Glutter

Just a grrl

Up again. This is something that happens during pregnancy. When one is calm and relaxed, the baby moves a lot. While one is busy with the day, the baby is lulled into sleep as mummy is rocking him or her. I should have known this will happen as today I hardly felt the baby move, which means baby will be awake longer in the middle of the might. To think I feel worried earlier. Pieter laughs as everyday I feel the baby is moving less and I feel worried. But I do know baby has moved less than before. No more wild kicks and turns. I read this is because he or she is getting larger and there is not a lot of space to play in.

I am tired. I would really like to sleep. Tonight is extra tiring as I did not nap. Sometimes I nap. But I was busy with paper work, and so I stayed up through the afternoon. Now I feel slightly hungry, so I might have to make something to eat. Pieter says that I have a whole different second life. He goes to bed and I stay up, I write to my friends, I talk to my mum on skype, I am on the phone to New Zealand, Dubai, Oman, Australia and Messenger friends in HK. I play on the internet, I read, I do things around the house. All the while he sleeps and has no idea. I baked shortbread once early in the pregnancy. He woke up with little biscuits sitting on a cooing rack. He laughed so hard. He found me asleep on the couch as well, as sometimes sleeping somewhere else helps. I had a week or two of great sleep in the bed. Maybe it's time to move to the studio downstairs and sleep on the fold out mattress because it suddenly feels comfortable. Sometimes a hard bed is better, sometimes the soft one is.

Pregnancy makes one's needs and wants skew to whatever it is, it's a little like food cravings except I call it "life style cravings." One day I decided i didn't like body gel anymore, I wanted soap. But I wanted something that was really foamy, but had no scent. I walked around silver lake for a few hours looking for soap. I was shopping, but I kept looking for the "right" soap, until i came across a tomato one. It worked well. I was happy and ever since then I have used soap. Don't ask. It makes no sense, but Pieter and I are so used to strange needs and wants that make no sense we don't even give it a second thought. Sometimes I want oranges, others mellon and chocolate milk, sometimes I am happy and sometimes I am sad. One day I feel like everything is under control, the next, I do not. In fact, let me take that back. Sometimes I feel all those things within hours of each other. I have learned this is normal. I have heard of stories of people yelling at their classmates, crying over hall mark commercials, a woman getting angry at her husband because he did not eat the beans and rice in the "right" order at dinner. Shouting at him in front of everyone in the family. Someone said to me last week that the worse thing for a marriage is getting pregnant and having a baby. Women go a bit nuts during this time, there is a lot of stress, and I am only in the seventh month, I don't even know how I will feel after the labour with the screaming child that only has needs...

I woke up this evening feeling itchy and dirty, like somehow everything feels wrong of my surface. I laid in bed trying to fight the feeling and was tossing and turning so much that I woke him. So I get up instead. It's better, he worked late tonight and has to be back at work really early tomorrow. I can go back to bed in the day even if I don't want to. I want to go to the pool and exercise. In order to have a natural birth they say you should exercise a lot. I try to but I still don't think it's enough. Because the baby takes up so much space, one's stomach and lungs are squished making it hard to eat a lot and breath deeply. Which means one is out of breath, and out of energy a lot quicker. It's a full moon tonight. I wonder if it's making it harder for me to sleep. I have no idea. I don't feel like I am being pulled by the suns and stars, I feel like I am being pulled in ways of dust, swishing at the whims of the wind. I am hungry, I think I shall find something to eat and try to go to bed. Maybe I will write more later. After all these months, I suddenly want to share my thoughts and feelings. For no reason. Just Because...

Just a grrl

How did all this time go? I am not sure. How come I haven't written for so long. Not even sure if I can write. My life is completely different now. My friends, my future. I have a cactus garden. I am renovating, we are building an extension. I spend a lot of time looking at furniture. I pick out paints. I realize I do not have a knack in house decorating even if I thought I would. I am terrible. I can never make any decisions unless I see something that is "perfect" otherwise I look and look and never see what I need. I live with a dichotomy in home furnishing, which is I have expensive tastes but I hate spending huge amounts of money. So I always hope I will find a bargain. I hope that I will find something that will match what I want with the price I want to pay. One thing about the US I have learnt in that over here you get what you pay for. And pay for is a lot more than in HK or Asia, and you still have to pay the damn 8 % sales tax. We are very very far away from the rest of the world. There is no popping over in Macau or Thailand or across the border where labour costs are low, and beautiful pieces of furniture gets made.

