The passage of time is generally only ever noted when punctuated by significant events and activities.

This week, a mate of mine from the Department, on the verge of completing his Ph.D., leaves Canberra for Birmingham, UK where he will take up a position as a lecturer. His departure highlights how time is running out on my own research and how I too will soon have to contemplate career choices and decisions.

This time last year, I was watching Big Brother and was very busy preparing for my research fieldtrip to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. This time this year, I should be doing the same for my upcoming fieldtrip to Seoul and Kuala Lumpur… I should… but I am not. However, I am still watching Big Brother.

One of my best friends in Canberra has just completed her undergraduate degree and will be leaving Australia in a few weeks’ time. I have known her for two and a half years. I will be saying goodbye to her this week and bid farewell to late-night chats in each other’s flats, angsty conversations about men, and sharing tips on knitting.

I am meeting a very, very good friend in Sydney next week. We’ve known each other for 28 years now. I last saw him in April 2006 - it’s been over a year. We’ve so much to catch up on. I’m really looking forward to seeing him again.

Yesterday, I found myself having to stop and actually count how long my last relationship had lasted. The answer was no longer reflexive and automatic. It was eight years.

I’ve been dating someone. I haven’t blogged or talked about this much. This week marks 24 weeks, or close to 6 months, that we’ve been seeing each other. It’s going well.

I frequently wonder where all the time has gone… and how I could have achieved so little in so much time… but I know, if nothing else, I have lived.

Posted on July 5th, 2007 by jl
Filed under: Life!, Remnants of a Previous Life, love | 1 Comment »

I’m in a very funny funk at the moment. I’m feeling particularly low in a way that is more disturbing than depressing. I think it’s due to a combination of factors but everything has to do with being in Kuala Lumpur.

While the work that I am doing here in KL got off to a good start last week, the pace has died down considerably this week. I’m hoping that it will pick up again very soon, as in the next day or so, or I will be very anxious. There’s a lot riding on the work that I am doing here and “failure” will have huge repercussions.

Although I realised this when I was in KL in January, it’s hit me again - I have very few friends left in this city that I really want to see. There are very few individuals here for whom I can be bothered to make an effort to meet up. Most people I know have turned into what I guess one would call an “acquaintance” - someone you know but share very little with. Hello and goodbye.

Then, there’s the city itself. It’s a graveyard of memories. A maze of roads with emotional bumps where the next corner could mean an accident from the past. I sometimes catch myself walking around in a very tensed state of being, wary of what could happen… I think I might still be grieving for what once was… I’m not sure if I could ever really live in this city again.

It occurred to me the other day - I’m like a stranger in a familiar city, and that’s worst than being a stranger in a strange city. At least in the latter, you would expect to be a stranger. At the moment, I’m like a spirit of a body that has died, caught in between two worlds.

Finally, when you throw in the haze that plagues KL at the moment, I really, really miss the clear blue sunny sky of Canberra right now. I wanna go home.

Posted on August 8th, 2006 by jl
Filed under: Life!, Remnants of a Previous Life, work | No Comments »

It’s less than 24 hours before I board a plane to return to Kuala Lumpur. I’m anxious and reticient about this trip but I also know, that it will be the beginning of the next chapter of my new life.

I’ve put this trip off twice now. The first time I moved it from June to end of July because I needed more time to prepare for it - I’ve spent the last three months or so working really hard to get ready for what is essentially a work trip.  The second time, I pushed it back by four days for several small reasons that alone wouldn’t be sufficient to make the change but together made better justification although one of those reasons is a rather trivial but emotionally rewarding one - I’ve been following this year’s Australian Big Brother for 100 days now and I wasn’t going to miss the finale by three days! I thought I would be leaving on a super-high but my favourite contestant did not win - nevertheless, the last three days of this show has been great and I’m ending this chapter of my stay in Australia on a relatively good note.

However… I’m anxious and apprehensive about this trip. Two reasons. Firstly, where work is concerned, I’m not sure if I will be able to accomplish what I need to do in order to move the research project forward - and I really, really need to move the project forward. Secondly, although it’s been almost two years since it ended, and although I’ve somewhat moved on emotionally, I’m still haunted by the relationship that I left behind in Kuala Lumpur. There is still the fear that I will bump into him around the next corner and always the knowledge that memories lie scattered throughout the city.

