During this trip, Chis mentioned that all of our trips are not genuine “holidays” in that we are never really sitting back, relaxing, and just letting time slip away. We’re always on the go, with a list of things we want to see, do, and accomplish by the time we leave our destination. The closest thing to a “holiday” in this sense for us is when we come back to Melbourne and are spending time with his family and friends… or at least, it’s relaxing for him. For me, it’s a lot of need to be “always on.” It is a bit more relaxing than hiking up mountains and trying to find the next restaurant in a language we can’t understand, but it’s still not complete “zone out” time for me.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy kicking back and relaxing. It’s more that I feel like time is limited. I won’t live forever, and even if I did, I would not have enough time to see every inch of the world that I want to see. So when I am not working and am away, I want to be able to explore more, to see and experience new things that I don’t always get to do.

It’s for this reason that whenever we take trips, we rarely spend any time just lying on a beach or back stroking through our hotel’s pool. In Rio, one of the beach capitals of the world, we were only on the beach twice and spent about five seconds in the water. But this trip, we decided to spend the second half of our first day in Cairns relaxing in the water at our resort pool, which was gorgeous and mimicked a real beach with its white sand “shore” and clear water setup. It was by far the nicest hotel pool I’d ever been at. It was a great feeling to not feel like we had anything we had to rush off to or be at afterwards. I felt calm and happy, swimming on my back and feeling the sun beam down on my face and body.

I still think I would get bored if that’s all we did for a week anywhere, though.

Whenever I see Chris’s grandmothers, I always feel a tinge of sadness knowing that my own paternal grandmother didn’t get to live to see me do things like graduate from high school or college, get engaged, or even just reach a double-digit age, as she passed away when I was just nine years old. We went to visit Nana at her house today, and she talked about the blessed life she’s had – the happy childhood, the loving marriage to Appa, and the constant help and love she receives now from everyone, from her family, friends, and even neighbors. Every time we see her, she always has us do a short group prayer, where she thanks the Lord for all the blessings of her and her family’s life. This time, she asked the Lord to bless our engagement and marriage, and I could feel my eyes starting to water when she asked this of Him.

I’m not used to people being so accepting of me, of asking to bless anything I do or wish me well from a higher power. I’m honestly not sure what I ever did to be accepted to the degree I have been, or to be loved by people I don’t spend much time with, but it’s a very surreal feeling.

This is my third trip to Australia and my third time spending Christmas in Melbourne. Despite the last two trips, I realized I’d never had good aerial view of the city. I got it twice today, once at Vue de Monde with Chris and his parents, and the second time on the Melbourne Star, Melbourne’s equivalent of the London Eye. It moved far slower than I thought it would, and we probably spent about thirty minutes on it. We saw a gorgeous sunrise and great colors reflected off of the skyscrapers of Melbourne.

Being up on the Melbourne Star, I realized how much my perspective on this city has evolved since the first time. The first time I came, I was a wide-eyed American, finally in the Southern Hemisphere for the first time and seeing this great Down Under country. The second time, I was a bit jaded. I thought, well, I’ve already been here before, and I was saddened at knowing that this was the first Christmas when my brother would not be alive. I felt bits of misery on and off throughout the whole trip. This time, it’s like I am seeing it with a new eye from literally a new perspective. I’m noticing more and more the beauty of Melbourne and how livable it can be (despite the subpar public transit system). It really is like another home for me.

Chris and I went to dinner with one of his best friends and her husband tonight, and she announced to us (by not drinking) that she is eight weeks pregnant. She said that ideally, once the baby comes, she would no longer work and would be a stay-at-home mother and wife. “I just think that it’s better to have one parent home to keep an eye on the kids to see what they are doing and thinking every day,” she said. She also said she had no attachment to her job and industry, anyway.

For the longest time, because I came from a family where both parents worked, and my mother has rammed into my head that no matter how much money my future husband makes and no matter how secure his job is that I absolutely need to work and not depend on him for money (in the event he either leaves me, or tries to “control” the money in the house), I was very resistant to the idea of women continuing to stay at home and be full-time mothers and wives. It wasn’t just about my own upbringing; it’s about how hard women before me have worked to gain gender equalities in today’s society – the fact that it still hasn’t been a century since women gained the right to vote in the United States (and similar timelines in other developed, westernized nations), the fact that women on average still earn only 75-80 cents for every dollar men earn in the same professions, the fact that after getting married, women for the most part are still expected to relinquish their family names in favor of their husband’s family names and become a “Mr.’s.”

