made the long-delayed trip to the doctor’s today. turns out that all the reflux-ing has resulted in swollen vocal chords and tightness around the throat area. and all these months, i thought i hadn’t warmed up my voice properly. i had probably aggravated things somewhat with my ignorance.

so, come tokyo, i will be making the return to my rabbit-food diet. not here, not yet, because there are still too many social obligations to fulfill, and i do not wish to sit through another meal sipping hot tea while the questions come – is that all you’re having?

i suppose i am grateful that i will still be able to sing, only perhaps not as well as i could have. but right now, the thought of having to live with this indefinitely seems rather surreal. a diet of leaves and soup brings cold comfort in winter – i don’t wish to be a self-fulfilling prophet, but am terribly afraid that it will be yet another discouraging and depressing half-year ahead. i wish i could take my own advice and live each day as it comes; i want to enjoy the opportunities i have been given… but the pessimist in me is winning this one. childish as it may sound, i do not want to return to tokyo and be alone again, staring at my measly meals and dingy walls.

i know it doesn’t have to be that way, but god help me – i can’t quite see another way right now.

so, on top of the return of gastric woes, i was struck down by one of those 24-hour fever bugs. i had been cowering under the blankets for the better part of the day, and finally awoke past 3am, nauseous, yet feeling sure that just one more second of sleep would kill me. i feel as if i must take a bath in a bucket of ice. i am burning from the inside out – head, throat, esophagus, stomach.

i daresay things wouldn’t be awful at all if i were in the pink of health. that this entire study-abroad thing would be nothing less than fun and excitement from morning till night; that i would be fiercely productive and be able to churn out papers and translations on command; that s would finally be wiped clean from the slate of my mind; that i would stop feeling this strange ambivalence toward singing… all, only if, if, i were literally as strong as a bull.

isn’t almost-30 a little too young to be hit by strange, unexplainable maladies? it is all very well to resolve not to whine, but being sick and alone and unsure of which doctor you should go to, can bring out the worst in a person. and i am hardly a good person to begin with, even under normal circumstances.

the irony about sick people is that, despite the innate need to talk it all out to anyone who would listen, there is, at the same time, fear of sympathy, of having people gush over you, of seeming to be like a weakling, of becoming one of those annoying walking dictionaries of symptoms.

and at times like these (most unfairly, i know) i cannot help but direct all my anger at s. anger at his non-presence, his inability to see beyond his own misery (but are we all like that?), his need that far overwhelms mine. my head pounds so furiously i wish i could throw a big, hard rock at him.

so, i comfort myself with pictures.

6 hours of singing is no small feat, and there’re still 9 more to clock tomorrow. despite all i had said previously about wanting to sing, and sing, and sing… it doesn’t feel right somehow, this… marathon style of rehearsing.

god, i’m tired.

i met up with a friend after rehearsal today for a long overdue chat and some cocktails, acid reflux be damned. a fellow singaporean who has been in japan as long as i have, she broke the news that she would be returning home next year for good. she is one of the few people in the world, and the only person here in tokyo, who share my interests for fine dining and girly fun like shopping and hair salons, coffee and chewy cookies at tully’s, and english fiction. among other things that we have in common. like college friends. like having followed much the same route of education. like worrying about ageing parents back home. like peers getting married left, right, and center. what will life be like in tokyo without her?

despite having fought negative thoughts and feelings for the past few months (and believing i had triumphed), i feel all at sea, once again. unanchored, frightened, and terribly tired. and wondering if the opportunity cost of getting yet another degree is, after all, too much for me.

allow me a moment of weakness and petulance – i want to go home, too.

…and the day of my first performance with this choir. we get all of five minutes to sing one piece at the tokyo choral festival (and even then, it takes three weekends or so to get through all the participating choirs). and truth be told, i am not quite in the mood to get all dressed up for one piece. very unprofessional, i know. but there you have it.

what i would really like to do (this being sunday and all) is to go for a lovely breakfast. continental. lots of eggs. sitting in a bright airy room with lots of windows and a view of sorts. clinking tableware. english-speaking, non-gushing company.

i can’t sing about the lamb of god when i have eggs on my mind.

the point of the title to this post is to lament my total lack thereof, rather than extol the virtues of stoicism.

the pain, acid, nausea, all of it, came rushing back this morning. my throat burns, my stomach burns, my oesophagus burns. i cannot down enough ice water in my desperate urgency to sooth the burning, if only for a while.

and here i thought i was making good progress with my ultra-disciplined diet. i might as well have had all the coffee i wanted for all the difference it made.

and as always, when the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan… all i can do is crawl into bed and hug myself. curse the chain-smoking neighbor. run the angel-devil movie in my mind (you know, the one where angel goes, oh you poor thing… and devil goes, this is all your own doing! your punishment for [insert random gastritis-inducing activity]…) stare at phone. shut phone. stare at phone. curse. loop all the above till sleep comes. mercy.