I know I like modern Asian furniture now. Not modern furniture which LA is full off. Not Asian furniture which you can also find in abundance. I like furniture that is designed now, not five hundred years ago, but has accents of home. I think it would be very hard to find in HK, as European furniture is what we had mostly, but it's really hard to find here as well. I think Americans can be so frumpy. The clothes are frumpy, the furniture is frumpy. Finding a crib for the baby has almost ripped my heart out with dread. I hated every crib I had seen, and the only one I genuinely liked was $800, which I found a bit much as you can get a pretty decent one for $200. I looked in so many places, and in the end there was one if Toys R Us's Baby section that I liked for $400. A good compromise I decided. There are a lot of baby stuff you can spend your money on. Most of it is vanity money, it's "can you live with the design" money. If you don't mind what it looks like, you can get things really cheap. I guess that's with everything, but I never had a baby before.

Baby is due September 16th 2008. From then on, I will be a mum for a few years. Maybe I will have another baby as well. I will have a family. I am going to stay home with the baby. I will breast feed, and make my own baby food. I will not have a nanny. I will raise the kids by myself. I will hopefully still be a full fledge human being, and still can do some things I did before. I hope I don't become a mumbot. Pieter asks me a lot whenever we have to fill in forms what my occupation is. I always reply "housewife," he always looks uncomfortable and says, "Are you sure?" and I say "Yes, that's what I am now."

I guess I can still say "Artist" or "Writer" or "Something Creative" but I don't. I don't because I don't have any projects running, no goals, no exhibitions, I just do some fun things when I have the energy, and put them around the house. I still read interesting articles about law and I spend a lot of time listening to NPR or BBC, and I ruminate on political ideas and thoughts. I still have opinions about the protests in Tibet, the protests in San Francisco, the state of the world, and things that is happening in HK, but I don't write about it. I don't actually have the energy. I try to eat well. I try to improve our standard of living by fixing little things in the house, and buying stuff or replacing stuff or cooking. I quit smoking cigarettes which was a relief, and hard to believe because there aren't many people who smoked as much as I did at my age. I stopped wearing high heels and buy my sweatpants at Ross (a discount store). I like Ross, they have good brands there if you have time to look. I only buy sweat pants there tho.

I took an art class in a junior college. A drawing class. I was not very good, but I got an A. My teacher liked the things I did because I had my own distinct style. I went often to a pottery studio and made some stuff I really liked. I have all these ideas of things I wanted to do for the house in the future. I went to law school seminars. I enjoyed talking to people who was interested in the same things I did. All that time we were thinking we might have a baby, but we didn't really know. I didn't make a conscious choice between career or baby. I just found I had a baby coming and was too tired for anything else. I found once a baby is on the way, your whole focus in life shifts and it blocks out other thoughts and feelings, wants and desires. You are so very very very tired. You want to sleep a lot. You cry a lot. Things that was once so simple becomes hard. Your body changes in a way that you did not expect. Sometimes you are so tired that you have to fall asleep in a parking lot of a supermarket so you have energy enough to drive home. I do not know how other women work though the pregnancy. I do not know how they can work, and do housework, and be themselves. Once you are pregnant, you slow, you forget, you are a different person. I hear over and over again, you actually never quite become the person you were before. You will never be as sharp, as together, as present as you were before the baby came along. I believe that.

When I was first pregnant, I wanted to write a "pregnancy diary" and see what the changes were going to be. But I didn't, I was too tired, each day was something strange. Throwing up, hands swelling, needing the bathroom, insomnia, tears, tantrums, strange feelings, worry, joy, excitement. A roller coaster of emotions far beyond anything before. It was impossible to write because one had no point. It was just a burst of feelings followed by being tired. Needing to eat, needing to sleep. For four months, I was barely able to get up and even go to class. Then slowly things started to settle down, but then one had so much to do. Birth classes, buying baby stuff, reading up on being a mum, housework, making sure one is eating properly, exercise. Prenatal yoga, prenatal aqua aerobics, walking, lying in bed and sleeping. Doctor's appointments and knowing what you need to do, tests, worry, sleep. I started to feel unhappy about not writing the diary, and Pieter said, "Well, really how many millions of words has been written about this topic, I mean, it would be hard to contribute something really different. Maybe this is not the time you write." I felt better and didn't write.

