Space Between the Notes

From Kathmandu to Kyoto

Sunset in Kathmandu. March 2019. © Peck Gee Chua

Have you read the news lately? They are numbing. I try to tune them out. But sometimes, you just can’t forget about them.

I see headlines on flooding and landslides from Southeast Asia to South Asia. The recent one devastated Nepal, including Kathmandu Valley where we used to live.

Nepal has a special place in my heart.

• I had the best work-life arrangement there. With my then 3-year old daughter, we completed multiple 2K runs around the valley. She met her first best friend and learned art from the most amazing art studio.

• I was captivated by the beauty of sunsets there - a canvas of colors, sometimes vibrant and at times subtle, but never stale. We experienced festivals all year round from Holi, Rato Machindranath Jatra, Buddha Jayanti, Teej, Dashain, to Tihar; festivals of knowledge, light, to new beginnings.

• Learned firsthand that it is not impossible for cows and elephants to freely roam on the streets. And the best Japanese soba is to be found on a hilltop.

• Experienced paragliding overlooking Pokhara lake with my brother on a Christmas day!

• Multiple times, we got sick with food poisoning from poor water quality. We also wore masks due to the bad air situation. Kathmandu is also where I first got into the anti-air pollution movement because of what I saw.

Compared to Kyoto, the infrastructure in Kathmandu is much less resilient.

The vulnerable will only become more vulnerable. There is an inherent inertia to vulnerability that is hard to shrug off when stuck in a complex web of overlapping systemic issues.

Life is unfair. It pains me to read about the destruction happening to the gentle people of Nepal. Yet, I am also fully aware of the richness I have seen firsthand and benefitted from my time there.

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Doing the essential things better.

“You should have a really high bar for doing anything but thinking about what to work on" - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

Come this October 6, another 365 days around the sun for me. Perhaps more accurately, 366 days since this is a leap year!

At the start of this year, I publicly wished for a year of rediscovering rest, of me doing the essential things better. Looking back, life must have its own endearing way of making dreams come true.

Because in the short few days after my Jannuary 1 post, I got a(nother) surprised health diagnosis. See OpEd ‘Why Sitting is the New Smoking: My sudden diabetes diagnosis’.

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I stopped doing a lot of things. I stopped paid work. Tipped the balance to myself and my family. Rewired and reworked my worldview from the ground up. Destruction of an old way, an old identity, old habits.

For the past few years, as I grew closer to the work cause, I also sat with disconnection between my work and my lifestyle. Work required frequent travels and burning jet fuels, yet I preached to halt climate change. I was constantly online and on social media, running webinars, events, choreographing, coordinating. My mind running nonstop. Advocacy is a long journey and so it took time away for me to be fully present at home to be with my family and kids, yet I am championing early childhood causes.

The endless ideation to chase the perfect narrative, the adrenaline of crafting that perfect slide deck, the dopamine rush you get when you satisfy the urge to act on new ideas just because the work is urgent, important, and cannot wait.

I miss all of it and the people that I get to work with.

But I am equally curious about all other facets in life with no purpose, no end goal, no monetary value tagged on them. And see what emerges.

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For now, I paused to feel more deeply.

As we move through the world, we are in turn the brush and the brushstroke - Sylvain Tesson. © Peck Gee Chua

I turned towards introspective activities that can steer me towards creative expressions.

Now I can proudly say that, actually, I can 全心全意 cook with my heart. From butter chicken, cabbage rolls, pumpkin soup, konnyaku miso dengaku - making them from scratch on hours, pairing them with 2-3 other dishes each meal, while drinking tea with music.

Since Grade 6, I stopped playing the piano. I used to be able to play Clair de Lune by Debussy for hours. Now, I find myself leaning into the subtle rhythms of Chado or the Japanese Way of Tea, Chinese tea, meditation, Eastern philosophies. The piano chords I once played, now shifted into the quiet flow of tea and spirituality.

Just to think that a year ago, I had seriously contemplated enrolling in another Master’s degree to specialize on Climate Change.

Since high school, I stopped composing poems (I used to wake up in the middle of the night to just write). Now, once again, I am touched by poetic beauty all around, offering glimpses to the 10,000 expressions that words alone cannot convey.

“Music is the space between the notes”, as expressed by Debussy. Pauses between notes where magic unfolds.

I am now back to writing, reading, 1:1 in person conversations, taking lots of walks, and reflecting.

Reflecting on how I can connect social change with meaningful changes at hyperlocal levels, starting from individuals, parents/ families, and communities in ordinary ways.

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Unordinary by David Whyte

Extraordinary is almost always approached through doing, unordinary is approached and uncovered through undoing, through a radical simplification of what I know about myself and my world.

Unordinary is what lies beneath my everyday life, like an interior seam of precious metal hidden by layers of my surface ordinariness; something to be uncovered and perhaps at times, even unleashed. 

Unordinary says there is something yet to be seen in me, something yet to emerge. Unordinary is the ordinary me, but half-a-shade braver than my surface-self because it has to be brought out from what is hidden.

The extraordinary might take effort and constant practice, but bringing out the unordinary from the hidden takes real, personal courage.

Unordinary is the ultimate experience of absolute presence, complete personal expression and a burgeoning sense of freedom amidst all our responsibilities and our many duties. 

- from the forthcoming Consolations II 

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