Reaching Out

Yesterday I got a notice that my visa interview had been cancelled, which caused me much dismay and I might have cried and stomped around the house sobbing to get a bowl of ice cream.

Later, the Restricted Movement Order began circulating. In sum, Malaysia (or at least West Malaysia) has been told to stay home, from the 18th to the 31st.

- all returning citizens have to immediately self-quarantine
- no one's traveling out of the country
- foreign visitors and tourists are banned from entering
- all education institutions, from kindergartens to universities, public and private, have been closed
- only essential services will remain open

The Bay Area is in lockdown until the 7th, so I couldn't go back there even if I could head out earlier.


I've been struggling to focus on my work because my room isn't particularly comfortable for working, and I cannot handle being around my family for too much (working at the dining table is more physically comfortable but mentally not). I may try because my brother also works downstairs, but he also hogs the fan, and the mosquitoes come for me instead of him, and that's super annoying!

I better ask my dad what the contingency plans are. I think my mom will keep going to the shop since she's a pharmacist and we don't do a whole lot otherwise that would disrupt our lives, but I think out of all of us, only Dad does a whole lot? So he might get even more annoying.

It was really nice when my parents were away last weekend to Kenyir Dam. Mom almost didn't go because she tripped and hurt her ankle (there's always something these days). Roy and I came downstairs to let the maid clean our rooms and we just ended... sleeping on the couch together. It's been a while since I got to hang out with anyone to laze like that.

Anyway my concentration has been extremely shot recently and I am going to try to work regardless.

When I was a child, someone told me that for maximum luck, you shouldn't open your red packets for at least 2 weeks. I think that morphed into, you shouldn't open them within the first 14 days of New Year's, which culminates with Chap Goh Meh.

Since this last weekend was Chap Goh Mei I felt it was the right time to open up all the red packets to calculate my earnings, seeing as I'm unmarried still and all.

We went up to Penang on Friday, and had a reunion with my mother's family (almost all her siblings except her eldest brother, who went to Australia to be with his kids, since 3 out of his 4 are now living in Melbourne). I haven't seen my eldest aunt's sons in some time, not since their kids were toddlers, so it was kind of interesting, if a reminder of my age and how... not close I am to them. I mistook a niece for my cousin's wife which /o\ She just looks so much like the mom! But my mother's family is in many ways not "my people"--they speak Cantonese or Hokkien for most part, and it was hard trying to get to know any of the nieces without my mom interjecting all the time (which led to some ramble about how it's hard for girls to be dentists because you have to have strong hands for dental work which ?????????).

On Saturday, I followed my parents on an early morning walk around downtown Georgetown, which was mostly a trip down memory lane for them as they talked about what used to be there, or who used to live where, which is mildly interesting, but I was promised a yau char kwai at some point and got pretty hannoyed (hungry + annoyed, which is like hangry, but not so bad).

Had my dad drive me over to Charis Loke's place, where we had a nice brunch, and I was just gonna leave after, but my dad decided he wanted to nap, and so could I hang out with Charis for longer? And OF COURSE I CAN, because Charis is... really cool??? And she suggested we go over to the Thaipusam festival a few blocks away. It was a really interesting experience! In KL the place to go to for Thaipusam is Batu Caves, but it's usually crowded and my family doesn't really make it a point to go, so I've never been. Of course I grew up with the newspaper articles with the images of the intense body piercing and near mutilation that is performed during Thaipusam, but I've never seen it in person. So that took another two hours, and I posted an Instagram story of it.

I had every intention to working the rest of the afternoon but instead crashed the hell out, waking up in time for an evening dinner with some of my dad's cousins, in particular Uncle Jimmy's family. Uncle Jimmy passed away a year ago, and his sister also passed just last month (the day of the wedding I attended, in fact). Uncle Jimmy's three kids are more my kind of people, but I didn't get to sit with them, and haven't really gotten to talk to them much. I've not met them since they were teens (they're a few years younger I am; I think I last saw them in my first two years in Canada?). And sigh, my mom kept interjecting again, and it's really hard to have a basic "get to know you" conversation with her butting in with answers and questions that don't actually generate more conversation?? Anyway that was another wash, but oh well. I'll keep trying, since I do value my dad's family to some extent.