I spent a lot of time on facebook. I like looking at photos of my friends babies, I like seeing my single friends out and about looking beautiful. I like reconnecting with my friends from primary or secondary school, people who I knew at 8 or 9 or 16. We have all moved on with our lives and it's fun to see that somehow, somewhere, we all met up in about the same time. Lots of babies, renovation, moving countries, return to grad school, and lots of baby talk. It's fun. I wish they were all closer, but the truth is we're so busy we probably would not see much of each other anyway.

The baby is coming in six weeks, or at least is ready to be. I can feel the baby move every day now. It's "normal." I no longer feel excited or tell everyone that happens to be nearby about it. Sometimes I forget to let people know. There is still so much to do. I need to buy things, I need to sort things out. Since we're building an extra room, I need to get furniture. I want the house painted before the baby is here, as we're moving everything around anyway. So it's a good time. We have to find non toxic paint because of the baby, which is good. It's good for the environment, it's good for our peace of mind. It's also twice as much as normal paint. But we're glad we made that decision.

There is a lot of things to decide. Not just what crib or sling, but how you want to have your birth. Do you want a natural birth? Do you want to have a drip? Do you want an epidural? A C section? Do you want to take a 12 week birthing class or a one day intensive class? Infant CPR? Breastfeeding class? Do you want photos of you being pregnant taken? Lots of decisions at a time one is most indecisive.

Getting ready to be a mum is starting all over again. Everything you knew before this time is no longer relevant. Your job, your knowledge, your education, your friends, your relationships, your family. Mum will be grandma, partner husband becomes dad, dad becomes grandpa. Career becomes something you decide if you want to keep or can afford to lose. Your friends you used to have so much to talk about with, is bored by your constant blabbing about which baby crib. Some are jealous, some find it so alien and uninteresting, and you yourself find some of their worries small. Sorry, you slept with some guy you didn't know and now he doesn't want to be your boyfriend -deal with it, you're too old for that crap. Find someone good, so you can get married too and have babies because we're all in our mid-30s now. Maybe it seems trivial to worry if I am spending $100 or $700 for a baby stroller, but I live on a hill, it has unpaved roads, if I don't get a good one maybe I can't take walks with my child. My friend spent $800 on a stroller that can flip and move up and down stairs and escalators. She is moving to Tokyo. She will not have a car. I understand why she did that. Another had post-natal depression, one friend lost her baby at 30 weeks. Do I really care to deal with a tantrum of a single girl friend over something about some guy she is seeing, while she is drunk and stoned. My main concern was she is so selfish to drink and smoke pot when she is driving me and my baby around. I know she had no idea. She's never been pregnant. She didn't even know why I walked away from her when she lit a pipe. I was shocked and grossed out. No one near me does things like that anymore. But before I guess I would just smile and let her be.

Suddenly that beautiful shoe I once so converted doesn't even have to wait, it's out of the question. My shoe size is now one size bigger and I have no idea whether it will shrink back or stay the same. Anyway, there really really is more important things to spend one's money on. Especially when three of you will live off one salary for a while. Suddenly everything is different.

It's a very quiet night over here.

Pieter is working late. We're really happy he got a promotion. It made our life so much easier but it means he works longer hours. But this is not why it's so extra quiet. All the apartments and houses directly opposite me is empty. Two are empty because the neighbours all moved out. The other is because my neighbour is in the hospital. The reason both of them are there is because she is having a baby. She is being induced. Her baby needs to come out. It's so strange to know that in about 24 hours, there will be a new human being living opposite us. There will be three of them. One day she was pregnant just like me, and now her baby will be born and be alive in a whole different way. I am excited. I look out the window waiting for them to come home. It might be in about three to four days if she is having a C section. But when they do finally come home they are embarking on a journey that no matter how much one reads about, or talks about it won't make any sense until it happens to you.

Just a grrl

It's been a year since I relocated to LA. It's taken a year to get into my stride and be used to the vast hugeness of Los Angeles and able to take advantage of all this place has to offer. I am still working on my cactus garden although I had to take a lot of my plants out of the ground and replant them into small pots, as raccoons seem to enjoy chewing up the more expensive (always) and exotic plants. I am starting to get used to the land more and realized that they are too small to look good in the garden.

