Still Thinking…

My name is Uja. I am a spa-holic.

I am ashamed to admit that despite the fact that I am a full-grown adult (with a full grown body to reinforce that fact), have 20 people reporting to me at the workplace (yes, that planet with a recalcitrant alien tribe called The Bhemdods which refuses to banish itself from the universe) and a husband to take care of (albeit the fact that he is so far away) – I have lost control of my addiction to spas, scents and kneads. How unbecoming. How weak.

I succumbed on Friday night. I broke the spell of my self-imposed, cold turkey no-spas for 2 months plan. It happened on the night that I felt so lost in Esplanade Mall, all because I have 1.5 hours to kill while waiting for my 66-year-old mother and her equally 60-ish-year old best friend to finish watching ‘Impenjarament’, the play that I helped to translate. I was nursing my dissapointment of not being able to watch the play (not enough tickets, long story) and as I was walking around the Mall toying with the idea of grabbing a cuppa somewhere and continued to read Da Vinci Code, I felt down, moody and in the pits. Pathetic to be caught reading a book in a cafe on a Friday night, I know. In the middle of town, to boot. Cis bedebah! Sungguh tak sanggup.

Suddenly, my heart raced. My breathing was shallow. My pupils must have dilated. And my brown hijab must have turned blonde. As I was standing on the escalator on the way to the cafe to reconcile my conscienciousness with my pathetic Friday night life, I saw a huge sign right in front of me. It says Kenko Wellness Spa…..the 3 letter word at the end of the sentence was so inviting, I did not realise that by then, my mouth was 10 cm dilated. It was short of oozing foam.

I hurried myself into the apparent heaven. There is respite after all. I must have talked so fast to the reception counter, that the next thing I know I was seated plumply on a white seat, warm orange hues enveloping my tired eyes and a soothing score of xylophonic symphony started meandering its waves through my ears. Aaahh…blissss.Bring it on!

It was barely 5 minutes after that I realised I have walked myself into a reflexology-based spa. This is no aromatherapy-based one. There are no warm hands kneading my frenzied nerves. No strokes, no gentle movements. I was horrified at the pain that the therapist inflicted on my fragile toes, but I could not run. I could have told her to stop, paid and walked out of the new agey reflexology centre, but do I really want to read a book in a cafe on a Friday night? Thoughts of being booed and visions of waiters walking past me and making the L sign on their foreheads were threatening my ego. Gosh, it was a painful thought. All that tasawuf reading did me no good, I chided myself. Banish the ego, woman! Save yourself from the pain of traditional Chinese torture. Go to the cafe and swallow the stares, I battled.

But, I failed to fight. Instead, I closed my eyes and grit my teeth, day dreamed about my husband and tried every way to distract myself from the therapist’s punishment to me. Serves me right. I blew another $103 on an hour of ‘treatment’.

Oh, I am so very ashamed of myself. Someone please, help me hide my head.

No, the above message is not for my DH. Its for the masseuse – who epitomises the direct, unflappable bond between a hard turning, firm hand that can knead the hardest dough (often, that’s my flesh!) and a stressed out, tangled piece of muscle which has been exposed to the frustration of battling Bhemdods at work.You want to be the first to watch War of The Worlds? Come to my workplace. And no, I am not the alien.

What’s with us girls and spas, massages and salons – aku pun tak tahu. I overdid it this month. My bank balance say so, my husband just shook his head (well, I can FEEL he shook his head, although I cannot see him on the phone when he is 18,000 miles away) and my own conscience just grin and smile at my weakness for spas. This past month alone I have been to Anggun Andaman Spa, Balik Kampung Spa twice, spa partying at The Retreat Thalasso Spa, twice to the hair salon (to reperm my rebonded hair, and then reborn again!) and cancelled on Wayan Retreat twice too.

I think I have spent more than $1000 on these treats, and all because – to keep my sanity. It is no wonder that what happened this week at work was the final straw for me, and I am still contemplating my next move. Should I quit and move on to green and snowy Canada, where a doting husband, mountains and husky sleigh-rides abound (*grins to my Seoul Garden dinner companions*), or stay a while longer here in SG. Sigh, I dont know. All I know is that I cannot be spending more than a 1000 in cold cash everytime I need to be sane, yes?

