Update 14th May 2009: Yay! My cousin has come around to my point of view and is happy with the compromise. She also conceded that the day was a happy one, even if the eventuality wasn’t.

Tonight I got a message from a cousin, asking me to remove her wedding photos from my blog. As you might guess, the marriage had broken down and I assume that looking at the photos of happier days is difficult for her. At the same time, she probably also don’t want them available on the general Internet.

My first reaction was of annoyance. This is my blog, it is a record of my life and thoughts. I was there at the wedding and I had a blast with my family and relatives. She may not think of it positively now, but we were all truly happy for her. As such, asking me to remove the photos and the post was like asking me to forget that the day had existed. I’m not going to do that because I can’t.

The other thing that got me perplexed was that it’s not as if no one in our immediate family and social circles don’t know about her current situation, and about her having married once. Seeing her in a wedding dress in a photo from a few years back isn’t going to shock anyone. This is true even if she thinks that divorce is a bigger social stigma than it really is these days. No one is judging her and I don’t think anyone in our family is too. Disappointed and a little bit sad we maybe, but no one is judging because we haven’t walked in her shoes and not many of us know the full story.

Though in the end, after having a long thought about it I decided to compromise. I will still be seeing her and it’s best to keep things cordial and civil at least. I emailed her to let her know that I will remove any photos with her ex-husband in it but the ones with her and her family, and us the relatives I’m keeping up. And I’m not deleting the post because reading through what I wrote, I didn’t find anything that deserves to be deleted.

This post also serves as notice to everyone that I know. I blog. It’s what I do. It’s a big part of me. If you come into contact with me in any way, shape or form you might end up as words here.

I’ve already promise you that I won’t write or post anything compromising about you. In fact I believe I’ve toned down a lot – I’ve learnt my lesson. In my opinion, it’s made my blog a little less exciting and I have to think more about what people may think these days. It takes a lot of willpower to keep my fingers from the keyboard sometimes.

So in return, I hope you understand that it’s difficult and sometimes frustrating for me when you request that I remove something which I have already carefully thought out about. I will compromise a little, like I have done for my cousin but it doesn’t mean it’s something that I like to do.

I don’t expect you to have a thick skin like I do, but I hope that you respect me enough to understand my position.

p.s. to those of you who remain friends with me, knowing that I blog, I love youse all!

You know how once you get to a certain age, say your mid-30s, your social circle tends to get cemented and stays the same? Not me though. I’m lucky that I’m still meeting new faces all the time and for the past few years there’s at least one new person who gets added to my roster of friendly faces.

And adult friendships are so much more richer than when you are a kid but with that comes complexity and the efforts to maintain them become that much harder. Gone are the days of when becoming friends was as easy as because you swapped lunches one day, and your friend’s friend are your friends too, and your friend’s enemy is also your enemy. When you are a kid, there’s much less “frenemies” behaviour going on, less back-stabbing and less talking behind people’s back.

So as each new face gets added to your social circle, the complexity of the circle increases and if harmony is desired, everyone has to tread a diplomatic line. Because your friend’s really good friend may annoy the shit out of you, and that person that they hate? Well, he’s not that bad really. At least, he hasn’t done anything bad to you. For now.

Plus there’s no winning from trying to please everyone. You can’t. So if I know of someone not quite enjoying the company of another, and I have a choice in it, I’d not put them in the same room. But that’s easier said than done right? When your friend insists on bringing the person because hey, you’ve met and you seemed to get along quite well (damn you, diplomacy!), how can you possibly say no?

Then there’s the talking that people inevitably do when the subject is out of earshot. I’ve adopted the policy of not spreading anything that I hear. Ignorance is truly bliss. If I ever feel the urge to gossip, I always ask myself, “Do they need to hear this? What good is gonna come out of it?” And most times, that question answers itself.

