When I first started working on festivals, it was long hours starting from early morning working right into late night. I really enjoyed the work, especially the people I worked with. There was a site manager Dave, who managed all things relate to the installations and safety of the event. Whenever I ran into Dave, he always asked me “Are you winning?”. My English wasn’t as good as it is now, I had trouble to understand what he meant. Most people greet each other with “how are you?”. He explained to me it is similar as asking are you having a good day? Good enough for you to take it as a win? Even till today, I still sometime secretly ask myself the same questions ” are you winning?”

Today marks the one year anniversary of NZ went into the first lockdown due to Covid in 2020. This morning I watched a Youtube video of this guy who played piano duet with his neighbour. His neighbour was a 78 year old man named Emil. Emil lost his wife in Dec due to Covid, he lived in the apartment temporarily while his house was being sold. He played piano everyday at 2pm like how he did when his wife was alive. Thats how this young guy heard him playing and started their friendship with a wall in between them. They would play piano duets each weekend. By the time I watched this video Emil has left this world peacefully in his sleep. There were so many tragic stories last year moved me in many ways, this story for some reason made me feel both sad and heartwarming. It combined all the elements of human emotional needs, being heard, being seen, being loved and being remembered.

Coming back to the question of “are you winning?”, one thing I took from the past year of magical thinking and deep sorrow was that I learnt to celebrate the little wins in life. Since I was an event organiser, I imagined when we beat Covid, there would be celebrations across the world. Everyone pours into the street celebrating the end of it with music, dance, lights, fireworks and lots of hugs. The reality is this may never happen, as everyone will come to the end of this with different pace, some people may never get over the year of 2020.

Instead what I can do is to celebrate the little wins. It’s the first breath I took with my eyes open in the morning, with strong and healthy set of lungs. It’s having meals with my mum and dad, talk about our daily life. It’s watching my daughter doing a new yoga move she learnt from daycare, sang me her new favourite song. It’s going to sleep next to my husband at night and knowing next morning we will rise together face another day. It’s having friends to spend time with and do silly things no matter how old we get. It’s going to work open my laptop answer emails , solve problems and chat with colleagues while making a cup of tea. It’s taking the moment each day to look up at the sky above my head and stand firmly on the ground below my feet. These are my little wins in life, which can be easily taken for granted. These little wins are what truly matter, without these my life would not be the same.

So are you winning today? I hope even if you are not, you learn to celebrate the little things.

Went to Skytower tonight celebrated mum’s birthday. In the morning, went to Bella’s daycare celebrated her birthday. Mum and Bella’s birthday only one day apart. Also Chinese New Year normally falls around this time of the year too, so it has been a busy month of celebrations.

At Bella’s daycare, we prepared 3 fruit platters and some of my dad’s homemade spring onion pancakes. The kids enjoyed the savoury pancakes a lot, it was all gone in 20 mins. Its really interesting to watch how these 3 and 4 year olds interact with each other, you can see lots of reflections in the adult world but with a more direct sense of feelings and purpose.

I also joined Club House 2 days ago, I have to admit its really easy to get suck in the chatrooms and a few hours would go by easily. One thing I noticed with the Chinese chatrooms on issues banned in China, the conversation always become quite urgent and filled with tension. I felt its not just a place to discuss things, its more like a group therapy session with 40 people all want to share their thoughts and feelings at the same time. I get this sense of urgency, because normally these topics were out of your reach suddenly you get to share your views on them, its naturally become a bit chaotic. In comparison to some English chatroom discuss similar topics, it was more clam and the thoughts were expressed with more depth and backed with some research. I especially enjoy Kaiser Guo’s chatrooms, they always have some interesting speakers. Talk about Kaiser, we met at a dinner in Beijing about 6 years ago. He had a rather heated discussion with a British writer on the opium war, during that time I wasn’t aware of his podcast. Now I am a regular listener and it is impressive how he composes himself so well and let the speakers share their views without much judgement.

I think Chinese need to debate more on sensitive topics, these discussions may become really awkward and some comments seem to be ridiculous. However, it is through this process I learnt to clarify my own views and values. I felt good to know many Chinese people living overseas share some similar experiences with me, being minority in a different country help me to open my eyes and have empathy towards other minorities.

Tomorrow we have a big Chinese new year party to go to , then next day is Bella’s real birthday party with friends and family. 2020 definitely has made me feel a bit different being in a crowd, I wonder is it safe, what if? But I know NZ is relatively low risk and we can not stop living life. So keep on celebrating, keep on talking, never stop listening and never be afraid to communicate.

I like to do a review of the year passed, mostly just the things happened each month that I can recall, so here we go.

Jan – My brother visited from Sweden we spent time together , it was always nice to have him back in NZ with us, but as always there was family tension towards the end of his stay. None of it was anyone’s fault, its just our family dilemma. This time I chose to stay out of it instead of being the mediator between my parents, and I am glad I did that.

Also we moved into the new house.

Feb – Randi and Morten arrived NZ safely, it was really nice to have them staying at the new house with us, Bella was super happy to have grandparents from Norway visiting us. They helped us get the garden ready and Randi painted our living room wall. Till today when we have guests over, they comment on how nice the wall colour is.

We celebrated Bella’s 3rd birthday with lots of friends over at the new house, little did we know it was the last proper party we would have for the rest of the year.

March – Mum went to Canada, Covid hit NZ. When NZ government announced borders were closing and Air NZ started cancelling international flights, I brought forward mum’s return tickets by 3 weeks for her to return to NZ immediately. That was one of the best decisions I have made in a while. She went into self-isolation at home for two weeks.

April – We celebrated my dad’s birthday in the front garden of my parents house, while my mum sat 2 meters away as she was still in self-isolation. It was good she didn’t catch anything on the flight, that time flight risk was still relatively low.

