FGR arrived on Thursday night (or rather, Friday morning) at 2:30am and we stayed up talking till 4am. We had so much to catch up on since the last time we saw each other was in Qingdao right before he quit our company. I updated him on all the people that had left since him (a lot) and he updated me on his new fabulous life as a diplomat’s spouse.

The next day, we visited two must-see temples in Bangkok: Wat Pho and Wat Arun. Both were completely worthwhile, even in the Bangkok heat.

We had lunch at an outdoor market near the Grand Palace, from a very local street stall. He had a pad see ew and I had a suki soup, a dish I’d only recently been introduced to by a local at the client canteen.

We had dinner at a “royal Thai cuisine” restaurant called Ruen Mallika. While the decor was certainly interesting, the food was not as good as what I had at another popular Thai restaurant often recommended in guide books: Baan Khalitha (which is actually within walking distance from my hotel). Of course, the food was definitely great compared to Thai food outside of Thailand, and FGR was blown away.

After dinner, we went to Khao San Rd. To be honest, I’m not sure why this road is so popular because to me, it was a rather unexceptional night market (except for the fact that there were carts selling fried cockroaches, grasshoppers, and other insects). For lack of anything better to do, FGR and I decided it would be fun to get henna. He got a star on his ankle, and I got a dragon on my shoulder blade. It was the year of the dragon, I am a dragon, and I personally fancied the idea of having dragons on my shoulder a la Danerys in Game of Thrones.

The next day, we went to see the Grand Palace. It was massive and gorgeous, but there were a lot more tourists. I got an audio guide because I thought understanding the history behind the Grand Palace would make it more interesting, but I was bored of the audio guide within five minutes. Instead, FGR and I wandered around the grounds taking funny pictures of each other².

In the afternoon, we went to Chatuchak, a market only open on weekends and the largest open-air market in the world. It was truly massive, and you could pretty much find anything you were looking for. FGR and I did not have any shopping for ourselves to do, we shopped for our dogs. The pet section of the market was probably the most surprisingly upscale section of the market, with little enclosed air-conditioned “stalls” that were like small boutique shops. The outfits were adorable and decent quality – but the selection was definitely better for female dogs than male dogs. I got a navy blue polka-dot dress and a fuzzy bunny suit (which my dog will probably hate but I think it will be hilarious) for my baby girl and FGR got a Superman shirt and a hoodie for his baby boy.

Saturday night’s event was gay-clubbing, for which FGR was obviously excited about. We had dinner in a supposedly famous bar in the gay district – Telephone Bar. The food there was surprisingly good, but the margaritas not so much.

After dinner, we moved our drinking to a bar next door. The margarita was better and we downed our pitcher at record speed. At one point during the night, I asked FGR to Google “symptoms of liver failure” because I was afraid the two Tylenols I took before coming out would shut down my liver and therefore, drinking alcohol could be fatal. FGR was not taking no for an answer, so in the end, I had to match him drink for drink, and by midnight, we were both very drunk. We stumbled to one street over where the big gay club was (DJ Station), but I was denied at the door because I’d forgotten my ID. Who knew they were so strict about IDs in Bangkok? No one seemed to ID in bars, but apparently they ID’d at gay clubs.

It turned out to be a good thing that we were turned away because we had to be up at 5:30am the next day for our trip to the floating market. We got back to the hotel at 1am, got an embarrassing amount of McDonald’s, and watched Sex and the City (the early years) until we passed out.

The night did not pass easily for me. I was feeling extremely dizzy, nauseous, and ill the whole night. I started to realize this was the price I paid for mixing alcohol and Tylenol. I should’ve known better. I felt so sick I thought I needed to go to the hospital, but could barely wake FGR. I eventually lost consciousness around 4am and was rudely awoken at 5:30am to get ready to leave. I was in no shape to go anywhere, but since we’d already paid for our day trip, there was no way to cancel. I somehow managed to drag my butt out of bed. A minivan picked us up at the hotel and I spent the whole ride in a hazy, hungover kind of sleep.

By 9:30am, we reached our destination. It wasn’t until we were in a boat on the river that I really started to wake up. Once we reached the main market place, we paid extra to board a smaller boat to explore the rest of the floating market and its canals. I didn’t really start to get over my hangover until I got some fresh mangoes from a mango lady. I hadn’t gotten any food in my stomach since our 5:30am awakening. The mango was so good I ate the whole thing. Thai mangoes truly are the best mangoes.

In the end, the floating market was really worth it, despite the early wake-up call and the awful hangover. I had definitely learned my lesson though: never mix Tylenol and alcohol.

We got back in the afternoon and FGR went for a swim at the hotel. For dinner, we went to the mall next to my hotel, which is themed as an airport terminal. This was one of the most impressive malls I have ever been to in terms of design. The theme was well-executed down to the smallest detail. The “airport terminal” had a departures board on the first floor and a different city theme for each floor: Rome, Tokyo, Paris, San Francisco, Istanbul, etc. and the shops on each floor matched the theme. The interior design was also phenomenal. The Rome floor was lined with Roman columns, had a piazza in front of an angel sculpture fountain, and frescoes along the ceiling. The San Francisco floor had a Golden Gate bridge across the open-air middle and a boardwalk. It was truly impressive. We ended up having ramen that night, and went back for shabu shabu the next night.

Our last night together was also the night when Bangkok pretty much shut down for the cremation ceremony of a deceased princess. We had wanted to check out Soi Cowboy, which was right next to our hotel, but found that it was closed, so we ended up staying in and watching Sex and the City with enough junk food to feed a small army.

It was an amazing “vacation” weekend, and I didn’t want the vacation to end. Luckily, Thailand had two long weekends in a row, so it would be a short work-week for me. The following weekend, I would be visiting FGR in his new home in Guangzhou.

1. This is a big transformation from my crazy itinerary-planning in BJ times – “Before Job”
2. This is totally unlike me because I tend not to like having people in my pictures, but FGR is a total camwhore and I succumbed.

