Pathing
So the parents are back, or they soon will be. This has led to the usual things, I suppose. Let's see if we can't go over this in an organised way.
Things That Happen When Parents Turn Up
1. Unexpected changes. This means things like coming home one day to find that the parents have decided to move house the next day, and consequently having to pack everything into boxes. It also means things like never being able to find anything because everything's been squirreled away for neatness.
2. Increased food intake. I've gotten used to going without dinner most of the week - usually I only take supper once, on Friday nights - and go all day on lunch. On the other hand, my parents insist on family dinners.
3. Reduced time. My schedule, previously, was a relatively uncomplicated thing - wake, work, return home for exercise/ laundry/ computer time. Now I have to add in family dinner time, which takes up at least an hour, and then on top of that there's whatever random activity the parents have decided we're all going to do. As a direct result, I haven't done any exercise in more than two weeks.
4. Errands. This is because there is still only one car - the parents will want to buy one for themselves when they return for good, around the end of January - and therefore everything has to be done by everybody. And so everybody goes out for groceries, miscellaneous things, furniture, etc. together.
I went through NaNoWriMo this year, successfully; I attribute that the relatively extensive plotting I did, though the plot still managed to get away from me at times. I flatter myself it is a better effort than that of previous years all the same.
It's December; Christmas preparations have begun. The church is draped with tinsel and blinking lights and some green spiky plastic thing that appears to be somebody's conception of mistletoe/ holly, and wreaths have been put up all over the place. It doesn't look too bad. It's how the church has looked every Christmas for at least the past two Christmases. The songs that the carolers are being taught to sing, too, are the same songs as they have sung for at least two years, in the same arrangements. I'm not sure if I like that it seems as if retailers pay more attention to Christmas celebrations than the church does, but then I'd like to sing something that doesn't sound like somebody slapped a bunch of Christian lyrics on the tune of Frosty the Snowman.
And now? Now I don't know. Things are falling into place, which means things are shortly going to start falling right out of place again; peace is not a long-lived phenomenon in my experience. It doesn't really look like Malaysia has very much of a future going for it, not when one considers the political and economic climate. (It's a bit of a downer to look around and find that just about everything wrong with the place is at least partly the doing of people who ought to at least ostensibly be attempting to help it.) But what I'm going to do next is the question.
What I Can Do Next
1. Keep going on. This is probably going to be the easiest - read: lowest-effort - option, but is likely also to be the least comfortable one, in the long run. This is the option where I stay on with my life more or less as it is; no job-hopping, steadily progressing with my job as far as it will take me. It's the stable one where I end up living with my parents, take care of the house, maybe start and continue a fitness regimen, things like that.
2. Take an MBA. This one kind of builds on the previous one; for this to be feasible at all, I'd have to stay in my current geographical region, and almost certainly remain with the current company. The payments... well, I do already have condo payments to keep up with, though I can get a little off of rental, and I think the company will be able to help since I'm told it can come out of the HRD budget - which is claimable from the government. I'll need more information on this. The main thing is that I don't know if I'll be able to handle the extra demand on my time, and I'm half afraid that a bad choice would either a) leave me with a useless, though easy-to-get, degree; or b) be out of my depth and leave me floundering.
3. Emigrate. This one would... well. It would completely upset everything. I'd be starting everything all over again - rebuilding career and life in alien surroundings. It'd mean a certain additional measure of freedom, but also a measure of binding; I'd be abandoning such responsibilities as I've accrued in my time here. It's the scariest, but at the same time the most freeing, in a bizarre way. I kind of think this option is one I'll have to inevitably take, to be honest, if my country goes on the way it seems to be going.
I think one of the real big things these days is that I'm scared of being surpassed. I don't know why; perhaps it's a late-developing sense of competition or just that I'm afraid of missing out on things. Like when I'm chatting with friends and they casually mention trips to far-off places or expensive purchases; it's not that I want to go a-travelling or shopping, but it'd be nice to have that kind of disposable income just hanging around to be spent. As it is, I don't have very much in the way of savings - and I'm considered one of the more frugal people in the family. My cash-flow tracker, incidentally, begs to differ. I seem to spend a lot of money on random one-off purchases; so far it's only halfway through December and I've already spent 1k on food, tithes, gas, &c. But then, the parents have been around - having people around always increases my expenses. My spending in November, for example, was about 2.8k.
