Try to make one free day of the week, truly your day (like today). DON’T look at your work-emails, DON’T think about work. Think about you. Think about what you’re truly feeling when you look outside the window, something you’ve always done and akin to taking a deep breath.
To realise that you like to be be organised, but some things to make it happen just don’t work. Stuff like writing apps with labels and word counts and prompts. Fuck that. You were able to write in the past without any of that.
But need to plan food. Need to have a specific flavour to look forward to. Taste of excess on Saturday (Sam’s birthday dinner). Taste of basic on Sunday (chicken nuggets, commercial spring rolls with the girls).
and just like that
Doyet and Jong had gone to Christchurch for the week so I decided to spend my two working from home days in Papakura just to see how the kids were. And of course they were fine; I forget that two of the kids are over 20 and that Chini at 10 has enough vocabulary to solve the Wordle game I left open on my phone. She got the word EPOXY.
Plus, the fridge is groaning with food, and I remember how we were back at my house during the pandemic when we were locked in with our $300 per fortnight food budget. That didn’t include snacks and we rationed those. But it was fine. I had started working out again and I felt physically great so non-essential food wasn’t really tempting at all.
And then ‘normality returned just before Christmas. We started trusting the supermarkets again. We were snacking twice a week again. We thought we could plan fabulous birthdays again (private dining room with a custom menu).
And just like that, we’re standing on the precipice of another Covid wave with omicron. Like WTF (though of course, we all knew this, but still..)
For a minute there (exacerbated by working on some work-comms when I’m actually on leave), I thought I couldn’t do it all over again. All 4 months of it or longer who knows, no matter how well planned or how well-oiled I made my daily routine to be.
By request from the kids, we had Papa’s Korean chicken for dinner- those crispy, Moorish bites, your palate cleansed with cool, slightly astringent radish cubes. It was only at the end of last year’s lockdown that we were able to have some takeaway food, not that it really mattered enough to line up at the crack of dawn which is so stupid.
But you actually thought, you were finally back to whatever place you were before all this happened; when you felt safe. When you could make plans and make them happen.
But who am I kidding? This is where I am, and I have to adapt fast before it gets the better of me.
Nearly the middle of the week
The weekend
When 'ugly' is beautiful
This Thursday
Office essentials
AirPods (the fucking 3rd gen ones don’t fit- I had to put a ‘condom’ over them so they could stay stuck inside my ears but just barely).
An external drive (where all my working files are so I could work literally anywhere as long as I have it and a laptop).
Sunglasses
Readers
gum
mask
sweet treat (just for this week).
Saturday
The essentials
a bottle of Morello cherries for your Tequila Sunrise cocktails
Prunes for the fibre
bananas for your oats in the morning
tuna for your lunches (which goes with rice and four eggs)
artificial sweetener (in 2021, I went back to having the tiniest amount of raw sugar for my espressos for about four months).
fresh underwear (for the new year)
Back to the office
Who doesn't want to be in the office?
There’s free coffee from a professional-grade coffee-maker, cookies and biscuits on the house, a one-hour break (30 minutes for morning tea and 30 for lunch) and great air-conditioning?
Assessing 2021
I never look back. I may glance over once and while, but what is done is done.
I don’t remember even half of my past, only because I’m 101% sure, that I never, ever repeat bad decisions, not that I’ve actually made many.
But it’s the habits that can trip us. It’s those little things like not taking care of your body (I’m good at this, but don’t want to be that ‘perfectly’ healthy person that dies suddenly of a heart attack and becomes a cautionary tale); postponing things far too often (like trips to the dentist), or buying things too often (I give myself a B+ for 2021).
So in assessing 2021, I think I could have done better, way better. So for 2022, I will try again and perhaps harder this time.
That’s all we can really do…
hello 2022
I could say fuck you to 2021, but I personally had a terrific year so….
The magic wish list
When R was younger and didn’t quite yet know the power of his mind, he relied on basic magic- crude magic, like writing affirmations on blessed paper (written after the last full moon prior to the new year), and burnt (conveniently and discretely with the fireworks) just before the clock struck 12.
For more serious stuff, he would write out wishes in the smallest script possible- in reverse- on a mirror fogged with humidity. If it was granted, the wish would disappear. But mind you, when he first knew of this, R was skeptical; it could have been a change in temperature, or that someone may have deliberately wiped it off. But since he did it in his own bathroom which no one else used (with his room locked for good measure) he was fairly certain, it was working as it should.
But more importantly, he had proven it for the last three years of what it granted, and what it withheld. His face burned with shame at the memory of the first two times he did it. Top of his lists for those two years was one word- fame.
Looking back now, he didn’t quite know what it really meant, or what he wanted. Was it adulation? Like people on a sound-stage screaming his name as he sang or danced, neither of which he knew how to do? If it was granted, did he miraculously wake up one morning singing with the voice of an angel, or moon-walked effortlessly across their verandah like Michael Jackson? (he had tried this, but his ankles were stiff and he didn’t move an inch). Did it mean money, because if one was famous, wasn’t wealth not far behind?
But he didn’t think of these things until later, on the 3rd year when he had ‘fame’ at number 2, and when he did look at the mirror after midnight, he had to look again, half-believing. But there it was; number 1 was gone (D will stop bullying me) and so was number 3 (I will do well in Math).
But number 2, ‘EMAF’, in all-caps, was there as it had been for the last three years, unerased.
But whether it was magic doing its work, or life taking its normal course (nudged by magic, who knows?) D stopped bullying him because he moved schools. And he did better at Math- just- because his mother got him a tutor.