Thursday night, I landed at 10:30pm. I had promised to go to this month-end helipad party with the expat girls I’d started clubbing with. So I went home, dropped off my suitcase, finished a presentation that I had promised to send to my manager (which I had to work on on the plane, and I hate working on the plane, but knowing that I’d go out that night, I had no choice), and was at the bar by midnight.

Friday night, I had dinner and drink plans with some other girls. I took them to my favourite secret bar in Singapore, a place so secret it doesn’t have a name. When we were finishing up, the Canto group texted me and told me to join them for karaoke. I was already a bit tipsy, and I never say no to karaoke, so I went. There were about 10 people there (only 9 drinking), and we ended up drinking three bottles of whiskey. They were literally pouring straight whiskey down people’s throats by the end of the night (mine included). There was a couple there who had gotten us into the members-only club the weekend before. The boyfriend, AITB, was super into me, which struck me as odd since he was flirting with me right in front of his girlfriend. What was more odd was that she didn’t seem to mind at all, in fact she was super nice with me, as if we had known each other a long time. At first, AITB just teased me for my “Canadian accent” (they both have an Aussie accent). And then he tried to get me drunk by forcing me to guzzle whiskey. I had eaten a lot for dinner so I could actually handle my drink pretty well. Later that night, I saw him talking to CCB about me, and CCB must have told him about how I’m CCB‘s younger sister (a long-standing joke between us), because afterward, AITB came up to me and said he wanted me to be his sister, too. If I am any judge of body language, he did not want me to be his younger sister, unless he wants to fuck his younger sister. He was standing an inch from me, and when he leaned in to whisper into my ear, we were cheek-to-cheek. “I like you. I’m serious, I really like you. Can you be my sister? I swear I will take care of you, I’d never let anything happen to you.” Meanwhile, we were standing in the front of the room, and his girlfriend was sitting on the couch. I brushed him off with a joke and excused myself to the washroom.

I had to admit, in my drunken state, I was kind of attracted to him. But I couldn’t believe he could get away with that kind of behaviour in front of his girlfriend. It just made me think his girlfriend was even cooler. His girlfriend was a long-haired, waif-like Asian beauty. She was nice and friendly, and not that dumb from what I could tell. What could he possibly want from me when he had her? By the time I left the washroom, I still hadn’t figured out what had happened back there. As I was walking back to our karaoke room, I saw him coming down the hall. When he saw me, he saw his first opportunity alone with me. And right then, it registered with both of us that we were attracted to each other. He opened his arms and I walked right into them. I can’t remember what he said to me exactly, it’s a bit of a haze, but I do remember him saying, “I love you. Seriously, I love you.” I immediately let go of him and walked/ran back to the karaoke room. I’m sure he didn’t mean it, I’m sure it was the alcohol talking. But he left no room for doubt that he was attracted to me.

On Saturday, I went for a late dim sum with CCB and AB. Then we went back to their place and decided the best way to get over our hangover was to continue drinking. AMB joined us in a game of King’s, and by 4pm we were all drunk. Our next destination was a friend’s BBQ pool party. The last time I’d gone to one of his BBQ pool parties, I’d been bored out of my mind. This time, I was glad I was drunk. After a few hours, they decided that they wanted to go clubbing. Someone had a table and bottle service somewhere, so that’s where we were all headed. We were standing around the pool, getting read to leave, when AITB (the couple had come as well) tried to throw me in the pool. I started to run away from him, then a few other guys noticed what he was trying to do and they all decided to target me for the pool. I leapt over a lawn chair and before I knew it, I had crashed on the cement. I must have misjudged my landing, or slipped on one of the discarded crushed beer cans. I have no idea how it happened. Suffice to say, I was on the ground and in pain. I assumed I probably sprained my ankle. My friends helped me sit down and got some ice for me. It was hard to walk, so they thought I should go to a doctor. CCB and AB fought over who should carry me, and AB won, so I was piggybacked downstairs and into a taxi. The couple came along, the girlfriend had the address to a 24-hour clinic, and the boyfriend felt bad for having instigated the whole thing. It wasn’t too serious, the doctor gave me some painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills. I realized I didn’t have my Blackberry with me, so I went home with AB to check if it was at his place. When it wasn’t, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where I’d left it. The whole day was pretty much a drunken blur. I ended up calling the taxi company. AB said he’d lost a phone on a taxi twice before and never gotten it back. It was a long shot, but it didn’t hurt to try. The taxi company said they’d try to find our driver (based on my poorly constructed memory of what time we’d taken the taxi and what colour it had been) and let us know. At this point, there was nothing left for me to do, so I went home.

When I got home, I was finally sober enough to evaluate the damage. I had two tattoos on my arm (during our game of King’s, we had started eating a package of seaweed and they had free tattoos in the package, so we started using them as penalties in the game), a sprained ankle that was quickly starting to swell, bruises and scrapes up and down both my legs from the fall, a burn blister on my wrist, and of course, my missing Blackberry, which I actually needed for work. A few minutes later, the taxi company called. My driver had my Blackberry and was coming to return it to me! Given the number of times this sort of thing has happened to me (with purses), I must be the luckiest girl in the world.

On Sunday, I had to sober up or else I wouldn’t be able to take the meds the doctor had given me. In the afternoon, I flew to Bangkok (traveling is not fun when you can barely walk), canceled my dinner plans with a friend, and had dinner alone in the hotel restaurant. It didn’t hurt that it was an award-winning restaurant and it was practically empty. The service was exceptional and I ordered way too much for one person, but since the company would be footing the bill, I didn’t care.

It’s ironic that I had a “Hangover” weekend in Singapore, considering this coming weekend will most certainly be “Hangover 2″ in Bangkok.

Friday, 2pm – I receive an email from a senior manager asking for my CV, informing me that I will most likely be staffed on his project in Bangkok. I still don’t know what the project is about.

