Tired

It has been a highly charged, stressful time stretching back almost a year ago by now. Challenging in ways entirely and directly linked to career trajectories, and the people at the center of an organisation.

You see, it becomes an entire different universe the moment you step into a work setting. Whereas in school you just needed to game the system, here, there is no set system in place to help you survive what work is, what your worth is, with someone telling you that you are not good enough with little to no proof of who you are as a person or the effort and sacrifice you have put in, into this blasted activity that helps pay for your survival and your many many wants and shiny trinkets that provide momentary satisfaction and happiness. (truly though tango shoes do make me, very very happy).

There have been moments of pure anxiety and stress and being someone who does not forgive or forget easily, it has been a real challenge to my own sanity to have survived this period without utterly and entirely breaking down.

There also comes a point where reflection happens and did I know that close to 30 I’d be where I am, doing the things I’m doing, facing the people I’m facing and dealing with the things I’m dealing with? Actually, honestly, yes. I knew that my ambition and drive would always be the cause of my own anxiety, I knew that the worrywart in me was never going to go away. I knew the grit of solving a math problem for hours at age 16 was never going to go away. I knew that if I had to run a marathon I would run it. Because there is no such thing as quitting, because there is no such thing as not being able to do it, if you put the effort into it. That has always been my motto and that is always something that I believe defines who I am.

So yes, more sleep is definitely required, a reset is definitely required. All the rest, just noise. 

Insecure

I don't think I've ever been comfortable. Just. Being.

I'm a worry-wart, someone who is forever looking at the past, pretending it were better, yet reliving the embarassments of certain times and forever stuck in-between spaces. Between now and the end of the year, anticipating yet again another event and the cycle of life spins and spins and spins like a whirlpool.

The past few years have been a haze and yet paradoxically, some of the most committed times I've made for myself. It's the whole, think of what you want, chase it, and if you fail, fail fast.

I forgot that motto for myself. Much as I was, chasing things, chasing potential, I actually idiotically got reminded to look at myself from the last person I would expect to hear things from. A tinder random who I started chatting with. Maybe it's true, the ones that know you the least will actually spot how you are presenting yourself to them, raw, from what you say, how you react.

I also blame the creatively stunted work of corporate life. For all my inabilities to express myself in writing. Also blame the best and worst invention in the world, the bloody phone/computer/robot that sits in our hands nowadays.

New resolutions - purchase 3 books and finish them by the end of the month.

I also feel the lack of deep discussions with friends totally don't create the same inspirations anymore. We talk about very superficial things nowadays and not what really drives us, or maybe we just avoid the hard topics because it is easy to.

Tomorrow, a new outlook. Enough with the jaded complaints. Enough with expectations. Enough with presumptions.

You cloak yourself from really feeling and expressing by presuming, and you believe that experiences make you the best teacher for yourself, when the best teacher is just acceptance, openness, and to hell with the outcomes.

That's when you always discover yourself, no?

Once Upon a Time

Written 5 years ago
_______________________________________________________________________Time inexorably flows on, to the point where it's been a year+ since graduation and job hunting and 9 months into settling in and looking forward to projects, to more experiences, to figuring out life.

Why is it always like this? Maybe I was never aware of holding onto something, but everytime I think about it, the more I realise there really is only one. For now.

It's like...topping up the vase of dead flowers in a vain attempt to revive, well something? But why fight then? What's the point, always a one sided affair isn't it? And then time just keeps ticking away, and I can see it happening already, a decade or two really. Because I don't want to let it disintegrate, so I try and keep it locked up, but the more you hide it safe, the more you realise that you're also losing the password to it. And I guess eventually you end up not caring anymore.  I guess.

And memories. Let's not even talk about them. I think the older I've gotten, the reason why I've also been able to be more chill about things, is because I've learnt how to let go. Let go of moments where I've paused momentarily and said to myself "wouldn't it be great to just have this on loop? Forever?" Those moments are so preciously rare. So, so rare.

What's the point of it all, when it all ends anyway?

Home...or something like that

Having run around for the past 2 years for projects where about half the time has been spent in countries other than Malaysia, I do sometimes feel a bit in a transient mood, non-committal, non-binding and hell, not responsible for certain aspects of my own life.

Slowly but surely though, getting back into the groove of being back home and realising that no matter where in this world I go, I try to establish a few basics - the feel of "home", the feel of that comforting lazy weekend waking up to activities like gym, friends, brunch and dance. That is what I try and replicate in every city I've had to work in so far.

Also being involved in activities happening. I feel that the pull of certain countries happens because I am almost a different persona in those countries. As though the transient nature of being there makes me want to participate more in the activities which are more "tailored" to foreigners. No doubt, a lot of the more hipster-ish movement happening in KL seems to be crafted more to an international middle class of coffee drinking, brunch eating, hipster, organic buying yuppies. But I do feel, Malaysia does it its own way, it incorporate things like supporting local brands, local artists, local shophouses, I think the difference is that, we have a history that we can lean on, that we can showcase, but in a newer manner.

And yes, it plugs us into a global network of what is "cool".