And my off shoot project of going to a pottery studio to make some pots for my plants has grown into a full blown passion onto itself, and I started creating a style of hand building sculpture that is inspired by the South Western Landscape of rocks and canyons and the study of bones I did about six months ago. I also started collecting pieces of pottery both from my teacher and other artists. Mostly I am getting kitchen wear as the artistic space in the house is taken up by my own work.

With that I am also baking, I learned to make bread, apple pies, blue berry pies, quiche, roast a chicken, Yorkshire pudding and all sorts of daily dishes that I had not thought of before such as apricots and carrots. I challenged myself with making a ginger bread house with little ginger bread people all decorated with icing, which was a success. I resurrected old childhood favorites of scones, shortbread, chocolate chip cookies, plus added to my repertoire old family recipes such as cauliflower and cheese. I made my first full blown Christmas meal all by myself, with my mum's recipes with twists of my own. Yummi Stuffing with walnuts and Apple. Pieter got my a super duper food processor for Christmas which I am happy to put to use.

And for Christmas I got my first REAL Christmas tree, my aunts from Hong Kong decorated it all, and bought us the cutest one and half feet penguins with lights in them. We had candy cane lights in the living room windows and an explosion of tinsel. I can't wait to go to China Town and get some Chinese New Year decorations as that's coming up.

Then there is the dancing. This winter I started taking modern dance class in a local community college, plus a history of dance class which includes labs. I have tried my hand at sufi dancing, a little bit of choreography, and studied the Graham method. I love rolling around the floor and dancing across the vast studio in triplets. I love dancing, and with the far more democratic American style of teaching, a non competitive environment, I am excelling at something I loved but was never particularly good at before. I love the fact the teachers point out different moves and who they are created by. I love understanding the moves in the historical context instead of blindly following. I am going to take some free workshops of the Durham Method, a famed African American Choreographer who was also an anthropologist of dance. I can't wait. There will be African drummers, and afterwards we get to watch famous dancers and choreographers at work. Next semester I am hoping to pick up tap dancing again, which I have not done since I was a girl. The most incredible part of all this is I am doing it at junior college, and phys ed classes are only one credit. The cost per class that is twice a week that last 16 weeks? A mere $20. Incredible.

As if that's not enough to fill one's day. I have some small mosaic projects planned, and read a lot of butterfly gardening, and native plants. I recently planted a package of butterfly mix of native wild flowers and hope due to the rain they will come up soon ready for the Spring Bloom.

There are concerts: Neil Young and BB King -the symphony. There are cactus shows. I joined the Natural History Museum so I can return without admission for a year. We joined the Autry Museum. Soon when my papers are ready I want to volunteer at Moca. There are so many art museums and galleries in LA that I realized there is no going to all of them, especially in the weekends when we would like to go hiking or drives up the mountains. It's taken me a year to just walk up and down the beautiful hill I live on.

I still keep planing to go whale watching again. This Christmas during our mini off road adventure, we saw elk, a huge herd of them. We saw a bob cat in the wild. We spent a lot of time with Inyo petroglyphs, a scale of engraving I have never experienced or imagined. I hiked in the snow, and made a snowman. We saw some Bristle Cone Pine the oldest living organism in the world, up to five thousand years old, and the oldest specimen is kept secret. We got stuck in some silt and had to be towed out. For New Year's Eve we ended up in a local bar in Bishop of Sierra Nevada and listened the thrash metal, and kissed on midnight.

We plan to go see Joshua Tree National Forest because I love the cactus there. There are free movie screenings, disneyland, universal studios, still have not gone to San Diego to the Zoo or safari. There is the Los Angeles Metro Art Tour I want to go on as I catch the train a lot. I have been enjoying using the LA public transport system as I don't like driving every day. I hate the hassle of traffic, and since Pieter can pick me up once I get back to the surrounding area, I like that I can go anywhere during the day and not worry about parking, and getting in and out of the car. There is always some "adventure" of course, because this is still dirty, rough, and strange LA. Like yesterday I had to call 911 because a passerby fell down a big flight of stairs and hurt his head and arms bleeding all over himself and the sidewalk. This being overkill America, they sent at least eight men, one ambulance and a full blown fire truck to take him to the hospital and the men were so rude. Barking orders at us and barking questions at a man with concussion.