Friday, 3pm – The American Partner calls me into his office, along with another junior manager. “This project is starting on Monday. Have you seen the proposal?” was the first thing he asked me. I assume this is the project in Bangkok he’s talking about, although I wasn’t even aware he was one of the executing partners. Apparently, as far as he’s concerned, I’ve already been staffed on this project. “Am I on it for three months or just phase 1 (one month)?” He doesn’t know. “Do I need to be in Bangkok on Monday?” He’s not sure. He says he’ll let me know by the end of the day.

Friday, 6pm – It is now officially the end of the working day. The partner still has no idea whether I need to be in Bangkok on Monday. I email the Swiss Partner, the other executing partner of this project. No response. The travel agent’s office is closed by now anyways, so it makes no difference if I wait longer.

Saturday, 3am – I receive an email from a Canadian Partner saying he’s informed staffing that he wants me on his project, a 5-week piece in Toronto starting Monday. “It’s ok if you arrive on Tuesday,” he says.

Saturday, 10am – The Swiss Partner emails me back to say I need to be in Bangkok for Monday morning.

Saturday, 11am – I email the Canadian Partner, “As far as I know, I’m supposed to be in Bangkok on Monday.” I email the junior manager, asking him what flight he’s taking and what the hotel situation is.

Saturday, 2pm – He emails me back saying he’s on the first Monday morning flight at 7am, and that he has no idea what the hotel situation is. He CC’s me on an email to the Swiss Partner’s assistant, asking her to inform us what hotel the team should stay at.

Saturday, 3pm – I book my flight for Monday morning.

Sunday, 12pm – The Swiss Partner’s Assistant emails us back to say the Westin, which she was inquiring after, is not available on one of the nights we need. She is looking at the Sheraton as an alternative.

Sunday, 3pm – The junior manager emails back to say we can try to get the corporate rate at the Sheraton, but we will have to call them.

Sunday, 7pm – I don’t have my calling card on me and I don’t want to call Thailand. So I make my own booking at the Sheraton using my Blackberry Travel app during dinner. (As a result, it turns out my room rate ended up being almost $100 more than my junior manager’s. Oh well.)

Monday, 5am – I wake up and get ready for my flight.

Monday, 9am – I land in Bangkok. The junior manager and I meet up at the airport and share a limo to the hotel. We drop off our stuff without seeing our rooms and head straight to the client site. The senior manager and Swiss Partner are already there.

Monday, 10:20am – We arrive at the client site. The first thing the senior manager says to me in the elevator, “I changed your CV a little, added some relevant experience. You’ll have to introduce yourself during the meeting so just look over that quickly.” “When is the meeting?” The junior manager asks. “In 10 minutes,” the senior manager responds. The junior manager lets out a chuckle. He turns to me, “So, you have 10 minutes to transform into the person he created.”

And so it began…

I have never been a music critic. In fact, my distinct and picky tastes when it comes to food is the exact opposite of what I am when it comes to music. I could pretty much listen to Top 40s all day long, and that, apparently, makes me uncool. I also have no particular allegiance to artists. I am perfectly happy to listen to my favourite one-time-hits without any idea who the artists are. At the end of the day, I just don’t care.

Which is probably why I have never been to a concert. I mean, I do have artists that I like, but I don’t have any artists that I follow religiously. And given the frenzy over concert tickets for the artists that everyone knows and loves (e.g. Lady Gaga), I’ve never thought it was worth it. Why would I pay several hundred dollars to be on my feet in a crazy crowd for several hours?

Having said all that, going to a concert has always been on my bucket list since I was 18. It just seemed like something I should experience before I get too old for it. So I bit my teeth and decided to go to this “Future Music” thingie without really knowing who was performing or what it would be like.

I would be arriving at 2pm, going directly to the concert from the airport, and then leaving at 6am, going directly from the concert to the airport. “If you’re going to do something, do it all the way”, I thought. Never mind that I would be going with nothing but my purse. Never mind that we would be on our feet for over 12 hours. Never mind that I was treating an airplane like a taxi.

In the end, it was totally worth it. I can’t say that this experience turned me into a “rocker girl” but I can definitely see the appeal. Once you’re in the crowd, and a song you recognize comes on (or even a song you don’t recognize, which was often the case for me), it’s hard not to lose yourself in the music. Plus everyone is looking at the stage, no one is looking at you, so you feel a lot less self-conscious dancing than you would think (especially when compared to clubbing, where there’s a row of lecherous guys staring at you from just off the dance floor). For someone like me, who just wants to dance, I would say a concert is a better venue than a club. But that’s only if multiple artists are playing all my favourite songs. It was not as crowded or rowdy as I imagined, but I did forget to take the heat into consideration and was completely inappropriately dressed.

It was also really good to see BFE, even though she only moved out a week ago. She’s going on a three-month language program in Beijing so she has sublet her room in our flat for now. But by the time she comes back to Singapore, I will have left Asia for good. She’s the first flatmate I’ve ever really liked – truly liked – so I’m quite sad that we got to spend so little time together. I may have lost a great flatmate, but meeting her means I have met a great friend, and I’m sure we’ll keep in touch even when I’m in the U.S..

The last few weeks, I have been going out a lot, trying out new bars, new clubs, doing new things like this concert in KL, etc. It made me realize that I really haven’t been taking full advantage of being based out of Singapore. More importantly, it made me realize that hanging out with CCB, AB, and their crowd of Cantonese friends really made me have a negative attitude toward Singapore. They all hate Singapore, and their negative attitude has been rubbing off on me. I agree with many of their complaints toward Singapore (in fact, most expats feel the same way), but the difference is that the normal me would have found my own solution around it. However, hanging out with them constantly made me sort of apathetic. I fell into a pattern – their pattern – of drinking at their place, karaoke, and dinner. And we always, always complained that there was nothing to do here.
Ever since I cut myself off from that group, I have been filling my own calendar and I feel like there’s not enough time to do all the things I want to do! Why didn’t I start earlier? Why have I been wasting my time doing the same things week in and week out? I guess I should blame myself, not this group, but I do blame them a little. Their negative (and apathetic) attitude was just not me, and I needed to step away from them to realize it. I may still feel unsatisfied with Singapore, but the real me would find things to do, not simply accept that there’s nothing to do and fall into a rut.

