(Thought-Random)
Stray thoughts I have on this particular day, the seventeenth of january in twenty twelve, and I am here at a Starbucks Coffee Shop somewhere downtown Malaysia. As I open up another year-segment of my life, I look back in retrospection at the time just immediately passed and I try to size up any profoundness, any insightful values that I might recognize I leave behind. And I shudder a bit at the realization that perhaps there is none! Dear God, none?
Every year, I make it a point to signpost an advent for something I could call "for you, Lord", no matter how insignificant or worthless to others' eyes it may be but which I could call something I have my heart and soul in. I do try but I really am afraid there seems to be nothing worthwhile.
I had started with a try at online endeavors, - a website? a blog? social networking to keep it going? I have a little but I am aware that I pitifully lack the knack for it. I probably need help but surely, I should be much stronger than I show myself to be. If I can't get all the help I need or want, it seems I have to give it to myself. Can I? I guess I have to try harder - even through hell I have to go to get it!
Got back to teaching through Bing. Amazing how elation-providing this feeling of teaching again gives me... and in America! Am I good here? I guess I feel I am. My students make me feel proud of myself... I feel fulfilled...I have rapport with them... they make me feel queen! But again, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, this doesn't seem to be enough! Dear God, what is it?
So I have flown in to Malaysia from New York, thanks to Bong. While still back at the JFK airport, the thought of my 13-hour layover at Hongkong kind of locked me in a heartbeat. I felt the likings of a maelstrom about to drown me at the thought of it as I waited for my flight off from NY. But something amazing suddenly gives, - myism comes to the rescue, giving me a most comforting company in my aloneness - so much like that drop of water on a sultry desert. So in effect, that particular airport experience served as the awesome interlude even right at the start of my JFK-HK-KL sojourn.
Now the household of Bong provides another but quite a different front of sorts. I see the stark distinction between the US and Asian cultures as it asserts itself in my family. I have to admit that Malaysia does have an exotic flavor somehow. And I have to remember one can't compare items where they aren't comparable, where they can't be comparable. I just must say, to each his own.
But as I write, my attention is pulled to the environment I had blocked off. That's the outside of the coffee shop where the Chinese New Year celebrations are in high gear and in red. The vibrant mall decorations are complemented by the frenzy of sound both in the massive outcome of people and of continuing song and dance programs presented at the Atrium Centers. Inside the coffee shop, on the other hand, is another kind of frenzy: a conglomeration of a diversity groupings. I see businessmen at meetings; -elderly people, calm, as they while the time away; -young ones, frolicsome, recognizably school kids; -prospective employers and employees on apparent interviews; -even cozy, intimate huddles; ....,each group unmindful of the other, while I do my own thing.
And now, hey, I am distracted by this one young guy from the crowd right in front and across me. He has on a bottle green Tshirt, a slightly look-alike of my student, Francisco. Like Francisco, he has an oval face, an acquiline nose, slightly wavy hair, and a pair of dancing eyes. Unlike Francisco who is fair, however, this guy is handsomely dark. Amid their laughter and animated conversation, he stares at me over his iced frappuccino, making me definitely self-conscious. Each time I raise my eyes from what I'm doing and automatically throw them at their direction - which I can't help, really - I catch him staring at me - just staring! What is it? Or am I the one staring? Oh God! How old am I today?
My cell phone vibrates with a text message alert. I'm wanted home already. I was told by family to be home earlier today. Why? They wouldn't tell. Just be home? Okay, okay... got to go, got to go! And as I go, I still am as bewildered as some moments back with this senseless feeling of being lost, -of indirection and of incompleteness, -of unrest and a longing for something I can't put my finger on! Will this go on for yet another year?
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