old friends

And then, suddenly one day I realize how far I have been away from my friends. Just one day I heard that she's been engaged and is going to get married soon, the one who appears to me to have no change, and all her life is like a lake, with no big waves. How far I had been aware myself that some of my friends are no longer friends, after high school years till now, 7 years. Sooner or later, it would be 10 years, with no difference. But in 3 years, people may have changed very much, and love and marriage sometimes only needs a few months to make it happen. Didn't I realize that I have been away from my friends, sharing nothing, hearing nothing from them while managing and living my own life? When I was younger, a few years ago, I was glad to be in the open world, to make more friends and to know more people. Now, suddenly what matters is the closed friends that I had. The ones whose houses I dropped by almost every day to go to school together, whose I ate breakfast at her home, whose house I had to stay over because of the floods, whose I know their families, parents, grandparents, cousins,...

I blamed them for not keeping me posted with their lives. They probably don't know my life either, and the ones whom I have concern about. Now, I seem like the person who doesn't have that much growth and change, watching my friends and their lives going by, disconnected.

Am I no longer the person they can share their lives with. Standing in Herengracht, I wonder if we are still the same, because they no longer share or know my life. Distance, with its unawareness divides people apart, or just they themselves go further away from each other. I questioned my life being here; yet now and here, it is my life, the life that I am aware of my happiness when I'm alone, or when I have someone to hang around with. Here and there, it is perhaps my life and different lives that are different. Somes are destined to be there, some are born to go, detached or connected, life keeps going.

off

This entry is especially for me. It's not for anyone else, or about living experience and so on and so forth. It's just about me, being happy.

I came to the office for a while, after finishing everything and returning the key to the housing company. There was no feeling for the place I have lived since November 2005. I had been sad, when I came back there to pick up some stuff, when there were a few things left. I sat on a couch, an old couch bought in a second hand shop that Zillah and me went to. I like watching the TV, which I bought for 25 euros, built in DVD player. The woman's husband helped me and my brother bring it to Central Station. But we had a hard time managing to bring it from the tram station in Zuiderzeeweg into the house. Now I leave the TV there. I like mornings when I watched CNBC, reading Financial Times. My breakfast were mostly with brown bread, a special one which really matched with English orange marmalade. There were nights when I came back from work, watching movies or Sex and the City, lying on the blue coach which I don't remember how it was brought to the place. And when I had a boyfriend, an office job, I came back home watching TV for a while, not so much though, but still I like to watch Quest means Business on CNN. That seemed to be the memories, the memories I had for myself. I'm not sure if my boyfriend remember anything about that place. He doesn't have good memory of his old childhood which makes him not as nostalgic as I am. He said the old place had value because of me. Yet, to me, that place was home and I know I need a place to feel home wherever I live.

Today the weather was humid. It looks like it's going to rain from the morning, but it has not. I'm off from work since this is my moving day. In Holland, you got a day off when you move, or have a funeral, or a wedding. I don't even know the rule in Vietnam. But there's no rule there. I remember my mom came home during her working days since she had to do grocery. There were no supermarket at that time. I like going to the supermarket with her when I was home from abroad. The supermarket, the Metro, in my city was big. There are a lot of fresh vegies, fish, and the smell of the bread just out of the oven. There were people standing in line to buy hot, roasted poultries. My mom spent a lot of money there. I liked it and missed it coz I couldn't afford to buy that much in a supermarket in the Netherlands. And I had to carry them home all by myself. There we have a scooter, or we take a cab, which was not expensive compared with my parents' salary, although we are just above mid-income.

This morning I was on tram 1 heading from Meer en Vaart to Central Station. It's a very ordinary ride. But there were not so many people as there are during rush hour and I didn't spend time with my iPhone. I was thinking my mother would love the city. I hope she will, when she comes to visit me. Houses here are small, and in the centre, they are not standing straight. But they are typical Amsterdam. Yesterday night, it was windy. I crossed the road from AH, the one near Magna Plaza. I heard a woman voice saying: "This place is nowhere compared to NY." I turned defensive inside. I love this place, I don't know the reason why. Now that I'm working and I have to spend some unpleasant time on trams 1 hour per day. I've changed and I have been busy that sometimes I'm not happy when I see myself not motivated, the girl who loves lives and people, who goes and is happy with every breath inhaled.