What have I been doing without their negative energy? I read an article two weeks ago about the best unknown cocktail bars in Singapore and have been trying every single bar in the article. I found a group of expat girls to go with me, and every single Wednesday and Friday we’ve been trying a different bar. Some of them have been really unique and amazing, and I wish I had discovered them earlier. We also sometimes go clubbing after, and I’m actually enjoying it (although I’m never the last one to leave – I find I’m at my best if I can leave after ~2 hours, any longer and I stop enjoying myself). I don’t know if it’s because I wrote off clubbing in Singapore too early or because I “grew out” of clubbing. The first and only times I went clubbing when I first came to Singapore, I found the crowd to be old and weird. I think I just didn’t go to the right place/on the right nights, plus I didn’t have a group of like-minded people to go with.
I’ve also found a brunch group, a group of more mature girls who I have brunch with on the weekends. It’s great.
In addition to my new-found activities within Singapore, I have also pretty much maxed out weekend and vacation time to travel, all the way until July. In two weekends, I am going to Guangzhou to see GEC¹. The weekend after, we are going to Cambodia together. Then, depending on where I am staffed in April, I plan to go to Tokyo and Seoul for a weekend each. The last weekend of April, my flatmates and I are going to Hong Kong together. From Hong Kong, I’ll fly to China to meet my parents and spend a week visiting relatives. After that, I want to go to Dubai to see one of my friends from university. At some point in May, I want to go to some world class dive sites in the Philippines. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing in June yet, but in July, I’m going to Jakarta and Bali with Zee, then Vietnam and Laos with MFL.

So much living to do, so little time!

Edit: After posting this, I read an article that feels very relevant. [Source: Top Five Regrets of the Dying]

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

1. Formerly known as FGR.

9:19 AM PLB: hey
11 minutes
9:31 AM PLB: are you okay? You haven’t responded to any of my messages
9:34 AM me: hey
yeah i’m ok, just busy
5 minutes
9:40 AM PLB: how are you
9:44 AM me: i’ve been thinking, do you think we could just be friends?
9:46 AM PLB: i think we could try but there will always be feelings involved
i was thinking about that on the way back from thailand..
5 minutes
9:52 AM PLB: what do you think?
9:54 AM me: well, i’m not sure what we are. but i don’t think this can go anywhere so i’d rather we be friends
5 minutes
10:00 AM PLB: what if we decide to try to be together? long distance for now but in september we could be much closer
work out something
10:04 AM i just feel like i’ve been fucking around too long and want to commit to you
10:05 AM and hanging out with you in phuket – albeit short and brief – reminded me how the short times we have hung out together feel like i’ve known you for a long time
10:06 AM that has got to count for something
10:07 AM or at least it means something
10:08 AM and maybe after we actually try and it doesn’t work, i’d be happy as friends
cuz i like teasing you
10:10 AM let me know if there’s a good time today to call, i’m going to study in the office for the next couple of hours so i can call
me: i appreciate the sentiment, and i don’t deny that we have something between us. but phuket made me realize that while you’re a fun guy, you’re not really the kind of guy i want to be with. and it’s not just a distance thing
PLB: it’s probably a better method of conversation
10:11 AM what did you notice in phuket that you didn’t notice before?
5 minutes
10:17 AM me: it’s more that in phuket we got to spend more than just a few hours together, and i got a better understanding of the kind of person you are. i don’t really know how to tell you without offending you
10:18 AM PLB: i’m a big boy – it may hurt a little more coming from you but i’d rather hear the story in full so i can judge how much of that i believe may be true and was affected by the nature of traveling and where my mind was at
6 minutes
10:25 AM PLB:
10:28 AM i’m jet lagging hard core – i don’t know how you did it during xmas break
10:30 AM can we just have like a 15 minute phone conversation?
me: ok… overall, i found you to be a very self-absorbed person. i will preface this by saying that i don’t expect you to be able to change, and that this is also common among Gen Y, but nonetheless i was disappointed by it.
i guess it starts with the diving course, and i know it was something you really wanted to do and i completely understand that. but i came to phuket to see you specifically, i mean i’ve been to phuket several times before, so it wasn’t about a getaway for myself. and i took a day off on monday and took the evening flight thinking you’d appreciate an extra day together. in the end i probably spent more daylight hours with phil and milo than with you. it kind of worked out that i got to a dive trip as well, but for me that wasn’t really the point of the weekend, i mean i could plan a dive trip any weekend. i don’t know if you realized that i was coming just for you when you signed up for the diving course, and i know you tried to think of stuff i could do too, but i feel a lot of the time that it’s only about what’s convenient for you. seeing me while you’re doing the things you want to do would be a bonus but not the priority. from my perspective, i was initially confused on two counts 1) you seemed like you wanted me to come but then you would be in course every day – did you really want me to come? 2) you expected me to wait by the pool while you did your course? really? do you not know me at all?
sorry i just typed that all out
10:31 AM well i’m kind of in the middle of work, it’s less conspicuous if i’m typing
10:35 AM the second thing was when i came back from my dive and hurt my foot. EVERYONE noticed except you! i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were in the middle of napping when i came back, but for the whole trip you never asked how my foot was doing. even after i woke you up to tell you i needed to go to the pharmacy, you didn’t seem to be worried or see any urgency in the situation. i think i remember telling you i had been bleeding a lot, i mean even a normal person would show more concern… especially when a guy is traveling with a girl, if she gets hurt, you worry. actually, you still haven’t asked how my foot is. it was infected when i came back, i have been on antibiotics for a week, thanks for asking.
10:38 AM PLB: wow, i’m sorry. i really fucked up.
10:41 AM i’m really lost for words. my whole time in phuket was just a whirlwind and i was just so busy trying to party all the time that i really forgot about what was more important to me. i didn’t realize i was missing the most important thing
has the antibiotics worked?
10:43 AM me: yeah, i think so. it looks like the infection has cleared up, but the skin will take longer to heal. i’m trying to eat more vitamin C because apparently that helps skin regrowth
10:44 AM PLB: yea vitamin c helps make collagen that connects new skin cells
zinc is also good too
10:45 AM i hope it doesn’t scar…although you will remember me forever with the scar
even though it wasn’t a good memory lol
me: i hope it doesn’t scar too. it’s super itchy but i’m focusing all my willpower not to scratch it
10:46 AM PLB: but it feels sooo good
and it means your skin is healing
10:47 AM i’m not purposely trying to divert the topic or sucking up. i’m sincerely sorry, i feel terrible for being such a bad person
and i want to make it up to you somehow
and i don’t think it was an accurate or good impression of me
10:48 AM me: look, i appreciate the apology. but i have to be honest, i kind of lost all interest in you after the trip. i can’t date someone who doesn’t know how to be considerate or take care of others. I can’t date someone who is self-absorbed because god knows I am already. maybe you should look for a girl who will only look to you and take care of you and shape her life around yours. i’m really not that girl.
PLB: and when i saw pictures of you and phil/milo, i was sooo jealous that i didn’t get to do that with you and create memories..
10:49 AM but for me the trip was probably once in a lifetime too and i didn’t know if i’d get my diving if i didn’t get it in thailand…
10:54 AM i don’t appreciate that you say that i’m completely self absorbed or that i should look for a girl that only look to me based on 3 days that are not reflective of my normal self. if i was looking for a girl like that i wouldn’t be attracted to you. and if you do believe your judgement of me is true than i was wrong thinking you knew me for who i was and didn’t judge me based on few observations.
10:58 AM and by the sounds of it, you are pretty black and white about this and not willing to work things out in which case this relationship we have/had going on wouldn’t work out in the long term anyways. but please correct me if i’m wrong.
10 minutes
11:09 AM me: if you in thailand was an anomaly, i’ll take my realizations with a grain of salt. but it’s also more time i’ve spent with you than our previous time combined, so it’s no surprise i would take that as an indicative sample. moreover, i can’t imagine wanting to date a guy who in any mindset, anomaly or not, isn’t concerned for a girl who’s gotten hurt, especially if it’s someone he supposedly likes. i don’t think i’ve ever claimed to know you for who you are, in fact i’m pretty sure i’ve always told you that you seemed like a mystery to me. maybe i’m wrong about you, but i can’t help the way i feel now.
11:11 AM anyway, you wanted to know the story so that’s what it is. i don’t think you’re a bad guy, i’d just rather we be friends.
11:12 AM PLB: i didn’t make such a big deal about your foot but i don’t know how i didn’t care about it, we ended up going to the pharmacy, i helped you choose stuff, helped you with wrapping it up, asked you if it was okay when we were walking to and on the beach. did you expect me to constantly ask about it? You said it was fine so that’s what I thought
17 minutes
11:29 AM PLB: but thank you for telling me how you thought about the situation and how some of the things I regret made you change your feelings about me. while some of your expectations that were not met seems unreasonable, at least it’s out in the open. i’m sad that you feel this way and that we won’t find out what this could have been. funny enough, there were even weird warm fuzzy thoughts thoughts of me wanting to relocate to you once you came to north america, which scared me a lot because it felt so cheesy but thought i should actually commit for once.