Stick to berzikir, you say? I hear you. Itu tasbih sekarang jugak kena cari!

I had a giggly spa-party yesterday – so giggly that it will be considered pornographic if I were to describe the details of what made four 33-year olds former schoolmates giggled non-stop. But I had such a good time I have to tell some! 😉

The 3-hour session was supposed to be filled with a massage, steam/sauna bath, a soak in a seaview jacuzzi and then some refreshments of sushis, chicken fingers and Japanese beans. It was absolutely hilarious to be paired with KYC, my former classmate in our all-girls secondary school, who was also my seat-partner. Back then, we were so noisy and talkative that our form teacher made us sit right in front of the class, as that was the only way he could control our ‘noise’. In my report card, I had Bs and Cs and he would write – ‘You survived this on natural wit’. Damn. Why didn’t he just write ‘Work harder’?!

Anyway, I digress. Back on the spa table, KYC and me were yakking non-stop – about love and marriage, the publishing firm I work for, F1 and Bernie Ecclestone, a Malaysian datuk who was a scam, a former boss and many other issues while the therapists dutifully knead our knots and tangles with what felt like hot massage oil. We must have yakked non-stop, and then complaint about how stressed we are with work and life that the therapist actually stopped massaging and said – ‘You girls better stop talking about work, you are suppose to relax here!’.
We said sorry, fell silent and just 2 seconds later, she quipped – ‘Err..but your conversation very interesting lah!’. Gosh, make up your mind woman.

The spa-party was a form of celebration for KYC’s birthday, and so we decided to join her b’day dinner with her family at the Shangri-La. When we reached there, there were like 100+ policemen blocking the roads to the hotel, gurkhas with guns on stand-by (I heard later that the instructions given to the gurkhas were – anyone who circled the area more than 3 times have to be shot – at the tyres ) and the hotel’s carparks were all non-accessible. The last time The Shang had such a Level 1 tight security was when Bush was in town. It was my kepo questioning to the guards that we realise there was an international ministerial conference going on. Ok, so be it. I wanted my dinner, and I could not care less who was in town and how many security clearance points I had to go through. My dinner agenda stays.

Today, I flipped the papers and realised that was a conference attended by 250 defence delegates. DEFENCE. That spelt Rumsfeld, Teo Chee Hean and Najib. And so I was right.While we were dining away downstairs enjoying our pizza and lassi, Rumsfeld was a few floors above our heads either snoozing, resting or perhaps bidding on eBay on his laptop. What a thought. I would have lost my appetite.

But alas, political preferences aside – I enjoyed my dinner. See, keeping focused always help. My food – will always, always come first.

Fortunately, none of the waiters asked me – “Rumsfeld for coffee, ma’m?”. My reply would probably be – “No, kopi-baba would do”.

And I AM serious.

For the past 14 days, the iPod mini was plugged tightly into my ears – my heart was entertained from one song to another and my otherwise vulnerable soul could take all the emotions that music usually evoke – all because, my husband is here. Here, as in in Singapore. Here, as in just within a turn away when I badly need to see his sweet face.

Tomorrow, about this time, I will be whiling away the time, eyes in tears and heart in pain. He will be leaving tomorrow, back to his adopted country 18,000 miles away and it is back to our long-distance marriage again. Life is hard but oh so beautiful. I don’t know if I will be stronger, but I know I will be crying. Again.

We chose not to spend the 2 weeks he was here on short holidays, but live up the Singapore life instead. So it is eat, eat and eat, playing badminton at the Tampines Sports Hall, paying homage to Mustafa Centre, hanging out with my silly cousins and annoying best friend on a Friday night at Samar Cafe, having a romantic date watching Ten Tenors at Esplanade and alfresco candlelight dinner at Al Dente, get myself spooked at the Night Safari and visits to relatives (like 10 in total!). We had so much fun, and it is now ending.

I will look forward to his next visit, or mine perhaps. For now, the iPod will definitely be played less often and the radio dial unmoved for a while. The music stops again.

Talk about exposure.

Yesterday, I brought (correction: ‘dragged’) my 17 yr-old niece to watch a 4.5 hours documentary on the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Singapore Film Festival. My husband made me. It will ‘widen her horizon’, he said.

