Puttin' the Ice in Voice
I had a rather disagreeable morning. First of all, my phone woke me up; although I did set its alarm clock to go off at 6.30am, I never find it pleasant to be woken up by any artificial means. It's just a pity my biological clock thinks the day begins at noon, is all. And then I shut the singing thing off and dozed off, and next thing I knew it was 7.30am and I had to wake up because I needed to get some stuff done (that stuff will be the subject of the next few paragraphs). Now this was a bad thing because I was being woken up artificially for the second time in one morning and because I had no time for a shower (which I had somehow forgotten to take last night and was planning to take in the morning). Well, so that was that for waking up. Breakfast cheered me up enough that I managed to get my passport, passport-sized photographs, and some money together and went off to A. Park--interestingly enough, there are places in Malaysia with English official names--to apply for a visa. And that's where things began to go amiss.
For one thing, the visa was to China. Where the Olympics are, apparently, imminently being held. Don't ask me when or where; I have a vague hunch about Beijing and sometime within the next 4 years, but otherwise nuh-uh. At any rate, hosting a prestigious international-level sports competitioin causes the paranoia sense of people in bureaucracy to tingle, and that makes visas rather more complicated to apply for, which means extra days needed to process those things, which means I really should've applied for the darn things a lot more than 5 days before the trip.
At any rate getting the form filled out and presented and everything, that wasn't so bad. I'm used to dealing with paperwork that I can't make head or tail of: you simply fill in the stuff you know, and if you don't know it there's always a helpful desk marked Enquiries with somebody who'll tell you everything else is unimportant and lets you leave it blank. And if they really need to know, you fill it up on a vague hunch and usually it doesn't turn out too badly. Unfortunately the Chinese consul, despite its incredible pragmatism and clever ideas (there was a desk selling pens for people who don't bring 'em and I was the first customer of the day), has not the foresight to put up a list of required paperwork. Well, perhaps there is one on their website, but I've not got Internet access...
In any case when I passed up the form to the lady behind the glass divider, she smiled, looked the paper over, and asked for my roundtrip ticket. I said I don't have one, I've only got a booking that Mom made online. She said I'd need a copy of the itinerary then, and that was when Mom called and said I had to go to the airline's office anyway because there were details that needed changing. So I left the consul, around 9.50am or so. The rest was a merry chase at which I made a wrong stop, misled by the mislabeled Information Counter of one of our LRT stations--seriously, I dislike the way they'll go "tak tahu" and leave it at that instead of, I dunno, actually trying to find things out. They're the transport department after all--and eventually wound up at a branch office where I found that Mom hadn't booked the return trip yet. So there I was, with a itinerary that apparently said I was going into China but had no plans to ever come out again. Not the kind of thing that endears you to the visa-stamping officials.
So Mom and I had a discussion about the date of the returning ticket, and I said the visa was good for 30 days and so I'd like to be back by June, please. And then Mom said no, I'm wasting my time sitting around the Gorillas' living room watching old episodes of Heroes and generally enjoying life, and what I need is 60 days of family scrutiny where Dad and Mom can make sure I don't waste the precious years of my youth and I can catch up on family gossip ever since Chinese New Year, which was 3 months ago. And since she holds the credit card, my return ticket now reads 19 July. I'm wondering whether the Coconut would prefer her birthday present to be 36 days early or 24 days late, or whether to leave it somewhere and give somebody instructions to deliver it to her on that day. Still, nobody knows yet and I'll probably only tell them later...
Wolf said, 9 years ago, that my family controls. I guess the Choleric impulse holds true throughout my family tree; we all know what's best for each other even if they don't know it, and ye gads if we ever catch 'em sitting about and doing nothing, why there's a mountain of schoolwork to be done because you can never make too much use of your time. Still, I'm really rather irritated that they've gone and taken 2/3 of my semester break and expect me to relive my school days on holiday. I am not at all amused. What's more, they plan to have me and the two youngest siblings visit a certain aunt and her husband while there. I'll say frankly that I've never really gotten along too well with the maternal side of the extended family; the episode with the Brats is a rather striking example, no pun intended, but otherwise... no thank you. They're not bad people per se, the way you'd say a shaken bottle of Coke isn't a bad thing in itself. I merely have a very different personality set from theirs, and the more emotion they radiate, the less I do. You could say I'm the negative feedback mechanism on the overall emotional scale. And the last time I saw that aunt and her husband was in my room, several years ago... let's see, I think about 5 or 6 years? and they were nagging at me to get off the dialup Internet. To be honest, hindsight makes it much less irritating and I admit it's a petty grievance to be remembering. But I still don't like them too much.
