Duck's Nuts on Play: The Mystery Above Us

It's a little mystery that's been playing at the back of my mind since I came here. Shoes. Up there. Why?

You see, there's this odd phenomenon that's happening in Sydney's neighbourhoods. OK, calling it a phenomenon is a bit much. But the question remains - why are these shoes hanging off those power lines?


I took this photo at an inner-Sydney suburb.

But first, before the why - what and how ...

Q: Whose shoes are those? Are they old, new, of a certain brand? Why are they almost all sport shoes?
A: Eh, I don't know. I'm so short that usually the shoes are the size of barbie doll sneakers when I look at them.

Q: Where are these shoes being hung?
A: As far as I tell, in every neighbourhood in Sydney. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you get to see two pairs of shoes hanging off one power line. Most intriguing though, is that when I did a quick google search to see if this happens elsewhere in the world, I stumbled upon photos in Europe, the US and South America.


Photo: Adam Fowler, Edinburgh, Scotland via Flickr, Creative Commons

Q: How did someone successfully get a pair of shoes up there?
A: Again, a good question that I don't have an answer for. I am good at speculating though - one option could be they kept throwing the shoes up into the air from the road below until they finally slung onto the power line. Another option is someone took a very very long stick with a hook at the end and hoisted the shoes up on the lines. Another is that someone leaned out of a high building window and chucked it onto the line below.

Q: When are these shoes being thrown up there?
A: In the dead of the night when no one is watching? Or is it in broad daylight when everyone's walking past but doesn't care (more likely scenario - Aussies are a pretty chilled bunch).


Photo: Ed Kohler, Minneapolis, US via Flickr, Creative Commons

OK, now that we're done with the whats and hows, the question is - why bother. I used to be relatively satisfied with the answer that the hanging shoes mark a drug house, ie. where you can go and buy drugs. But if that's the case, isn't that just an invitation for the police to come knocking on your door? And why is there a pair of shoes just dangling on the street around the corner of my house?

With all these questions floating about at the back of my head for many a year (yes, I suppose I could have done better things with my time), I was delighted to find out that an Australian director has decided to make a documentary on this very topic. He's called it The Mystery of Flying Kicks and it was released this year.



The phenomenon, director Matthew Bate says, is called "shoefiti" and it's something that's been happening since 1890 (though I don't think as many countries had power lines back then.) Interestingly, in Sydney it was apparently a rite of passage for boys who lost their virginity. (So did my neighbour just lose his virginity? Eh actually, I don't want to know.)

Bate does confirm though that the most common explanations for this shoe-throwing/hanging phenomenon is territory-marking for gangs and for drug-dealing spots. Which makes me wonder - do different gangs throw different brands of shoes? What if the pair of shoes thrown up there by another gang are the ones you like? Do you have to resign yourself to throwing up a less-cool shoe?

But I hear you saying - enough questions for one blog post. At least I haven't gone as far as tattooing this on my arm:


Photo: Nick J Webb via Flickr, Creative Commons

Now, that's one territory-marking too far for me.

Tianni on Play: Academy of the world

Headline translation of report in Singapore's My Paper: I can become a Superkid!

I can never quite make up my mind on whether I had been a good student or a bad one. As with many areas in my life, I can only conclude my student record has been unpredictable.

On second thought, no -- I take that back. I was definitely a bad student. Only, I was good enough to pass exams (at least the important ones) without really putting in the work. Yeah, go ahead, kill me.

Okay, now that I’ve got your attention…

My formal education – all 16 odd years of it – was largely received inside Singapore. It was also rather unfortunately, largely forgettable.

No, I don’t mean the lifelong friends whom I’d picked up along the way, or the opportunities to engage in numerous extra-curricular activities that allowed me to explore interests that my parent-sanctioned courses of study (Commerce!! Business!!) didn’t allow for.

