Girl and City

I was looking through old emails and chat logs between MFL and I (despite knowing better than to wallow in the past – or rather, our past – because I am a glutton for punishment obviously), and I noticed that I rarely told him how I felt about him. In our entire three-year relationship, I probably said things along the lines of “I missed you,” “I thought about you,” etc. a total of four times. And I never, ever said “I love you.”
Similarly, I never discussed my relationship in my blog entries from that time, to the point that when I mentioned “my boyfriend” in one entry, one of my long-standing blog friends actually left a comment asking, “What?? You have a boyfriend? Since when??”

I was reflecting on this over coffee with BI yesterday, using it as an example of how I’ve changed since high school.
“I was so ignorant about what it meant to be in a relationship. I had no idea what was considered normal behaviour as far as showing one’s feelings. Sure, I showed him I cared in my own way, but maybe by missing out on all the cliched things, I made him feel more unsure about our relationship.”
Like a horse being whipped, words started tumbling out of my mouth at lightning speed. “I was so clueless! I didn’t know what it meant to be someone girlfriend. I didn’t know what to expect of anything. And I never talked about my feelings – not to him or to my friends.”
I took a breath.
“But now, now I know it’s ok to talk about my feelings. In fact, it’s expected that you tell your partner how you feel about them – they want to hear it! I also know it’s ok to talk to your friends about your relationship, I mean I’ve seen Sex and The City, which taught me all I need to know about commiserating. Since then, it seems like all I can talk about on my blog, with my friends, is boys! Boys, boys, boys!”
BI nodded with comprehension.
“Given that I’ve come such a long way in terms of understanding relationships between men and women, you’d think that I’d be better at it. But guess what? In the last four years, my longest relationship lasted two months.
That is the greatest irony of all. When I was in high school, I didn’t plan to have a relationship at all. I didn’t take high school relationships seriously and would have been just fine if I had graduated without ever having a boyfriend. Instead, I ended up in a three-year relationship.
But when I went to university, I was totally ready for a relationship, and guess what? In the last four years, I haven’t had a single relationship where I would actually call the boy ‘my boyfriend.’”

BI chuckled and shook her head. “Maybe ignorance is bliss after all. Once you knew what to expect, those expectations may have actually been a barrier to you falling for someone.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s why first loves seem so perfect – because they’re easy. We’re all clueless with our first love, and it’s a clean slate. Our expectations only grow from there.

But my own statistics still left me baffled. “Four years. Hundreds of boys on campus. I mean, you’d think I could find one genuine love interest, right? Even if my expectations have changed, what are the odds that I would not like a single person in four years of university?”

For that, BI had no answer.

Friday night. DG and I are sitting across from each other in a booth at a hot new strip-club-turned-dance-club, the It spot of the moment. I’m swirling a glass of wine and she’s nursing a vodka tonic. Everything is awash in a crimson red. The place is nearly empty, the crowd has yet to arrive. The stripper pole looks both enticing and intimidating next to the empty dance floor.

…

“I got a feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night”
DG and I are now in the middle of the dance floor, shaking and moving to the rhythm. We both have huge grins on our faces, drunk and happy. We sing along to this familiar song, knowing they’ll ring true tonight.

…

She grabs my hand and pulls me up to the platform. We dance around each other, as if we’re the only two people in the club. I’m oblivious to the two guys coming up behind us. Before I know it, she’s pulling me off the platform and pushing through the crowd. I look behind me just before we disappear into the crowd, the guys are looking embarrassed and their friends are laughing.

…

We laugh as we run away, returning to our spot in the middle of the dance floor. After a few minutes, I see a guy trying to dance with her from behind, so I put my hand around her shoulders and spin her to a different position. She sees a guy coming up behind me, and spins me away as well. Both guys leave feeling confused and rejected. We laugh. Tonight was going to be about just us girls.

…

On the way out of the bathroom, we run into a friend of mine, who had just arrived with some other people I partied with in first-year. We start dancing with them, our dancing duo now turning into a trio. The third girl, MG, spots a recently vacated stripper pole and points to it. I shrug my shoulders and we get up there, knowing that the rest of our friends are watching us. But when Lady Gaga comes on, all is forgotten and we just dance.

“I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance.”

…

The three of us are dancing in the middle of a circle that our friends have formed around us. I feel a hand on my waist and a solid chest against my back, the faint smell of aftershave hovering above me. I throw my arm up in the middle of the song and accidentally hit the side of his head. “Sorry!” I gasp, as I turn around. I look up to see a tall Asian boy, one of MG‘s friends that I’d met once. I remember him to be good-looking, but tonight he is smoldering hot. DG winks at me and moves away with MG. TDH places his hand firmly on the small of my back and I melt into him, our bodies moving in sync to the music.

