Hello hello from the tail-end of January, which felt simultaneously like it had 365 and 10 days. You’ll see why.

A couple of weeks into the month, I finished reading Everything Under by Daisy Johnson—my first read of the year. It’s a Sophoclean tragedy made eldritch and unsetting. The novel’s structure was winding, often doubling back on itself like the river that features so prominently in it. That was an interesting experience because the second I thought I’d finally situated myself, I was spun around again. There is plenty of the syntactical liberty that I love seeing authors take, it brings such musicality to what is otherwise words on a page. My current read is The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng, and so far it’s been an interesting, well-paced one. Also possibly my first Malaysian author…?

I’ve mostly spent my month in my parents’ house because my sister was home for her holidays. I quickly realised how used I’d become to my kitchen and the way I arrange things. I never thought I’d become someone who was particular about the way their kitchen was arranged, but here we are. I obviously got a lot of flak for fumbling about the cabinets as if I’d never lived here before, but I guess that map was quickly superimposed by the one I’d drawn of my kitchen.

We went on a little 10-day side quest to Vietnam in the middle of the month because it’d been on our bucket list for ages. It was, in a word, fantastic. I loved Saigon’s pulsing energy. The area I’d booked our hotel in was super modern but a short walk away from the main sights. We did easily 20k steps a day there, despite taking many a Grab to get from one point to another. Saigon was super walkable, and the people there were some of the kindest I met throughout the trip. We stopped at Hoi An for two days: a bit too touristy for my taste, but that made it excellent for people watching with a side of banh mi and salted coffee. Funnily, most people I’d spoken to said they loved Hanoi the most, but perhaps that depends on where you land first? Because Hanoi felt frantic and anxious to me, and the Ba Dinh district was almost dystopian in its Soviet-like atmosphere. Anyway, I have some photos in this post, and plenty more in my SD cards.

I looked back on some wins I’d jotted down in my planner roughly every week, and it’s interesting that most of them relate to assertion. If you know me, you’ll know that this is something I’ve been working on for the better part of a year now, after years of being a chronic pleaser and yeswoman in professional settings. I think my experiments have been more than just pushing back, but also learning to reframe my communication positively so I sound confident and in control, not panicky and reactive. An example: Instead of saying “this isn’t my area of expertise”, saying “X from Y department would be perfect for this”. It’s a work in progress.

Also, speaking of journals: I’ve started taking a little pocket notebook and pen with me everywhere I go, inspired by this dispatch from Katherine May. I realised I might have been losing a lot of writing fodder to my lack of attention and presence, so hopefully this nudges me to write down whatever I see without thinking about Type A things like categorisation and tagging. Bonus: it fits into all of my handbags, even the slim ones that are the bag equivalent of pockets on women’s jeans. I really have no excuse any longer. (It’s the Paperclip pocket notebook, if you’re curious).

I didn’t get to hang out much with friends this month, considering we gave two weeks to Vietnam. But I did manage to go to the Chitra Santhe with T and C. We squeezed through the crowds (what crowds!) to get a good look at all the paintings, before retiring to Indian Coffee House for coffee and a juicy piece of gossip (so juicy they filmed my reaction to it). I hope to squeeze friends into more of my routine activities—to enliven them, yes, but also to escape that vicious cycle of “this weekend doesn’t work, how about Monday? No? Friday, then?” Adulthood.

I’ve had APT stuck in my head all month. It’s annoying. I feel like a Cocomelon kid.