I am referring to the Accounting classes and Business 101 lectures I’ve had to sit through half asleep, the Operations Processes homework I copied from classmates that I’ve handed in, and the Financial Accounting exams I didn’t turn up for.

I’m not proud of my nonchalance toward the most part of school. On the contrary, I look back on the last decade of my formal schooling with a truckload of regret that I'd walked away not learning more than I could have, simply because I was mostly studying subjects I had little interest in.

I had started out pretty motivated, often topping classes in primary school. I also had an affinity for language and was inclined toward the arts and humanities. My conservative parents however believed in the conventional path to success and more than that, in the conventional measure of success. Basically, in secondary school, that translated into "no arts stream." Later on, this was fine tuned into "Business = $$ = :-D."

So when it came time for university, out went my preferred choice of theater studies, and in came full-blown truancy. What had started mildly in junior college during which I would regularly excuse myself from classes in subjects I loathed for the endless "track training" became a way of life in university, a period during which I spent approximately 60 percent of my time engaged in countless hall and extra- curriculum activities -- running, swimming, drama, dance, you name it -- and only some of the remaining sitting in lecture halls. My disinterest grew to a point where I went through an entire term without attending a single class in subjects I highly disliked. When examinations came round, I decided to simply not show up for the papers (read: two glaring ‘F’s!!). During the last days of the final semester, I stepped for the first time inside the faculty library to photocopy a term's worth of handouts I'd missed, only to realize I actually needed a library card. What I see looking back on my uni years is a shameful waste of precious time and limited resources, and not just mine. I sincerely apologize to that student who didn't get a place in Biz Ad despite a genuine interest, because I accepted mine out of expediency.

Every parent's dream (if they work) - 'model' answers for the PSLE exams

Why I'm even bringing up this sorry history is the earlier online furor in Singapore over whether to reduce the weighting of the mother tongue (i.e., the compulsory second language subject) in the all-important Primary School Leaving Examinations. I didn't follow the whole debate closely, but what I generally grasped is this: some are concerned reducing the importance of Chinese (or Malay, or Tamil, or Hindi, whatever the case may be) in exams will lead to students paying less attention to their mother tongue, deteriorate an already dismal grasp of the second language and so further dilute our already weak cultural roots. Others argue reducing the pressure to score in the subject will make it more enjoyable to learn a second language and so boost standards. Still others fear taking away the need for good second-language scores for admissions into secondary schools will further fan the competition for limited seats in top schools in favor of those with a strong foundation in the English language (generally seen as being from English-educated, more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds).

To me, the arguments all miss the most basic point. That just as there are students poor in maths or sciences or literature, there are students poor in languages. Just as there are backgrounds where the parents communicate with their children using Chinese, there are parents who use English; just as there are those who are comfortable crunching numbers, who surround their children with literary novels, or who instill an early love of natural sciences in their children. If there were as many diverse backgrounds and as many varied interests, why do we persist in holding young children's abilities and worth to standardized examinations that demand they perform equally well in everything, and penalizes them should they fall short on even one? If there is debate over the fairness of a compulsory second language, why not also debate that of measuring unique individuals with a generalized, standard measure?

I guess it means you can get 4 'A' stars if you memorize all the answers. Duh.

Of course, I'm hardly the first to question the standardized assessments of children. In China, some 10 million 17-year-olds sit each year for the college entrance examination, or gaokao, after spending their entire childhoods swotting for what has been criticized as nothing more than memory tests. The gaokao is seen as about the only way for rural families to break out of the poverty cycle, yet questions are being raised over whether they promote rote-learning over creativity and the ability to think for oneself.

(Read this interesting critique of the traditional Chinese education system)

There are as many arguments for standardized assessments, and truth is, until there is a better alternative of applying or assessing learning, the current vanguard will likely continue to be used.

But, as in my case, the possible consequence to enforcing something without an appreciation for "natural" talents or inclinations is a backlash, and at its worst, the potential hijacking of an individual's full potential. And that would serve the interests of no one. Fortunately for me at least, I've found one can try (or be obliged to) but never truly run away from oneself.