…

DG and I are waiting in-line at coat check, our faces gleaming with perspiration.
“Tonight was awesome,” DG says emphatically, her eyes shining. “This was the best clubbing night I’ve ever had!”
My expression mirrors hers as I nod. “Yeah, this was amazing. Girls night out at its best. I danced so much!”
“And did you see who you were dancing with? For an Asian guy, he was hot!”
I giggle, “I know, I couldn’t believe it when I turned around and it was him. Especially because we were dancing with all our friends, I didn’t think he would single me out.”
“That’s what makes it even hotter,” DG says with a twinkle in her eye.
As we exit the club, I say to no one in particular, “Tonight was a good, good night.” And I mean it.

During dinner with my high school friends over the holidays, an interesting question popped up.

“SG, will you be a surrogate for me?” OBF asked me.
Somehow, we had started talking about surrogacy, which is defined by Wikipedia as: “a method of reproduction whereby a woman agrees to become pregnant and deliver a child for a contracted party.” It is important to note, however, that (at least in Canada), it is against the law to compensate (in monetary or other terms) a surrogate mother. That is to reduce potential abuse of someone offering a large sum of money for someone else to be a surrogate. So, in Canada, you would have to volunteer to be a surrogate without receiving anything in return. My friends were debating whether that was fair, given that you would have to be either incredibly nice or incredibly empathetic or both to volunteer to carry someone’s baby for nine months and risk complications related to pregnancy and giving birth.

I was not actively participating in this discussion when OBF suddenly turned to me and asked, “If MS and I can’t conceive, would you be willing to be our surrogate?”

I spat out my drink and laughed. Then, when I realized she was asking in earnest, I practically shouted, “Um, NO! I don’t even want to carry my own baby, why would I want to carry someone else’s?!”
Her eyes widened. There was suddenly silence around the table as everyone’s face matched hers. Wait, did I say something wrong? Did they honestly think I was going to say, “Yes! Please let me be your baby incubator!”?

“Really?” She asked disbelieving, as if I would change my mind on second thought. “If there was something wrong with my uterus, you wouldn’t have my baby?” Her eyes were so wide I thought they were going to pop out of their sockets.
“Well…” I chuckled awkwardly, “I hope it doesn’t come to that. I mean, I hope you and MS are both healthy and fertile.” Then I added, “If you want to be.”
Still, no one said a word.
I looked around the table. If wanting a baby and being physically equipped to have one was the equation for happiness in their mind, I didn’t want to leave anyone out. So I extended my wish to everyone as an afterthought, “I hope you’re all fertile, if you want to be.”

It was awkward. Oh, it was awkward.

Luckily, someone started to chuckle and relieved me of the spotlight.

But seriously, pregnancy? Not on my list of things I have to experience in life, thankyouverymuch. Even if I wanted a baby, I would probably adopt. So why in the world would I volunteer to be someone else’s baby incubator, even if the couple in question were my oldest friends? There are a lot of things I am willing to do for my friends – hold their hair up when they’re throwing up, go along with their crazy plans to seduce an older/married/otherwise unavailable man, make comfort food for them when they’re sad, and even go skydiving if that’s what it takes to cheer them up – but I will not have their baby, no sirree.

What are your thoughts on surrogacy? Would you have your best friend’s baby if she asked you to?

Last night was epic. Seriously, it was one of those nights that I will always look back on fondly and say, “Remember that time when…”
As a result of last night, that sentence can end in one of the following ways:

• Remember that time when… I snuck into a hotel, into their men’s staff change room (and shower room), looking for a mini bottle of shampoo?
• Remember that time when… we got a mango?
• Remember that time when… I asked a stranger to text me the phrase “wo shi yi ge long xia” (I am a lobster, in pinyin Chinese).
• Remember that time when… we broke into a closed salon to take a picture of their Engrish sign?
• Remember that time when… we went looking for a BMW 7 series?

So late last night, I met up with MFL, AHB, and EN at a popular bubble tea cafe¹ This place was packed, as if all the Asians in the city had come out that night. It took me forever to find a parking spot. Unsurprisingly, the lot was filled with a lot of high-end Japanese and European cars. We Asians love showing off our cars, and this was apparently the place to be seen with one.
After bubble tea, we had trouble deciding what to do next, as usual. After discussing for nearly an hour, someone came up with a brilliant idea. “Let’s do a scavenger hunt! In our cars!” The idea snowballed. Soon, we had split into two teams of two and were off.
I was with AHB, driving a BMW X5, unsurprisingly. We had 15 minutes to do each challenge (which is not a lot of time when we’re driving and the roaming area is unlimited), and we were to call the other team as soon as we had completed a challenge. The losing team got to decide the next challenge.

That was how, in the middle of the night, I found myself running into Asian restaurants, asking for a mango.
We finally spotted a juice shop in one of the plazas and ran in, only to find the other team had beat us there. The lady behind the counter looked utterly confused as we tried to explain to her, while interrupting the other team, that we were playing a game and that she needed to give us a mango, and not to the other guys. Finally, she sold us a mango for $2.

