After five months of waiting, my mentoring program finally started today. It’s a small program with no more than 15 mentors and 15 mentees, and so far, it looks like it will be a good setup. All the mentees are in fourth or fifth grade, so they are a relatively young bunch. I haven’t been matched with anyone yet since for the first 2-3 sessions, the program leader wants all mentors to get to know all mentees, particularly in the instance that a mentor or mentee can’t make a session. In that event, the absent mentor/mentee could be replaced with someone that s/he was familiar with.

The exercise we did today involved a method like speed dating, where all the mentors sat in one row and all the mentees sat in a row sitting across and facing them. We had five minutes with each mentee before the time was up, and they had to move to the seat to their right.

Like I imagined, there was a large range of personalities and social skills in the group of mentees. I had one mentee who was really mature for her age, and she’s already traveled quite a bit around the U.S. and in the Caribbean and was telling me about her travel experiences. Another mentee was so hard to crack that it ended up feeling more like a Q&A talking to him, but the answers part was just one or two word answers from him. Some had one sibling and others had seven siblings. Some knew where San Francisco is and some had never even heard of it. But they all had eager, happy faces.

That’s what I want. I want to be around kids and people who are hopeful, even if they are painfully shy or awkward or even annoying at times.

In a rush to get to the gym on time this morning, I left my phone sitting on the counter much to my irritation. On the train ride to the gym, I wanted to do everything from read e-mails I’d downloaded, listen to Edge of Eternity via Audible, and even check my work schedule to see what was on my agenda today, but I couldn’t do any of it because it was all on my phone. Then, I thought about my personal to-do list I made for this week. I couldn’t access that, either, because that was in the Notes app on my phone. I felt so useless without my phone and as though I was just standing mindlessly on the train, waiting to reach my destination without anything to accomplish. I hate feeling inefficient. That’s one of the worst feelings to me — feeling like I am useless and getting absolutely nothing done.

This is the trouble about living in a modern society with the privilege of having a mobile phone. We become phone dependent; everything is on this freaking device. I used to write tons of post-it notes for everything as reminders when I was on the go; in an effort to save trees and contribute less waste to a city like New York that doesn’t recycle, I stopped doing this and now write everything in my Notes app. Even little things like phone numbers, which in the past we used to memorize for our family and closest friends, we don’t do anymore. Chris and I have been together almost three years now; I don’t think I actually remembered his phone number fully by heart until after a year and a half. I still don’t think he even remembers mine.

At work today, I actually felt a bit liberated without my phone. I didn’t have anything to check or buzz at my desk, and it felt kind of nice after a while to think that I didn’t have to think about my phone or its existence until I got home. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. Granted, I was in front of my laptop about 90 percent of today, but having a mobile phone is so much different. It’s like you are married to the damn thing even when you don’t want to be.

Maybe I should use today’s experience as a lesson to be less attached to my phone this year and not to check it several hundred times a day the way the average person does now.

When discussing wedding venue research today, my friend told me about how his friend’s cousin is trying to plan a wedding in Kazakhstan this year, and it may even overlap with his trip there, which means he’d be able to attend. The problem with planning, though, is that her family needs to be mindful of the planting season. If the planting season is not done, the wedding cannot be held because the groom’s side has a lot of farmers, and so they would not be able to attend.

“Whenever you get frustrated about wedding planning, you can remember this and remind yourself how lucky you are that you don’t have to deal with problems like these,” he said.

Well, that’s certainly true. 🙂

We slept for 12 hours last night and woke up at around 11am this morning. This never happens to us.

Both of us are usually quite good about not getting jet lag and timing our naps and awake times on planes. I’ve been doing this since I did my first international trip to China in 2006. One strategy I’ve used to force myself back onto local time is to never take any additional days off to “recover,” and instead to go right back to work the next day. It forces me to be alert and get back into my usual routine.

That strategy doesn’t really work when the next day, you actually have the day off because it’s New Year’s Eve.

In the blur of our jet lag, I’ve started our wedding venue research and contacted at least 13 other venues today. The new year will have a lot to accomplish for our wedding, careers, and personal lives.