But he never ever put ‘fame’ on his wish list ever again, even after he started to understand its strange dynamics. He knew that like a plant, it had to start as a seed, with magic being its oxygen and water, and having it flourish and bloom at a preternatural rate. But he had looked inside of himself, at his catalog of abilities and there was nothing there really that was special or extraordinary.
He wasn’t disappointed at this though. He knew that talent and skill can be granted, even if they were neither special nor extraordinary. Having something that he never had before, was all the magic he ever needed.
So he started to write his magic wish list:
1) you will speak French;
2) you will write something great;
3) you will get some muscles;
4) you will paint;
Relax my ass
The following things relax me:
1. A cup of coffee
2. Work task done and dusted
3. Clean carpets
4. Not having spent much (this is a recent thing)
5. No pending work task the next day (because I’ve all done them the day previous).
6. A good meal that wasn’t too complicated to prepare
7. A flat stomach (on some days)
8. Finished a work-out
9. A good book
10. A good short-something on any of the streaming services
So eight days into the Christmas break, I feel like I’m over it. I should have planned it better, but then planning is also hardly relaxing. But really, there are only so many hours you can spend not doing anything; only so many chocolates you can eat before you feel absolutely sick. I look at the time I have to spend on holiday and it triggers the same feeling I get looking at the Prezzy card I got from work; I don’t want to fuck it up by wasting it on shit.
Reading list Dec 21 - Jan 2022
Jeffrey Euginides’ Middlesex: Primarily a coming-of-age story (Bildungsroman) and family saga, the 21st century gender novel chronicles the effect of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist's life. The novel won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction .
Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway: The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
Joanne Tompkins’ What Comes After: After the shocking death of two teenage boys tears apart a community in the Pacific Northwest, a mysterious pregnant girl emerges out of the woods and into the lives of those same boys’ families—a moving and hopeful novel about forgiveness and human connection.
Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary: Is a 2021 science fiction novel by Andy Weir. It is his third novel, after 2011's The Martian, and 2017's Artemis. Set in the near future, the novel centers on junior high (middle) school-teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace, who wakes up from a coma afflicted with amnesia. He gradually remembers that he was sent to the Tau Ceti solar system, 12 light-years from Earth, to find a means of reversing a solar dimming event that could cause the extinction of humanity.
Nnedi Okorafor’s Remote Control: An alien artifact turns a young girl into Death's adopted daughter in Remote Control, a thrilling sci-fi tale of community and female empowerment from Nebula and Hugo Award-winner Nnedi Okorafor. The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa—a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past.
Keri Hulme’s The Bone People: The buzz when The Bone People won the Booker prize in 1986 was all about the struggle Keri Hulme had to bring it to publication. First there was the monumental effort of writing it over a 12-year period, then the fact that nearly every publisher rejected it out of hand. Those who were prepared to look at it wouldn't contemplate bringing it to print without severe re-edits, prompting the author to declare she would rather have the book "embalmed in Perspex" than re-shaped. When the book was finally taken on, it was by Spiral, a tiny feminist press in New Zealand led by three women – two of whom had links to the same Maori tribe as Hulme. The initial print run was 2,000 copies. When they sold out and so did the next 2,000, Spiral approached Hodder and Stoughton in New Zealand, who shifted another 20,000 and brought it to the attention of the Booker judges.
Boxing Day haul
There’s only one place for the ultimate Boxing Day shopping spree- Smith & Caughey’s. One of the oldest surviving retail businesses in New Zealand, it was established in 1880 by Ulster-born Marianne Smith as a drapers and millinery shop and is the oldest-surviving department store in Auckland.
And also the place for the good stuff.
Here’s what we dropped serious coin on (if we had the money and a tacky apartment).
Noche Buena 2021
A Simple Prayer for Christmas Dinner
Dear God, we give thanks for this time when we can all be together. We give thanks for this food which is bountiful and delicious. We give thanks for this joyful holiday when we can celebrate our Savior and his love for us. With joy we pray, Amen
Dec 24 2021
The tricky thing about Christmas in New Zealand is that because the season falls on a southern hemisphere summer, it’s like being in the Philippines- though more than ever, tropical typhoon season has crept closer and closer, and for some like the people in the Visayas and Mindanao, it’s celebrating the season in the destructive and tragic wake of a typhoon.
I wish I could stay longer, but the kids are all grown up; they don’t really need anyone. And Chini- the baby who made the last six Christmases joyous and happy is no longer a child. So I’m left to my own devices which suits me just fine- no chores to do, could finally relax a bit, caught up with a bunch of shows.
And the meals- they do bring you home. All those lazy afternoons with a feast of grilled pork and fish, a seaweed salad with green mango and tomatoes or sauteed mung beans thick with fat slices of ampalaya and malunggay…
mmmmmmm..
Midweek
Had lunch in the city- yum char- and the 1st time since lockdown started in August. It was a quick, I’ll pick you-up on a day of light traffic and whizzing through 12 little courses, then goodby, happy holidays, I’ll drop you off thing. It’s good to reconnect (I stopped myself from talking about work which is what we always do these days) with people you actually trust, yet are not in your personal life.
They trust that you bring the same kind of efficiency and skill that you have at work to your personal life, and I’m glad to say that they’re at least 90% correct. And i’m always working on the remaining 10%.
A friend dropped us a goodie box of various succulents. She said they’d be fine in the box until we find the time to plant them. But 24 hours later, they don’t seem to look so good- not so succulent looking. So we took matters in our own hands, cleared up a patch of soil at the back and stuck all the succulents in.
And apparently, that’s all it takes for them to take root and grow. It’s a pity you can’t eat them.
Back to work then nek minute..
The daily commute (Uber mostly), the question of what to have for lunch, machine-made lattes…then 5 minutes later, it may be back to lockdown again because of Omicron..
