New Home

Since my last entry, I have moved into my new home, crossed a significant project milestone, quarreled with my boss, played golf a few weekends, cleaned my old flat and transferred and unloaded all my stuff into their new surroundings. No time for reflections except adjust to the new circumstances. In the meantime, my project manager left the project, after a last week of argument and tears, replaced by someone new to the company. During this period of change, I had to complete a lot of high stress activities: finish my writing course, continue the Coursera online subjects I chose, finish a design document, conduct meetings with contractors, undertake testing in 2 different software application, lead a project and hold meetings both in and outside the company (with contractors who were fixing up my old place).

To make things more difficult, I had to wake up early than usual, about 6:30 am since my new home was about 15 minutes father than my former home (7 miles vs. 12 miles), with a total travelling time of 30 minutes. In the past, these whirlwind events, coupled with the high stress of production problems which was finally solved in the first week of October, would have required me to write out my stress in my usual journal entries. The blur of activities would also have been calmed down by my usual morning tai chi which I seldom do nowadays. Instead my sanity and salvation seemed to be resolved with my Saturday golf games. The walk in the greens in the early morning, the golf strokes and shots to the fairways, the challenges and course management of game have relaxed my mind and allowed me to forget my troubles at least for a few hours. The result is that I arrive on Monday refreshed.

Looking back on my golf record, I have been playing every weekend for almost 3- 4 months. The regularity and relaxation had allowed me to survive the change of home, challenges at work, pressure of transfer, money problems and the distraction of the presidential election – an event which I have been reading about since my youth. Living right in the smack of it allowed me to experience first-hand the amazing transfer of power in the most powerful nation in earth. Strangely, this has prevented from watching the debates as my partisanship makes me too emotional to enjoy the event. Instead I prefer to skip the debates and read the next morning analysis; enjoying the recap in the New York Times channel in Google television during the weekends.

Of course, living in a much larger home, with nice views of the surrounding landscape, with large trees and undulating hills that have allowed me to relax more. I seemed to have lost my predilection for after work cocktails, instead plunging right in the Coursera courses. Next November is a coming challenge: to participate in the Nanowrimo novel writing month and to produce a significant draft of a novel. I wonder how I can achieve this task with all the online courses I am taking. But I think this will be a good end to the year which I started by attending the Gotham writing classes. Life is a constant flux and I realize that one should always keep moving. I wrote some good short stories that brought me back to my youth and of my days in Singapore. The new home has given me roots although I do not feel any sense of permanency, thinking that this is more an investment than a lasting stake in the ground. Much change in the air especially with the coming presidential election.