I wish to spend the rest of my days reading and being surrounded by books all the time. Imagine that, your job is to be surrounded by books.
Because right now I want to quit my job because of the changes to our contracts that they would want to implement.
There’s an ad from my university, from my college, in the department that where I came from, which says they have a tenure track faculty position. I know I fit very well but it would kill me. It would slash my income by half or more, I would be checking papers (the most detestable thing), and I won’t be able to practice journalism anymore.
I know I’m just considering this because it is a knee-jerk reaction to the email I got from our head of APAC this morning.
Angry is an understatement.
Weekend is ruined. I need to go hiking today.
And this is what I meant when I say you will feel when you are the “wrong kind of Asian.”
I’ve had several of those. Sometimes, I want to punch them in the face and make their noses bleed but my mother raised me to be a civilized human being so that always wins over my more Neanderthal tendencies.
Take a hike, I said. Hike I did.
It took me an hour to climb up and make a loop in the upper campus and walk down to the lower campus. About 5,000+ steps and 200+ calories burned.
I started late, at exactly 4 pm so it was a bit dangerous for me to go deeper into the forest through the rougher trail. Dangerous in the sense there could be malaria/dengue-bearing mosquitos or poisonous snakes lurking in there.
When I was going up, I passed by the older faculty housing, many are empty and in various states of disrepair.
A long time ago when my parents were lowly instructors, they applied for faculty housing but the slots were full. They were at the end of a long list. So my parents resorted to extreme saving to build a small house far from the university campus. It was a bungalow about 100 sqm. It initially had two rooms but father had it extended to build a room for my brother. The neighborhood was ghetto but we had a very good childhood there.
Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t get the faculty housing because the upkeep of the yard was tedious. If you don’t cut the grass for a week, it will become a jungle fast. Plus snakes. Lots of snakes. Public transport was also a pain because only a few jeeps ply that road. Students that lived in the dorms in the upper campus had to hike up or down to attend classes in the main campus.
I imagine it’s hard to have a proper garden in the middle of a rainforest. I had been a regular in one of the houses like these because my piano teacher lived in one. For years, I had to go up the upper campus on Saturdays for my lessons either via jeep, if I’m lucky, or rode at the back of my father’s large motorbike, or I hiked. After piano lessons, I would knock on the door of my elementary best friend’s front door whose house was just further down the road.
Anyway, after my upper campus hike, I walked around the park and walked to the usual road I took for my regular afternoon walks.
In total I walked more than 8 km for less than 2 hrs at a leisurely pace.
Quite satisfied with my exercise today. My head cleared up a bit and I am not going to quit my job yet.