We are two days away from the new year. 2015 seemed like it would be ages away for a long time, and now it’s just two days away. As difficult as the last year has been for me to accept many circumstances in my life, particularly losing Ed, the last year has been one of the most fulfilling years of my life.

I did quite a bit of travel, both for work and for pleasure: we visited a number of states on our quest to hit every state in the U.S., including Arizona, West Virginia, Vermont, Upstate New York, Michigan, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. We took my parents on a first vacation that I paid for to the Grand Canyon, Phoenix, and Scottsdale.

I learned how lonely and isolating work travel could be. I also realized how deep the word “unethical” can go. I stopped spending time with some friends who I felt just didn’t understand anything past the surface and wanted me to assimilate rather than just be myself. I realized through this process that some people never really get past the maturity and depth level of high school. I also stopped putting as much effort into other friendships because I didn’t feel like always being the one doing more.

Chris proposed on a secluded beach in Rio, and we became “engaged.” We went to Brazil for the World Cup and saw some of the most stunning and beautiful sights on earth. We also visited Montreal, Quebec City, Vienna, and Budapest as some additional international trips, and finished the year in Australia, visiting his hometown, of course, but also Cairns and Brisbane, and the biggest highlight, snorkeling underwater in the Great Barrier Reef. I finally got to hold a koala (yes, I am very ambitious like this).

I started my first fundraiser in honor of my brother to raise money for suicide prevention in the United States, and was ranked 10th out of hundreds of fundraisers in all of Manhattan. I met other suicide survivors and realized I wasn’t alone at all. I started mentoring with two youth organizations and started realizing things about how much my life has changed since I was my mentees’ ages. There’s so much more to be done to help others with hardships; I haven’t even done a fraction of what I’d like just yet.

My dad found blockages in his arteries that resulted in his having double bypass heart surgery, and I flew home to be by his side. After losing my brother, this was probably one of the scariest periods I’ve had to endure. Logic may prevail with those who are more distant, but when this is affecting someone this close, emotions aren’t always so logical.

I’ve continued documenting my life through 1 Second Every Day and through this blog. It’s kind of funny when I think about this because it’s like I am prepping for the one day that will come when I am gone and can for whatever reason no longer be coherent, and perhaps my children will read through all of this and see all the ponderings of their mother. They will look back and read this blog and think, damn, our mother was ambitious as hell. She loved and cared that much despite all the dysfunction and selfishness surrounding her. And boy, did she love travel with Dad.

Now, what’s in store for the new year?

We came back up to the top of the Dandenongs where the viewing deck is today. Chris first took me here two years ago during my first visit to Australia with him for Christmas. It was a bit of an overcast day when we came two years ago, but today, it was semi clear despite the threat of rain. We had a clear view of the Melbourne skyline. I looked at the place with a slightly different eye, this time seeing it as a potential wedding venue with its Secret Garden, English gardens, and 180 degree views of the city of Melbourne and the Yarra Valley. When we walked around the grounds and the reception area, I could actually imagine this place as a feasible option for our party. Even the food options seemed like they could be fitting for our multicultural menu desires.

This wedding thing is becoming more and more real each day. I can’t believe this is really happening.

We visited three potential venues today, and something seemed a bit off about all of them for us. The first one was the most naturally beautiful – it was a reception venue in the midst of the Dandenongs built to maximize the beauty of the forest surrounding it. The food menu was a bit lacking, though, and they didn’t allow for outsider caterers. The second and the third were owned by the same hospitality group. The second felt the most staged in terms of photo opportunities but had the grandest entrance and cocktail/bar area. I also loved the layout of the reception room. The third was still under renovation in many parts, but was the cheapest for a venue hire.

The idea of having a wedding in a place that is 100 percent for weddings doesn’t really sit well with me. It seems a bit trite to have a wedding at a place like that to me. I think I’d prefer a place that was a garden or a winery or something specific that also happened to host weddings and other functions; it would have a bit more character.