Over the past decade or so, I've found myself embarking on a real-world education, one that has proven far superior to any I'd received within the confines of educational institutions. Much of it had come from traveling and living in countries with cultural and political orders starkly different from home, and from interacting with a whole society's spectrum of people. I've been given crash courses in civic participation while witnessing public movements from Bangkok to Taipei, and realized politics isn't just restricted to an educated minority; in the developing countries, I've been sobered by inequalities in wealth distribution with both extreme poverty and wealth on display along a stretch of a single street. In rural Thailand, I was humbled by the grit of prepubescent muay thai boxers determined to rise above less than fortunate circumstances; in Taipei, I was educated in the inconvenient truth that taking responsibility for environmental degradation also involves a nugget of personal discomfort.

Throughout, I've read furiously on an array of books that pique my interest -- International Affairs, Development, Economics, Psychology -- not because they are mandated readings for a course, but because I personally desired to know more. Not surprisingly, most of these subjects fall into the Arts and Humanities department.

In a way, I've come full circle through my exploration of the world.

The people I meet outside of textbooks

But of course I can't explain that to my parents. They're still wondering when I'll end my gallivanting and begin a proper career in the business world.

Horse With No Name on Love: It Takes a Bit of Yuck

Whoever said nothing much happens in the desert obviously hasn't visited the HWNN corral.

We've been blighted with high drama when we least expect it, usually when Mr HWNN is away on business, leaving me to saddle up and take the reins.

It usually involves one or all members of the family falling ill from some debilitating virus or infection, at a level of intensity never experienced before when we lived in Singapore.

Pumpkin, who turned one in April, is at that age where everything and its cousin winds up in her gut. So it's no surprise that she often plays the role of screaming femme fatale, fending off some mysterious B-grade bug that's decided to inhabit her tiny system.

Mmm... strep-throat virus... tasty...

Most times, she stars in re-runs of “The Endless Throat and Ear Infection of Terror”. But older sis Sweet Pea, never to be outdone, will follow that up in true diva style with “A Clockwork Stomach Bug” - the sequel to “Naked Lunch, All Over My Pillow”. (I won't give away the ending.)

Occasionally, both of them collaborate on a not-so-original but highly underrated version of "Fever of Scary New Heights”.

It took me a while to get used to the health-care system in Arizona. For one thing, there aren't any walk-in general practice clinics in our area, something we tend to take for granted in Singapore.

The handful of pediatric clinics nearby are strictly by-appointment and are usually booked solid. The only thing in between that and the hospital - in terms of levels of health care - are the urgent care facilities, where you sometimes wait two hours or more to see a doctor (or assistant physician) about vomiting/minor injuries/high fever situations.

In our early days here, I would often find myself having to make the the rounds of no less than three of these health-care facilities in order to figure out what new bug we were facing and how to beat it.

It was one of those hair-tearing, gut-wrenching experiences that I've now to come to terms with. Mostly because I have little hair left to tear out, and not much stomach left to spar with medical staff.

After months of trudging through the muck of pill bottles, bags of sick, and enough ice packs to stop global warming, I composed a long and angry tirade about the state of health care here in AZ. In summary: They no likey give out medications here, especially for de little kids. You mommy go pharmacy buy whatever you think is good for 40 degree fever... like ice pack. Or Ibuprofen. Okie dokie? Bless you.

Psst... hey buddy. Need some nasal spray? Check the pharmacy in my kitchen cabinet.

So why have I only posted the gist of it, and not the whole thing? Well, I thought shaking my fist (and certain unnamed digits) at the medical system would make me feel better. Truth is, it didn't.

After re-reading that post about 120 times, I thought, gosh, what a lot of whinging and moaning going on... to what end? What was the point of all that anger, when the medical practitioners I was angry with probably don't even read these posts?