There have been moments where I have been frustrated because of my gender, particularly at work, when I have been called “difficult” or “bossy” by both men and women, in situations where I know that if I were a man doing the exact same action or using a similar tone of voice that no one would ever pass the same judgment. In these moments, I’ve thought occasionally, it would be so much easier if I just “gave up” – left the industry to take on a more traditional gender role because in that realm, I wouldn’t have any glass ceiling to try to break.

But then I think of my mother and how hard she has worked despite her lack of education to make sure that our household income included money that she made. My mother never even had proper primary school education, yet I’ve completed tertiary education at arguably one of the best colleges in the world. Despite her lack of formal education, she still found a full-time white-collar job in San Francisco and stayed there for over 26 years, while others in similar situations went to work in sewing factories or doing minimum wage jobs. I think of the freedom I have in earning my own money and never having to ask or get advice from anyone on how to use it for the things I want. I also think of my future daughter and the message I’d be sending to her if I didn’t work. I’m not trying to do anything revolutionary by wanting to continue to work, but I want to have an identity that is outside of just the labels “mother” and “wife.” I want to be seen as an intelligent woman and human being outside of domesticated duties, and I want to make sure that my daughter sees that she has every opportunity in the world available to her through my own life examples.

Once I reached college, I did think more about how the “women’s revolution” was about having choices – the choice to work or not work, and I became more and more accepting of highly educated women deciding to leave the workforce to become full time stay-at-home mothers because I can see why women would want that. In this friend’s case, she has no attachment to her job. Parents may want one parent to be fully aware of what’s going on at every millisecond of their children’s lives. Not everyone can afford hired help or have the luxury of having healthy, physically capable grandparents nearby. But I have realized in myself that I don’t think I can ever shake the initial invisible “slap” I feel every time I hear someone around my age say that she wants to be a stay-at-home mother. As hard as I try, I’ll always have to force myself to bite my tongue to not question it or say anything remotely judgmental. Women will always judge other women and oftentimes be the reasons other women fail. But I guess this is how one feels when she has very strong opinions about certain issues when she knows that gender stereotypes regarding societal roles are nowhere near dying in this lifetime.. or even in the next four.

I’m at my home away from home away from home. There’s the home I have in New York City that Chris and I share, the one that I’ve spent the most time in during the last 2.5 years. Then, there’s the one I grew up in on a hill in foggy San Francisco, the one that has a mix of both bitter, angry, and sweet memories. It’s the one I go back to and always feel conflicted about because I’m convinced there is too much negative energy that persists there, an energy that almost prevents happiness from existing.

Then, there’s my third home in the opposite hemisphere, the one that I first came to about two years ago in 2012, where Chris’s parents live and where Chris and his brother lived for their late teen years onward. It’s the home that is always decorated full of Christmas ornaments and wreaths and trimmings each December, with a big, open kitchen and lush gardens. It’s a place that feels more and more like my home each time I come back to it. And this time, it felt the warmest.

Ever since getting to know Chris’s parents, it’s always been a conscious or subconscious thought in my head how differently they react to different situations than my own parents do. When we didn’t make it in time for our connecting flight to Melbourne and had to be re-routed through Sydney, Chris’s parents both messaged us, letting us know that it’s all right; we have increased segments and status credits to look forward to, and perhaps we could also enjoy the Sydney lounge! There’s nothing to worry about!

In the same situation with my parents, they would probably worry, complain about the missed connection and not think about anything that could remotely be good about the situation. It’s a constant contrast for me to see how positive his parents are versus how negative mine are. It’s comical when I see how positive Chris’s parents are because all I can do is literally laugh out loud and want to pinch myself to convince myself that this is all real, and these are real life reactions to real life situations.

According to my Tripit stats for 2014, I’ve been on the road for 84 days so far this year. On 18 trips, I’ve traveled to 34 cities in seven different countries. I never even though about it much until I looked at the stats on this app’s page. I’m such a spoiled brat.

I flew down to Atlanta today to participate in “team building” activities with an agency client, and with my boss, hosted a team holiday party. At the Painted Pin, where we played games, bowled, ate and drank, a few of my clients gave me a hard time about not telling them about my recent engagement. I’m not sure how you suavely tell clients that you don’t see face to face every day that you are engaged, so I just started calling Chris my “fiance” one day, and they figured it out. And of course, they made me tell them the engagement story.

