On aging bravely

As a fortysomething woman, I found this to be a hilarious-yet-true account on how women, as we grow older, become more self-confident about our bodies, flab and all. It’s as if a switch is turned on when you reach 40 and suddenly, you’re filled with an IDGAF attitude about what people think of you. Not to say that I suddenly got all confident about showing off my body, but I’ve certainly let go of many of the insecurities I’ve had when I was younger. I still remember feeling embarrassed when I wore a pair of shorts to a screenwriting workshop and one of the guys started teasing me in front of the whole room, and everyone laughed! (His comment was: “Ooh, look at Terrie in shorts! She’s so brave!”) I wanted to go home and change! And now, looking at my photos back then, I wondered why I was so embarrassed. I wish I had the gumption back then to smack the guy on his head for making me feel bad. But that’s insecurity for you.

I still have cellulite, my body jiggles more than it should, my tummy could do with more crunches to reduce its size, and my arms are like noodles. But you know what? I wore my first two-piece bikini in my 40s and it was liberating. It’s all good.

Mistaken identities

In which I make sense of my Asian-ness.

 

“Oh, I thought you were Thai,” said a flustered massage therapist in Phuket, where we just spent a week. I laugh. In Thailand, locals chatter away at me in Thai, before getting clued in by my clueless expression that I probably wasn’t who I seemed. And then they apologize. It’s okay, I tell them. I get that a lot.

But then, it also happens in Vietnam, where my slitty eyes (as D teasingly calls them), get me mistaken for Vietnamese; in Indonesia, where sarong vendors, mistaking my skin color and hair, plead with me to buy their wares in Bahasa or Balinese before they realize I couldn’t understand them; in Cambodia, where tuk-tuk drivers speak to me in the local dialect. I’ve also been mistaken for Chinese and Japanese. D teases that I am “the girl with many faces” or maybe no-face girl, referencing Game of Thrones.

The most memorable so far was at the London Eye. D and I were in the queue when one of the ushers told me to follow the line of people down the corridor, before ending his instruction with “Sawasdee krup“. I was bemused and asked D what was that all about. His explanation: The usher probably mistook me for a Thai bar girl visiting London with her English lover. Hmmm… D says it wasn’t unheard of for British men go off to Thailand for a holiday and come back with a girlfriend. Oookay then.

Do you mind it, he asked. Not really, I replied. It’s not as if I can control people’s perceptions and preconceived notions, anyway.

Oddly enough, I don’t get mistaken for my own race all that much — at least, not outside Singapore. However, in Pilates class, one of the instructors, who is Filipina, thought I was Thai. She initially said she didn’t feel the “lukso ng dugo” (poetically, a leap of the blood), a Filipino term which refers to that sudden leap of recognition of one of your own. For instance, I can usually tell if a person walking towards me was Filipino and can accurately tell if a person is Thai, Malay, Indonesian or some other Southeast Asian race. “How do you know this?” D would ask me, frustrated by his inability to tell which Asian is which. I don’t exactly know how. I guess we all have an instinct for recognizing one’s own, or what’s familiar. It’s not a trait that’s unique to Filipinos. D can usually tell what kind of European it is just by looking, while I have to wait until that person speaks, and not even then.

So what’s with the preoccupation on race and color, you might ask. Shouldn’t we all be color-blind? I guess I became more aware of my nationality/color/race when I started living in another country where being part of a multicultural society was more predominant and race factors in pretty much everything. Being in an interracial relationship has also gotten me to thinking more about it.

In the Philippines, it wasn’t something we thought of at all, mainly because we are a fairly homogenious lot and consider ourselves Filipino, whether or not we’re half something else. In fact, we tend to adopt Filipinos from other countries (like Hollywood actors with a hint of Pinoy blood, whom we claim as our own). We’re inclusive that way. But I think there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging each other’s color (or race). It is after all, part of who we are. It’s when we assume certain characteristics or take on prejudices about races that it becomes a problem. I don’t see anything wrong in genuinely wanting to know about a particular nationality so long as there’s an openness and acceptance of each other’s differences. In my case, people mistaking my identity always leads to an interesting conversation about each other’s differences and ways we’re alike. It’s an ice-breaker and a door-opener. And ultimately, people-connecter.

Today I’m grateful for…

Early morning sun in Toa Payoh

I subscribe to this site called Daily Page, which gives you a writing prompt  — basically a topic that you could write about for the day. In theory, the prompts are is supposed to help make you a better writer by compelling you to write everyday. Of course, I say “in theory” because you actually have to do the writing yourself — bummer, right? So how have I done so far in the site? Miserably, if truth be told. I had written a bunch of stuff when I was new to the site, but the discipline tapered off,  for various reasons. So for the past few months I have been ignoring the emails that have come from the site, until today.