what they say about women being made strong enough to endure the pain of childbirth – i don’t know about that. i must have been made wrong, somehow.

the rain came down in sheets just as i stepped out of my room to get a cup of hot chocolate (or cocoa au lait, as it is elegantly labeled) from the vending machine at the lobby. i wish it would thunder as well, just to match my somewhat mutinous feelings right now.

the pain and reflux returned with a vengeance last night, for reasons i am not aware of, unless red peppers are also meant to be on the taboo list. i spent the night in bed, ravaged by pain and burping red peppers mixed with acid, and wallowing in self-pity. so much for a perfect day.

it all went on till this afternoon, and i had to plead off from choir rehearsal and a concert i had paid close to 40 bucks for. still, i must confess i wasn’t too sorry. these days, singing with others does not give me the same thrill that it used to, and it is such hard work dragging myself to all sorts of different parts of tokyo every sunday. i cannot quite put my finger on the reasons behind my lack of motivation – the music? the people? the money involved…?

losing something that used to be such a significant part of my life makes me feel rudderless. some days, i ache to feel that sense of satisfaction i get from simply warming up and being able to reach all the way to a high g; from getting a difficult interval right; from hearing how seemingly unrelated notes mesh together as if they were born to do so. singing in a choir, and singing alone at my voice class, used to make me so happy i did feel, literally, like i could burst.

these days, i cannot seem to feel the music with my heart anymore. i become frustrated, annoyed, dislike the way i sound, dislike the foreign sounds around me… there are many days when i croak out a sumimasen on the train and realize that i have not so much as uttered a word for days. it is so strange, this disconnection with sounds, with music, with myself.

i often say that i would hate to become one of those people to whom life is a vale of tears; who cannot stop whining; who is constantly depressed and seeking sympathy. but sometimes, when i stop to read through my blog entries, i see how dangerously close i hover to becoming just that, and jump back in alarm. i see that there is a lot more i could take into my own hands and i want to, i want to. i want to make so much more of my opportunities and the little talents i have. i want to pepper my days with tiny moments of pleasure; multiply those perfect days of mine exponentially. but why is it so much easier to slip into that rut of self-pity?

for days now, i have woken up with the sun at about 5 and worked non-stop at the computer till dinner time whereupon i collapse, eyeballs burning, onto the bed. yet, my mind and body, running on some kind of strange adrenaline, refuse to shut down properly at the end of the day – you know how computers running on windows tend to do have problems closing programmes, or start installing updates right when you really want them to just shut up and shut down? that is what my brain feels like these days. my sleep continues to be restless, and i think about coffee the way they talk about chickens and eggs – do i drink coffee because i do not get enough quality sleep and need to stay awake during the day, or do i not get enough quality rest because i drink too much coffee during the day?

i am a busy person.

but the truth is (i feel as if i need to clarify this because i do whine. a lot.) there is a certain enjoyment i derive from driving myself this way. i would much rather be frustrated doing research than not be frustrated doing anything else. and i suppose, to a certain extent, i prefer having my time filled to the utmost brim than sit around nervously, wondering if i have forgotten something because… well, because… how is it possible to actually be free? i whine endlessly about wanting to have time to read fiction and take long walks and drink red wine, but i cannot quite handle yet the guilt that comes with enjoying life; it is too soon, and i haven’t quite done enough to deserve any of that.

but that doesn’t make me quite a crazy masochist yet, i think. if i were, i would certainly not be what the japanese call my pace; i would probably be a series of nervous twitches and be far more efficient than i am now (and likely then, be able to sleep more while accomplishing more). and i certainly would not be blogging when i should be working. or getting up to clean the toilet even when i am this close to finishing a piece of work, only because i want to take a break and cleaning the room is the most time- efficient kind of break that i know of. for all my whining, i believe, deep inside, that i am a rather mentally and emotionally stable person who loses it only for about a week and a half every month (perhaps on full moon nights too, but i never really observed those patterns). it is a rather reassuring thought.

it is very strange (and also amazing and awe-inspiring, i suppose) that the most appropriate music pops into your mind and stays there to serve as a movie theme for whatever emotion you are going through at that point in time.

i have been pondering the analysis of some data the entire day, attempting to sketch out a plan for putting it through various software to produce meaningful, wow-inspiring numbers and graphs. i must have come up with (and abandoned) 974 different plans and combinations of variables, dropping much imaginary hair and producing a very real headache in the process. for the past two hours now, this particularly ominous phrase in the requiem that i am currently rehearsing has been running through my mind – i can hear those chords being drummed out on a pipe organ in some dark, gothic church, urging me to repent of my folly and return to where i can be a happy fool again. urgh.

