in the middle of somewhere

I've been sometimes thinking about chi Lan (Khoai's mother) or chi Linh, who is two years older than me and was happily married two years ago, and my girlfriends who have got married, and those who are single. A few among the latter are successful, to people's perception. To me, I'd prefer those who have a happy family. Of course, it's told that as a modern and independent girls/ women, your happiness shouldn't depend on a guy. It's true. But when it comes to family, it's you who decide the happiness of the family, or at least, it's you to choose the right one to marry. Words are easier than actions, though. To a lot of girls, I just can find the reason of them being lucky not to have the wrong one(s). It seems to me, when I am getting older, that you cannot choose your fate. Like, before you were born, there were fates on the sky and God just plugged you in that life. I have turned Asian-minded after years of living on my own abroad. Isn't it strange?

I'm a difficult person, and stubborn even though sometimes I'm nice and adaptive. I am so when I'm aware of myself. Once in a while, I tell myself that I am lucky, to have my boyfriend with me. Because, he is a happy person, and he doesn't think much, like me. My life seems to turn to what I had imagined: a normal life. I thought it would be happy. In fact, I still see it so. A 'normal' life of a girl, to my perception is not having too much in a career, that you don't work for a bank or any financial institutions all days that make you forget about what you can do except work. A normal life contains love and attachment to other person(s). I have a job in a nice company, in the centre of Amsterdam, a start-up company that you find things to do yourself in an industry that has been changing so much and it will still be, in more than 5 years. I, myself like people and I like my colleague. I just don't know where the feeling of belonging doesn't exist in me. I don't belong to the industry, or don't I belong to the young society in the Netherlands? I don't think the latter, but the former. Yet, I have never been working for a bank in the Netherlands although I was going to. If I had worked there, probably, some day I would find out I need to be outside. I am not really a type of an office worker. Yet again, to be really something or nothing is better than in the middle, where I am now, in a casual environment but still, it's office, numbers which don't require a lot of creativity or sympathy and love for people.

I want to go home, sometimes, very much. My home is where my mother and my younger brother live, and where I used to go to the beach with my family two or three times per week in the summer. My home is where I can have food coming from the sea, where I can breath the sea into my chest. Yet, when I've turned more grown-up, it's difficult to do so. I cannot just leave what I have here (in the Netherlands) and what I have some responsibility on (my work and to some extent, my boyfriend). There's one thing I know, my boyfriend is more than a 'boyfriend'. That our lives are to be met, not for short-term. I have a girlfriend. She's purely girl and she enjoys writing, mostly about girls and love. I don't, even though I used to. Relationship can be tiring, especially when you're in love, and distant. Yet, being in love and to love a person is different. You won't leave a person unless that person turns different to you. I don't say 'unless that person changes' since everyone changes and that is necessary.

What I meant with 'my life seems to turn normal' is that I will travel, have a family, and to go to work still, taken into account that the world will still be fine in years to come, without so many natural disasters or crimes. On an on, I still have to learn to content with myself while still keep some space for my own development, the reason why I don't come back to my hometown or to Vietnam at the moment. (Where time is mostly spent on social networking and other things that you can't control, like traffic trams). I will, probably be an ordinary woman and if that's true, I will work with people and for people after some efforts.

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.

not ephemeral

and as long as I maintain (and enhance) the love for people, for their own values, or just simply they themselves, there's still my love to him.

Working at an Internet company is a great experience but working in the media world makes me scared how money, how capitalist and how ephemeral things are. 

If money is not the meaning to work, I'm not sure what's the purpose making the organization and the whole machine runs. 

Isn't working for something real, which can bring benefit to people more important and more meaningful?