What I learnt about marriage

 There are many assumptions we make about the world or take for granted until we realise otherwise. Growing up, I engaged in dinner conversations, eavesdropped or just openly listened-in and sometimes participated in numerous casual conversations and similar communication models throughout the days. These conversations varied in all forms, commentary, transactional, open-ended, unfiltered, biased, unbiased … etc. Never did I once classify parents’ marriage to be of the gold standard or was inspired enough to want it for myself.

 

For me, that was what a marriage was. To be with someone you trust enough to critique their thought processes, to be with someone you respect enough to brain storm ideas that may or may not go anywhere, to be with someone who admires you enough to be eager to be hear your perspectives, to be with someone who shares your humour and fascination of the mundane events in a day. Of course, there were disagreements. To make up for it, there were compromises and growth. Overall, it has been the greatest marriage that I ever had the privilege to witness. Little was I made aware that I would forever be comparing my own “marriage” to this by default.

 

I have heard of Ester Perel, I do not expect my partner to fulfil the role of an entire village. That would be unreasonable and impossible for any one person. But I have seen my parents’ marriage and know for a fact that it is possible and attainable without feeling like work. Have I been exposed to the gold standard and setup for failure? Or should this be my relationship goal? Would it not be great if I could role model this to my offspring, so they do not settle for less? Or do I want this standard - definition of marriage - to be forever lost with me?

 

As I reflect on how I got here, I realised that much of the focus in our world has been focused on searching for the right partner - qualities and characteristics that resembles a checklist. Nothing wrong with a checklist, if it was thoroughly thought through. But how do you know what you don’t know? At what point do you assume humans differs from each other? The very idea of a checklist for a partner centers around the Partner, yet the end goal is a way of life. A wiser way of approaching the problem would be to focus on the relationship. To think about: what kind of relationship I want? What do I hope to get out of the relationship?

 

The idea of speed dating, again, focuses on the person. Maybe times have changed, relationships are no longer as transactional as they used to be. If the aim of a contemporary relationship is happiness, the focus should be on organic interactions. 

Understanding recession and inflation

 Recession is the word that is often associated with economic downturn, and everyone thinks they know recession, but do they? Sure, there are certain historical recession that we can all agree on like to the 1920s great depression, the 1970s/1980s great inflation, the 2000s dot com bubble, the 2008 global financial crisis… and more recently the 2020s COVID-19 supply chain breakdown. Wait, was that a recession? You see, how can it be black and white, if each country defines recession differently?

 

The US defines recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales”. In Australia, UK, and many other parts of the world, recession is when there is a negative GDP growth for two consecutive quarters. In China, an annual GDP growth of less than 8% can be considered as a recession.

 

Call it what you like, the greater question is what is social impact of a recession, and why do governments want to avoid it? The most prominent aspect of a recession is excessive unemployment. When unemployment rate is high, households struggle to make ends meet, thus they cut back on spending. When household cut back on spending, low-margin businesses struggle to stay open. Once businesses start to close, it further exacerbates unemployment rate, and economy falls into a vicious cycle.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that “recessions” are not limited to contractionary economies. Inflationary economies can also lead to recession. A growing economy should be inflationary, however if inflation become too overheated, money loses value. If prices of good and services significantly increase, consumers and businesses will see a fall in real income. As living standards drop, consumers demand drops. Businesses struggle, investments are cut back, jobs are reduced, and the economy rolls down the path of a contractionary market. 

 

This is why it is important for governments to intervene with monetary and/or fiscal stimuluses. Monetary stimuluses are exercised by the central bank with an aim to boost spending power. These measures often involve adjusting the interest rate and controlling the money supply in the economy. For instance, in a recessionary economy, the reserve bank might reduce interest rate and hand out cash, so consumers have more money to spend. In an inflationary economy, the reserve bank can restrict spending and incentivise savings.

              Fiscal stimuluses are government spendings and policies that strives to boost spending. For example, infrastructure spendings and tax cuts, so consumers have jobs and in turn money to spend. Tax cuts work similarly as it allows consumers to have more money to spend, but this is money already in the economy, not newly printed money. Fiscal stimuluses are generally funded by government bonds. If economy is experiencing high inflation, government can slow down spending and increase taxes.

 

 

 So here in April 2022, where is Australia heading? To answer where are we heading, we must answer where are we now. Currently, we are facing high inflationary times due to supply shortages and high employment rates, if managed well recession can be avoided.

 

Let’s apply what we know:

Tightening of monetary policies:

-          Increase interest rate

Tightening of fiscal policies:

-          Slow down fiscal spending

-          Increase tax

-          Other policies – increase jobs, immigration

Now, let’s examine if they will work?