it does not help that the weather is being most indecisive today. a cold wind has been blowing away merrily since morning, but every time it falls – even for a single minute – the humidity becomes unbearable. sitting here staring at my data, i must have taken my jacket off and put it back on 974 times as well. the back of my knees feel sticky while my feet are like blocks of ice. what would i give for sunny singapore now, where all you have to do when it gets nasty is to turn on the air-conditioning? none of this indecisiveness for us, no.

i fell off my study chair this afternoon in a moment of excited confusion over nothing. this old swivel chair was possibly the height of comfort twenty years ago, but today, with the sponge padding peeking out from the sides of the chair, this rickety thing is slowly but surely becoming the bane of my existence. i come close to falling off it at least once every day; this afternoon, the curse struck, and i fell. hard. every time i look at my scraped elbows, i have to stifle a sigh commingled with amusement at myself. at my room. at my data.

have you noticed how things that seem highly uncorrelated under normal circumstances can somehow, when you experience something out of the ordinary, link up to form the picture of your life? right now, my life is a patchwork of tragic music, empty mugs on the desk, several pages of squiggly lines and writings that i like to think of as ”mindmaps,” an old chair, and a nondescript girl with thick glasses and scraped elbows… who, once upon a time, thought that she would be the proud mother of three at age thirty.

what a relief, really, that i am not. because it means that i can now eat an orange, and go calmly and sensibly to bed to dream about professors throwing papers at me.

i am slightly annoyed this morning, with much of it directed at myself for having agreed to take up a certain translation assignment. not because of the translation itself, but because i have to work with two others on the assignment. did i ever mention this? i abhor group work.

back in school, when we had a choice of doing something in a group or by ourselves, i would always take the lonely way out. it seemed odd to many people that i much preferred working on my own. i disliked the constant (inefficient) group meetings, the arguments, people who didn’t pull their weight, people who thought they were pulling their weight when everyone else knew otherwise, and the less-than-perfect result that culminated from all these factors. i was a snob. i still am.

it is amazing how many people carry that all the way into their working lives. by that, i mean the arrogance and ignorance, the ineffectiveness, and the inability to listen to others. when i started working, i was rather taken aback at all that went on (and on) behind closed doors. intelligent people, so carried away by the very idea of their own intelligence they failed to make any relevant point. they exit, write lengthy papers and meeting minutes with no conclusion whatsoever, and nod sagely at one another. a brotherhood (or sisterhood) of wise stupidity.

perhaps i am getting rather carried away myself. i don’t claim to be clever, certainly not. but at least i do not look at a pile of translations, declare loudly that it was all “very easy” and “not a problem at all,” and spend the next ten days whining to all who would hear that it was “killing  me.” translations do kill me, but i hope, at least, that i do not swagger around at the start of it all, and then kill everyone else around me with my whining before it is very much over. or if i do (or did), i repent of any brash arrogance now. most sincerely i do.

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i read the above over again, and am rather proud of how hoity-toity academia it made me sound. perhaps i am on the right track after all! what a cheering thought for a grey morning.

it has turned significantly warmer. some days, the afternoon sun is so searing hot, i am momentarily transported back to singapore. but evening comes with customary spring chill, and i am reminded again that i am not there, but here. very much so.

i was invited to sit in for a choir practice yesterday. the practice venue was out of tokyo (by which we usually mean the 23 wards that make up the main part of the city), and i enjoyed the train ride very much. watching the buildings and cityscape give way to low houses, fields, and spring flowers was cheering – so much so that i did not quite realize i was heading in the wrong direction until it was rather late… i had set off with more than a half hour to spare, and ended up being half an hour late. i was much embarrassed and profusely apologetic, but they waved it off and welcomed me so warmly it became impossible to say no when the question came: so would you like to join us? it felt like it would be a slap in their faces if i so much as asked for some time to consider it.

post-practice and dinner party, i came away exhausted. the entire way home, my brain worked feverishly, wanting to know why. why? wherefore the discomfort? i knew these people, i had sung with them before (albeit in a different setting), they were warm, friendly, welcoming… so why?

i am, i suppose, fiercely loyal, and so… i cannot quite forgive them for not being the choir that i am used to. that, i know, is gross injustice to them, but i will allow myself a little time to get over these sentiments. after all, it has been barely two weeks since i arrived; i am pre-menstrual, worried about school, and mostly, rather much more homesick than i care to admit. for now, they will have to remain them, until such time when my brain comes to accept it as us (but will it ever?) still, they are a young choir yet, and so ablaze with enthusiasm and passion that i cannot help but admire their spirit.

i hadn’t wanted to publish this post, because in my heart of hearts, i am fiercely competitive, and whining like this (homesickness! at my age, if you please!) seems too… defeatist. but it takes a certain amount of courage to confess to moments of weakness, so i shall attempt to harness that and focus on what i have come here to do.