So I decided it was more constructive to think like a virus: whatever doesn't kill us only lets us live to multiply and become stronger and more evil, and perhaps take over the universe. Right?

Let me illustrate: One time, the girls were running a back-to-back marathon of "The Stomach Flu Trilogy", when my body decided it wanted in on the action too. Because Mr HWNN was away (of course), I had the pleasure of driving us all to the doctors (three), the pharmacy (two) and the grocery store (just one) to pick up pills, pedialyte and porridge. All while battling a 39 degree C fever.

Now before you think, “poor HWNN”, I ask you this: which family hasn't gone through this sort of thing in some sort of permutation? Some of you reading this may have even gone through worse on your own. (I can tell you're nodding vigorously, going – Yeah, we went through all that AND we wound up in the ER too! With NO MONEY, OR PANTS! Hah!)

I suppose I could have asked for help. But I have this bad habit of preferring to soldier on until my limbs fall off, because that's just how we do things in my family.

Despite my stubborn idiocy, I think the girls and I were remarkably fortunate to have weathered that madness as well as we did.

And here's the coming out stronger part: No matter how tired, angry and frustrated I might have felt then, I don't want to post a story about what an awful time we're having.

Because we're not.

See, here's Sweet Pea, none the worse for wear, and up way past her bedtime painting a little surprise for her friend. As I watch her - all dizzy with excitement over what colour she's going to use next - I'm grateful.

Grateful we came through that mess in one piece. Grateful that I'm blessed with lovely friends and neighbours, who messaged or Facebooked me during my radio silence to see if we were all still alive. (One of them even came to check on us, just when I had about given up and was having a silly sob fest, bless her heart.)

I'm grateful to the one good doctor out of the tangle of doo-doo-heads we met, who rang me up after hours when everything was falling apart, and called in medication for me to pick up, so that I wouldn't have to wait for hours in long queues with two very sick kids.

I'm even grateful to the grocery store delivery guy for being so polite and helpful when he brought us our much needed weekly supplies. (Yeah, it only took me a million years before I discovered a grocery store here that made deliveries!)

I'm grateful to the pharmacists who took the time to reassure me that things were going to be okay, who explained in detail how that the multitude of medications we were on weren't going to make us see little spiders crawling on the ceiling. (A deep-seated fear. And very real!)

I'm grateful to my parents, who Skyped us very day to keep our spirits up. And even though Mr HWNN missed all the action, I'm actually grateful he was away. Seriously. Because he escaped the big bad bugs and came home healthy and whole and ready to sweep me off my feet.

On a side note: To the unhelpful folks I encountered, those who told me they couldn't do anything for my sick kids, or ignored my pleas for help or doctor's appointments, I'm going to say, peace be with you. And guess what? I'm grateful to you too, because you've taught me that I have even more unknown reservoirs of emotional strength than I thought.

The miracle of ice-packs. They make you think you're on-snow.

Through the haze of sick, the kids and I had our own brand of fun. We had a Sesame Street revival, curled up on the sofa amongst blankets and buckets, watching endless old episodes and laughing at the way Pumpkin got super excited at the theme song.

When she wasn't screaming from the fever-induced headaches, Sweet Pea and I would time how fast ice packs melted against her hot, hot, hot forehead. (Turns out, REALLY quickly!)

And we had slumber parties every single night, all squashed in my bed, the kids taking turns to snort or snore warm, slimy breaths down my neck, while I stayed up to check temperatures and administer medication.

In hindsight, it was glorious to spend this time with them. Because really, who needs that much sleep anyway? Not me.

Now, as Sweet Pea puts the finishing touches on her little project, I'm grateful that my beautiful girl is back to her effervescent self. And when I get annoyed at her hyperactivity, I try to remind myself of the time when she was a limp dish towel, and how un-fun that was.

As one very wise seven-year-old once told me: Sometimes it takes a bit of yuck to make you see the good stuff.

It most certainly does.