Weeks later my parents went to get flu shot from GP, but mum got sick and ended up in emergency. It was quite an experience to be admitted into hospital during the lock down.

May – Lock down lifted, I celebrated birthday with families also went out for dinner with 3 girlfriends. We felt lucky none of our lives changed much by this virus, I felt fortunate M and I both kept working, as we had a new mortgage it was stressful to think what would happen to the new house if one of us lost income.

June – Mum start seeing specialist, many visits to the hospital with many tests, they suspected something not great with her lungs. Luckily cancer was ruled out.

July – We went on a camper van trip for the first time. It rained a lot but the scenery was beautiful. It was good to get out of Auckland for a bit after being in the same place for half a year.

August – Auckland went into the 2nd lockdown, this time it didn’t last as long and everyone was more or less used to the “new normal”. Covid is becoming part of daily life.

September / October – For some reason there is not much I can remember about these two months, work was good. I read lots of books. Other than that, I really can’t think of anything to note.

November – We found out we are having another baby. I learnt how misleading morning sickness was, as it lasted whole day, not just about the mornings.

December – I was sick most of time, tired and nauseous. M helped out lots, my parents also cooked for us. With all the help I carried into 2nd trimester and regained my strength. We left for South Island on Boxing Day for a 2 weeks trip along the west coast.

All in all, its a year of lots of thinking and reflection, since we stuck at home most of the time. Living in NZ, I kept reminding myself to count my blessings when I read news about what is happening in other parts of the globe. I am certain crisis and tragedy happen on daily basis, its just the scale of this virus is something most of us have not experienced in a life time. I do not know if I got much wiser with all that I have experienced or witnessed this year, one thing I do gained from all this is that I learnt to sit on the fence a bit more. It means when something happens, I don’t tend to react as fast, pass a judgment as quickly, I want to watch and learn before decide on what I think of it. Hope this is something useful to carry on into another year.

Late last month my mum went through a CT scan and the result showed that she needed further test. So today I went with her to hospital for a bronchscopy.

We reached hospital in the early morning, after answered a long list of questions, she was told her procedure won’t take place till 3 hours later. Due to Covid, we did not want to be at the hospital waiting around, so we went to the park for a walk then spent sometime at a library near by. One thing I am grateful of was the two big hospitals near us both have very big parks near by. While you waiting for a test there is green space to walk about. Whenever I was walking in these parks, I wonder how many secrets these trees would have known from all those people who walked through them.

When we retuned again for the delayed test, we were told the translator isn’t available onsite. So I said I would go in to the room with my mum as a translator. The nurse kindly remind me if I felt nervous or dizzy I can go outside. My mum was also glad I could be next to her. I guess the doctors and nurses didn’t want to end up attending to a scared support person while the patient is being treated.

The procedure was straightforward, they put a pipe down mum’s chest and lungs and to look closely at the area of concern, then take out some samples for further testing. It must be really uncomfortable but my mum did really well. One thing she didn’t get use to with NZ’s health system was that the tests result won’t be ready on the same day. Comparing to the health system in China, you wait for hours for all the procedures to be done in one day, then doctors would deliver the result to you in a few minutes of time, then next patient is waiting to be seen. Unless you have very good private care or government health care, the hospital visits can be a highly stressful situations for most ordinary people. Here it may take weeks to get your appointment, but once you are seen by the doctor, there was time just for you to understand what is going on with your body and if you have any concerns or questions. Each doctor specialise in one specific area, today there were two doctors onsite, one is to carry out the procedure another is to check the samples are good enough to be further tested. However we won’t know the result until we have another appointment with the specialist, who would look at my mum’s health issues from all the tests then come to a conclusion of what might be the solution. It looks like we will know more of the full result by early Oct, unless they see something needs urgent treatment then my mum will be seen even earlier.

I am surprised by how calm I am sitting there waiting for the procedure to end. Of course, its uncomfortable to see mum lying in bed with tubes inside of her. However, I kept telling myself that we do the best we can until we know more. When we know more, we do better. I am getting better to focus on the task at hands instead of worrying too much ahead. I am not a doctor, I will leave it to the doctor and the health specialists to figure out what is going on. What I can do is support my mum as best as I can, and if need to, I will learn and research on how to do better in any set of situation we face together.

Till then.

Fear is a friend, sometime it walks along side me. sometime it gets on my back, let me carry it. Sometime it walks faraway from me, I almost forgot it exists.

For the last few months, like many people around the world, I would say fear is on my back, constantly.

I am fearful for my loved ones health. I am fearful for my health. I am fearful for my job. I am fearful for the future.

To admit I carry fear is not easy. Most time, I could have a full head of worries then I see my friends or my work mates, I smile. I smile not only to reassure others everything is ok, but also the action of smiling actually help keeping fear at bay.

Fear is a friend, it is a old friend. This friend is loyal, as it knows all my weakness and my strengths. It knows my deepest desire and what I long for in life. Fear knows who I love and care the most. Fear knows all my aspirations and my hopes.

I long for the day fear walk alongside me, who I see as a companion but not someone I carry on my back. It can get heavy. M tells me fear is an illusion, its almost crazy to be scared of something does not exist or something not even happened yet. Its very true. However, it does not really help. Fear is a friend, who is always there.

I am grateful to have a friend as fear, it keeps me from making rush decisions, it keeps me on the ground. It reminds me what worth to keep, whats to treasure and whats to let go. It teaches me the deep meaning of loss and gain.

Learn to live alongside fear is a life long lesson. Hey fear, I acknowledge your existence in my life, this is a good start. We will get to know each other better and learn to live alongside each other just fine.

Last note to self – Fear and Fun, both start with the letter F, also Fine.