2 By 2

Yup, how can!

I was pretty pip up to do updates along the way at Portland, but was so caught up with the train of activities that I didn't.
Am at SFO airport now, awaiting my long haul flight back to Singapore via Korea. I'm coming back!

The trip to Portland has been really rewarding, and I am looking forward to share my findings/experience here, and to kick start my work blog again.

But they are calling to board already, I guess I can only do it when I am back! Counting down 20 hours!

Naive was I to expect that my long break would be about my personal journey to be happy.

I had expected the initial resistance but never did I expect the repercussions of my decision to be felt up till now.

I’m currently on this book titled “The secret letters of the monk who sold his Ferrari”. It is about a cosmopolitan man who is so buried in his work that he is starting to lose sight of people around him until one day, he was coerced to drop his work and travel around the work to collect talismans for a distant relative whom he barely knew. Then, he began his journey of self-realisation.

The first talisman was accompanied by a message that spoke about the Authentic Self. It got him to question if he was leading one, the yardstick? Whether one is happy or not.

Just as I was so inspired by the visions in this book, I was greeted with hostility by my own mother at home; one that only a young, educated but economically inactive person would face.

That is tough man, I must say. Extremely frustrating. I tried to gain my composure by reading at my neighbouring void deck. I then seeked assurance from the book to reaffirm myself.

This led me to conclude that one’s road to happiness will only be possible with the support of the people around you. Otherwise, it’s going to be a rocky road ahead.

Till then….

I had two interesting conversations yesterday.

When back to visit my in-laws and got to sit down and had a nice chit chat with my father in-law. We spoke about making life choices:

He said:
“Just follow your heart”
I asked him:
“What if your heart if wrong?”
He replied: “then you bear the consequences lor”
I asked then: “what if the people around u are against it?”
He replied: “don’t take their personal experiences as yours. They are they, you are you. You may not experience the same thing because you are not them, vice versa.”

Follow your heart. I’m impressed by his words.

Since young (even up to recently), I’ve adults around me always saying, “let your mind rule, not your heart”, “learn from people’s mistakes so you don’t make the same and suffer”. To hear an entirely different perspective from a person of the same generation as my adults, I must say, is truly liberating.

I guess both schools are right in their own ways and at this stage, I’d prefer to let my heart rule…I don’t wish to keep living in others shadows.

That was my first conversation. Now is the second:

Over a casual phone conversation with my aunt, she said:

“You must be a dutiful wife to your husband and cook for him when he gets home from work…”
(That was after she knew that I may become a stay-home wife)

Then she went on:
“You must prepare yourself to go entertaining with your husband’s clients. Socialise. You cannot just stay at home.”

And she went on to stress on the omnipotent importance of all those supposedly wifely duties that are only applicable to stay-home wives who depend on their husbands who are hard-at-work in the ‘real’ world.

I was pissed, truly, as it was the third time she mentioned the ‘entertaining’ to me.

“Does it mean if I don’t entertain I’m not a dutiful wife? then what about what I want?

A home-maker doesn’t have a choice as to how she wants to lead her life?”

While I think such pre-modern thoughts still are prevalent, I would like to keep my own thought: to be a person in my own right.

P.S: silently pray that the day will not come when others’ experiences would become my own and I’ll have to eat my words while they’d say, “see I told you so.”

What an interesting day! While one soothes, the other pricks.

Till then…

Read this from the book “The happiness project”:
“Studies have shown that we tend to unconsciously overestimate our contributions or skills relative to other people”

Hence, we yearn for people to appreciate our efforts and fail to see that they too are making an effort.

Interesting perspective put forth by the author. This thinking is the culprit to dissatisfaction.

Thus, we shouldn’t do something in hope to get acknowledgement from others; their response will never parallel your own perception of the effort you’ve put in.

The above is derived from this extract (from the same book):
“…you have to do the kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don’t expect other people to react in a particular way”

Read this earlier, good read.

We lament that we are fixing the problem in our environment caused by our older folks. But this guy put it all in perspective. “Really?” you ask…

I went back to my workplace yesterday to tidy up my workspace, in case a relief needs to use it but more so to maintain a good impression. Bumped into many colleagues who expressed how envious they were of me. They seemed busy as usual, happiness index was low.

I left the place after five hours, relieved that I have chosen this path in pursuit of happiness; a state of mind. That evening, I met up with some friends, one of whom showed great life force. Her positivism and energy was infectious.

Today, I managed to accomplish three things on my checklist. After spending some time on the copywriting of a friend’s website, I tried what I’ve been wanting to do: to fuse plastic bags together. My first product was born out of fused plastic bags.

Later in the evening, I met up with my old schoolmates and showed them my proud creation. They told me point-blank that they’d not buy such a product. We had a good laugh and I gave myself full marks for the effort, and sadly, no deals.

Throughout our conversations, I spoke freely about the business ideas I had in mind. They were tickled by my enthusiasm to run errands for them so as to earn some pocket money. I didn’t feel the least embarrassed sharing crazy business ideas and spoke with fervor which they would not dismissed. Because they know I can make it happen; time is on my side and I’m happy that I’ve control over it.

So apart from having to watch my budget, I was caught in dilemma between the $5.50 chicken teriyaki or $4.40 italian blt (I ate the former), I had a great day today!

By the way, my friend and I co-invested in these two books.

And I also bought the ingredients I needed to make my peppermint cornflakes. Photographs of them will be available in due course.

Till then…

It’s 7am now, and the sun is not out yet. office building lights are on throughout the night, and there are people in the office already.

Cold and hungry, can’t sleep so it’s time to wake up and wash up and look for food.

Booked my flight at american airlines, but was told at the airport my flight is operated by Alaska airlines. Had to walk in between terminals.

Settling lunch at Gladstones in terminal 3, window view of the runway.

The a380 that I came in is preparing to fly back.

Taking my time to absorb in the sights

Good chowder

The A380 upper deck experience is quite good. Lesser people, more cosy feel. According to stewardess, upper deck will feel the turbulence more strongly. Didn’t felt so. Maybe the turbulence I felt along the way was consider “strong”.

With a bigger plane, comes a bigger queue for luggages at the carousel. They need 2 carousel to service the passengers!

Finished dinner, not bad. And they gave me a can of ginger ale (my favourite flying drink) which I never seen before. not as tasty as the original one, but refreshing nonetheless.

Did some dips (only 5 lah) at the stairways between the decks, stretch my legs a bit.

Took my bag down, time to test yoobao. I kinda like the eneloop one now, so much more lighter and apparently better hold charge capability. We shall see. I am getting power hungry hah.

Still barely 1/3 way across pacific, 20 minutes more to finish 1911 (Jackie Chan), more than 7 hours to LAX, 5 hours of transit time an 2 hours more to Portland, I’m here wondering if I will have a chance to get PS Vita and whether my cruiser customizing stuff will arrive safe and sound… Haha…

Back to the big screen