-          Increase interest rate

Ø  Increasing interest too much will send economy into recession as proven by history and logic is self-explanatory.

Ø  Reasonable increase should minimise disposable spending, but what if people are already struggling to pay for the essentials, like petrol, shelter, and food?

o   How can we help lower-income households without impacting too much on inflation?

-          Slow down fiscal spending

Ø  Infrastructure and amenities spending on regional areas to help housing affordability.

o   This could boost inflation further in regional areas. Will this manage inflation in the cities?

Ø  Increase social housing to help low incomers

-          Increase tax

Ø  Tax cuts for small businesses has already been announced. This is help businesses survive after the COVID impact and keep up with the increasing wages. The policy is placed to avoid recession.

o   Will this increase inflation? Or does the befit outweighs the consequence.

Ø  Individual income tax for low and middle income earners have also been given up to $1,500 tax offset. This will only come a maximum of approximately $500 once off payment from tax return.

o   The counter-inflationary effectivity is to be questioned.

Ø  A reduction of 22 cents/L on petrol for 6 months to help living cost.

-          Increase jobs

Ø  Both labour and Liberal parties are promising to increase jobs, it hard to imagine the benefit if unemployment rate is already below the government ideal. What people was is an increase in real wages.

o   Increasing employment can increase wages, though the result is either higher inflation or small businesses closing.

-          Immigration

Ø  As much as immigration is dependent on Australian policies, it is also dependent on the state of the world. Both labour and liberal are favourable toward skilled labours for immigrants, though visa numbers remain at pre-COVID levels.

 

So, it seems that if we want to resolve inflation, only interest rate and immigration are helping, everything else will not be.

 

What would I do differently? Increase interest reasonably, increase immigration, stop creating new jobs, limit tax cuts to low-income earners and small businesses, create minimum infrastructure additions in regions.

 

It is worth noting that all these monetary and fiscal tools are targeted at consumers or the demand-side. We have no tools for the supply-push inflation.

A Greedy Sort of Ache

I looked him in the eyes, all I managed to say was “nothing”. “Nothing,” I repeated unconvincingly before I burst into tears.

“You can tell me if something is wrong,” he persisted, “we are still friends.”

He, who once told me that he couldn’t live without me, has just made me feel like a friend. It was I, who taught him with full confidence that life goes on, without a second thought that I would need him like this.

All I wanted in that moment was my place back. All those times, he would make me believe that I sat on the top of the world with a throne on my head and I had his undivided attention.

I didn’t want to tell him to come back when I had doubts, but it pains to know that time will tick us further apart.

He went on to tell me that he must have a child before he leaves this world. Once upon a time, he told that he didn’t care about anything else as long as I was happy. If it meant not having children, he was willing to accept.

I knew I have lost my place. There are other priorities in his life now. Every action there is a reaction. Even if we were to return to what we were, I have caused too much drama for us to have what we had.

Importance of breaking out from comfort zone

Generalisation is a human nature. Often in life it is somewhat convenient to categorise others and put them inside a box. But it becomes dangerous when you start categorising yourself, resulting to limitations in your own life experiences.

I never thought I would find myself in middle of a pole dancing workshop. That is not to say, I had anything against pole dancing. But you know... I had no special interest in pole dancing, why would I take time out of my week and fit pole dancing between work, family time, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, down time for myself, catching up with friends, exercising... (the list goes on)?

Yesterday, an awesome friend of my, N (single) invites me to share the celebration of her 27th birthday and her recent passion for pole dancing. Little did I know what I signed up to, I went expecting an end of semester performance by her pole dancing class. Rereading the invitation again would help in the future. When I showed up, my first hint was there are no seats for audiences. Still, I did not expect myself to be doing any dancing. For one, I am out of tune when I sing, if I dance I will be most definitely be out of rhythm. For two, I initially told Nikki that I would like to watch, and Nikki said watching is fine. See? There is no reason that I should be involved with dancing.

It was not long till I realised everyone who turned up is Nikki’s friend, and not part of her pole
dancing class. Some like me showed up expecting to watch, while other showed in gym wear ready for pole dancing. Due to the small number of people who came to dance, the teacher encouraged us all to pick a pick and dance along.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed watching the promiscuous side of everyone, and laughing at people when they make a fool of themselves. It was just nice to exercise and mentally loosen up. At the same time, the experience has bought to my attention the amount of muscle that I have neglecting in my everyday living.

