits, this is the best I can come up with: 

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades (I think). 

Far from brave

I'm always embarrassed -and at times, a little worried- whenever friends and family members (usually much older women) tell me how brave I am to go off and travel by myself. I cringe when they say things like that because courage or bravery has nothing to do with it.

What comes across as bravery is nothing more than wanting something really badly, setting out to do it and preparing for it. It's a terrible cliche, but I'm a bundle of nerves every time I go off somewhere new. I worry about slipping and falling to my death while hiking (I have wonky feet), I worry about hurting my back (that's wonky, too) and the thought of being assaulted or robbed scares me like crazy (as the title of this blog suggests, I have short legs and can't run very fast).

That is not how a brave person thinks. 

So in order to 'make' myself brave, I read as much as I can about the country or city I'm going to, which is actually what every traveller does. I do this so that I won't be fumbling through any maps at the airport- I'll already know which train to take into the city, where to take it and how much it costs. If I have to get down at a train station, I'll know exactly how to get to my hotel so that I won't look nervous or lost and become an easy target.

To make sure I don't hurt my back, I simply don't carry a heavy rucksack and come equipped with whatever painkillers that are necessary. And what about being robbed and chased? I don't make it a habit to hang out in dark alleys, which is actually pure common sense. 

The idea of taking a taxi alone after dark in a strange city freaks me out, so if I'm going out late, I make it a point to know when the last train or bus leaves. I can't imagine anything worse than not being able to get back to your hotel at night.

So, yeah. I'm not brave. In fact, I'm a complete scaredy cat. 

My Happy Un-honeymoon

The young couple had been smiling at us for more than half an hour. It's like they know something we don't, I thought. I couldn't tell what it was. Finally, the guy spoke up. "So, how's your honeymoon been so far?" he asked as his girlfriend beamed at the two of us.

Neil and I laughed. So hard until we shook. "Oh no, we're not together. We're just friends. Honeymoon?? Gosh, no," I shook my head. We were on holiday and it was perfect honeymoon weather, but no, they were mistaken.

That wasn't the first time. Earlier that morning as I walked past the shops on the main road, I met a man whose store we'd visited the day before. "Hello, hello again! You are alone today? Where is your husband?" he said, greeting me like an old friend.

I sighed. My darling 'husband'- poor, unsuspecting Neil- was probably checking out guys on the beach at that moment and secretly snapping photos of the hot ones to show me later.

I am as straight as a pencil, a ruler, as Darth Vader's lightsaber, but I have gay friends and Neil is one of them.

We must have come across as a pretty strange couple. We laughed and whispered together a lot, but never held hands. We were obviously very close, but yet didn't exchange long meaningful looks. And if anyone had gone up to our hotel room, they would've been mystified to see two single beds instead of a double bed which was messy and with sheets all over the place, hinting at whatever it is they thought we were up to.

I found it liberating knowing that Neil would never think I was trying to seduce him if I wore a particular dress or top, that he would never think I was trying to attract his attention if I did my yoga stretches in front of him. It was great to be close friends with a man and know that there was no way it would get any further than that. Sometimes a girl just doesn't want her life to get complicated.

We took a day trip before we left. There was some travelling involved and we had to ride on a van together with five other couples. Neil climbed on board before me and after getting in, immediately turned his back and sat down, leaving me outside.

"Hey," I called out.
Neil got up from his seat, his eyes asking me, What?
I motioned for him to come closer. "This is when you pretend we're on our honeymoon and help me up," I whispered.
"Oh, shit. Sorry, babe," he whispered back and gave me his hand, which was nice and tanned from the sun.
"Do I have to tell you everything?" I said softly as we sat down next to each other.
And my husband laughed, and so did I.

Remembering

I'd always suspected I was a sentimental fool but now I know for sure.

I'm not exactly a hoarder, but I like keeping stuff, especially things which remind me of my travels. A few days ago I found receipts for dinners I had in Rotorua, Bali and Moscow, business cards from carpet shops in Istanbul and a ticket stub for a movie I watched four years ago with someone I used to have a crush on. 

The list goes on. Ticket stubs for museums, heritage sites, you name it. I have them.