And lastly, not everyone will like you. And you don’t have to like everyone. If you hear that you are being disliked by someone and it’s not something that you did or have said, then there’s really not much you can do about it. Sometimes, there’s no real reason why someone doesn’t like somebody else – they just don’t. So don’t try to understand it. Life is too short for such pettiness.

Having said all of the above though, I love having a big and diverse social circle. Different kinds of friends begets more different kinds of friends, and you can never have enough friends, even if life becomes a little bit more complicated as a result.

Life IS a soap opera
(image source)

At an unassuming restaurant somewhere in Ampang, we went to have hainan chicken, char siew, roast pork and wonton noodles.

The char siew was crispy and sweet and melts away in the mouth. Mmm.

And the roast pork … you know how they say “fat is flavour”? Well, this was ALL flavour.

And as a balance to all that meat, some carbs in the form of wonton noodles.

My mouth watered from looking and thinking about they all tasted. I hope yours did too!

On the way back to Perth from Guangzhou, we had a 2-day stopover in Kuala Lumpur. It’s been a while since I’ve been back and boy did I miss the food! So the next three posts about my short visit there is dedicated to the food, OMG food.

The first place we visited was this open air stir-fry restaurant – one of my uncle and aunty’s favourite places.

Among the things that we had …

were satay …

and stir-fried kai-lan.

After dinner, it was a short walk over to this stall selling durians.

I don’t normally like durians, like I don’t mind eating it but I don’t crave it, but these were really good. And pricey – two of these came to RM80.

By the way, there’s a reason there’s this food post all of a sudden. It’s nearing winter and I generally eat more during winter. Food, delicious food. Mmm.

Over the weekend, there’s been a sudden flurry of activity on my post “Why don’t Aussie girls date Asian men?”

In particular, there’s two comments that I want to address. One was by an Asian guy (and presumably not a troll although he sounds like one and I had to delete a few of his comments) who has a victim mentality and likes to see racism and discrimination in everything, and another who laments that he couldn’t date a Caucasian despite having a few of them as friends.

I’ve said it before, and that is: why this need in some Asian guys to date non-Asians in order to feel validated? Instead of obsessing about dating a white woman, you should all obsess about dating the right woman.

Of all the things to get upset about, don’t you think this is very pointless and trivial? And seriously, what’s wrong with dating nice pretty Asian girls all the time? I don’t see a downside to it. So get a grip and move on to more important things yeah?

Most days I’m happy to have lunch at my desk because I get to instant-chat with my friends and browse the net. But lately, the workload and pressure has been affecting me greatly that I’m compelled to leave the place.

Going out of the office allows me to mentally split up the day into two by being somewhere different, and in a different mind set. The walking around also helps take my mind off of things. And it really works. Two separate chunks of a day are easier to handle than one long drawn out one.

I’d rather that the workload wasn’t so hellish at the moment but at least I’ve got a coping mechanism for it. The only thing that would make it better? If we were allowed some alcoholic drinks at work to take the edge off.

I received my $900 of stimulus money yesterday. I am deciding between:

1. a new head deck for my car because I need something that can play MP3 and that my iPhone can connect to. That will save me having to burn CDs all the time.
2. a new computer that I can do a lot more video and photo editing on. My current one is coping well but really shows its age when I’m splicing together those clips for Youtube.

I only drive on the weekends so I’m leaning towards the computer since I’d spent more time using it. I’m gonna add approx. $1000 and get a Dell Studio XPS Desktop. Although it probably wouldn’t stimulate the Australian economy directly – it’s an American computer assembled in Malaysia from parts made mostly in China – anything that stimulates an economy elsewhere would surely trickle back.

At the very least, the Australian economy will still be helped this way: there’d be a dock yard worker who’d unload the computer from a container on a ship, the fork lift driver who’d then put in on a truck, and the truck driver who’d deliver it to my house. So indirectly, I’m helping save Australian jobs even if I’m not buying Australian-made. The important thing is to spend the money here in Australia and not overseas!