Facebook keeps me updated with people and help me share a lot of things. But I don't like going there sometimes. I see friends in Vietnam getting married. I see them hanging out, spending their lives for immaterial purpose. It's good, but it's not practical. I've turned further from them. A few have more than a thousand friends. One of them I had dinner with. I wondered if she spent more than one thousand dinners with all of them... Or sometimes I see the pictures of them gathering, with their kids. A few with their new home, as they've just got married. They are at 24, at my age. It's happiness for them. If I lived there, it would be a wonderful life for me, to be married, having a home and hanging out with friends. However, since I'm here, my conception is different. I can't dedicate my time to one person, to a home at my age. I'm not a party type of person. I like spending time with my boyfriend but I know there's time needed for both of us, for personal growth and personal space. And that I'm not mature. And that I want to travel, to meet people, to take pictures, to write. I can't be committed myself. I need time and the memories that we have had and will have to stay with a person.
With my colleagues here, the ones I like don't like to share everything on the Internet. I like that. I like not showing off. So, I don't communicate a lot with them there. I don't have pictures taken with them, even though with a few of them, I feel there are personal relationship. I would still like to keep in touch with them when I don't live in the Netherlands. Yet, I know part of the reason I don't have a lot of communication with them is that I'm not really integrated into the society. I won't, probably, if I live in Vietnam either. I could have a lot of social networking, knowing thousand people. It was me, when I was aware of myself. I listened to people, being diplomatic, hypocrite,... I attended parties, meetings and conferences. I liked it, sometimes. But it was only for half a year. I was not sure and still not sure now if I can live that life for all my life.
Somehow, I have the idea of people are different in different groups. Their communication style can be different, as a 'red', 'blue', or 'yellow' person, depending on the people and the society they interact with. This, however, should be taken into account in social relationship level, not personal level. I hope I will have a chance to explain it in the future.

I'm in a cafe, the place where I often write. This is surrounded by faculties of University of Amsterdam. There are a lot of students coming here. I'm sitting near a man, with a laptop as well. I would go to Chinatown, to buy glutinous rice, Vietnamese sausage and a few things. I just know that walking there and buying some grocery in idly make me happy. I'm missing chi Lan, Khoai's mother. She wrote me a few lines during the lunar new year. I hope the family's stuff will come soon to Houston. She had a lot of things ready for Tet that she didn't have to cook over there. I would love to talk to her now. It will be about their life. Finally, I've got to the practical life, caring about how my friends settle down and live, rather than hanging out, travelling, feelings,...

I'm gonna stop soon. My thoughts are not in order. I'll spend time reorganize them, I hope, in the future. If they're not going to be so, I will be happy doing something else. :)

February 2010

http://www.fridaycafe.com/2010/01/holgamoon/

(My best friends' honeymoon).

I'm not sure if having feeling is good, and sense, toward a few things that are like a sense for the future. It was so trivial that I moved when seeing the album photo for her, for him while they were happy and are happy. Sense and feeling are worthless, in the context, aren't they?

I'm happy that I like jazz and there's still Nina Simone. I'm excited to move and to share a new place with a nice, cool single-mom girl. And that my boyfriend is still holding me when I turn incomprehensible, even to myself.

There's nothing else matters.

Schiphol, Holland

I passed the land covered in grey and white. It was beautiful. I saw windmills, two or three small ones standing high on snow. "I don't belong here", I didn't know why I said so to myself. I was not sure if I belong to anywhere. I came back to A'dam from Paris, being happy to come back to a place like home. But do I really belong to Holland? No. I'm probably just a nomad, like my friends, like me.

I saw my friend off from Schiphol today. My manager after hearing me saying about her saying she's a refugee, the girl who lived 6 years in the US, now living in Finland and on that day, she went to Belgium from Holland but came back to A'dam to go to Paris on her holiday of visiting me. And other friends of mine who have stayed here for years now are going to America, for an indefinite time.

If I didn't have my boyfriend, if I didn't have the person to each other we belong to, I don't know if I can stay here. Sometimes, it questions me if a relationship got better because two people really need each other when they live abroad, in a place where they don't have a lot of friends to hang around, to talk and share things with.

Like yesterday, I was wondering if I am a happy person to find happiness in snowing but warm A'dam rather than in gorgeous Paris with my boyfriend and my best friend, but in a place I'm not used to, a place I don't prefer. I love people, but I love me. Both, so much sometimes that it feels like a sin.

I don't know, sometimes I write when I feel like I'm lost.

Khoai

It's the name of the boy whom I changed diaper when he was one and a half year old. I went to America and came back after more than a year. He still remembered me. And then, it looked like nothing had changed. I went and came back. But now he's going to go, with his family, the family with whom I stayed for weeks when I was ill, a family where I often stayed in the weekend in Delft, coming from busy A'dam.

I tell myself in my relationship, it's very good that I stay rational, even when I can't control myself. It's good that my relationship is fun and interesting, that makes me stay away from thinking, from being too emotional, to do something else. To what extent a person can be so nostalgic?

There's another family who are friends of mine, everyone in the family is in the same zodiac as Khoai's. I am so superstitious and unreasonable to see they have a lot of things in common, especially when they say Taurus and Cancer make the best family, and the lucky, adventurous life of the boys born in December. And now, one has come back to Vietnam, the other one will be in the US soon. I am telling myself that I will look at Khoai's clips when I miss him. I'm not sure how many times I will watch it. I will be busy with my own, with spending time with my boyfriend, my mother, my brother and good time with my colleagues. It's just life, people come and go...

I am not sure, in the end, being adventurous will bring happiness. It's just the way people choose for themselves, since they're not happy with other ways of living. It's good that people don't set high standards and requirements right from the beginning but develop plan and new things during the journey. But to some people, like me, sometimes unhappiness or satisfaction comes as the vision we have. In the end, I've learned not to expect a lot.