Anyway back to the workout groove and yet again the endorphins are helping the wheels to turn, the ideas to form and the discussions to happen. It's been a while since I've felt this gung ho about something and as always it comes in the maelstrom of work, passion and self evaluation that is happening.

Life, always fun to live it!

Writings and musings

I often lose the will to want to write. Consulting does that to you when you have to form incoherent sentences to drive a point across. But sometimes, certain inspirations drag out of me the need to want to verbalise or frame what I have in mind about life. I find Tango does the talking for me nowadays though. I don't need to write, I just need to express.

It's been a crazy project in Dubai, highs and lows, tears, anger and fears all manifested into one big mess.

Always feel like I am at the beginning. Traipsing around a golf course during an LPGA championship.

Friendship

Tango to me has always been about friendship.

It's about the times in a dusty classroom where english classes, stata classes, chinese culture classes give way to awkward shuffling around the floor. Where seats with attached tables become our vantage points at a 11pm practica on a Friday evening.

Where people meet, mingle, learn across all ages and all types, be it from healthcare, engineering, economics, professors, students, professionals and everyone in between.

Where late night mamak's post Friday evening regular milongas give way to conspiracy theories amidst the running rats around the drains and trees of Kay-el's messy streets.

When in a foreign land, you make friends immediately, by first, embracing strangers. Leading to night rides in brake-less cars and four women yelling directions to an unheeding gentleman bent on driving the route he wants to take.

When you have the last embraces on the floor, knowing you will see them again somewhere in this connected, weird and wonderful friendship of the love of Tango, its music, and its people.

Tete Rusconi’s open letter
Let us learn to dance Tango
Today January 9, 2006 I would like to ask you something with all the love and respect I have for you all. This is not a reproach against anyone, what I want is that the youth and all those who dance tango understand my reason: We do not have to dress up tango under any circumstances because this so passionate music gives us life, energy, pleasure and then makes us feel better. After so many years seeing dancers and trainers I think that there cannot be so many mistakes either in teaching or in exhibitions.

Next I shall tell you what my idea is. I always knew that music is the main basement of tango. Like also is learning to walk it with balance and cadence. I would not dare to say that there is no technique when you dance but I think that it would be much better if they taught to dance more freely, like for ourselves… there’s more fun there. Nobody can jeopardize us by watching us because we dance for ourselves.

I say that I think that many are disguising tango into something that is not true, because tango is music and you cannot start teaching steps or make the mistake of not teaching how to walk different music bars to recognize every orchestra. A lot of people that are teaching would have to learn first to dance tango in order to be able to teach giving all of themselves so not to let down their pupils or to spoil their images as educators.

Tango is not a business even though many ones think it is. Tango is a part of our life, a part of our grandparents, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends. It is our life. We should not be so greatly mistaken and ought to conquer it again since we are losing it because we do not respect it.

Dear friends, female and male dancers, since this you do is one more work in your life, in order to be respectful with yourselves, it would be nice that in your exhibitions you should dance more tango and less acrobatics, ballet or any other thing different to tango.

I don’t want to think that in your exhibitions you behave as contenders; we know that each dancing team should create its own style and, furthermore, you should not dance music alien to tango. Don’t lie to yourselves or to people about that.

And for the tango community of Europe and the rest of the world I have a piece of advice: I would like that you opened your eyes about how to learn to dance and, especially, to stage organizers and trainers, sincerely, I want you to know that when something is organized you have to summon the best dancers and teachers to be able to teach correctly.

Without music, cadence, posture, and balance, steps are of no help at all and for that we need authentic instructors and teachers.

Travel

If one thing that travelling for work has taught me, it's that the more I step outside Malaysia's borders, the more I realise that I often act upon pre-conceived sentiments and notions of a country.

Case example, going to Paris for the Tango Marathon, there was some disgruntled sense in feeling that we were being treated rather rudely by some of the members of the Tango scene. In Dubai, having the taxi driver suddenly turn on the meter when the hotel bellhop had assured us of a flat rate. Little things like these that suddenly draw up the comparison..."In Malaysia..."

But really, "In Malaysia..." all these might have been multipled 10-fold, taxi's would have fleeced us and service wouldn't have been the best either. Yet, we seem to filter our lives by growing the barnacles that protect us against such negativity. We grow the layers of skin needed to survive in a country and carry this with us anywhere we go.

I do realise something though. It doesn't matter how developed a country is, there will be something that you pull and pick at and want to compare against your own sense of what home should be. Sometimes home is what it is, warts and all and it's not a black and white thing, no it is the multi-coloured rainbow hue that makes us who we are, and makes the nation what it is.

When people drag Malaysia's name through the mud, we are apt to also try to protect it. It's like how no one can use the N-word except for the people themselves, so really, no one can slander Malaysia better than her own people. But maybe sometimes we do need to drag our name through the mud, maybe sometimes its justified when we look at the powers that be and what they are saying, doing and acting upon. Yet when we defend it, we are not defending the powers that seem to want to test us with every step, we are defending the friends we have, the family that exists, the memories of time, place and childhood. Our identify, woven into the fabric of what makes this country great, and also what makes this country flawed.

Believe, trust, and the grass always seems greener on the other side