i’m not really sure we can stay just as friends at this point but maybe it’ll be different after some time.

have a good rest of the day at work, let me know if you ever hear from stanford and what your plans are in the fall (of which i’m really proud of you). and also about your trip before school life kicks in again.

me: (later in an email) Sorry, I had to go into a meeting.
Look, I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel bad or punish you. I wouldn’t have told you at all if you hadn’t asked me to, but since you appreciate honesty, I thought at least you deserved an explanation.
I’m glad, for your sake, that you’re thinking about committing and I know you’ll find someone worthwhile. Your sentiments are sweet, and in the right direction for a relationship, but I get the sense that you have a lot to learn about what it takes to be in a real relationship.
I naturally have high expectations, of myself and everyone around me, and whether or not they seem reasonable to you, they are also what drives me forward (and maybe, hopefully, they also drive the people I love to be the best that they can be). In any case, I don’t think we’d be able to reconcile unless we had more opportunity to interact in our normal environments, and sadly that just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for us.

I think know I did the right thing, I was just completely taken off-guard by him. As my male friend put it, “If he’s this into you, why didn’t you guys spend the weekend together?” Beats me. He’s a complete mystery to me. I suspect maybe he’s one of those guys that talks pretty but who you can’t rely on at the crucial moment. I don’t need a guy like that. And I’m not going to give him “extra credit” just because he’s a bad-boy-turned-good, I can find myself a good boy to begin with.
I tell myself these things and yet I have to admit that I’m confused. I don’t understand him and I don’t know whether or not I believe him, or believe in him, that he really is better than a self-absorbed prick. Why is it that whenever I try to break up with a guy, he goes crazy and suddenly declares he’s in love with me (or wants to relocate for me, in this case)? BOYS ARE CRAZY.
And why do I feel like the bad guy here? What do you guys think? HELP.

This is what I would say to me.

–

You know that phrase “shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you will land among the stars”? Best phrase ever. Aim high. If you believe in yourself, as I know you do, you owe it to yourself to reach for the best.

You may doubt yourself at times, but never apologize for who you are. You are proud, over-achieving, and a compulsive liar. These may not seem like good attributes to the rest of the world, but you are the only one who understands yourself. What you think about yourself matters far more than what anyone else thinks about you. You understand why and wherefore you became this way, and you will determine what you one day become.

Fight the cynicism. Your practical and realistic nature will make you assume the worst as life teaches you lesson after lesson. But hold onto hope, however childish it may sometimes seem.