Anyway what with all the red packets!!! I've got some RM230 in cold hard cash!! Which is not bad for a season--I've had some really stellar years, but the last decade has been slim pickings since I'm not there to collect in person usually. It's also worthwhile writing down who gave which red packet... it's a bit of a surprise sometimes to see who's giving how much each year (you know the economy is taking a downturn when a wealthy uncle gives less than the years before, for example).


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In other news, the FedEx box containing my new O1B petition has been shipped!!!! It's 18lb of paper--I need to get the PDF of the documents in the order that they are arranged and whatever else.

Since I paid premium processing, this time I'll get a response within 14 days, so the countdown now begins. My lawyer is VERY positive about my chances. After that I have to go to the US embassy here to get the actual stamp. Hopefully that all gets resolved in a month??

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Went to the dentist for some scaling last weekend, which was in the realm of RM250, but had to go back to get my fillings fixed. The dentist told me that one of my teeth is ... 80% filling now, and one of the four remaining corners has a pretty high chance of getting cracked in the next few years, so she suggested getting an onlay. Since it's on my dad's dime, and also not in USD, I figure I might as well do that now and have less dental work to worry about in the future.

But an onlay takes about two weeks to construct, and in the meantime, I've got a temporary onlay that feels... like chewing gum?? Just the surface of it. When I scratch it, it feels hard like a regular tooth, but running my tongue over it makes me itch to remove it like an errant piece of gum!! So hopefully I'll hear sooner than two weeks for the onlay.

I had a personal trainer session this morning, since signing up with the gym gets me a free hour. She started me on the rowing machine, then did some bar balancing stuff (terrible), plank push ups (terrible but doable), TRX stuff (fun but not something I can do without a trainer apparently) and something that required squatting with my back against the wall with my hands held in front of me, and she applied pressure on my hands that I had to push again (also fun but also not something I can do without someone else).

I suppose I could have headed it off by not entertaining her questions about "what is your IDEAL" and "what are your GOALS" because honestly the reason why I like swimming is because ultimately it is pleasurable. I like an exercise that gets me into my body and has all my senses engaged, which is not a thing that I get from being on treadmills and walking. Losing weight and getting my metabolism up and whatever, that's all a bonus at this point. Like, yeah, I do want to lose weight, and sure, I would like more muscle mass, but this whole "working out efficiently" with 25 minute blasts of energy is... not my workout style. I got spots in my eyes a few times, which she thought was because I hadn't eaten beforehand, but really it was just that I'm not used to pushing myself so hard so quickly.

I did like the rowing machine a lot though, so next time I'm on my period and not going to swim, I'll use the rowing machine and see how I like it when I'm not going at it like a sprint. Or maybe I might like it enough to alternate between swimming and rowing? I got my first menstrual cup from Saalt (after taking this quiz which recommended this particular brand to me), so I'm going to give that a shot next time I'm on my period.

She also taught me what I guess is the "hollow hold"--where I had to pin my back to the ground while lifting my legs and arms up ("like a banana"). I figure I can do the plank pushups and the hollow holds while microwaving my water in the future, rather than just planks.

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I scanned some of the documents I needed, and wow is scanning a whole goddamn ORDEAL. The scanner at Tachyon doesn't really work very well (it's fickle; some days I'll get it to work, other days only Jacob can use it, and other days, it's bricked), despite my attempts (it worked! ONCE! when I was testing it! then I closed out the program and it was bricked again). So I walked to the public library and scanned in a couple of things. Tried to scan my PhD certificate but that didn't work, so I walked to Staples to do a colour scan of it.

I also scanned my OPT card, which was another production where I couldn't just copy both sides onto one piece of paper (a common service back home in Malaysia, and something my dad taught me to do as well on home printers). I copied both sides, flipping the card over so that it would show up on a different part of the paper, then I folded the two papers together in such a way that the two copies appeared side-by-side, and scanned THAT.

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I also have my Eligibility Post up now. I published three things last year, down from the 5 pieces I published in 2016, but given the stresses of the year, I think I did pretty okay!