There is more I have done, and more I want to do. And the one thing that has fallen on the wayside is writing. I would like to pick that up again a little bit this year. I would like to take a drawing class as well, and when everything is settled take more upper division law classes at UCLA extension. In March I start the LSAT process for the June Exam. I pulled up my camera again so I can record everything.

Talk soon. xoxo

Yahoo Case Moves to Discovery Phase

"Our lawsuit against Yahoo, filed in April 2007, has now advanced to the discovery phase after the District Court for the Northern District of California granted our motion to begin initial and jurisdictional discovery. The court's order comes after Yahoo attempted to delay initial and jurisdictional discovery by asking the court to bifurcate proceedings, which would have meant that the court would have to delay addressing the merits of the case. Human Rights USA successfully challenged Yahoo's attempts to split up proceedings into multiple parts.

Human Rights USA filed suit against Yahoo in April for its complicity in handing over identifying internet user information to Chinese authorities, leading to the arbitrary arrest, long-term detention, abuse, and torture of Chinese journalists and human rights and pro-democracy advocates. Two of the plaintiffs -- Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao -- have been arrested and imprisoned in China for having expressed their right to free speech as a result of Yahoo's actions." http://www.humanrightsusa.org

Just a grrl

I love rereading my facebook status, it's like a mini-diary


Today
Yan is so happy to see her friend Matt, whom she hasn't seen for over 12 years!!! 10:21am

Yesterday
Yan is unnerved and amused the Sheriffs knocked on our door at 2am... only in LA. 11:06am

August 19
Yan is home from her first cactus and succulent show at the LA Botanical Gardens. 9:00pm

August 17
Yan is worried she killed her Catapillar. 10:56am


August 16
Yan is back online (No thanks to my wireless service). 8:43pm

August 9
Yan is fine. Earthquake was small, but it woke me up. 8:40pm

August 7
Yan is off to buy some Native Violets so the endangered Oregon Silverspot Butterflies has place to lay eggs. 9:40am


August 6
Yan is pleased she has a path to walk on. Applause for Pieter.. 11:03am

August 5
Yan is enjoying Sunday and going OFF facebook. 12:22pm

August 4
Yan is joining the HK network Fluff Friends Petting Frenzy. 12:03pm

Yan is up at 4 43 am and not very happy about it. 4:50am

August 2
Yan is "Hurting Feet" from dancing Salsa.... 11:45pm


August 1
Yan is trying to put three "tween" boys to bed, and they are making farting noises in the living room. 12:09am

July 31
Yan is home after taking her nephews to the Natural History Museum and hung out with dinosaurs and butterlies. 7:46pm

July 30
Yan is trying really hard to come up with a good idea for high and dry exhibition..... argh. 11:18am

July 27
Yan is home after her first Native American Pow Wow. 11:10pm

July 26
Yan is hailing the King (of Kowloon). 3:00am

July 25
Yan is saving CACTUS from a construction site and giving it a home (That's for Chris). 10:35pm

Yan is sick iuck. 9:18am

July 24
Yan is sick of being covered in grout dust, but the piece is done. 4:19pm

Yan is waiting for the grout to dry. 2:09pm

Yan is planting. 10:37am

Just a grrl

I was playing around facebook and found that you can see all your "status" announcements for the last month. I thought it was cool because it tells the story of the things that has been happening in my life.

Today

Yan is tired from her two three hour session in the pottery studio. But she finally got to glaze! 9pm

Yesterday

Yan is really pleased with her first piece of art mosaic. 11:23pm

July 20

Yan is wearing black after going to the Cure and Morrisey Tribute band at Downtown Disney

Yan is in love with thursday night salsa at the Autry Museum. 3:09am

July 18

Yan is happy Pieter has taken two days off to work on landscaping the back hill... 8:27am

July 16

Yan is awake from trying out her new mattress... 4:51pm

Yan is going to try out Pieter and her new mattress in the middle of the day. 2:42pm

Yan is staring at 200 lbs of dirt in her front yard and is going to bed to avoid it....(landscaping not landslide tho is looks sorta the same). 3:20am

Yan is suffering coz she fell asleep at 7pm and now it's 2 in the morning and she's wide awake. 1:57am

July 14

Yan is surprisingly pleased that Pieter got a truck because she wants to pick up stuff from home depot. 9:30am

July 11

Yan is making dinosaur fossils for her work in progress cactus rock garden. 10:18am

July 9

Yan is pleased she's finished her second scarf!!

