ARRAYEWHY

No Facebook. No Google.

These were the words swimming around my head as we stood in line at the immigration gates of Shanghai Pudong Airport. It’d taken 4 stops to get us here; Bintulu, Miri, KK, and finally Shanghai. Now it’s 6am and I’m in a country where I can’t even email my parents to let them know I’m here.

We clear immigration and head over to a pair of escalators leading to the main exit. Next to said escalators is a booth selling temporary sims at RMB300 a pop. Zino gets one, I get one. I figure if I somehow manage to find a way to call home I wanna be ready for it. VPN? No access to the Play Store if you’re on an Android device. WeChat? Who uses that (haha EVERYONE)?

We’re in town for what they’re calling a ‘sprint’. We’re each assigned a client with products to advertise on social media. We take images of these products and make them move so they’ll hopefully catch the eye of unwary users as they zip through their infinitely scrolling feeds. Simple, straightforward, and we get a day to do it. It is also for Facebook.

A Facebook event in Shanghai. My brow furrows, and as I attempt to shake off the familiar scent of irony, we’re ushered off to hot pot before my 12am flight home.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fourth dimension lately. Probably trying to think about it.

Being a game developer, I deal with the concept of 3 spatial dimensions (3D) on a regular basis. I have a box, but is it to my left or right (X axis)? Is it above or below (Y axis)? Is it in front of or behind me (Z axis)? Fairly simple concept. We all understand it (and I find that FUCKING AMAZING, but will write about that next time).

That being said, I have yet to get my head around this mysterious 4th dimension that’s been floating around. Even after watching countless videos ranging from Neil deGrass Tyson interviews to in-depth explanations of a W axis, I still can’t seem to hold the concept in my head, and I attribute this situation to ignorance plus a healthy dose of lack of time spent on the subject. These failed attempts in understanding did however, spark a thought in my head, which I will proceed to vomit into the space below:

This is a lonely blue dot. That is all I know.

Here is a red dot placed away from the blue dot. Drawing a line between them gives our first ‘dimension’. Now we can place a point along this dimension, and now I can say: depending on where the point is along the dimension, it can represent any shade of ‘purple’ resulting from mixing red and blue. For example:

Badum-tss! Or violet:

Or magenta!

You get the point (I hope). We could do the same for your mom and dad:

Maybe they’re bald:

Now a point along this dimension can represent anything within the relationship between your parents!

Say dad likes cars, while mom hates them, and you’re more like mom in that respect:

I guess you don’t really like cars (jk you love them).

In conclusion:

TLDR: A dimension can exist between any 2 points, where each point represents a different value of the same variable.

-is what I think.

I think I’ve figured it out!

The next time you jog after stopping forever:

1. Start off with a power walk. The point is to stretch your thigh muscles with every step.

Back straight, keep walking.

2. After a few minutes you’ve probably settled on a brisk pace. Ask yourself, would it kill you to jog? Give yourself a strong honest answer, and with luck you’ll start jogging.

3. Now that you’re jogging, you’ll slowly start to feel soreness in your legs. That’s your body coping with physical stress it’s been avoiding for too long; keep at it (unless it’s pain that you’re feeling, in which case stop la).

4. Then ask yourself, how much energy have you got left? Since you just started running, I’d hope you have plenty left. Just ask yourself this question once in a while during the run, and repeat until a, you stop replying, or b, your body is screaming for you to stop.

It doesn’t matter how long you last or how far you go. All that matters is that you run until you can’t and come back within a week. This last part is what will make or break your running habit. No matter how much you do, come back and give it your all.

TLDR; Power walk to stretch thigh muscles -> Jog -> Ignore soreness -> Check energy levels until empty

On another note; couldn’t make it past the 3rd bar today. AGAIN.

I couldn’t sleep last night the day started at noon. It had me brush my teeth while grandma made breakfast. I say thank you and sit down to my bacon and eggs while grandma shares a biscuit with the dogs. One of them wants more than her share of the biscuit and takes a chunk out of grandma’s hand. Now there’s more red in the scene.

Emotions run high. I put the dog outside, grab some gauze, bandaid, and medicinal oil purporting to come from a snowy mountain, then we sit down to treat a wound we’ve seen too many times before.

AhMi had just given birth to a fresh litter when we first saw her. It was raining and they were in a cardboard box with no top to keep them out of it, so we prioritised the newborns and got them out of the rain first. I can’t remember what happened to them, strangely enough.

We put her in a foster home for a few months and she was always just the nicest little dog with her wagging tail and bright eyes. We eventually brought her home and things were perfect for a while

She bites when there’s food around. I don’t know if it’s something she picked up on the streets, but if you wanna see this dog go Mr. Hyde all you have to do is stand around with food in your hands.

Chicken maryland, RM6.

I sit down and awkwardly wait for my food. It’s a saturday night and our family has dinner out together on the same night every week. We don’t usually come to the food court on saturday nights; maybe this is our version of shaking things up.

My food arrives, but where’s the rice?

I told you there wouldn’t be any rice, he says. There’s something in his eyes saying way more than I was willing to handle for a bowl of rice.

Oh, could you get me some rice, please? I give him a dopey smile.

He goes off and reappears with a plastic plate with rice on it, and we hand him 7 ringgit.

I cleared the monkey bars today.

I was 15 and we were away on a scouts camping trip somewhere in the woods. It was 2 days of sun and suffering, and we were told we had to hike halfway up a mountain before heading back to camp to unload our gear and prepare for another moving organiser’s speech we didn’t want to hear. It’s a love-hate memory, and I’m glad it happened, but I’m not talking about that right now. I’m talking about the monkey bars. At the end of the hike we were met with a makeshift set of monkey bars, and were told we had to clear it before ending the day. I used to have breasts hanging off my relatively overweight self so needless to say, I wasn’t too keen; it also didn’t help that I’d never touched a monkey bar in my life. Most of the troop did okay. I went last because I could bear facing the bars before I was ready (I never would be), and I took my first jump at it. Grip. Hang. Try not to pass out. Swing.

Land on my back.

Crap.

Let’s try that again.

Grip.

Hang.

Blink out the sweat.

Swing.

Lunge.

Land on my back again.

The troop was cheering at this point but I could barely hear them over the thoughts racing through my head.

GRIP.

HANG.

FUCK.

SWING.

LUNGE.

CRUNCH

WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?

WHY CAN’T I JUST DO THIS?

AND WHY IS IT JUST ME?

The warden let us leave and I dragged whatever was left of me all the way back to camp.

That was 13 years ago. At roughly 6:30pm today, I slowed down my jog and walked over to the park bars. This time I started with some chin ups, then some pull ups, just to get some blood in my fingers. It’s okay to fail. I’d made a few attempts in the past weeks and always walked away with 3 bars. 13 years for a measly 3. Today though...

JUMP.

GRIP.

SWING.

GRIP.

SWING.

GRIP.

SWING.

GRIP.

SWING.

GRIP.

SWING.

GRIP.

LAND on my feet.

13 years.

"Ultimately, our humanity depends on everyone's humanity."