Wet

I had a good cry after so long. What broke me was re-watching a video of the final moments of Jurassic Bark and the true story of which it was based on, Hachiko. I cried not just for that but for all the pent up anxiousness and stress I've had for the past few weeks and the reminder that that story brought up. Which is that there is great sadness and suffering in the world that happen in isolation, and yet like Hachiko, people too go on. Maybe good news will come soon. Till then I want to cry in empathy with everyone else.

Dry

Eyes are pretty dried out. I felt the need to blog to get things off my chest (read: rant). I feel extremely lost over issues and feel guilty about it in a kind of cringey white guilt way. I think I have to, in an even more cringey way, resort to stepping away from whatsapp and the like. I'm very tired and just want to be with Christelle. I want my visa issues to be resolved, I want to make sure my apartment is OK, I want to get back to being motivated about learning and my job. I want my family to be happy and my younger brother to trust his instincts and learn to try and fail or disappoint and be his own success. I want people whom I've wronged to know I sincerely tried but apologize nonetheless. I'm not sure what spaces I can be my authentic self except here, sort of.

Here are some 'cultural issues' as Carlin might have put it:
-Our parents are proud their kids go to Harvard, OxBridge etc but then when they come back slightly ostracized because of an accent that for most people they probably have little control over, any ideas they might have are dismissed as Western liberal nonsense, unless of course it follows the dominant discourse that touts pragmatism and free markets
-We are scared of 'AOC-type politics' and warn of the dangers of liberal extremism, marxism, etc; again we call these 'sjw politics', or Westernized thinking, out of touch etc, but then we inherit colonial practices and ideas, neo-liberal economics, all products of the 'West' and are surprised if it brings along any of the consequences and fair criticisms of those ideas that also originate in the West
-We idolize and re-post LKY giving fiery speeches in cheem or poetic, usually Oxbridge British English 'this is not a game of cards!
-We are fine with comparing down 'at least we are not the US', but 'we are in a different situation' when trying to compare up ('scandinavian standard of living')
-We keep saying 'Singapore is small, we must be open to survive', but pick and choose what we are open to - rich tax avoiding foreigners and migrant workers that have low socio-economic and political power, but no 'Western ideas', sjw language, no refugees
-Singapore is actually beholden to shareholders - there are real threats that voting away from the centre-right PAP will cause investor confidence to fall, it's a reality that we seem powerless to or too cowardly to try and confront and change

I have more perhaps, but I've also calmed down for the most part... we just need to talk more.

How to be a son

My father passed away today. I thought about how perhaps for anybody who is grieving the loss of something, there comes a point in time when they implicitly and deeply understand that life goes on. For me I've known this day was coming for quite some time. My mom is upset because she could not properly fulfill his last wish which was to die at home. I think that she is upset because of the many things that could have gone differently that would have allowed her to fulfill it. She is looking for someone to blame, herself, the housekeeper with Covid-19 that came to work with symptoms, the hospital staff that couldn't release him earlier, etc. but I hope she realizes that it is nobody's fault. One cannot help but feel guilty though, because last wishes hold some sort of finality to it. But she should know that we did our very best, and it shouldn't discount everything and every joy that we have brought him in life. In his last days I think he was most unhappy, slipping in and out of lucid consciousness, unable to fend for himself nor eat and drink the things he likes. It was pitiful and sad and hard to watch old age play out like that. That sort of decline was portrayed poetically in The Irishman, and in some ways I'm thankful that I saw it, and learned, though an aphorism, the line 'it is what it is'. It's very Buddhist if you think about it.

I changed my phone screen to one of those lovey-dovey couple pics, and am enjoying seeing Christelle. I can't wait to see her in person again. As you grow older I think it's true that you simply acquire more things that you don't want to lose or find it hard to let go of.

I'm thinking about my mom and younger brother especially now, and hope they are coping well. I hope that for the rest of her days my mom will find contentment, despite not being able to fulfill her wishes to retire in peace with my father, traveling the world on a long cruise ride, like any middle-class person of her generation dreams of. I want her to finally be happy and I know that most of all she needs safety and security to feel that.