July 7

Yan is happy she went out with Pieter to Californian Adventures for their six month anniversary and saw the original electric light parade 1:34pm

July 6

Yan is really annoyed that the raccoons disseminated the pond, but at least her cactus is flowering. 10:02am

July 5

Yan is pleased people turned up for our fireworks watching hike up the hill. 12:58pm

July 3

Yan is miffed Pieter gets to go to Disneyland during work hours as a "team building" exercise (they all work in animation for guess who). 10:02am

July 1

Yan is having an open house on forth of July. Pop over and see the fireworks from our hill. 10:39pm

Yan is potting around the house and garden with Pieter. 2:43pm

June 30

Yan is relieved she's started her yoga practice again after an eight month hiatus. 12:40 pm

June 29

Yan is amazed the coyotes came all the way down to the street and is a bit worried about her cat (which has to stay inside for a few days). 12:19am

June 28

Yan is excited she's been to her two hour class and feels she can crochet the goldfish she wants 5:45pm

Yan is tired from her first proper salsa class with Pieter. 9:06am

June 27

Yan is pissed the raccoons ate her brand new water hyacinths from her refurbished pond. 8:11am

June 26

Yan is happy she finally actually finally got around to do a mosaic piece... 3:08pm

June 25

Yan is enjoying her new pottery classes. 5:18pm

June 22

Yan is starting knitting again at the Yarn Store in Eagle Rock
.
June 17

Yan is home from her free citrus tree growing class at Armstrong nursery

Just a grrl

Today is the third month of me moving to LA. It struck me how my life is completely different now. I spend a lot of time in the garden. In fact I spent a lot of time in garden centers around my area and home depot. I am learning to grow plants -the biggest morning glory I grew from a seed is about three feet tall and three feet wide. The other smaller one feet ones are having sporadic purple, light mauve and bluish flowers.

I have started a small succulent "farm" where I collect different ones from shops, farmer's markets and taking some clippings off neighbours, I plan to make a little garden with all of them at some point. I had to learn to translate from metric to imperial system, from litres to gallons, meters to feet. I learnt what a quarter acre is, as that's the size of the land our house is built on. I have all these new words or old words with new combination and meaning: regular water, low water, full shade, full sun, bright light, partial shade. One has to match the environment with the plant you want to add. I actually started a compost heap. It's fun to pile the leaves and stuff on, and watch it shrink.


I have a really large lemon tree, a little lemon tree and an small orange tree. The leaves are all yellow and dry with green veins. The last seven years before me, the hill was neglected and left to fend for itself. I now know how to read leaves as if it is a palm (if you believe in that sort of thing), brown edges equal not enough water, yellow means not enough nutrients, green veins means it needs more nitrogen. There are all these ways to fix it through organic fertilizer, or growth bacteria that you can add, there is the bright green synthetic crystals you add to water. I use both because the tree needs a lot of everything. The lemons are bigger now that i have pruned the three (with a saw! by hand! by myself!), I make lemonade with the ones I picked. The leaves are turning greener, I hope they will get to dark one day.

I have three step-nephews, due to unfortunate circumstances they are more or less neglected by their father and mother. They don't have medical care, no help with school work, and one of them have sever learning disabilities. He's twelve but he's only really about eight. So I take them out. I go to their house and pick them up and take them to do fun things, and I bring them to our home so they can have a comfortable and safe place to play. I attend the school fair because their parents won't. I go to the meetings with the principal because finally someone turned up in school to talk to the teachers. I get all the important signatures, I read the report cards. I taught them to make cookies, Pieter taught them to saw and nail a small photo frame. I haven't seen them for two weeks now, I miss them so much. One day soon we want them to take them to the zoo. I really want to see the hippopotamuses.

We are fixing up the pond. After the raccoons came one night and ate all the goldfish and knocked down the pump, Pieter left it until it became what I called the "Health Hazard Black Lagoon." So now i have moved in, we're fixing it up. One day when it's ready, we're going to take my nephews to the fish shop, a local one, not a chain one coz I want to support local business, and get the boys to choose some fish. Ben -the more healthy of the twelve year old twins- he never wants anything. He's pretty reserved, but when i went to the school fair, the other kids were all getting goldfish prizes, I saw for the first time real yearning in him. So since he can't have pets at home, I want to take him to pick some so he gets his fish, even if it's in a pond at his aunt's house.