Your relationships are the most valuable and priceless things in your life. Value your relationship with your parents, your friends, and your boyfriend.

Speaking of your boyfriend, this is not just a high school crush. It may seem inconceivable to you that the first boy you date will also be the only boy you’ll want to date for the rest of your life, but you really are that lucky. This is real love, although you do not know what that is yet. The boy beside you will one day grow into a man, and he is and always will be the most amazing man you’ll ever know. Don’t let him go.

Stop trying to grow up so fast.

–

I wish I could have had this conversation with my 17-year-old self, if only to heed that piece of advice about MFL. Nonetheless, I am still young, and I think it’s not too late to correct some of my oversights as a teenager.

By the way, I got into Harvard Law School.

Shoot for the moon!

I ignored his lack of courtesy to give me an earlier heads-up and nonetheless made plans to see him on the second weekend of his trip. When I told him I could make it, he was ecstatic and asked if I could stay a bit longer. So I managed to get a day off on Monday and booked the last evening flight out of Phuket so that I could stay Sat-Mon.

Two days after I booked my flights, he told me that he had decided to get his diving certification. Now, I had suggested this much earlier but he had not planned it into his trip, and after going on a one-day dive and loving it, he decided to sign up for the full course. This meant that he would be in “class” every day that I was there, from 8am-4pm. What did he expect me to do? Apparently, he expected me to wait for him during his class sessions, and for the dive day (on Monday), I could go snorkeling with them (since I can’t dive the same day that I’m flying). I should have said something right there and then, but my aversion to confrontation got the better of me and I went along with it. Of course, I made it clear to him that I was not going to wait around for him, period, but that I would find something else for myself to do during the day.

I did end up booking a full dive trip on Sunday, which was very worthwhile, but in hindsight, that initial move by him was pretty inconsiderate and I should have said so. After all, I was coming out to see him, not to see Phuket. I’ve been to Phuket twice before already. And I had taken a vacation day and the last flight on Monday night in order to be able to spend the whole day with him, and now I wasn’t going to see him at all on Monday. Did he think I was just some girl he could come back to the hotel to and fuck? It was a little hard to believe that he thought that way, but that’s what his actions indicated, and in hindsight, he turned out to be a bigger prick than I imagined.

During my dive on Sunday, I injured my foot and it was bleeding quite badly. The dive instructors helped bandage it up but their first aid kit on-board was limited. When I got back to the hotel, everyone who saw me immediately noticed my wrapped up foot and asked me how I was. PLB, on the other hand, napped. Yes, he napped.

I had to wake him up to tell him that I wanted to go to the pharmacy to change my dressings before he noticed I had been injured, and even then he didn’t ask me if I was ok. In fact, he didn’t ask me how my foot was doing once the whole time afterward. I said I’d go out and look for a pharmacy but he said he knew where it was nearby and would take me there. Except then he went right back to napping! I nudged him again twenty minutes later because my foot was starting to bother me, and he finally woke up and went with me to the pharmacy.

I had noticed little things during my first 24 hours with him to indicate he was self-absorbed but the foot incident really was the clincher. Even if I wasn’t a girl he was interested in, I would have expected him to be more considerate about getting injured. I mean, if a guy is traveling with a girl and she gets injured, the decent thing to do is try to help, in whatever way possible. He did not even make an effort.

I won’t go into the other small details, suffice to say I felt disillusioned and utterly disappointed in him. On the bright side, I have lost all smidgen of attraction I used to hold for him, so I’m off the hook, and I guess so is he.

In the end, I did have fun on the trip, mostly not to do with PLB though. I arrived at noon on Saturday and the first thing I did was go for a foot scrub. I love getting foot scrubs, and they are so cheap in Thailand. We had street food for dinner, delicious drunken Thai noodles and pad thai.

My full-day dive on Sunday was amazing despite getting injured. My dive instructor couldn’t believe how good I was underwater, he said I was like a fish. I barely used any oxygen and had no problems controlling my buoyancy, which every amateur diver struggles with according to him. Even though I hurt my foot at the beginning of my first dive, I completely ignored it and did two hour-long dives. It was fantastic.

That night we went to a Thai restaurant recommended by a local. There was a bit of a wait but the food was totally worth it.

After dinner, two of PLB’s friends joined us and we went to Patong to check out the nightlife with one of the bar girls they met in Karon. The bar girl introduced us to another bar girl in Patong and we ended up hanging out in her friend’s bar for most of the night. Patong in general was quite sketchy actually, swarming with lady-boy hookers (and regular lady hookers of course).

On Monday, I went to a temple near our hotel, then went for a coconut oil massage to cool off.

In the afternoon, one of PLB’s friends and I went to the Big Buddha. After, we went to the beach and played beach volleyball with some German and Russian guys, then I took a break to watch the clouds and finally, the sunset.

• We are not all emotionally stunted, narcissistic masochists.
• To the extent that we take advantage of clients whose intelligence may not be as sharp as ours, it is usually in the form of harmless joking within the team. We never manipulate the client in order to unfairly win follow-up work or to be cruel.
• We never travel together. In all the projects where I have been sent outside of Singapore, never once have I traveled with a colleague. The only time I’ve been on the same flight as a colleague was when we were all heading to our off-site retreat, and that was by accident. So the whole team-debrief-while-knocking-back-shots-of-Patron-in-the-airport-lounge is completely unrealistic.
• We rarely travel business/first class, at least in my firm. There’s even one senior manager in my office who prefers to travel on budget airlines (he does the Singapore-Jakarta route a lot).
• We do not make flashy Powerpoints with things zooming in and out and cheesy Times cover pages.
• Our projects last months, not days. And a marketing pitch is not the same as a project (re: the pilot, we certainly do not have team dinners for marketing pitches – the “potential client” will not be paying for any expenses related to the pitch).
• We rarely have to entertain our clients outside of work, and this is coming from my Asia experience, Asia being the place where it’s arguably common practice for business to be discussed outside the office. Granted, our firm upholds the American concept of professionalism very staunchly, so I am not sure if this applies to other management consulting firms in the region. But I would say with certainty that wining and dining the client is the job of sell-side bankers, not management consultants.
• We do not expense strippers to the client. We may have nice team dinners once or twice during a project, but if we, let’s say, go out to drink after the team dinner, we foot that bill ourselves (usually the most senior person present will pay, i.e. the partner).