Come to think of it, I'm not exactly thrilled that in a week, my social life will essentially be centred around family. Day will be grocery shopping and housecleaning while night will be thrilling conversations about schoolwork and how much I've forgotten and whether I've drafted a study plan. Yes, I know it's horribly pessimistic and I really ought to be euphoric about getting to go out of the country and meet the parents after not seeing them for ages and ages. But you know, I'd kinda like to leave them and miss them, than stay with them and be irritated about it. Then again, I already know most of what the conversations will revolve about. Not thrilling stuff; my Dad is practical and thinks anything with special effects is to be watched once in a lifetime, and that only if the watcher is less than 5 years old. And books containing non-educational material are to be restricted to between ages 3 and 6. After that life consists of school, then work, then death. Retirement? Not in the picture. At least that's what I'd summarise it as. I'm not too sure what my Mom's view of the ideal life is, but I'm relatively sure it follows the same route. In both cases, naturally the route has a caveat: Divine Calling to Abandon Civilised Life and Work Amongst Sadly Deprived Tribes. Or any other sort of Divine Calling. It makes sense to me, except I don't see what they have with a few months of enjoyment along the way.
I think it's something to do with the idea of work being its own fulfilment, which is an idea that deeply vexes me. If work was so fulfilling you'd find people trying to find ways to work more, but right now you get millions of people who're trying to find ways to work less. Evidently work is not its own fulfilment, or at any rate if it ever was, we've managed to drain all the fulfilment out of it somehow. It's probably less about finding an enjoyable job and more about enjoying the job you have, but it makes very little sense to try to force a person to enjoy anything. You might as well put a candy cane in the Grinch's mouth.
So... yeah. 60 days in China. And I'm limited to 20 kg, total, of luggage; parents have even said that maybe I should leave my laptop behind to save weight. Pardon me while I roll my eyes. Plus I'm betting that the computer time I have, will be seriously, seriously limited since there's one computer and three people who'll want to use it (and the Internet), four when Dad gets back from work. I think the laptop does not get left behind. Maybe the hard disk will, but not the laptop.
Now excuse me, I have a lot of entertainment to stock up on before I enter China. Surely it can't be as bad as what I'm envisioning. Right? Right. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
For one thing, the visa was to China. Where the Olympics are, apparently, imminently being held. Don't ask me when or where; I have a vague hunch about Beijing and sometime within the next 4 years, but otherwise nuh-uh. At any rate, hosting a prestigious international-level sports competitioin causes the paranoia sense of people in bureaucracy to tingle, and that makes visas rather more complicated to apply for, which means extra days needed to process those things, which means I really should've applied for the darn things a lot more than 5 days before the trip.
At any rate getting the form filled out and presented and everything, that wasn't so bad. I'm used to dealing with paperwork that I can't make head or tail of: you simply fill in the stuff you know, and if you don't know it there's always a helpful desk marked Enquiries with somebody who'll tell you everything else is unimportant and lets you leave it blank. And if they really need to know, you fill it up on a vague hunch and usually it doesn't turn out too badly. Unfortunately the Chinese consul, despite its incredible pragmatism and clever ideas (there was a desk selling pens for people who don't bring 'em and I was the first customer of the day), has not the foresight to put up a list of required paperwork. Well, perhaps there is one on their website, but I've not got Internet access...
In any case when I passed up the form to the lady behind the glass divider, she smiled, looked the paper over, and asked for my roundtrip ticket. I said I don't have one, I've only got a booking that Mom made online. She said I'd need a copy of the itinerary then, and that was when Mom called and said I had to go to the airline's office anyway because there were details that needed changing. So I left the consul, around 9.50am or so. The rest was a merry chase at which I made a wrong stop, misled by the mislabeled Information Counter of one of our LRT stations--seriously, I dislike the way they'll go "tak tahu" and leave it at that instead of, I dunno, actually trying to find things out. They're the transport department after all--and eventually wound up at a branch office where I found that Mom hadn't booked the return trip yet. So there I was, with a itinerary that apparently said I was going into China but had no plans to ever come out again. Not the kind of thing that endears you to the visa-stamping officials.
