My Definition

My Definition

I don’t understand women.

Aung Sang Su Kyii, why did you not meet your dying husband? Simone De Beauvoir, did you not want Satre all for yourself? Zips fall like petals and underwear blow off like dandelion fluffs, but sorry Erica Jong, I don’t fancy the zipless fuck.

Great women, you all are, but. Well yes, there is a ‘but’. I’m not like you all. I like making safe decisions in relationships. It doesn’t mean that I don’t take risks in life. I embrace the unpredictability of life;

I fear not failure or judgment. But.

I’ve never met a successful woman. At least by my definition.

Who is she?

She runs after her dreams; She does what she loves. She doesn’t conform. There is no work-life balance. There is only life. There is no dilemma between family and freedom. They are congruent.

She has it all. Who is she? I’m afraid she is a chimera. It’s a catch-22, really.

If she is emotional, you call her faulty. She is irrational; her dreams are impossible. If she is distant, you call her the Ice-Queen. An unfeeling spinster.

Then, I look around at the women in my life.

Grandma, you brought up five children amidst the bullet rains. You put food on the table, though it was just porridge and soy sauce. You schooled your children, even if they were daughters. But you put all your beans on your only son. He left, yes he left. He wasn’t even at your deathbed.

Aunt, you gave up your broad-casting career, to marry this knight in rusting armor. Was it worth it? Your in-laws despise you for giving birth to a Tiger daughter. He doesn’t care, yes he doesn’t care. He wasn’t even on your side.

Mom, did you really think I’d turn out an oddball? If you didn’t give up your job? You don’t talk about it, doesn’t mean that I don’t know. Housewife. That’s what you fill into occupation forms. But you’re afraid of me growing up and you’ll lose your job.Your love is like a sun. I love the warmth, but I am sunburned.

Cross your legs. Straighten your hair. Now why do you want me to pierce my ears? You say: Because you’re a girl!

Gosh. What poor reasoning is this?!

Mom. Female is a gender. Not a condition. Does not wanting petroleum and fish scales on my face, make me lesser a person?

Damn conformity! But. I’m afraid.

I fear looking into the mirror. I see no image. I can’t see myself as a matronly woman, tied up with diapers and milk bottles – I can’t see myself as a highflying corporate superstar, with fat paychecks and all that bling – I can’t see myself as the poet, the visionary - I can’t see myself. Must we choose? Must I choose?

At 14, I was a misandrist. At 15, I found my dreams. At 17, I had it all. I thought, at least.

They say, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible.

W ell-

At 18, the rest of my life ended before it began.

A failed three-year relationship. This relationship, this story... what a joke – a cliché!

Girl makes a decision. Chose A over J. She promised to never regret. This love was eternal.

He thinks she’s demanding. She thinks he’s is uncaring. They grow apart. And yeah, they break up. And now, J is back. Heck. Since when did her life – wait, my life – turn into some disastrous romantic comedy?

Never mind. It’s God’s will.

But. I think, I think I’m getting somewhere. I don’t have an ‘ambition’, but I know what I want. I want to attend a women’s college, in the United States. I want to cycle across continents. I want to start a social enterprise. I want to study Neuroscience. I want write a play. I want to travel to Iran.

I want someone who listens, who understands; just someone to lean on when I am

scared. I want a perfect marriage. I want a family. I want this undying love. I just want to grow up and grow old with someone. I want ‘till death do us part’.

They say the answer to life is 42. Maybe that’s the right age for marriage. Or that’s when mid-life crisis happens.

Perhaps, the answer is 24? ... Or 34? Well frankly, I don’t know. But at least, I’m getting somewhere. I know what I want. What is a successful woman? I hope. I hope I’ll be my definition.

Personal Monologue - KELVIN

Why so Cina?

I hate mispronouncing my words.

 Deaf, death. Deaf, death. The man is deaf. Death has come for the man. I hate it, this genetic predisposition for a short tongue. Palallel, I mean, parallel! I’ve learnt phonetics, why is this so hard? Ah,be,ce! Pronunciation, it’s simple really; just know what you want to say, and how you wanna say it. Teater! Th-ea-t-re. Still I can’t help saying it Cina.

            Faris likes making fun of me. He’s a stickler for pronunciation; it just floats his boat that I can get words wrong. His favourite is menu. He will never let that go. The first time he noticed me say meh-nu. He did a double-take, stared at me

 “Say that again.”

“Say what again?”

“What you just said.”

“Menu?”

He wouldn’t stop laughing; I had no idea what he was laughing about.

“Its men-yoo”

“Men-yoo? Its meh-nu isn’t it? Everybody says meh-nu. I’m pretty sure it’s that.”

“Nobody says meh-nu, its men-yoo.”

“Well I say meh-nu!”

“Haha Meh-nuuuuu boy.”

I’m not that Cina am I? I’m not even fluent in Mandarin; I slipped out of the womb crying in English ok. Chinese babies cry in Chinese, English babies cry in English.

Faris and I aren’t all that different. We’re sitting in our favourite pub, eating pork burgers and sipping Strongbow cider. Faris is Malay but he is not. Pork munching and booze guzzling aside he can’t even speak Malay properly; I swear my Malay is better than his. He was speaking to his driver on the phone the way a gweilo expatriate would speak. I have never let him live that one down.

Really I believe it’s about choosing your influences. When I was younger, in the afternoons I’d watch MTV, and at night, Cantonese TVB Dramas with Poh Poh. Raised with American influences in an Asian context, we have to choose. To me, to be Chinese is to be closed-minded, to be without imagination. Go to school, go be an engineer. Be a manager, be a CEO. Buy a house, buy a Mercedes Bensi. Do what you are told to, and don’t ask why. Is that all there is? Where is the room for dreams and imagination?

My uncle once asked me:

“English? What for? I speak English, you speak English. Study what?!” 

I am tired of explaining myself to all the aunties and uncles who stare at me incredulously. All of them asking me the same questions:

“Can get a job ar?”

No. But McD is always hiring anyways.

“How you going to make money?”

I don’t know. Male stripper la.

“Aiyoh like to read also good la, but that one can do as hobby mar. You have to consider a career.”

This is really about the only thing I’m halfway competent at.

Que sera sera. What will be will be.

Call me straight, call me naïve. I want to believe that if I keep doing the things I love, the things that feel right to me, then everything will turn out for the best. I love to read and I love knowledge. I want to learn more about language, to understand how we create words and words create ideas. Maybe even become a writer; to craft and sculpt thoughts into words.

Education has become a process, to achieve that A, to achieve that Degree. I, however just want to learn.

English they ask:
“What kind of work are you gonna get after you’re finish?”

Nobody asks “what will you learn”?

I knew I had to choose my lot in life. Take me away! There is no place for me among the culture I had grown up in.

Take me away.

Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly.

I hate it when I mispronounce my words.

I am reminded that despite my very best efforts, to be liberal, to be imaginative, to be eloquent and articulate; to be progressive, and for lack of a better word, Western. I am after all, Cina. There’s no escaping that. Born into such a context, when removed I lose my meaning. You can change, adapt, but you cannot remove that aspect of you; the bat who is both mammal and bird, unaccepted by either. Take notice of the plight of my generation, of Faris and me. Lost in the continuum between East and West, between tradition and modernity; we must find ourselves knowing we are never of either side. We are thesis, anti-thesis and the synthesis of a blave new world.

 Brave I mean. Br-ave. Fuck.