This will be a long trip - I will be away for almost 3 months, about half that time will be spent in KL. I wished I didn’t have to go. I wished the work would come to me instead. Alas… no.

On the eve of this long journey, I realise how much, in the last 18 months, Canberra has become home and Kuala Lumpur just another place I visit. I’m looking forward to seeing some good friends again - and my best mate in Malaysia will meet me at the airport - but I know that I will miss walking out into the brilliant sunsets every evening. I will miss the easy, comfortable life of Canberra. I will miss my cosy flat. And I will miss the security of my little nook here - my home.

Posted on August 1st, 2006 by jl
Filed under: Life!, Remnants of a Previous Life | 1 Comment »

And the truth shall set you free…

See. This was the deal with the boyfriend: he had a few character and behavioural traits that I found difficult to live with and that I wasn’t sure, when combined with me, would be conducive to the making of a long term relationship. Moreover, they were the very same traits that the ex possessed, that I had previously found problematic, and that I decided I never wanted to live with again.

So I angst over it for a long while.

The boyfriend was otherwise perfectly “alright”. I found him attractive. We connected on a mental and, to an extent, intellectual level. He was obviously madly in love with me. And with the exception of those behavioural and character differences, we got on perfectly.

Hence, for a while there, I found it difficult to reconcile the ”good” and ”bad” of the relationship. They seemed to me to be on polar ends. On the other hand, at a rational level, it was obvious what the answer would be. However, it was difficult to accept a decision that would effectively mean ending a relationship for what could be considered, at some level, to be trivial reasons. That said, while I might have been “happy” to live with these “shortcomings” in a previous relationship, I’m not sure if I would want to do so again.

The boundaries between lands are clearer than the boundaries between ‘eras of time’. You know when you’ve crossed a national border. Currency that was acceptable, a few miles back, is worthless now. Language and culture is different too. Yet recall, for a moment, the ‘you’ that you used to be just a few short months ago. What if this ‘old you’ were to wander suddenly into your current world? There would be much that it couldn’t relate to or cope with. The current you will soon be an ‘old you’. This week’s conduction of Mars and Saturn suggests that you have come to the constructive end of a long, tiresome process.
Cainer, the week ahead for Aries

Then on Saturday morning, I discovered, albeit without his knowledge, that he had been less than honest with me about something. I’m not proud of what I had done to arrive at this discovery, but I nevertheless feel justified in hindsight. Two wrongs may not make a right and a just outcome may not justify a wrongful process but in my cluttered, clouded mind, this somewhat accidental discovery was important.

Is it better to do that right thing for the wrong reasons than to do the wrong thing for the right ones? A lot of course, depends on what the thing in question is. More still, depends on how right - or wrong those reasons are. Right and wrong are relative terms. They are expressions of a system of value judgements with several fundamental flaws. Who can really say what’s good or bad, right or wrong? Meanwhile, here’s today’s forecast. You are now doing the right thing… for all the right reasons.
Cainer, for Aries on Saturday

There really isn’t an overwhelmingly decisive reason. There are just a lot of little points of contention. But each little bit adds up. And I think the haystack has just tipped that little bit too far over one side now. So, although the matter over which he had been less than honest is ultimately unimportant to me, and although I still feel ambivalent about ending the relationship for “trivial” reasons, I think it is very much clearer in my mind, what the “right” course of action should be.

I should have listened to my intuition a few months back. In hindsight, there were certainly many signs pointing to these “problematic” areas. There were also events that practically screamed how “wrong” this was. But I guess I couldn’t stop hoping. The optimist in me prevailed and I wanted to give this relationship its fair chance. In the end, I should have known - if it doesn’t feel “right”, it probably isn’t… and no amount of hope or effort was going to change that.

I think I know exactly what it is I am looking for in a relationship at this point in my life. I think I know what I will or will not live with in that relationship. While past experience is all very well, and I don’t regret any of it, I think I know what it is I need now and in the future. Although my heart still clouds my better judgement sometimes, I think I need to let my mind take charge in my own best interests…