I was struck by the topic for today: Name three things you are grateful for. It seems like such an easy subject to write about. Until I finally sat down to write and nothing came out. It’s not that I don’t have a lot of things to be grateful for. The problem is choosing from among the many.

Or, to be honest about it, choosing to focus on the good things instead of wallowing in the muck of bad stuff. It’s hard not to focus on the unfortunate things. The last half of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 have been a bust for me. I lost my job and the one that I found this year turned out to be a disaster. When I lost my job last year, I wasn’t at all worried; I was confident that I would find another one quickly. It’s been that way for most of my working life. Things just sort of fell into place for me. I was rarely out of a job for more than a few weeks, and would be smugly puzzled by other people’s inability to snag a viable post right away. Fast forward several months, and who’s smug now? Not I, that’s for sure. While friends and family have gone ahead and done Stuff — published a book, gotten great jobs elsewhere, raised/are raising cool kids — I seem to be stuck in a rut. Don’t get me wrong, I love that the people I love are going places and doing cool things, I just wish that I was along for the ride too. I guess I didn’t realize how much the loss of my job, something that defined me, would be such a blow to my self-worth. This isn’t an exercise in self-pity, far from it. I do know how lucky I am, in the grand scheme of things. I guess what I am trying to say is that setbacks do make it harder to focus on the good things, even though it’s more important than ever to shine a light on the positive.

So, what three things am I grateful for today?

1. A thriving family. Almost everyday, I check up on the family via Facebook. I love that the older nephews are doing the things they love, the younger kids are fun and funny. My brothers and their wives are all doing well. And that my mom is as fun and fab as ever. Over in the other side of the world, I love that D’s parents are doing well and look forward to his dad’s bullet-point emails complete with photos of the lovely flowers and plants growing in the garden, sacks of compost and the latest in gardening gadgets.
2. A peaceful day. I’m all alone in the apartment, typing this with a picturesque view not many get to see everyday. I’ve just had lunch and it’s looking like it’s going to be a good day. For the past month or so, I haven’t had a peaceful day — one that wasn’t filled with stress and worry (about finding a job, paying my bills, etc) — and having one today feels like a blessing. I know it’s a respite, but I welcome it nevertheless.
3. 3. D. An old part of cool girl Terrie who eschewed mushiness wouldn’t have even put this last in here. But I recognize that I am indeed a lucky woman for having someone who actually understands and is supportive of me, even if he’s probably thinking by now that being in publishing is bollocks and I should try something else… like, I don’t know, sell insurance maybe, haha! But he’s been a rock these past few months. I read somewhere that one of the reasons successful writers end up being successful (aside from the talent and the perseverance to succeed aspects of it), is the fact that they had supportive partners they can depend on. That’s my D.

Actual view from my desk. It’s a little dramatic right now, what with the coming rain, but see the light in the upper right? That’s where the sun will eventually shine

So that’s my little list. What are you grateful for today?

Better late than never…

It’s been a turbulent and hectic last quarter of 2015, which is why I haven’t posted anything for the past few months. I’m hoping 2016 will be kinder so I can write more.

In the meantime, to remind me that I should do just that, I am posting this link to an article in The Guardian: Ten Things I Learned About Writing from Stephen King. The advice is nothing we haven’t seen in other articles like this. But numbers 5 and 6 did resonate: Number 5 was, “Aim big. Or small.” and 6 was “Write all the time. Write a lot.” So these are what I will be doing more of this year. Hopefully I get to keep this promise.

See you soon!

Kitchen experiment: Tuna cakes

What do you do when you’re not really feeling any of the leftovers in the fridge for lunch? If you’re like me, you experiment (so long as said recipe experiment wasn’t too complicated, of course! I don’t pretend to be a great cook).

So here was the situation: After a long morning wrestling with editorial plans, I was getting hungry. I could eat a banana or a tub of yogurt but that was not going to sustain me for long. A glance at the pantry showed that there were canned corned beef; I could make a quick corned beef hash (that’s always good, but we’ve had that recently). There were also packets of instant noodles (not an option, unless there wasn’t anything left to eat and we’re in a midst of a zombie apocalypse. Nothing against instant noodles, but I ate a lot of it growing up and during college. Also, I was trying to eat healthy)… Ooh, there’s canned tuna. Wonder what I can make with that. Quesadillas? An option, except that I have to open a packet of tortillas and only use one or two of them. I didn’t want to add to the leftovers in the fridge. Hmmm, tuna salad? Yes. But yikes, no bread.