That docu, filmed by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan (a Palestinian and an Israeli) is still one of the most gripping, raw and *unplugged* documentary I have ever seen. It was my second time watching it, the first being at the DOXA Film Festival in Vancouver last year. I marvelled at how I can put myself through watching it again, and still shed a tear or two during the same scenes! It cannot be two PMSs occuring at the exact same time 2 years in a row, can it?!

But it is not about me today. It is about my niece, and of course, my husband. My hubs is someone who fervently believes in exposing young minds, not constraining their potentials and never, don’t you dare – decide on what the young ones can achieve when you have no idea what his/her rezeki will be. I have seen how he applies the same principle on his 15 yr-old sister, and now, to my niece too.

I was very hesitant on bringing my teenage niece to watch the docu – it was back-breaking long, no frills,no banjo music ala Michael Moore’s and on top of it – the subject matter is about the impact of politics on the common man. It is not about 911, MacDonalds or the pop culture.

Route 181, that’s the title of the docu, was full of history, bitterness, soundbites too honest and painful to hear and tonnes of reality check on us ‘isolated’ Singaporeans. Could a 17 year-old take it? Would it be an interesting watch for her at all? In her life right now – boys, iPod minis, friendships and exams take centrestage. Who cares about the Middle East?!

True enough, she was bored. At some point during the docu she was busy SMSing too, and fell asleep during some parts. The Double Decker Snek Udang I brought kept her awake for the duration it took for her to finish the packet, and I am sure after that her mind drifted again.

At the end of the show I asked her if she liked it. Of course her answer was no. At that precise moment, I was so tempted to make a long-distance call to my husband to gloat and say ‘See! I told you these young kids won’t like docus! It does nothing to ‘widen her horizon!’- but something in me stopped myself.

I realised, that many of the wisdom I acquire now is because of the things I was exposed to when I was her age. It was during my teens that my worldview was shaped, my adult life was just a reinforcement of THAT worlview. Or debunking it, depending on the outcome. She may not know NOW why she spent 4.5 hours of her precious life watching how deep-seated the conflict between the Palestinians and Jews is, but the images, the soundbites and the characters interviewed will be remembered when she is older and when she has to make sense of the world around her, the Middle East to be exact. Who knows she will be a journalist, or an academic, or a diplomat – and boy would this docu come in handy!

So thanks hubs for the push to widen my niece’s horizon. And many of the young ones in our lives too. For that, this post is a tribute to you – you won this debate hands down.

Now, can I get that iPOd mini soon? 😉

Back then in newspaper days, I used to have a colleague (let’s call her Nelly) who would pay homage to the pub almost every night, drank her Corona blues away and smoked the chain at every other hour. If she has to rush out of the air-conditioned newsroom for a puff, she would -“Eh, got to go lah – need a smoke!” even when she was merely 10-seconds away from her turn to debrief our newsdesk supervisor. And with her 5-cm heels she would actually dash out of the newsroom for that single,liberating puff.

Many a time, when dawn broke the next day and most of us would saunter into the newsroom 30 minutes late, someone would tell me a story about how Nelly was so drunk the night before, she danced with the guitar.Not the rocker-style, mind you. She was not a tall lass with leggy, moisturised legs to boot – but she always,always looked sexy. So the guitar number must have been quite a scene for the guys.

Fast-forward to 2 days ago, I gave her a call to let her know of an opening in KL for a senior reporter job with AFP. Her mobile rang, but no one picked up after 4 rings. By the time it was the 5th ring, I looked at the time and realised it is 9.30 pm on a Friday night. How stupid of me, I said to myself. The girl is drinking away in a pub and she would not have heard her mobile ringing. The thought came, settled, and then was somehow rudely disrupted by a calm and warm ‘Hello’ on the other end.

Nelly was at home, resting (on a Friday night!). She just came back from work, she said. I spent more time screaming in disbelief that she was not pubbing, then actually telling her about the job opening. Her response about not being in a pub on a Friday night was, “Ah ?! Sudah tua lah!”. That hit me like a rock. We are both only in our early 30s.