Una Ragazza on Play: Of Jews and Asian Jews

Until my early 20s, my understanding of Judaism was somewhat limited to my reading of the Bible.

The Israelites who were enslaved in Egypt were called Jews. Moses, who led their exodus, was a Jew. The Jews in the desert wilderness ate manna and quail, which my Sunday school teacher once described as tasting better than Kentucky Fried Chicken. David, who killed Goliath, was a Jew.

Jesus was a Jew.

Back then, the notion of actually meeting a real-life Jew would have sounded preposterous to me. In my young and ignorant mind, Jews were a people who lived a long, long time ago.

Since moving to the United States, I have been humbly educated. Beginning with a deeper understanding of the Holocaust by way of museums and Schindler’s List, I learnt about the atrocities that befell Jews only five decades ago. I learnt about the role America played in becoming a refuge and home to what is now nearly half the Jewish population in the world. That’s right: there are possibly more Jews in America than in Israel.

Jewish memorabilia on sale in my 'hood

My adopted city of New York is Jerusalem West. Jews are believed to have populated this city since 1654, when 23 Jews arrived from Recife in Brazil, which was a thriving town with a Jewish population which had in turn come from Europe in the 1500s due to economic reasons and to seek freedom of worship from the Inquisition in Spain and its colonies.

The 1880s saw a wave of immigration from Europe because of antisemitism in Central and Eastern Europe, with the number peaking around 1950s and then declining as suburban migration to states like California and Florida took place. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jews from the former Soviet Union also started arriving in the New York metropolitan area in the 1980s and 1990s.

In many walks of American life, the Jewish community has made major contributions. It can be largely credited with founding Hollywood and for many of my favorite stars in the entertainment industry. (Think MGM, Warner Brothers, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, the Coen brothers, Ben Stiller, Natalie Portman, Jason Schwartzman and Sean Penn.) The academic and literary fields also have their heros and Nobel Prize winners in Albert Einstein, Milton Friedman and Elie Wiesel, to name a few. In politics, a prominent example is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been making many significant improvements to the city through efforts such as economic programs, nutrition laws (New York is one of the first cities to require fast-food establishments to include calorie information on menus), and traffic zoning changes (hello, bike lanes!). Also underway is a potential smoking ban in parks and beaches.

How many calories can a dollar buy?

Glorious bike lanes: a godsend for New York cyclists

The glow has even rubbed off on some born-and-bred New Yorkers who are not Jewish, but sometimes think they are.

“I grew up in Manhattan, so yeah, I’m an honorary Jew,” a colleague with British and Latino Catholic parents once remarked with seemingly a tinge of pride.

Having met and befriended many Jews in the city, I have had the opportunity to know the culture better. Take the holidays, for example. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year that falls on the first day of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar. Traditional foods include gefilte fish (made from carp or pike), challah bread (very yummy braided bread made with a lot of eggs) and chopped liver. Yes, there are people in this world besides the crazy Chinese and French who eat offal.

Challah-lelujah!

Jewish weddings are a lot of fun. They involve a pretty chupah (canopy under which the bride and groom say their vows), some broken glass and plenty of dancing (some chairs required). And of course, food. (Pass the challah bread again, please.)

Jewish chair dance... plenty of fun

Wedding cuisine aside, imagine my amusement when I learnt that Jewish people love Chinese food. One year, my company threw a year-end holiday party to celebrate all the festivities from the various religions, including Christmas and Hannukah, the “festival of lights.” A friend whose team was assigned to depict Hannukah served, among other things, Chinese takeout to symbolize the importance of the food to her culture. On Christmas, it’s a lighthearted joke that Jews do two things: go to the movies (because Christians are home and so there are no queues) and eat Chinese food.

Jewish people like their Chinese food indeed. Some say that the origins of eating Chinese could be because Christianity is generally not widely practised among the Chinese and so the likelihood of a Jew encountering a benign, smiling, rotund buddha statue in a Chinese restaurant is much higher than that of a crucifix or a statue of madonna. Yet others say that it’s because the dishes do not combine dairy with meat, which is agreeable with the Hebrew teaching, “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.”