Today, I finally was able to meet the third of Chris’s best friends. It’s taken over 6.5 years of friendship and almost three years of us being together for this to happen. I guess it hasn’t helped that she has been living across San Diego, Singapore, and now Jakarta and has given birth to two babies since. She’s also never overlapped time with us in Melbourne. We just happened to be at the Gold Coast at the same time and met for lunch with her husband, two children, and mom.

Chris always used to say that when he would hear stories about my mother from me, he would be reminded of this friend’s mother, who had a similar background as my mother in terms of coming from a war-torn country, immigrating to a western country and raising children with those experiences framing their minds. When we met today, it was like meeting someone who actually understood not only how I felt, but also tried to empathize with my situation given she’s experienced most of this, and also tried to see things through my mother’s eyes.

The most memorable moment I had when we were chatting and getting to know each other was when I told her that my mom has repeatedly told me that I need to get married and have my first child by the age of 30. Otherwise, she would forbid me from having children period. When I have told this story to others, it’s usually received with laughs. Everyone just thinks it’s very comical and doesn’t take it seriously. No one thinks one step deeper about what a statement like that says when it’s exchanged from a mother to her daughter. But when Chris’s friend heard this, she cracked not the slightest smile. Instead, her face turned sour, and I could see fiery in her eyes. And she launched in a tirade, saying, “Doesn’t that frustrate you? Who does she or anyone else think she is trying to control your body? It’s not her body. It’s yours!” It was clear she completely understood our relationship because she had almost the same relationship with her mother.

“It’s a really sad and painful thing to know that your own mother will never really know who you are, who you truly are as a person,” she said to me. It’s not that they don’t want to know us… It’s more that they just can’t handle that we are so different than what they had envisioned and hoped for based on different cultural backgrounds and their painful life experiences. “It’s hard, but I deal with it by knowing that I will not be that way with my own kids.”

Amen.

Today, we explored the Daintree National Rainforest, which is the largest rainforest in Australia, as well as the Port Douglas area of Queensland. One of the most striking things we found today was the Four Mile Beach, which was completely empty except for us. Apparently, there was a crocodile warning, so everyone was too scared to come to the beach. We went anyway just to take photos and feel the water for a bit. The sand was scorching on our toes, and as soon as we dipped our feet into the water, the water felt nearly hot, like the temperature you’d want to take a nice, comfortable bath in. The water was far warmer than it was when we were in Maui, which already was impressively warmer than the crazy cold waters I’ve felt at any beach in California, or even at Bondi Beach.

It’s crazy to think that this is the same exact ocean that California, Hawaii, and New South Wales have, yet the water feels so different in all these places. As we walked along the beach today and enjoyed the heat of the sun and the salt water, I kept thinking about how big this world is and how endless the places to discover are. There isn’t enough time to see or do everything. We’re just little people in a ridiculously large world.

As part of our Cairns trip, we took a snorkeling cruise today to see Michaelmas Cay and Hastings Reef, two reefs that are just tiny smidgens of the absolutely enormous and striking Great Barrier Reef. I’ve always been terrified of deep ocean water; drowning is something that really scares me. I took swim lessons when I was in high school and learned to swim and tread water, but I’ve always hated the feeling of not being able to breathe through my nose, and I never quite mastered the breathing technique during the free-style stroke. Swimming under water and not at the surface also makes me very uneasy, so I figured snorkeling would be a safe choice for me to see the reef.

I was scared initially, but I realized how easy it was to snorkel and get carried away by following different fish. We saw so many different types of bright and neon colored fish of all different shades – a greater variety than I could have even imagined that went far past just the Nemo/clown fish variety I was already imagining. The coral reef itself was vibrant and of colors I only dreamt of seeing. It felt so calming and surreal to just swim and feel like I was one of them in this vast, deep sea. While snorkeling and snapping pictures with my underwater digital camera, I just felt that this was one of the best experiences in my life — to be in the middle of the ocean with my flippers just like a fish. I kept looking down to the bottom of the ocean floor and thinking, wow, I’m really swimming in the ocean where in certain parts, the depths are so far down that my naked eye can’t quite see the bottom. It made me think more about how vast and complex the world is, and how little of it I have had the chance to see in my life to date no matter what anyone thinks or says.