A Canadian visitor just said that I was her “Chinese [tradition and culture] walking encyclopedia” and that I was a “know-all”, as a result of us spending time together for close to 3 weeks. Which I believe is a compliment :D

Because, you know, being a “know-it-all” isn’t a very nice label since it is used on people who thought they knew a lot of things but they actually didn’t, LOL.

One of the funnest part in having/hosting foreign visitors is that you get to introduce your country to them. You get to tell them that the Muslims pray 5 times daily, you get to tell them that a Muslim man can marry four wives if he was able to support all of them and their kids, you get to tell them that Chinese people usually do not sleep with their legs facing the door because that’s how dead people are positioned, you get to tell them that the Petronas Twin Towers are still the highest TWIN towers in the world, you get to tell them what “summer” is like all year round, and you get to tell them all the beliefs behind the celebrations of the Dragonboat Festival, the Mooncake Festival, Thaipusam and what-have-yous.

Image credit: Ice kacang by Seet Ying.

On the other hand, the most challenging part, I have come to realize, is in describing certain things to them. For example, I can describe “ice kacang” as shaved ice topped with several condiments such as red beans, milk, canned corn and atapchee, the flesh from the young seeds of the mangrove plant Nypa fruticans. But how do you describe “cendol”? What about “roti canai” or “apam” or “nasi lemak” or “kuih bakar” or “chee cheong fun” or “wan ton mee”?

I used to upload quite a number of photos into my Flickr account whenever I return from a vacation or field trip or just about whenever I felt like it. In fact, I have a Flickr PRO account, which allows me to upload however many photos I’d like to upload and have them all visible in my photostream.

But then, somebody in a government department used one of my turtle pictures without giving me, the photographer, any credit. And that prompted me to change the permission level on most of my photos.

You may say that it was only a picture and that wasn’t a big deal. But if you gave it a little more thought, you would see the rationale behind the existence of the creative common licenses. If you wrote an article and published it on your blog, and I copied and pasted it on my blog, you would call that plagiarism. So why would using my photos be any different?

But anyway, I thought I should not live my life getting worried over this and that all the time. So I have kind of decided to resume my photo-uploading ritual, LOL. Moreover, I guess, if somebody really wanted to steal any photos, there were 1,001 ways in which he could do it.

I now have more than 2,300 photos in my photostream, but to view them all, you will have to be my friend (yeah, this is an attempt to make more friends) :D

The best thing about my job or whatever I am doing is that whenever things get confusing and sarcastic and depressed in the office, I have somewhere else to go to.

A place that I have come to like going to throughout my days as a grad student. A place that nobody goes to on normal days because of the unusually hot weather that we have. A place where I don’t have to see people getting themselves stressed up. A place where I don’t have to worry about being stressed up. A place where I can think. And most importantly, a place where I can breathe.

I am glad I have found such a place in my working life, a place where I can seek solace during the thunderstorm. And I hope you have found yours too :D