Things That Happen When Parents Turn Up
1. Unexpected changes. This means things like coming home one day to find that the parents have decided to move house the next day, and consequently having to pack everything into boxes. It also means things like never being able to find anything because everything's been squirreled away for neatness.
2. Increased food intake. I've gotten used to going without dinner most of the week - usually I only take supper once, on Friday nights - and go all day on lunch. On the other hand, my parents insist on family dinners.
3. Reduced time. My schedule, previously, was a relatively uncomplicated thing - wake, work, return home for exercise/ laundry/ computer time. Now I have to add in family dinner time, which takes up at least an hour, and then on top of that there's whatever random activity the parents have decided we're all going to do. As a direct result, I haven't done any exercise in more than two weeks.
4. Errands. This is because there is still only one car - the parents will want to buy one for themselves when they return for good, around the end of January - and therefore everything has to be done by everybody. And so everybody goes out for groceries, miscellaneous things, furniture, etc. together.
I went through NaNoWriMo this year, successfully; I attribute that the relatively extensive plotting I did, though the plot still managed to get away from me at times. I flatter myself it is a better effort than that of previous years all the same.
It's December; Christmas preparations have begun. The church is draped with tinsel and blinking lights and some green spiky plastic thing that appears to be somebody's conception of mistletoe/ holly, and wreaths have been put up all over the place. It doesn't look too bad. It's how the church has looked every Christmas for at least the past two Christmases. The songs that the carolers are being taught to sing, too, are the same songs as they have sung for at least two years, in the same arrangements. I'm not sure if I like that it seems as if retailers pay more attention to Christmas celebrations than the church does, but then I'd like to sing something that doesn't sound like somebody slapped a bunch of Christian lyrics on the tune of Frosty the Snowman.
And now? Now I don't know. Things are falling into place, which means things are shortly going to start falling right out of place again; peace is not a long-lived phenomenon in my experience. It doesn't really look like Malaysia has very much of a future going for it, not when one considers the political and economic climate. (It's a bit of a downer to look around and find that just about everything wrong with the place is at least partly the doing of people who ought to at least ostensibly be attempting to help it.) But what I'm going to do next is the question.
What I Can Do Next
1. Keep going on. This is probably going to be the easiest - read: lowest-effort - option, but is likely also to be the least comfortable one, in the long run. This is the option where I stay on with my life more or less as it is; no job-hopping, steadily progressing with my job as far as it will take me. It's the stable one where I end up living with my parents, take care of the house, maybe start and continue a fitness regimen, things like that.
2. Take an MBA. This one kind of builds on the previous one; for this to be feasible at all, I'd have to stay in my current geographical region, and almost certainly remain with the current company. The payments... well, I do already have condo payments to keep up with, though I can get a little off of rental, and I think the company will be able to help since I'm told it can come out of the HRD budget - which is claimable from the government. I'll need more information on this. The main thing is that I don't know if I'll be able to handle the extra demand on my time, and I'm half afraid that a bad choice would either a) leave me with a useless, though easy-to-get, degree; or b) be out of my depth and leave me floundering.
3. Emigrate. This one would... well. It would completely upset everything. I'd be starting everything all over again - rebuilding career and life in alien surroundings. It'd mean a certain additional measure of freedom, but also a measure of binding; I'd be abandoning such responsibilities as I've accrued in my time here. It's the scariest, but at the same time the most freeing, in a bizarre way. I kind of think this option is one I'll have to inevitably take, to be honest, if my country goes on the way it seems to be going.
I think one of the real big things these days is that I'm scared of being surpassed. I don't know why; perhaps it's a late-developing sense of competition or just that I'm afraid of missing out on things. Like when I'm chatting with friends and they casually mention trips to far-off places or expensive purchases; it's not that I want to go a-travelling or shopping, but it'd be nice to have that kind of disposable income just hanging around to be spent. As it is, I don't have very much in the way of savings - and I'm considered one of the more frugal people in the family. My cash-flow tracker, incidentally, begs to differ. I seem to spend a lot of money on random one-off purchases; so far it's only halfway through December and I've already spent 1k on food, tithes, gas, &c. But then, the parents have been around - having people around always increases my expenses. My spending in November, for example, was about 2.8k.
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