I’d throw in another theory: Chinese is tasty. Jewish people, like the Chinese, simply enjoy eating. Indeed, food is an integral part of Jewish culture, akin to that of the Chinese.

Interestingly, food is not the only similarity I’ve observed between the Jews and Chinese. Jewish people, like the Chinese, have traditionally been known for their business acumen. In general, a strong aptitude in numbers has brought many professionals to the finance sector. Both cultures also share a reputation for being entrepreneurial, where “businessman” is a profession rather commonly held by those from both cultural backgrounds.

Now, considering the geographical distance between Israel and China, and the absence of any known major event involving both nations, did these two cultures ever cross paths historically?

I was intrigued to learn that Jews have been living in China since the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1127), with a small concentration in Kaifeng, the dynasty’s capital that is in the present-day Chinese province of Henan. It is believed that the ancestors of Kaifeng Jews made their way over from Central Asia. Later during the Ming Dynasty, the emperor conferred seven Chinese last names on Jews in the empire, two of which are interestingly the western equivalent of common Jewish last names: “Jin” (gold) and “Shi” (stone).

Perhaps all the above may explain that certain level of affinity I feel toward what is a “recently-rediscovered” people to me.

Once, when I was introducing my background as an overseas-born Chinese to some New York acquaintances, I even found myself drawing a comparison by coining the term, “Asian Jew.”

To me, that is a compliment in itself and a tribute to the Jewish friends I’ve made who have opened up my eyes to a whole new culture.

Mazel tov on a job well done.

Pretty menorahs (Hannukah candlesticks) and streamers

(Some pictures from the Internet)

Denim on Love: Love in translation

"You'd married the wrong girlfriend," is what I would exclaim to my husband sometimes.

Usually, it comes out as a joke but as the years go by, I realize how I still feel like a hot goreng pisang on a cold combini bento (prepacked lunch box from a convenience store). You see, although most of my teenage years were spent fantasizing about the world of J-pop with five girlfriends, I was the least clued in on the real culture that J-pop breeds on.

Bento shelves at a combini

To me, Japan was simply a lot of fun, fizz and neon lights in a foreign language that left blanks for my imagination to fill in. An alien planet where I could escape whenever I felt alone or misunderstood. A place to bury those growing pains. And, as with all things that time changes, my infatuation gradually faded to a distant admiration when I started at university. The once hormonally-driven feelings toward everything that popped out from the Land of the Rising Sun dissipated and in its place, I began to enjoy the rich and vibrant offerings of local hostel life complete with its midnight suppers of kopi-pengs (iced coffees). After that, I was thrown into the Anglo-culture of my ad agency and that led me further away from my teenage roots.

Meanwhile, three of those five J-pop crazy girlfriends remained loyal and became so deeply fascinated by the Japanese culture they'd actually taken courses in Japanese, lived in Japan on long cultural exchange programmes and picked up fluent Japanese. They are, in many ways, more Japanese than I am. And yet, they are the ones in Singapore whilst I am here in Tokyo.

I remember the first time I’d shared with my girlfriends about my Japanese then-boyfriend. It was met with gleeful excitement followed by, “Does he know other cute Japanese guys?” But the main concern amongst them was, “Can he speak English?” The Japanese are not known for their fluency in English and their form of broken English known as Japlish or Engrish (according to a popular website), has been the source of various amusing quotes. My most unforgettable and personal experience so far has to be from my previous workplace in Tokyo when the Japanese advertising creative team had a campaign that promised to ‘reflesh’ women with a new body shower product.

An example of a typical and fun Japanese phrase where they write like how they speak

As for the question about my husband’s English fluency, I am lucky in that so far, there hasn’t been any trouble on the communication front. Only when he uses dirty slangs he’s picked up from six years living in the New York borough of Queens. And his success is attributed to how he is someone who really tries to assimilate and immerse himself wholly to any new environment. He could even teach some really nasty Hokkien (Chinese dialect) within a year of living in Singapore.