Having said all of that, there are a few things “House of Lies” has got right:

• Sometimes we travel so much that the road (or more accurately, the airport) feels more like home than our actual “home”. Especially for me, who never called Singapore my home to begin with. I really start to miss the airport when I’ve been grounded for more than a week.
• We spend so much time locked up with our team that we become close with our colleagues regardless of whether our personalities mesh.
• The working hours and traveling implies that we neglect our family, whether we like it or not.
• We keep our personal lives very, very private. I completely empathize with Jeannie not telling anyone about her engagement. I would do the same in her shoes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some colleagues of mine who have gotten married during the time I’ve known them and I didn’t even know about it.

At the end of the day, “House of Lies” was a huge disappointment. It’s got a great cast, but the writing is just terrible, and it’s over-the-top lewdness is not particularly enjoyable.

Not that it matters – in a few months, I will no longer be calling myself a management consultant!

Going back to Toronto for Christmas changed my perspective on, well, everything. While I was home for the holidays, I had so many friends to see and parties to attend that I actually had to block off time for my parents just so they’d get to see me. Otherwise, I was out every single day. And I had so much fun. It was sober, innocent, catching-up-with-friends-and-laughing fun. And it made me realize what my life in Asia was missing.

The day that I came back to Singapore, I was immediately busy with an intense project. Fighting jet lag and severe lack of sleep, I went to Shanghai on two red-eye flights, worked morning and night and even weekends. When I did have free time, I found myself strangely anti-social, and I became intensely aware of it. The first weekend that I was back in Singapore, my friends dragged me to someone’s birthday BBQ party. I didn’t know the birthday boy or any of the guests, other than the two friends I showed up with. There were plenty of expats and locals alike at the party, and god knows it’s hard enough finding opportunities to meet people my age and make friends with a work schedule like mine. Normally, I would be cheerily chatting up as many people as I could to find a few that I click with and potentially start a friendship, but at this party, I was unfriendly and anti-social in a way that I’ve never seen myself be. I had no interest in talking to anyone, and the few conversations that I did have were awkward and required way too much work. Suddenly, I missed my friends back in Canada fiercely.

It wasn’t just this one party. The juxtaposition of my interactions in Toronto versus those in Singapore made me realize a few things. My friendships in Singapore were shallow, based on nothing but a common disdain for locals and a need for a group of friends to spend weekends with. The group that I had latched myself to was a Cantonese group and I don’t even speak Cantonese, half the time they were speaking in a dialect I couldn’t understand at all. How many dinners had I gone to where I ate in silence? Sure, I was out, I was with a group of “friends”, but I wasn’t really having fun. It was all a facade, like going to church every Sunday without believing in God. ArchitectBoy was not at all surprised when I shared this realization with him, he had realized it a long time ago. “I sometimes feel sorry for you,” he said, even though he was one of the few members of the group who spoke primarily in English.

And that was it. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want to feel sorry for myself. But there I was, the young misfit girl 20,000 miles from the closest person she would call a friend. And it was hard not to feel sorry for me.

Over Christmas, I had finally gotten around to preparing law school applications. I only applied to five of the top schools in the U.S. I figured, if I was going to go to law school (which I wasn’t at all keen on), I would only consider it if the best schools wanted me. I didn’t have much faith that anyone would want me, since I was applying relatively late in the game and spent about an hour on an application that most people spend months on. But since I didn’t know if I even wanted it, my attitude to the schools were, “Take me or leave me, I don’t care either way.”

Very soon, much sooner than I expected, offers started coming in. First it was Berkeley and NYU, which I pretty much ignored. Then it was Columbia, the fourth best law school in the country (and arguably, the world) and a school I actually had wanted to go to before I took this job. By now, I had already realized I wanted to go back to North America, that as amazing as my job was, my social life and my personality were suffering. I had never placed any amount of importance on the “soft” benefits of being in a familiar place, I’d always thought of friends as the icing on the cake, the fluffy parts that surrounded the solid center. But now it became the most important thing, the only thing that mattered. I was ready to give up my job and go back to North America just to be closer to my friends, or be in an environment that was conducive to my having real friends.

Holding a law school offer in my hands gave me that opportunity. I’m still waiting to hear from Stanford, which is my first choice, but supposedly they always send out offers quite late, so if I don’t get in to Stanford, Columbia it is.

In truth, this was not an easy decision to make. I agonized over it for two weeks and barely got any sleep (partially due to the intense project I was on, but partially due to having a lot on my mind). Coming to Asia was a big move, and I know that if I go back to North America, it’s likely that I will never move out here again, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave Asia for good. It seems so soon. But I finally made my decision, to go to law school and not even defer, but to go this fall.

My parents were ecstatic to hear of my decision, since they didn’t hold much hope that I would agree to go to law school (they were the ones who pushed me to apply in the first place, despite my protest that I had very little interest in becoming a lawyer). When the offers started coming in, I had played down my interest because I didn’t want to get my parents’ hopes up. Telling them my decision seemed to make it official.

Entering in the fall means moving to New York/California in late August. I decided I would quit in Q2 this year so that I would have some time off in the summer. I haven’t decided exactly when yet, tentatively the end of May so that I can have June/July/August to myself. It’s already late Feb, so this means I will probably only have one more project before I’m done with consulting, for good. In June, I plan to travel around Asia, either by myself or with friends in the region; in July, my parents and I are going to see my grandparents in China; and in August, I’ll be back in Toronto, preparing to say goodbye to it again for another three years.

Only two months into 2012 and already, I know it’s going to be another life-changing year for me.

