to vancouver that is and i still haven’t posted a single thought.

that’s not to say that nothing has happened, but i have to admit at the end of everyday i feel like there should be a place where i spill my mind and arrange my thoughts in a way so that i can sort through them methodically – but i always am either overwhelmed by fatigue (pulling the long days at work immediately after returning from a 4 month vacation-like jaunt in hk has been…rough), insecurity (i have a tendency to waver to the notion that well, my thoughts aren’t really that important…not really that interesting…and by the way who do i write for? myself or others?)..or just sheer laziness.

regardless, i just finished an engagement at work the other day meaning that the rest of the week will be a bit more free (i got immediately booked on something else for next week)..so i’ll try to enjoy to the fullest all the down-time that i can muster!

so returning home from exchange, another journey in itself although the physical trip only took 14 hours…i’d say i’m still very much a WIP – (work-in-process to anyone who isn’t an accounting nerd). strangely enough i never imagined that coming back home would pose the different challenges and circumstances which arose.

for one, i came back home from phuket a moderate shade of chocolate brown. an EPIC trip to phi-phi island left a very distinct sunburn all over….i was peeling for almost two weeks after. brutal. but i’d do it all over again and in a flash. phi-phi was one of the destinations hit by the tsunami and it was interesting that when i went there was barely any trace or remembrance of the disaster. only when i was informed by my dad that we had arrived spot-on the anniversary date did the tragedy of 5 years back resonate in my mind as i traipsed through the streets with julia. it seems like the land has chosen to forget – have the people really healed? can one truly heal from seeing their whole lives, loved ones, city swept up in the grips of a series of rogue and unprecedented attacks from the sea?

the wounds of the past peeled away like some old sunburn.

another thing was and still remains that having been so deliberately uprooted from normality in vancouver, being unceremoniously plunked back home after a life-changing four months away in southeast asia proved to be a more challenging than expected experience. firstly, so many circumstances whether direct or indirect with friends have changed. the structure to some relationships and groups that i once so happily and unwittingly retained a membership to have been unretrievably altered. delicate boundaries have been broken and redrawn with force.

i’m not sure where i fit in all of this.

vancouver, you see, move on without me. and did so happily.

not that i can/should mind because i feel as if i did – and very much so at the same time.

whenever i am presented with the opportunity to travel, i’m relentlessly struck by the fact that the world is so enormous, the communities and cultures so varied and distinct – yet how strikingly similar we as people are when we are all boiled down.

i saw humanity boiled down in:

  • the helpless vulnerability of a middle-aged HKU facilities worker when struck while rushing across the street just in that shift from yellow to red light and the wary culprit taxi driver – two lives which had never connected before that moment forever intersected by a literal collision – and then the overwhelming indifference of the passerby pedestrians and onlookers, more interested in the circumstance and the facts of the accident than the actual victim’s state. so much was said and exchanged in that silence as people paused, and then continued to walk away.
  • the horrific exhibits at the war remnants museum in ho chi minh city, ironically overrun by american tourists while showcasing the predominantly silenced tragedies and lingering scars of the vietnamese people. from the tales of american brutality and chemical warfare to the unexpectedly hopeful legacies of war survivors who – although forever tainted by the ugly effects of agent orange and violence, have learned to carry on and even forgive.
  • …tbc (i’m at work gots a meeting)