For another challenge, we had to try to get a stranger to text us the phrase “Wo shi yi ge long xia” (I am a lobster). I ran into the bubble tea cafe we were at earlier, spotted a guy with a group of friends, quickly explained that we were playing a scavenger hunt and could he text me a phrase? He, and his friends, looked at me like I was crazy, but at least they were slightly more amused than the juice lady. With relief, I saw that he had pulled out his phone and was starting to text. He sent me the message in Cantonese, but it was good enough. Later, MFL said I had a natural advantage with that challenge, being a girl. I guess he was right.

AHB and I also had to sneak into a hotel to look for a mini bottle of shampoo. We lost that challenge though, the other team went to a convenient store and found a mini bottle of shampoo tied to a big bottle of shampoo.

Photographic evidence from last night:

At the end of the night, we decided this was an awesome idea and we should do it again with more people and more cars. However, there is the possibility that we won’t all be together in The City at the same time (ever again, gasp), so we decided that we could turn this into a larger scale worldwide scavenger hunt. For example, we’d each come up with five challenges and post them online to compile a full list. They would have to be challenges we could do anywhere in the world² – for example, it couldn’t be take a picture in a rainforest, because not everyone will have access to a rainforest, but it could be take a picture with a family of eight (although this will be more likely in some places of the world, but it’s a given that any given challenge will afford advantages to people in a different parts of the world). We would then have one year to try to complete as many on the list as possible, posting photographic evidence each time we’re done. And the prize for winning? We would have to meet up in a location of the winner’s choosing.

All in all, it was a very memorable night. However, coming home at 2am with a mango was tricky to explain to my parents…

1. Asians don’t go to bars in the middle of the night, we go to bubble tea cafes. [↩]
2. After graduation, I will be in Singapore, or wherever I am for consulting, AHB will probably be in Hong Kong, EN will be in Toronto, and MFL will be somewhere in the U.S. (wherever he gets in for medical school). [↩]

I decided last week that I wanted to go to Europe as my graduation trip. And even though the trip is nearly four months away, I am so over-the-top in-your-face way too excited. If you’ve talked to me recently (or seen my Twitter), you’d think that I was leaving tomorrow.
I wish.

Anyway, my friends have been very supportive of my excitement (maybe they just haven’t gotten tired of me going on and on yet). I was shopping with a girl friend who I haven’t seen in literally two years, and when I started rambling about this Europe trip, she pulled out a few euros from her purse and gave them to me. I, clueless that I was, didn’t even know they were Euros.
“Here, for your trip,” she said, handing them to me.
“What are these? Are these like arcade game tokens?” I pulled out a game token for comparison¹.
“What? No! These are euros!”
“Oh. Right. Of course. I knew that.”

And then last night, when I went out to dinner with some of the friends that are going on exchange (you know, the ones whose couches I will be crashing on when I go), they gave me some budgeting advice.
“When I went to Europe, I ended up spending a lot less on food than I thought,” one of my friends said. “For example, when I was in Paris for four days, all I ate was a baguette, some pickles, and a bottle of wine.”
I chewed on my rigatoni, considering this.

“Ohhhh,” I said, suddenly understanding, “So you replace food with wine, and you get so drunk you forget you’re hungry. Is that the idea?”
They stared at me incredulously and then burst into laughter. Was that not the idea?

My friend took a bite of her beef tenderloin, which looked a lot like salami. “Of course, I’m not a foodie like you, I don’t go out to nice places when I travel. I imagine you will be taking advantage of some of the ‘culinary sights’ on this trip?” She said, when they had finished laughing.
“Well, I don’t eat out that much when I travel either,” I admitted, thinking of my trip to California when I went to the grocery store on my first day in San Francisco, and lived off baby carrots, apples, bananas, and cereal for a week.
“But in Europe,” another friend piped up, “Oh in Europe, some of these places take their food very seriously.” She twirled a forkful of capellini, and after a thoughtful pause, she added, “It’s more like an art to them.”

I groaned in pretend ecstasy. “In that case, I may have to be a little looser with my food budget,” I said, taking a sip of merlot and looking over at my friend’s chicken breast with envy.

For the last 48 hours, other than food, my head has been filled with Europe. I have already planned out a good portion of my trip, for cities that I am definitely visiting: Prague, Vienna, Venice, and Florence. I have put my itinerary up here, although it is still a work in progress. Most of it is based on Internet research, so I will be waiting for feedback from Real Live People who have been there, or my friends who are going to be there over the next few months, before I finalize the itinerary. Or maybe I won’t finalize it, and just let myself travel a bit more spontaneously. After all, that’s what Euro trips are supposed to be about right? Spontaneity, recklessness, embracing flaunting the fact that we are young and alive. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt for me to stop acting like a 30-year-old and start acting my age.

1. Don’t ask me why I was carrying around arcade tokens. I had some left over from last time I went out with friends and we played arcade games while waiting for our movie to start. [↩]