A receipt from Planeta Sushi in Moscow took me back to October 2007. That was the day we walked for hours to look for food. I also found a handwritten bill dated February 2008 from Luang Prabang. Breakfast- one pain au chocolat and Lao coffee, strong and black. 

One piece of paper stood out, though- a faded, seven-year-old receipt with Chinese characters. It was from 'Soxworld' for a pair of socks I bought in Xian in February 2005. I remember that day because it was -3 degrees Celcius and my feet were absolutely frozen. I thought Beijing in winter was cold, but this was ridiculous.

The Soxworld receipt also made me remember the following day. The day after I bought the socks was pretty special. The sun came out and it was 5 degrees. Not exactly tropical, but at least it was above freezing. I got excited when I saw the weather forecast on television, the only thing on TV I could understand. There was a little yellow sun beneath the characters for Xian and the number 5 in bright red. Excited because it was 5 degrees? Yes, I know. Cold weather makes you go a little crazy.

I walked to the Drum Tower Square to find it full of people. Someone had brought a radio and music was playing. Children were running around with their kites, vendors were selling noisy wind-up toys and couples were holding hands. I celebrated with a McDonald's sundae with extra chocolate topping.

My room is a little neater now but I've still got those dinner receipts and museum tickets with me. I'm going to hold on to them for a while. I'll sort them out one day eventually, but for the moment they're in my room, ready to be re-discovered two years from now.

Malacca

When my grandfather went into a coma in November 2002, one of my first thoughts was that he would still be able to hear me. That's what people say about someone in a coma, I told myself, he can still hear us and might just wake up.

So for the next four months, I spoke to my grandad while he slept. I told him I was tired of my job and that I wanted to leave. I told him I planned to take a few months off to travel but that I would come back when he woke up.

I also read to him while he slept. My grandad was and still is, the most well-read person I've ever known. He was always reading something- TIME, National Geographic, anything. He always amazed us kids with what he knew. Every morning, we would hear his slippers shuffling all the way from his room to the breakfast table. After he plonked himself down on his chair, he would look at us and say, "Do you know that they found some new dinosaur bones in the Gobi Desert? I read about it last night. Do you know where the Gobi desert is?" and we would wait for him to tell us, because we wouldn't know. If he wasn't talking to us about dinosaur bones, it would be something else, something scientific. My grandad was a doctor and even after he stopped working, he was always interested in finding out about new discoveries and new medicines.

My dear old grandad was reading right up to the moment he got his stroke. When we cleared his room after the ambulance took him to the hospital, his copy of 'Frankenstein' was on his bed, next to the space where he should have been laying.

I visited my grandad's grave in Malacca a few days ago. His grave lies under a tree which has white flowers if you visit at the right time of the year. When I saw his grave, it looked like that of a much shorter man. My grandad was tall, definitely a six-footer. But it was more than just his height. When I was in school, I didn't look up to him just in the physical sense, I looked up to him in every sense of the word. Or maybe he just seemed tall, like all grown-ups do when you're just a child. I tried to think of my grandad, my tears falling as I picked up the dried leaves and twigs on his grave. Am I not remembering him correctly? If he was so tall, why is his grave so short? I couldn't understand it.

When I look at the rows of unread books in my room- I have a habit of buying books when I see ones that I like, not necessarily when I've run out of reading material- I think of my grandad's old house in Malacca. I think of the hundreds of TIME, LIFE, National Geographic and Reader's Digest magazines dating from the 1960s which my mum, aunt and uncles had to clear up before they renovated the house.

We drove past the house before visiting the grave that day. It's now a private school with a white signboard and pretty little flags on the outside, ready to welcome the children who would soon sit in its classrooms.

When I said goodbye to my grandad before we left, I told him how his house had become a school. "It looks very pretty, Atok. The house will be full of books for children to read. You would like it."

