Personal

  • Starting Week Four

    Tomorrow morning marks the start of my fourth week of full-time employment. After nearly a year of freelancing, I’m extremely happy with how the new job is developing. Since I had done some work for the company in the tailing months of the old year, I already knew some of the people and projects I am working with.

    At the same time, they haven’t been shy about adding more responsibilities to my plate, including three major clients! As my mentor explained when we discussed the company’s view on work-life balance: over the long term, it is definitely a marathon and you need to pace yourself. But for the first six to twelve months, you had better sprint.

    That’s the case with all new jobs, right? Work hard to prove yourself and compensate for your learning curve.

    This past week the CEO sat down with me to lay out her vision of where I will be in the next two years as well as what she expects from me over my first ninety days. She’s one of the most respected leaders of her field, HR development and executive coaching, so it was exciting to hear that she has some very specific ideas about how I will fit into the company’s strategy.

    Of course, when you are hearing this directly from the CEO, it creates a pretty high bar over which to jump!

    All things considered, though, I’m having a blast. The experience reinforces for me that I stayed in my old job a few years too long and was stagnating rather than growing. I’m thankful, really, that they decided to give me the ultimatum of either moving back to the US or being let go. It was a decision that was long overdue.

    The only downside? Now that I’m working so much, my time for blogging is diminished. I’m committed to doing it as often as possible, though, so stay tuned.

     

  • Kiki the One Day Dog

    “I have something important I want to talk to you about,” Tawn said with a look of seriousness. “I think we should get a dog.” Trying to be a more effective communicator than usual, I decided to listen instead of immediately listing the dozens of reasons why getting a dog was a bad idea. So I settled back into the couch and tried very hard to have an open mind.

    photo 3

    The end result of the discussion was that we ended up getting a dog. Despite my misgivings – we live in a no-pets condo, and a small one at that; our schedules don’t allow much time for a dog; while I love dogs I don’t want to be responsible for one – I told Tawn that if he could address the concerns that I felt, we could get a dog.

    A week later, Tawn drove to a breeder across the river to pick up an 8-month old King Charles Cavalier. She had just been flown in from another breeder in Malaysia the night before and Tawn had been talking to the Thai breeder for a few weeks before asking me if we could get a dog.

    photo 1

    I arrived home in the middle of the afternoon to find them in the bathroom: a sad, soaked pup shivering on the marble floor as Tawn tried to blow dry her hair. Even though she had never met me, she readily jumped into the relative safety of my arms. Her wet, floppy ears quickly soaked my shirt sleeves.

    photo 2

    We sat on the patio for the next hour or so, the ceiling fan stirring a gentle breeze as I held the dog, whom we named Kiki, in a towel and tried to dry her fur. Her shaking stopped and she would doze for short intervals but quickly awoke at any movement or sound.

    After a trip to the local pet store to buy some supplies for Kiki, Tawn had to head out for an event. I had some cooking to do in preparation for a dinner the next day. Kiki sat in her basket for a while and then in her kennel, watching me as I cooked. Even though she could see me, she would frequently bark, calling for my attention.

    I would let her out and try to keep an eye on her as I cooked. Three times there were accidents on our carpet. Not being experienced caring for dogs, I quickly Googled for advice and tried to respond to the accidents without anger, instead carrying her to some newspapers on the patio whenever I though she might need to go.

    photo 4

    Tawn returned home, excited at the prospect of a dog waiting for him. She still seemed a little timid, afraid perhaps that he would whip out the hair dryer once again. We put her in the kennel several times, leaving the room for  an increasing length of time. She would yip and yelp quite quickly and we were worried that the neighbors would be disturbed by the noise.

    Finally, when it was time for bed, I decided we should take some additional online advice: to help puppies adjust, place their kennel in the bedroom at night so they can sense that you are nearby. This seemed a reasonable step but about once every hour or so, Kiki would wake up and call for us. Finally, after the third time, Tawn took the kennel into the living room and stayed with her while I fell back asleep.

    photo 5

    In the morning, I found him lying on the couch with Kiki in a basket nearby. With a voice filled with regret, Tawn told me that he had spent the night up with her. While doing so, he had evaluated his decision and said that he had probably miscalculated how much time and energy it would take to care for a new dog. He proposed that we call the breeder and return Kiki.