Before you kepos start inviting flies with your mouth wide-opened, no I do not go pubbing. With a hijab-on-head, that would have created a scene much more puzzling than a Nelly doing a Corona in one hand and a guitar in the other. I am just in shock that Nelly, of all people, outgrew the pubbing phase. There are people I know, our supervisor was one – who was still drinking, smoking and going to the pub every night. She was then in her late 30s, and she obviously did not outgrow the phase. The newsroom stress was too much for her I guess, and the pub was her sanctuary. Last time I saw her, her hair was dyed blonde.Poor supervisor.

So who are the ones who outgrew a certain phase, and who don’t? Nelly’s case spiralled my confidence downwards in my ability to read people’s character, because I thought she would be a pub-loyal. I thought Nelly would be one of those who will retire and open a pub with her son or nephew as the operations manager just so she can get close to the drinks and the live music. Sigh. I was so dead wrong.

Life has such a way of turning it around for people. Secretly, I am glad that Nelly is not pubbing anymore. One day, if you sport a not-so-tall girl walking around smiling sweetly without smoke-stained teeth, have a Christian name yet speak a spattering Malay and can rattle all the house-hits of the late 90’s pub scene – think of Nelly. It may just be her.

And oh. Hide your guitar.

I just watched *again* the documentary ‘The Corporation’ by Joel Bakan. Big mamma ChannelNewsAsia showed it in 4 parts – but alas, it is good to expose Singaporeans to such thought-provoking masterpieces as compared to locally-produced documentaries which are often cobbled together within a few weeks, at most – months.How the Singaporean producers are able to conduct their research within that short time, and then label the work as documentaries (some even go as far as saying it is a POV (Point-of-View) docus) baffles me. The best docus I’ve watched are made in years, mostly shot patiently and with hundreds of hours of research. Here in Singapore, I do understand that it is hard to find that luxury called Time to make such quality work. I just wish we are not so cocky as to call touch-n-go pieces of current affairs work as ‘documentaries’. If you think about it, this cockiness *right spelling?* comes from a huge sense of of ownership (Singapore’s TV industry is of course a monopoly).

Many may not realise that Ownership, if not checked and audited – will rear its ugly head called Control.When you are in control of the industry, you can define things the way you want them to be – an infotainment can be labelled as documentary, a news story can be labelled as a current affairs programme and the list goes on. Put that against Singapore’s backdrop of competitiveness, no one will really take the time (or have any) to reflect and make some noise about this shallowness. We are not known to be the kind of society who will question definitions, and I don’t think we will ever be. For the minority who do engage in such activities – they will be ridiculed.

For the above reasons, I cannot understand Singaporeans who complain, complain, complain about everything without thinking of a solution and the cause.They blame the government for all the high costs, the neighbours for all the noise, the police for all the crimes and the firemen for bushfires! How can you complain when you choose to disengage yourself from the evolution of something in the first place?! You choose to disown the process of defining, so do NOT complain when someone else define it for you.

Here’s a more micro example. My cousin owns an employment agency for foreign maids. Occasionally, she will have maids in transition who need to be housed for a few days before their next assignment. When her own home is full of maids (up to 4 at one time!), she will house them at our place.

Today, 2 such maids were at my place. One of them was crying – and when asked by my mum – we found out that her ex-employer terminated her contract within a few days and on top of that – refuses to let her take her bag of clothes home! The poor lady, a single mother of 4 from Indonesia and who is merely trying to make ends meet – now has nothing to wear except for a well-worn T-shirt and a pair of soft jeans she has on. You may ask why in the first place was her contract terminated suddenly – well, it is because she cut the chicken the wrong way and not according to what the employer asked her to. For that reason, the ex-employer take it upon herself to keep the poor maid’s bag of clothes as a ‘punishment’ for the mistake. Talk about definition, control and a warped sense of ownership!

I was speechless. Like most of you, my human instinct told me to execute damage control – so I ploughed through my closet and put together a bag of clothes that I can give her. A few T-shirts, pants, and several blouses. There was one particular T-shirt that I hesitated to put into the bag because it has sentimental value until, I reminded myself that it is only an act of giving when you give something you love, not something you don’t need. And so that T-shirt goes into the bag too.

Ownership and control is a lethal combination. The trouble with the human mind is – we tend to automatically shy away from intangible issues and not explore where within ourselves does a dangerous trait like this, lurks. Good for our soul? Why don’t YOU define that.