I never do my hair anymore really, I haven't worn high heels, I have only gotten my nails done once in three months. In fact, I haven't done my own nails much at all because when you garden, the soil gets in them, and the varnish chips. Today I found a pair of gloves that has special finger protection, a bit more padding on the tips so they protect your nails. I was happy. The glove is mauve, and it's perfect for a girl. We went to home depot on a Friday night because there were things we needed. I was happy with that.

Sometimes I go to the west side, which is the more urban, modern, young part of town, and I look at the skinny, pretty LA girls dressed so well, and I feel a pang. I think, it would be so nice to look like that, and be concerned about the things I used to. I joke that I am now an "East Side House Wife" with all the connotations that LA people can conjure up in their heads... I wear a lot of hair bands. I bought a pair of slip on black shoes that only has a two and half inch platform heel. I think it looks a bit frumpy but that's all I ever wear. Most people think they are quite fashionable, but they aren't the shoes I used to wear. I think they are okay but they are easy to drive with, I can walk comfortably, I can carry plants and chase after kids.

it's odd for me to think that everyone else is living the lives they lived before. They go out with the same people to the same places, and be the same person. I am still thinking of going to law school but I can't make those decisions until the green card comes along. I can't work, I can't go to school, it's imposed by the US government that I have to look after the home. It's actually really nice when I am on the ball, and things are going smoothly. It's like all these new things that I never experienced but always wanted is here. A house, a garden, a partner, kids. They aren't my kids, and we're not married, but it's good to have it all even if some things are missing. I would like a job or school eventually to add to the mix. I want to take some classes, to get me out of the house.

But right now, I am planning to start knitting again, I want to clear out all the land, and make a butterfly garden. I want to put up some bird feeders, maybe a bird house or two. Pieter and I are building a new room for me so I have a proper studio instead a small space at the end of his tiny office. We want to clear out his music studio so he can start making music again, as it's now the spare room with all my stuff I shipped from Hong Kong. I might learn to sew and make some things. I liked doing all those crafty things as a kid. I love cooking, and it's fun to have someone dedicated to eating it.

It took three months and I finally had some time to sit down and write. Will do some again..

Freedom of Expression/Just a grrl

Here I am, writing the first entry in two months. I am no longer in Hong Kong, in fact I am in Los Angeles. I live in a little house with a giant garden. I am trying to remember how to drive, work out where the supermarkets are, and most of all making a new life. It's really really hard. As much as I travel I still find it difficult to completely settle in. I think this is a normal process. In the back of my mind there is always something else I have to do, and it all takes a lot of time.

I have been thinking of Glutter as well, and what to do with it. I want to talk about free speech again, and the events in China but there have been so many changes in how I feel about things. When one lives in country where freedom is part of their constitution, when free speech is part of daily life, when all its glories can be reduced to porn, loud mouth rhetoric, and a place to hide for hateful and angry speech, one can feel frustrated. I feel frustrated when I hear people talk about politics here, and how much Americans take their freedoms so lightly, how the left is always complaining "how we don't really live in a democracy," when they really do. I get angry when I hear how Americans want to leave Iraq to their own devices when the country could be on the brink of civil war, I feel embarrassed that the "side" I have always been on has reduced their fight to legalization of marijuana, gay marriage, and bashing the system. I find myself wondering why is it that things are so easy here that people seem to have lost their focus on the big things. It's as if Americans take what they have so easily, that they forget Saddam was a dictator, that there are people in the world who is spending their lives working in factories in awful conditions, that a country under a totalitarian regime is allowing them to buy cheap goods. Trust me, I buy them too, but I do wonder where my social responsibilities end and my political consciousness begins.

Sometimes it just seems easier to go into a garden and plant flowers because I know when I wake up in fifteen years, I won't really have to worry that my children will go to jail for saying the wrong thing to school teacher or writing an email trying to learn about June 4th 1989. Sometimes I think I understand Americans more now. How freedom in a system is really more a "freedom of living without worry." One only has to worry about day to day things, the bigger things are enshrined somewhere else, placed there so they can go on living. I think it's easy to live here, the houses are large, the cars are large, I close the gate to my garden and we turn off for the night and there are hardly any neighbours. I think it's hard to live here because people are so disconnected as well. I don't really know what is better or worse, but I know that one feels like if something is wrong they can try and fix it. It's like living in the US allows you the option to not care because one is relatively safe, and an option to do something while being safe and having a place where it is safe to do it in.