So Mom and I had a discussion about the date of the returning ticket, and I said the visa was good for 30 days and so I'd like to be back by June, please. And then Mom said no, I'm wasting my time sitting around the Gorillas' living room watching old episodes of Heroes and generally enjoying life, and what I need is 60 days of family scrutiny where Dad and Mom can make sure I don't waste the precious years of my youth and I can catch up on family gossip ever since Chinese New Year, which was 3 months ago. And since she holds the credit card, my return ticket now reads 19 July. I'm wondering whether the Coconut would prefer her birthday present to be 36 days early or 24 days late, or whether to leave it somewhere and give somebody instructions to deliver it to her on that day. Still, nobody knows yet and I'll probably only tell them later...
Wolf said, 9 years ago, that my family controls. I guess the Choleric impulse holds true throughout my family tree; we all know what's best for each other even if they don't know it, and ye gads if we ever catch 'em sitting about and doing nothing, why there's a mountain of schoolwork to be done because you can never make too much use of your time. Still, I'm really rather irritated that they've gone and taken 2/3 of my semester break and expect me to relive my school days on holiday. I am not at all amused. What's more, they plan to have me and the two youngest siblings visit a certain aunt and her husband while there. I'll say frankly that I've never really gotten along too well with the maternal side of the extended family; the episode with the Brats is a rather striking example, no pun intended, but otherwise... no thank you. They're not bad people per se, the way you'd say a shaken bottle of Coke isn't a bad thing in itself. I merely have a very different personality set from theirs, and the more emotion they radiate, the less I do. You could say I'm the negative feedback mechanism on the overall emotional scale. And the last time I saw that aunt and her husband was in my room, several years ago... let's see, I think about 5 or 6 years? and they were nagging at me to get off the dialup Internet. To be honest, hindsight makes it much less irritating and I admit it's a petty grievance to be remembering. But I still don't like them too much.
Come to think of it, I'm not exactly thrilled that in a week, my social life will essentially be centred around family. Day will be grocery shopping and housecleaning while night will be thrilling conversations about schoolwork and how much I've forgotten and whether I've drafted a study plan. Yes, I know it's horribly pessimistic and I really ought to be euphoric about getting to go out of the country and meet the parents after not seeing them for ages and ages. But you know, I'd kinda like to leave them and miss them, than stay with them and be irritated about it. Then again, I already know most of what the conversations will revolve about. Not thrilling stuff; my Dad is practical and thinks anything with special effects is to be watched once in a lifetime, and that only if the watcher is less than 5 years old. And books containing non-educational material are to be restricted to between ages 3 and 6. After that life consists of school, then work, then death. Retirement? Not in the picture. At least that's what I'd summarise it as. I'm not too sure what my Mom's view of the ideal life is, but I'm relatively sure it follows the same route. In both cases, naturally the route has a caveat: Divine Calling to Abandon Civilised Life and Work Amongst Sadly Deprived Tribes. Or any other sort of Divine Calling. It makes sense to me, except I don't see what they have with a few months of enjoyment along the way.
I think it's something to do with the idea of work being its own fulfilment, which is an idea that deeply vexes me. If work was so fulfilling you'd find people trying to find ways to work more, but right now you get millions of people who're trying to find ways to work less. Evidently work is not its own fulfilment, or at any rate if it ever was, we've managed to drain all the fulfilment out of it somehow. It's probably less about finding an enjoyable job and more about enjoying the job you have, but it makes very little sense to try to force a person to enjoy anything. You might as well put a candy cane in the Grinch's mouth.
So... yeah. 60 days in China. And I'm limited to 20 kg, total, of luggage; parents have even said that maybe I should leave my laptop behind to save weight. Pardon me while I roll my eyes. Plus I'm betting that the computer time I have, will be seriously, seriously limited since there's one computer and three people who'll want to use it (and the Internet), four when Dad gets back from work. I think the laptop does not get left behind. Maybe the hard disk will, but not the laptop.
Now excuse me, I have a lot of entertainment to stock up on before I enter China. Surely it can't be as bad as what I'm envisioning. Right? Right. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
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