    Again trying to be a good communicator, I listened, acknowledged his points, and let him know that I would support him either way. If he wanted to keep Kiki, we would find a way to make it work. If he wanted to return her, I would understand that, too.

    In the end, we put Kiki in her basket and drove back to the breeder’s that morning. Kiki was subdued, probably from a combination of exhaustion and anxiety. Handing her back to the maid at the breeder’s house, I couldn’t hold back my tears.

    The next day, the breeder posted a picture of Kiki (whose real name is something fancy like Lady Penelope) sleeping peacefully with her sister, along with a comment about how happy she seemed to be to be back at home. That helped reassure Tawn that we had made the right decision.

    Looking back, I think it would have been possible to make Kiki a part of our lives. It would have taken a lot of work over several weeks, but it could have been done. But I also think that we made the best decision, because a dog (especially a lap dog) really requires time and attention. It isn’t fair to not be prepared to give them what they need to thrive.

     

  • Back

    It has been over a month since I last posted. No good excuse for my absence. Just a combination of being very busy with many things and also finding that ever since the announcement of the transition to Xanga 2.0, the community that made blogging here such a pleasure has largely eroded. It becomes a vicious cycle, of course, since blogging less and spending less time reading and commenting on others’ blogs only erodes the community further.

    A friend who pitched in $50 to help keep Xanga alive, just because he likes reading my blog, asked about my absence. I guess I do owe it to him to keep blogging, don’t it? Plus, I despite my frequent activity on Instagram and Facebook, those platforms don’t lend themselves to longer-form writing. I need to exercise the literary part of my brain more often, so I choose to increase the frequency of my blogging.

    There is a lot that has been going on the past few weeks. For starters, after being laid off in February from my job of 13 years, I finally secured a job offer. The new job, which I’ll talk about more in a future post, begins in January so I still have more than a month to fill before then. Still, it is a relief to know that a regular paycheck will soon be coming. Although I’ve enjoyed the flexibility of freelance, it isn’t the best decision for me right now, financially.

    There are a lot of other things that have been happened, too. I’ll share more in the next few days as I ease back into blogging. Don’t know if anyone is left out there, but if you are, I’m back!

     

  • The Festival Endeth

    So after eight very intense days of film festival operations, it is over.  Just as a town in the aftermath of a tornado, my mind is a scattered mess.  It was a very fun ride, though.  Over lunch the day after with a former festival colleague, I came to the conclusion that something that I’m experiencing less of in Bangkok than I did here in the States is intellectual stimulation.

    Through a combination of schedules and circumstances and just getting settled in to life there, Tawn and I don’t have a lot of people around us who are interested in things like films, theatre, books, lectures, travel, etc.  There are also very few people around us who are engaged in the arts, nonprofit organizations, or other causes that are driven by passions and convictions.  These few weeks here in SF reminded me of the sense of engagement and vitality that is largely absent in our lives right now.

    Tawn and I have talked about this before and have considered ways to build more of this into our life.  Of course between full time jobs, studying, yoga, and visiting Tawn’s parents, I’m not sure where exactly the time comes from.  But as I leave San Francisco, while I do know that I’m glad I don’t live here anymore, I also know that there’s work to do to further develop my life in Khrungthep from being just a place I live with my husband to a fertile field where I can grow as a person at all levels.

    Too deep…

     

  • Colma: The Musical

    By some yard sticks (meter sticks – need to transition from imperial to metric) Tuesday night’s film festival operations were not incredibly busy.  But by other measurements, the day was really packed.

    My boss, Kim, was in town with her cousin Bethany.  So I met up with them for lunch at Cha Cha Cha.  It was really nice to visit with Kim and it was good to just have two hours of calm in the midst of a week of insanity.  I had my camera with me but I didn’t take any pictures.  How lame is that?