Which leaves me sometimes just wanting to shut off and turn on some loud mouth radio and drive on the freeway.

But I know that I should not.

I know there are things going on somewhere else as well that I really care about.

So I decided to start up Glutter again, try to put all these new thoughts out there and see what happens.

I am going to "relaunch" (as they so LOVE saying over here) Glutter on June 6th. I would usually choose June 4th of course, the anniversary of the Tianamen Massacre. I would be in Victoria Park holding a candle. Instead I will be in Vegas with my family and we will be watching a Neil Diamond Impersonator. I guess one can't get more "American" than that.

On June 6th I will be a speaker in an Amnesty International Conference. I have ten minutes to talk about Censoring of News, of Corporate Responsibility of companies like Yahoo! and Google, about Glutter and why the internet is powerful. Part of me don't even feel I need to say anything. The fact, I sitting at my home with an idea in my head and a story to tell end up being able to speak in a Conference in London with the first NGO I ever joined, says everything. Without the internet I would just be a somewhat angry person at the world. With it I gained a voice.

It's been a bit quiet for a while, so I think it's time to speak again.

I will see you soon, or better yet, you will go to the webcast link either on the day or after and see all of us talk.

Yxxxx

Just a grrl

It's true, Anson Chan is coming out and proposing democratic time lines, Regina Ip is being bitchy about it, and Donald Tsang promises to "Do his job" which really only includes sucking up the Beijing and giving lots of tax back to Hong Kong people next year to keep everyone happy since we have trillion dollars of reserves. But really, in the last few days I only had a few thoughts on my mind.

1) Packing
2) Packing
3) Cancelling all cable, phones, long distance services
4) Cleaning
5) Getting curtains, shoes, and whatever I need made here before going to a place where labour is really expensive.
6) Buying Gifts
7) Need to find time to say good bye to friends.
8) H&M is opening a Hong Kong store and they are giving away 20 signed trench coats signed by Madonna, and 50 Sunglasses from her line free to the first 70 people in the store.
9) How early do I have to get up to line up with the hope in hell for a chance being one of those people not to mention being able to purchase a $1499 ($130 US) dollar leather jacket.

We have discussed this a lot with people, and everyone says that there is no way I would be able to do it, and people are going to line up really early. So at about 1am on my way home I walked past the store just to see and already there are about 30 people waiting, all looking not so comfortable squished up against the railings.

So I am off to bed a little sad. But probably will still get there about midday, to see if I can try the jacket on.

It's also true that I once flew from Milan to London just to see the Drowned Tour in 2001. I went to visit friends as well, but really I choose to go to London when I did mainly due to the fact, I always wanted to see a Madonna concert.

I love that woman, she's so stylish. It would be very cool to get some stuff that's been approved by her, coz I figure there would be some kind of quality to it. I could go on about the genius of H&M, their clothes, and marketing campaigns but it's really not so interesting if one is not as into fashion as i.

There is so much more to do in the next few days and I am off.

----

This morning, on the way to get more things done, I stopped by the H&M to see what the situation was! My goodness there were so many people lining up for 5 blocks! I was just in time to see the first people go in, and I have to admit the excitement was a lot of fun to see. The woman who came in first was extremely happy and she was waving her special jacket at the journalists. I off course didn't go in, knowing the best inventory will probably be gone by the time I got there, anyway there were a lot of things to do. One of which was the visit the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Museum by my neighbourhood. Which really is more important. There are lots of H&Ms in the world, but only one museum dedicated to the importance of Hong Kong to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's political development and revolutionary ideals for the modern China.

So I am off. I am on the way to LA for two months, just to look around. Establish old relationships, and see the new and improved LA. I have been stressing non stop about the car situation, until I was told that now there is a train direct from Downtown (where I am staying) to Hollywood. I am not sure how far I can go, or what it will look like, but it seems at least I will not be completely stuck there and have a bit of leeway.

I am nervous. But excited.

There is so much I want to write about in regards to my plans and of course all these thoughts on HK and politics, but time is short.

I think I am going to turn Glutter into a travel diary for a bit, and compare and contrast the ten year old memory of California to the one it is now.

Later...

Yan