However, my private joke with my husband is not really an exaggeration. He'd missed the odds. Sometimes, when I flirt with thoughts of fleeing this place, I start to feel a little guilty. Who else would give my other girlfriends an excuse to visit Tokyo once a year if I leave? Who else would incite loud stomach rumblings if not for my Facebook photos of glorious cuts of Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ of marbled beef)? Who else would tell people when the sales here start? Or scoff at the pseudo latest trends that magazines back home tout as Japanese? (Okay, maybe they are Japanese but they were from the last season. Or perhaps, just not from Tokyo?) I know people who would kill to take my place in the land of kawaii (cute) and kakkoi (cool).

Salivating yet?

But in dark times, those rhetorical questions appear frivolous. To live each day in a land where it conflicts with the Singaporean in me is a challenge and when it all adds up, I explode into my loud rants inside my closet-sized home they call mansions and entertain thoughts of digging a subway line all the way down to the equator.

"Why can't they simply give me the barbeque sauce?" a pregnant me wailed at Ma-Ku-Do-Na-Ru-Do (MacD) as I held onto my pack of fries that was getting soggy. (In Japan, unless you buy the McNuggets, they refuse to give you any of its sauces, even if you'd purchased the largest bag of food enough to feed four people. No amount of begging would faze their robotic auto-replies.)

"Why can't they simply change my drink?" a more pregnant me lamented as the waiter refused to allow me to have something else apart from the caffeinated drinks of the set menu. Isn't it easier to pour juice than to brew a cup of coffee?

"Why can't they have more escalators?" a going-to-pop-next-week me wept as I labored up the stairs out of the Shibuya subway. "How do the old people tahan this?" I wondered aloud and the next moment, I see a white-haired hunched-back old lady totter up twice as fast as me like a frisky hamster. (Tahan is Singaporean slang for “put up with.”)

Getting through this crowd is an emotional experience itself

I know that these all sound like petty complaints but the root of it is how Japan and I are just simply on two different ends of a personality scale. A psychology major friend explained to me that each country has her own personality profile and it is my lack of insight to not have figured out earlier that Japan is an introverted culture as opposed to my extroverted one. It is a stickler for abiding by process versus my flexible can-do attitude. And just these two conflicts alone make the chasm wide enough that after five years, I still haven't built a bridge to the other side.

So, how did I get here? Oh yes, the husband. A Japanese one to boot. Many plates of sushi ago, back when I was still easily satiated by the premium Singapore sushi restaurant, Sushi Tei, I met my husband. Then, after a short holiday with him in Tokyo, I boldly thought I could live here, explore my horizons and rejoiced at the opportunity to be IN JAPAN! That was me naively tapping back into my teenage state of mind. Bad idea. Wrong girlfriend.

This mistaken identity just kept snowballing down the rocky path into a really large onigiri (rice ball) filled with longings for sambal, durian and prawn mee. That is a combination that would burn any stomach and in my case, with a relationship in the mix, a tricky one to cure.

To his credit, my husband has been a real trouper despite all my dramatic protests against his home country. He seldom takes the side of the Japanese whenever I launch into my tirades. (He shrugs and agrees sympathetically.) He never expects me to learn the refined manners of a Japanese woman. (Till now, I still go out with minimal or no make-up. Horrors!) Never asks me to cook a Japanese meal. (Do you know the Japanese believe in consuming 30 or more different foods per day? Think of the number of side dishes I would have to prepare! I'm sorry but I'm usually a one-dish-meal kinda girl.)

Kaiseki spread: a Japanese full course meal

But best of all, he always sincerely offers to drop everything and move back to Singapore anytime.

So while I still believe I was the wrong girlfriend, for a guy like this, and with a lot more awareness, I’m going to keep trying to be the right wife.

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)