Legend:
Underlined Identify very strongly with (agree completely)
Crossed out Do not identify/agree with or doubtful about
Italicised Questionable (like, really?)

Personal Style
Quick to see the possibilities of new ideas and projects, SG is outstanding at initiating these and persuading people to support her. She is convinced of her own abilities and is constantly seeking environments where people will appreciate her. Ingenious, enthusiastic and outgoing, SG has great personal charm and can be successful in a variety of roles. She is inventive, independent and can be extremely perceptive of the potential contained within the views of others. She usually has a theory that will explain everything. She may not necessarily prefer innovative solutions over established ones but is adept at seeing situations from an unusual perspective.

Writing important facts or steps down on paper helps her keep from getting side-tracked, but she may lack the discipline necessary to do this well. Her speed of articulation may generate a few rough edges in conversation. She is an imaginative and creative visionary who is a source of inspiration to most. SG is a resourceful action-oriented person who lives for the future by making every moment count. She is motivated more by the big picture and goals than by regulations and procedures, and is content with established structures only if she can abandon them when they don’t serve the intended purpose.

SG may generate more ideas, possibilities and plans in one day than others might manage in a month! She can be funny and outspoken but is inevitably concerned with others’ opinions. She constantly opens up new avenues of thought or action and can keep them open against all comers. She has started many interesting projects in her time, but has finished considerably fewer. She enjoys projects where she can be seen to bring out improvements.

SG enjoys working with complex problems and is unceasing in her pursuit of mastering anything she finds intriguing. She values the gifts of inspiration and intuition above almost everyone else in all that she does. Only when a strongly held value is at risk will she willingly attend to important facts and details. She needs to learn to see things through to completion or get other people to finsih what she has started. She has an urge for lifelong learning and can shake off depression by simply finding projects that fascinate her. She possesses a natural gift for presentation.

Gifted in natural marketing and selling, SG needs work that challenges her and holds her attention. Work that is purely practical or work that leaves her on her own for long periods can make her irritable. SG is a curious and keen student of all that is going on around her. She will lose interest quickly and lack the self-discipline necesary to complete what she has started unless the project can continue to excite her vision. SG can combine social expertise within her normally assertive behaviour.

Interacting with Others
People see SG as enthusiastic, ingenious, imaginative and dynamic , with highly developed interpersonal skills. Bringing enthusiasm and energy to most activities, she can turn a dull managerial task into a game by using her persuasiveness and creativity to maintain the interest and commitment of others. SG is both charming and popular, constantly enthusing through her gift of ready articulation. Unconventional in approach and enjoying motivating others to exceed what is accepted and expected, she likes to live freely, looking for variety every day. She may become rather over-emotional when stressed.

She is a particularly good communicator and uses her gift of verbal expression often and effectively. She usually finds working with another person, even on a less interesting phase of a project, preferable to working by herself. When SG is in charge of a project she offers the team long-term vision and the ability to inspire and communicate that vision to others. She can be very vocal about social or people issues that concern her and can often be seen as the underdog’s “champion”. She may become rebellious or sulk if people try to railroad her or interfere in her plans.

Because she is so interested in possibilities, SG sees significance in everything while preferring to keep lots of options open. Having a high need to be affirming of others and to receive affirmation from others, she exhibits an infectious enthusiasm for living. She is noted for her innate ability to inspire and encourage others around her and exhibits excellent interpersonal skills. She is enthusiastic in helping people make the best of themselves and she is proficient in making lots of contacts. She is rather indifferent to authority, preferring a flattened structure where everyone is equally capable of advancing.

Decision Making
Open-minded, curious and insightful, SG has excellent long-range vision. She may have so many ideas on the go that she has difficulty in making up her mind on the best course of action. She has a tendency towards making higher risk decisions. She should take care not to take on too many commitments, and be sure to take time to see to the complention of current work before starting a new project. Sometimes she makes poor choices by getting involved with too many things at once.

She will not allow systems and procedure to stand in the way of what she believes is right. The best of a part of a project for her is the initial problem-solving element and the creation of something new. Thereafter the interest in completion begins to wane. She has the ability to appear to listen to other people’s viewpoints but may not necessarily be hearing or intending to action them. A tendency to take rejection and conflict personally may lead to her not taking early notice of the opinions of key members of the team. She enjoys the executive role and usually rises to challenges although she needs someone around with enough common sense to bring up overlooked facts and take care of important details.

Optimstic, spontaneous, creative and confident, she has an original mind and a strong sense of the possible. She is constantly full of enthusiasm for new ideas. Others may see her decisions as unrealistic in certain circumstances. Through her intuitive feeling personality, she may have difficult in limiting herself to a single project and usually prefers to keep many balls in the air. She is likely to exercise her intuition constantly on the most important and challenging parts of a problem. Her direct, sometimes erratic approach tends to work against her being totally consistent on a day-to-day basis.

—

The test places your position on a colour wheel with each colour representing a different persona. The test gives two results/positions, your conscious position and your personal or “less conscious” position. I think of the “less conscious” persona as something like how I “really am” and not how I portray myself to society. Overall, my conscious persona is an “Inspiring Motivator” and my less conscious persona is a “Directing Motivator”.
I think what this really means is that my less conscious persona is actually quite assertive (euphemism for bossy) but I tone it down because I know that being “directing” does not make you many friends, so my conscious persona is shifted towards the softer version of being bossy (“inspiring”, “encouraging”, etc.).

My manager said that most (North) American-grown consultants tend to get results on the extroverted side of the wheel (yellow and red) whereas most Asian-grown consultants tend to get results on the introverted side of the wheel (blue and green). This cultural explanation makes me really notice how much of the American culture I have bought into, especially adopting the “motivating” leadership style, as opposed to the directive style I had as a kid (and hence my “less conscious” persona).

Keep in mind that this was generated by a computer, not written by someone who has ever met me. Needless to say, I’m impressed by how spot-on it is about the most defining aspects of my character.