“Wait, you got engaged in Brazil during the World Cup?” they shrieked. “Didn’t you just say that you were in Europe for Thanksgiving and are going to be in Australia for Christmas? Can you just legally adopt us now because we want your life!!”

I really am a very blessed, privileged person, and in the last two years, I’ve thought about it more than ever, particularly given the hardships I’ve encountered. Sometimes, it really does take the worst in life to put things into perspective. I never thought that at the age I am now that I’d be traveling as often as I do for both work and pleasure, and that I’d have seen this much of my country and the world now. For a long time, it was just a wistful dream. It’s a funny thing when your dream becomes a reality.

It’s been exactly one year and four months since Ed passed away. I never would have thought that at exactly this moment in time, my dad would have had double bypass surgery, finally gotten discharged from the hospital after nine nights, and be back home recovering in his own home with my mom and me. I also never would have thought that he’d finally acknowledge after all these years exactly how freezing this house is, and that the heat actually does need to be turned on. He was coughing uncontrollably when we got home and we finally realized he was coughing so much because of all the cold air circulating throughout the house. Once the heat was turned on to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, his coughing calmed down and he was able to breathe comfortably.

Ed would have been happy to know that our father was recovering quickly from his heart surgery. I think he may have even secretly been more excited that my dad finally acknowledged he was wrong about the temperature of the house and finally decided to voluntarily turn on the heat. He’d probably even be in disbelief right now if he were here to see and experience this himself.

Our dad is finally home, though. He’s survived the scary surgery with flying colors, and he won’t be joining Ed anytime soon. That’s right. My dad is getting closer to his 150^th birthday like I said he would. It’s a good moment today.

My younger uncle and my dad have never really gotten along. It stems from seemingly ridiculous childhood problems and their respective high levels of stubbornness. In my family, everyone loves to blame each other, and no one ever wants to admit fault — at least, out loud to others.

I guess it had to take a family history of heart disease to get these two to start reaching out to one another. They both saw their older brother pass away from a heart attack 14 years ago at just 65 years of age, and then my uncle had his angiogram two months ago that revealed his blocked artery, which prompted my dad to call him. And ultimately, it was my uncle who suggested to my dad that he get the stress test and angiogram done, which led to my dad’s bypass surgery this past week.

My uncle visited for the second time tonight, and he spent two hours in my dad’s room with us and my aunt, talking about childhood memories, recent events, and my grandpa’s position in the U.S. Navy during World War II. For the first time, I found out that my grandpa went to Okinawa to fight during the war, and he got within 10 inches of some sharp object that almost killed him. He apparently kept it and brought it back to the U.S. with him after the war — as a reminder of how close he came to death and how precious life is.

My dad and uncle were laughing so hard at a few points that my dad had to ask everyone to calm down because he was afraid his laughter would open up his chest incision. It was amazing to see them both laughing so freely together. It looked and felt natural — I couldn’t believe it.

Is this what it takes for two hostile brothers to reconcile? It’s never too late. This surgery will save my dad’s life — and perhaps even my dad’s relationship with his younger brother. Here’s to hoping we’re all moving in a positive direction for both.

I hate hospitals. They smell funny, have stale air, and just have a general aura of “ugh.” Bacteria are everywhere here, and everyone constantly is squirting alcohol or some form of antibacterial gel on their hands. Today, I saw a happy man carrying a big basket of flowers and balloons that read “It’s a GIRL!” It was likely to a new mother in one of the patient rooms. The idea of having to give birth to a child in a hospital just makes me seriously think about wanting to have a midwife and have a water birth in the comfort of my own future bath tub.

I just spent the night at the hospital in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit with my dad. I slept on and off throughout the night awkwardly in a chair next to him. My mom and I are taking turns staying with him each night until he gets home. Today, he was transferred out of the ICU into a regular room because his blood pressure has returned back to normal. All I have to say is, I cannot wait until he is well enough to come back home. I’m so exhausted.

My mom has a church service to attend tomorrow morning, and because she doesn’t want my dad to stay alone too long (the nurses didn’t give him his lunch until 2pm today while I was out with my friend, so she was furious), I said I’d arrive at the hospital before she leaves in the morning. My dad insisted he was fine and says that he can take care of himself. “Why do you want to come again tomorrow?” he said to me. “Because I want to see you, doofus!” I exclaimed. “Why do you think I came home?!” He laughs, along with my mom, aunt, cousin and his wife, who are visiting.

Sometimes, my dad is so clueless. But his progress is making me feel really proud now.