    Of the eight shows Tuesday night, only two were sold out.  But both were the back-to-back 700 seat auditoriums and the first show started 10 minutes late and Q&A ran long afterwards.  So we had 400+ people lined up in the hallways outside of the auditorium.  For those of you who’ve been to the Kabuki, you know how small that space is.  For those of you who don’t, it’s a hallways about 150 feet long by 20 feet wide.  And about 300 people had to pass through that area to get to the two auditoriums at the far end of that hall.  Upstairs we have a 80 x 20 foot space where about 200 of the people queued up for the balcony.  Madness.

    No comparison to tonight, where of the eight shows, five are sold out including both the large house shows.

    But the highlight of the night was the world premier of Colma: The Musical (film by Richard Wong and music, lyrics and story by H.P. Mendoza).  For those who don’t know the Bay Area, Colma is a small town of 1100 between the City and the airport.  It is home to the cemeteries where San Francisco’s dead are buried.  There isn’t much else there except the Serramonte Mall, two Targets (yes, two!), and recently an In-N-Out Burger opened next door to a Krispy Kreme donuts.

    The story, mostly plagiarized from their website:

    “New York’s got New Jersey, San Francisco’s got the place where Colma stays.” Three friends, fresh out of high school, in the small San Francisco suburb of Colma, where the dead outnumber the living 1,000 to 1, tackle the age old question that has plagued humanity: “Now what?”

    Billy is a young actor with big dreams. But there is nothing big about Colma. He is faced with the choice between the easy: being complacent and ending up in a dead end job; or the selfish: going after his dreams regardless of how it affects the people who care about him.

    Rodel can be the life of the party – if he feels like it. But at home, with his brother in prison, he carries the pressure of being the “good” kid in his family. Coupled with the loss of his mother, Rodel finds his already waning relationship with his father further strained by a secret he desperately keeps from him.

    Maribel basks in her youth and embraces its carefree lifestyle. Turning 19, she begins to realize that youth, like everything else, is temporary, and starts to question whether being young is based on one’s age, attitude or actions.

    Together, they unwittingly begin the lifelong process of self-discovery and self-reliance – But at what expense?

    The thing that really steals the show is the music.  CDs were available for sale after the show and 18 hours later, the grooves in the disc are noticeably deeper as I’ve been listening and re-listening to the tracks.  Many of the songs are highly infectious.  Here are some examples of the catchy lyrics:

     

    Colma Stays

    “London’s got a bustling scene

    And Amsterdam’s different standards of obscene

    Paris got the Louvre and Eiffel Tower to mark it’s land

    While Colma stays, we finally got an In-N-Out Burger

    Next to a Krispy Kreme”

    Goodbye, Stupid

    “The ancients say that Cupid shot his arrows through the air

    Indiscriminately, just shooting arrows without a care

    If I saw an infant with wings just randomly dealing death about

    I’d kick that flying baby’s arse and then I’d tear his wings out

    “Oh, goodbye, Cupid we bid farewell to you

    We’ve made up our minds, there’s nothing you can do

    No more tears, no more games, we’re through with it all, ta-ta!

    No battles of sexes! (We’re through with our ex’s!)

    So, goodbye, STUPID, au revoir!”

    It was really fantastic in the style of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  I don’t know if Richard and HP will find a distributor, but hope they will.  With some further development I think this could be a really successful stage musical.

    A lot of the success of the Festival can be attributed to the great volunteers.  Literally hundreds of people give their time and in theatre operations we have a special group of about a dozen volunteers who work as our House Managers.  They actually have their radios and headsets on, coordinating the start of each show, ensuring the audience is seated, guests are located, introductions are made, Q&A sessions are timely, etc.  It would be difficult to run the Festival without them.

     

    Paul, Mabel, and Serena are three of those House Managers.  They’ve all volunteered for several years now and last night after the last show we went up to the Colma: The Musical after-party where they made silly faces for the camera.

     

    Festival Interns showing their skill at Latin dancing:

     

     

    I miss Tawn.  Still eleven days to go before I’m home in Bangkok.