 It got me thinking about all the different classes out there that I can be signing up to, and new people I can meet. Why have I not yet? Why is it that Nikki can make the time and I can’t?

Well, there is something I do not want to admit: when I am free, I spend time to my boyfriend. So do I spend too much time with Mr Boyfriend? Certainly not according to him, and I do not think so either. We only see each other on the weekends, and call in the evenings during the week. There is no standard for how much time one should spend with their significant other, therefore there is no such thing as too much or too less time that you spend together. But regardless how much time you spend together, it is still time. It is still time out of a lifetime, time out of a limited span of time.

 People in relationship will have less time to explore whether it is to a slight extent or enormous extent. It makes me wonder why I have not ever appreciated it when I was single. It seems that you need to have been in a relationship in order to know how to be single. You need to know where all the relationship constraints are, in order to take full advantage of all your single privileges.

Perhaps this is where the 80/20 rules comes in. The rule states that approximately 80% of the production comes from 20% of the activity. Maybe I only need to be a girlfriend 20% of the times. 80% of the time should be spent on me. Because there are so many things I want to expose myself to before I die. There is so much I have not seen, yet alone done in this whole wide world. I refuse to let my youth go just like that.

Since when MacDonalds' are allowed to open on Christmas?

It was Christmas Day. Generally, I spend the day at home with family, eat and entertain visitors. There would be nothing else to do because everywhere would be closed. However, this year a few friends and I have organised a barbeque lunch in the park. Knowing supermarket will be closed on Christmas, I made sure I went to the supermarket the day before – double checked and triple checked that I had everything I needed for the barbeque. For all I knew, only hospitals will open, and assuming anything else will be open would be a gamble.

As I have never really paid attention to which shops remained shop, I took particular awareness on the morning of Christmas Day. A tick next to petrol station, good to know I will not need to worry about petrol running low on Christmas in the future. I stared for a moment and thought if people can stock up on groceries, why can they not stock up on fuel? Can they not fill up their vehicle tanks to the full? But then, what if people were crossing considerable distance to be with their family on this day? Mentally, I approved for petrol stations to open on Christmas Day as I can see how it can be an essential service.

During our barbeque in the park, at the corner of my eye, I noticed someone holding onto a McDonald’s paper bag and McDonald’s drink. My jaws dropped. Wow. Since when in the space of history did a McDonald’s meal became a line of essential service?! That moment, I felt like McDonald’s has grown beyond just another fast food outlet. The yellow MacDonald’s ‘M’ on red background is so heavily embedded in Western culture that it has become a religion of its own. It is as if all this time, MacDonald’s had discretely built a world of its own without anyone noticing.

There I was on Christmas morning, eager to verify with the state on what I believed to be the essential services in modern day living. By lunch, I have handed over my enthusiasm to our capitalist society.

I saw her leaving the world before she did

Is a chair still a chair when all pieces are taken apart? If not, at what point does it stop being a chair?

From time to time, we find ourselves pausing to wonder: Where is that fine cut? Where do we draw the line?

I feel like I am witnessing a death as I watched her being spoon fed. Life is deteriorating from her motionless face. All that energy, stubbornness, and her sense of humour have gone. When life has been pushed to its bare minimum, all that is left is the tangible aspect of life. A bit like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in its perfect depicture of a dystopia, the sole purpose of life is to live for the sake of living - all individual qualities stripped.

“We are the dead”, said Winston, implying that life is not worth living if lived in such way.

Winston has a point. A human life is not to be justified simply via its capacity to maintain life. A plant life is to be justified by its capacity to maintain life – given environment allows. Human beings are a bit more complex, or perhaps more ‘snobby’. Humans are social creatures that regardless how anti-social one is, social interactions play a major part on individual health and community development. Human beings require emotional and cultural fulfillment. When life has been pushed to its barest minimum, there is only one emotional desire and that is to ease pain or discomfort. In terms of cultural fulfilment, all her/his past becomes insignificant to the present. Imagine being in the face of a beast in middle of nowhere, there is no other thought other than to ease oneself from the fear.

 On the other hand, we may be taking the simple pleasures in life for granted. This includes our cognitive ability to process information which is just as much of a human quality as emotions and cultural influences. From a post-modernist perspective, whose is it to say one’s life is not worth living other than the individual who's living it?

The fight that every patient go through

It was never clear to me why cancer patients are fighters and courageous survivors. . After all, it is beyond anyone’s hands. Is it not all up to fate?

Christmas Eve 2013, my grandma had her forth stroke. The next day, doctor pulled my parents aside and advised if there is no improvement in the next 24-48hrs, they will give up all medications – no drips, no anti-biotic, all her usual medications will be cut off. Then, what we feared happened. My grandma’s only defence was her own immune system, and the little food she is willing to eat. There she lied fulfilling the criteria to palliative care.