Midday, Humpday Reflection: Boobs

I was inspired by the nymag.com article to draw my own pair

This is a somewhat odd, middle of the week post. I don’t usually overshare personal reflections in this blog, but I just came across the article, “New York Women Draw Their Own Boobs” on nymag.com, which amused me. Reading it, I had an immediate flashback to my mom, getting dressed. I don’t know if she would appreciate me sharing this, but she’s not shy about getting dressed in front of her kids, even now that we’re grownups. When she needed to take off or put on a top, for instance, and we happened to barge into her bedroom to ask her something or talk to her, she would just blithely go on doing what she was doing, without self-consciousness, as if it were perfectly natural for her kids to see her naked. And we all got used to it, growing up. It was just mom being mom.

Scenes from an Easter Sunday…

… in which we ate too much Italian food, imbibed glasses of Bellinis, laughed a lot, told stories, argued, bought stuff — in other words, celebrated. Good times!

Had heard a lot about Osteria Mozza but haven’t had a chance to eat here, so it was great that we had our Easter brunch there. Food was fantastic! Expensive, of course — as only a Mario Batali restaurant can be. It’s definitely not an everyday kind of restaurant. More for special occasions, like today. The service was great, too! The waitstaff was very attentive and saw to our every need, even anticipating refills of Bellinis! Now, that’s my kind of service!

Starters were assorted bread, which went well with the coffee I had to have before the meal started, because I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink the whole day and I get a caffeine-headache if I don’t have coffee first thing. So we munched on bread while waiting for the food. We also ordered Orechiette with sausages and chard. This is actually a main, but we had it for starters, because we can. The orechiette was very good. The pasta was cooked just right and the sausage and chard complimented each other very well. The sprinkling of bread crumbs was a nice final touch, and mitigated the strong flavors, creating a nice balance. I wouldn’t mind having it again next time we eat here. On second thought though, it can be a bit heavy, so it was actually a good idea to have it for sharing.

Bellinis! Alcohol in Singapore is expensive, so this was, at $18 a pop. So if you’re here to celebrate and splurge anyway, do what we did and have the free-flow at $50. I thought it was worth it, but that’s me. You can check the health of your bank account tomorrow.

Tagliatelle Verde with lamb ragú, olive Taggiasche & mint. This was phenomenal and really hit the spot. At first I thought the serving was a bit small for the price, but about an hour later, I wasn’t done eating it! Flavors blended well together. The lamb ragu, although slightly salty for me, was the perfect compliment to the pasta.

This vanilla panna cotta was the perfect end to the meal. It was creamy and delicious.

Paparazzi pics of us just enjoying ourselves. The great ending to this Easter Sunday? My haul of magazines and A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold. The exile is over! As a friend said, “You really had a good Easter, huh?” Yes, I did!

For women everywhere — heck, for men, too!

Let’s celebrate us in all our quirky, wonderful and beautiful glory! Happy International Women’s Day. The  images below are from a series of watercolors called “Women Defined” by a brilliant artist named Jay. I first saw Jay’s work while trawling the Internet, particularly from my godchild’s tumblog and a few others. And finally found the source, which I am linking here. Aren’t these images wonderful and empowering? And as she says in her blog, aren’t we awesome?

Lunchtime break: Random quotes

Ever since high school, I’ve jotted down quotes and passages from books, magazine articles, TV shows and movies I’ve watched, people I’ve met and even overheard conversations of random people in various notebooks that I’ve been lugging around with me ever since. But with the advent of Facebook and the various incarnations of social media (like this blog), my tendency to record stuff has tapered off, which is really a pity because jotting things down was sort of how I kept track of things that happened in my life (“Ahh! Wrote this while I was having coffee with whatshername and she told me about that thing with whatshisface…” stuff like that) or was a good creative source whenever I feel blocked about what I’m writing — which is what is happening now, actually. However, this past weekend, after updating my phone’s software, I was scrolling through my notes, and it turns out I’ve been jotting down or taking photos of random stuff and I just haven’t really realized it. So I’m putting them here, before I delete them forever from the phone. Warning, some are sappy, some are wise, some I’ve posted on my Instagram or posted on Facebook, some are funny and some are just plain, “huh?”

Pretty in pink

Because looking at this goofy adorable face makes me laugh and want to go home and play with her. I hope she grows up to be funny and sassy, confident and kind, intelligent and streetsmart, delightful yet down-to-earth, able to wear princessy pink dresses but still want to look goofy and fun — the kind who wears sneakers under all the frou-frou

[originally posted in tumblr]