Things I don't normally do

I like how travel changes a person. In real life- okay, in everyday life, I can be a real lazy bum sometimes. I only get out of bed at 9am, unless it's a work day, which means I'm up earlier. Even 9am is considered being a little on the late side in my house. I know, I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Everything, however, changes when I'm away. When I'm travelling -and this includes non-working holidays- I can wake up at the most ungodly hours. Not a problem. I've woken up at 3am for a drive to Taman Negara. I've gotten up at 4.30 in the morning to go to the airport for a flight to somewhere-or-other. I remember waking up at 6 o'clock in winter in Beijing to get ready for a hike on the Great Wall. In fact, if I'm travelling with friends, I'm usually the one who wakes up first. This never happens at home.

I think I'm also much nicer when I'm travelling. I smile more and open up to people more. I'm more patient, less grumpy (that's obvious) and generally in a better mood when I'm away. I like me when I'm travelling; I prefer Travel Mode me.

I'm sure I can't be only person who changes overnight when they're travelling.

Do you do things differently when you're away? Are you totally transformed when you're travelling?

Escape route

Someone I know has just done something I've been wanting to do for the longest time. She's just quit her job to travel.

My friends, especially those who know me well, will know that I've been wanting to drop everything and run away for ages. My dream is pretty straightforward- I want to stop working, then travel and write. Pretty simple, right? :)

It's been difficult to leave, though. It's not exactly the 'Asian' thing to leave a stable job to see the world. To quit to study for a year, maybe two years? That's fine. But *just* to travel? Not that easy.

Neither does taking a year out constitute responsible behaviour where I come from, especially if you happen to be female. You're supposed to stay at home and be a good girl, not go gallivanting around the world just to -what was that again- 'find' yourself?

This time, I think, I'm going to approach things differently. Just like how you prepare for a trip, you've got to be ready for big decisions. You've got to get the preliminary stuff out of the way. When you sort out the logistics, your mind will be better prepared to go ahead with whatever you've decided, and stick to it.

So from this month onwards, I'm going to be setting aside an equivalent of US$700 of my salary towards an 'escape route' fund. That's not much, but in one or two years I should have quite a bit of money, enough for me to do what I need to do.

Sound like a good idea?

The year of being nice to myself

This is pretty late for a new year's resolution but it needs to be made. This year I'm going to do things differently. My travelling style has always been to go for a major trip every year ranging from two to six weeks and to have smallish breaks here and there lasting anywhere from four to seven days.

This year I'm going to make sure that I have more of these smallish breaks, no matter what. I get weekends off now -I didn't use to before- and although it may not sound worth it because it's just too short, I think I may consider trips where I leave on Friday evening and come back on Sunday or Monday afternoon.

It sounds rushed, but I've decided that I'm going to be nice to myself this year and just take breaks whenever I can.

Imagine waking up on Saturday morning to this:

Gunung Agung, Bali

That's what I'm talking about.

If I could travel with just ONE person

.......it would be Obi-Wan Kenobi 

Checkpoint: Let me see your ticket and passport. 
Obi-Wan: [with a wave of his hand] You don't need to see her ticket or passport. 
Checkpoint: We don't need to see her ticket or passport. 
Obi-Wan: This isn't the girl you're looking for.
Checkpoint: This isn't the girl we're looking for.
Obi-Wan: She can go about her business. 
Checkpoint You can go about your business. 
Obi-Wan: Move along. 
Checkpoint: Move along... move along.


I wouldn't need to spend money on plane tickets any more.

Musn't forget the painkillers

I'm leaving for Istanbul in two days and tried my rucksack on a few hours ago.

It's not heavy (I've taken out my three pairs of stilletos, hairdryer and giant makeup bag) but because of my bad back, I need to be a bit careful. Together with the normal junk that goes into a rucksack, I'll need to bring my regular dose of painkillers and muscle rub creams.

My feet are also flat, which essentially means that they have no arches like how all you normal people do. If you stand, you'll see a little space between your feet and the floor- now that's the space I wish I'd been born with.

There's a scientific term for flat feet (always makes one feel a little important, doesn't it, when there's a special term), which is pes planus, or fallen arches. Arches may not seem very important but what they do is that they cushion and protect your feet when you walk and distribute your weight evenly as you move. People with flat feet can't walk or run for too long otherwise their feet, knees and ankles will start to hurt.

Wonderful.

But never mind. It's nothing which a good Turkish massage can't sort out.

I wonder if I might have room for just one pair of three-inch heels.