If you, like many others in my close circle wonder how I cope with a marriage geographically divided by a mean distance of 18,000 miles apart – the key factor is, none other than, – music. Sentimental music to be exact. It is not that I listen to it to soothe my nerves, I just shut it down these days.

Music is like a key to an entire floodgate of emotions in me. In a space where I need to keep check of my missing a loved one so badly, keep the rational-side of my brain dominant and maintaining the energy to not give up so easily on our endless job search for suitable work (for him) in Singapore, I simply cannot afford to listen to sentimental music. I cannot afford to cry cos I will break.

I had stopped singing in the bathroom, and recently, even in my mind. No hums while walking to the bus-stops either. If any, it is just the occasional zikir to keep myself calm.

It is indeed a sorry state for a music lover. I love singing, and my happiest days were when I used to jam every week – hijab securely on head, with the now-defunct band F & C in a small studio called Boon’s down at Macpherson Road. Those were the days.

How the band played Sarah MachLachlan’s ‘Angel’ every single week to get me warmed up for the repertoire of original-songs that the band members wrote, cos that was, and is still, my favourite song. So many a time that I sang ‘Angel’, until one day, Melvin Singh – whose daytime job is also to chase reporters to file stories for The New Paper – one day literally beat the drums and made all of us sang ‘Angel’ reggae-style! Hilarious.

Carl Baptista, who is now a new daddy and is still travelling in and out of Singapore as the world’s busiest pestbuster (Carl runs Origins Exterminators) will ask me over and over again to sing Anggun’s ‘Snow On The Sahara’, and how I will forget the lyrics every single time. I sure hope Carl sings that song to his new baby somehow…

I miss my music. I miss simply, the connection that music has with my emotions. But I cannot afford that right now. Not until we have settled our lives (*read: living in one country*). For now, music is NOT music to my ears.

Suddenly I am faced with a situation most managers hate to face – resignations! My entire English team is gone (actually, there are only 2 of them but hey, that IS an entire team)! Just 10 mins after I briefed my boss aka Publisher about it , another workhorse in the office gave us a heads up that she may not last till the end of the year. All their reasons for resigning from the publishing industry is the same – tired, exhausted and jaded. Some, were even dragging their feet to work. They also have youth, young age and hunger-for-more in common.

I bet this issue has been addressed by many a managing editors before. Okay, there is only ONE managing editor post, a few senior editors and never-too-many editors (*we publish 300 titles maah!* ah kan…teloh Sin-Cia-Por dah keluar) How do you let the younger ones see the big picture and keep them happpy. How do you let them see there is a track ahead of them, albeit the cone of hierarchy gets smaller and therefore more competitive? I dont know, and this one I really have to figure. Soon, others will feel the same and I want to nip this in the bud if I can. But how?!

‘Recruit page 16 – AlJazeera looking for Executive Producer – based in KL!:)

That was the content of a text message I received this morning from an economist friend. He was obviously pouring through the recruitment pages of The Straits Times today and was excited at the ad. Before my fingers could even start tapping away on the tiny keypad which is often too bloody small for my fat fingers, to reply his message (to say ‘Thanks, but I got a job now and like it!’) another text message came.

‘Am in Kl now – I got job 4u! AlJazeera is looking for Exec Producer. Will bring back the ad’.

This time, the text message came from my best friend who IS in KL, and obviously trawling the recruitment pages of a Malaysian paper.

Coincidence? Maybe. Excited? A little. But my calling? No.

I am not sure about if what happened today were signs to apply, but my heart says no. 3 years ago, back in 2003 when life was in a lonesome apartment in Cyberjaya, work involved crooks and lawyers (if you prefer to name the lawyers as crooks – you are granted that opinion too) and every day I read the Quran to finish it – signs were aplenty. Someone told me that when you are often alone and talking to God, your other dimension is very attuned to the universe and His message.

These days, my intuitive reaction to something alike the double text messages from 2 different people, in 2 different countries – would be err…it is just coincidence. But what is coincidence? Is it a sign? Sigh. So confusing!!

My husband says I should apply. But do one apply when one is not interested? I like my job, I am building myself and I want to focus and deliver.

He says he will apply for me anyway. Ah well…Suddenly the job-hunting focus is on me now. Is that a sign too?