They said she is in pain and there is no quality to her life. The best thing for her will be to prioritise her immediate happiness, and cut off anything that is aimed at prolonging her life.

As much as I wanted to believe she is the exception to what doctors say and that she will recover before our eyes, it does not help when she actively refuses to eat. I am witnessing her energy level ceasing by the day. Does she know? Has she given up? Has she lost the patience? Has she lost the tolerance? Does she care anymore?

Suddenly the fight becomes clear to me. We can choose to fight or let go. It takes strength to have faith in your fate, to stand up to disbelief, and to be selfless before the ones you love.

If she has given up, I do not blame her. If she has lost patience, I understand her. If she is here to serve her immediate happiness, I respect her decision.

Changes

It was a week day evening last week; a friend asked me if my grandma’s situation has changed me at all. I usually love questions like that. Like a camera lens, one of my greatest joys in life is pulling events in and out of focus. Being able to analyse a situation from a personal perspective, then take a step back to observe the larger picture from a sociological standpoint, and then back to a subjective approach. (Yep, back and forth, just like that.) For a moment, I hesitated to answer her. For no other reason than I did not have an original response to launch into an exciting discussion.

“You never know what will happen in life,” I replied matter-of-factly in my monotonous tone. Somehow the conversation trailed off into how my dog died, relationships, friendships, work... and recently MICM’s purchase of Waterhouse rent roll, and our previous boss.

They were all changes beyond any one stakeholder’s control. Changes do not always happen for the better or for worse. Apples are to be compared to apples, not oranges. Changes just simply are, because nothing stays the same for forever.

She seemed surprised by my rather ‘cynical’ view. It was that point, I realised it is an interesting conversation we were having after all. It was for the first time in my life, I realised that what I took for granted as common sense is actually not a general knowledge. Perhaps a bit too controversial to be considered as general knowledge (just imagine what would happen to all those social values carried in a marriage certificate, families, commitment... etc.).

In my defence, I do not believe my view is cynical in any way. As a living being, change is inevitable. Way too often, change falls outside of our comfort zone. Instead of a negative view of change, people need to embrace change, learn to deal with change better. Changes may destroy our ideals, but they can be improvised to improve the present. If not, should tolerance and acceptance be part of our character to handle certain aspects of life.

She was ashamed of having a stroke

Too often we attend to places, face the world with fixed ideas in our heads.

Grandma was on a bed with heart rate fluctuating between 110/min to 150/min. She made sounds, but barely made a word. Her right side has been paralysed.

I knew she had a stroke before I arrived at the hospital. Whether she makes it or not, we can only leave it to fate. I accept the fact that she may not make it this time. I can only imagine her pain is not death itself (or is it?), but to be struggling before the ones she care for the most in life. Her face was expressionless, except for her eyes.

We both share an extreme form of stubbornness that gives no mercy once we have made our minds. Never ever, ever, ever should there be a day under the sun where we depend on someone else. There we were her pride has been diminished so much that it was visible to the eye. She did not want to be the reason we ran to the hospital for. She did not want to be a burden in our lives. Maybe it is a pain no one else will understand.

In the six days that went by, I smile like nothing is wrong. It breaks my heart to see her ashamed. It there anything I can do better? Should I take a day off work to sit next to her because I may never have the chance again? At what point in time, does one start acting on an assumption?

How I struggled between dream and reality

I had a dream. I was driving with no headlights. I wake up. In darkness, I remembered I was driving with no headlights last night. No, that was the dream. No, that was last night. No, it only happened once and it was in the dream. Wait, it was twice, it happened last night that was why I had the dream. I don’t know anymore – 5 min to alarm.

Sometimes, each day feels like a dream. Struggling to find what is real by questioning the present, and questioning the past. Dreaming becomes a part of reality, just as vice versa. They become an equivalent of each other.

I was once told reality is what you gather from your senses – see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. And if proven reality is otherwise, what does it matter if your senses are all you know? I loved ‘The Matrix’ so much, because it challenged the idea of reality. What do you trust, when you can’t trust yourself? How do you know what your senses are telling you is real? It could all be ‘Brain in a Vat’.

Luckily, not everyone need to know what reality is, as long as we can all live. Some accepts that life is full unknowns, others do not. Some need to live as far away from reality as possible in order to keep their sanity.

Often the daily decisions I makes each day, none of them seem real or hold any significant values. Until consequences hit, right there a focus is found, thus reality.