On laziness and loneliness

(Photo: taken on my phone, at the Hong Kong Flower Show, with a distinct 'we have the equestrian events for the 2008 Olympics!' theme going on).
I appear to have done it again: left it so long since I last wittered away on here, that I'm left with the choice of either summing up multiple thoughts as brief snippets, or having one good long rant and depriving you of the enviable beauty of some other complaints. Ah, which to do... let's see what happens. Maybe it'll be another epic, who knows. Fingers: take it away.

If there is one aspect of myself I could change - oh, if only I could be bothered! - it would be my unparalleled laziness. Within the first few days of arriving in my apartment on Lamma, I established that if planning on sleeping with the window open a mosquito net was clearly a necessity. After the briefest of forays around a bunch of Hong Kong's shopping malls, I didn't have any success and concluded that, well, the weather was getting colder and therefore I could get away with leaving the purchase for a while. The mozzie that nipped me sharply on the eyelid a few weeks ago should have been warning enough that the blighters had returned with the warmer weather and yet I was still unwilling to make a concerted effort to track down the vital netting... to my peril. I recently had the unnerving experience of having my lip take over half my face as it swelled to gigantic proportions courtesy of a bite from one of the cursed creatures; my gruesome face and I could be seen hurtling across Lamma Island at 0500 towards a friend's place and Childrens' Benadryl. Acquiring uber-strong antihistamine later in the day, along with cream that I was to 'use sparingly twice a day' (er, sod that, I lathered the stuff on as liberally as the swelling would allow), my lip finally retreated to normal proportions - after a brief period of time forcing me to wander round looking as though I'd had a disastrous event involving vanity and Botox.

Needless to say I refused to sleep the next night until I had a mozzie net hanging awkwardly above my bed.

The hellish yet mildly humorous experience - after I'd decided my lip wasn't actually going to explode - led me to thinking about this and that. One such thought being that despite being known for my somewhat haphazard approach to my appearance, I have, hidden somewhere beneath layers of ego and laziness, a vain side. I shuffled into Central, holding my head down and barely acknowledging the existence of the rest of the world, frequently covering up my lip with a tissue and the pretence of blowing my nose. I am under no illusions that I am a 'stunning beauty' - I know full-well that many other women, if cursed to spend a day with either my teeth or my nose, would act in the same manner I had when my lip went temporarily insane - but it hit home pretty hard that, actually, I do care. In the loosest possible way, that is. Despite the multiple errors I could point out (the creeping presence of 'orange peel thighs', a stomach that is not the springboard it once was, the veins that seem to have appeared only in the last few years - where were they before?), I'm fairly content inhabiting my body. It is by no means the figure I had even five years ago, when half the people I met would ask me if I was a model - and the other half had already asked me on a previous occasion. But it'll do. I wish I wasn't so lazy that I can cheerfully spend entire days hammocking and idling, and instead I was motivated to go running up hills and spend hours crunching my stomach into shape, but I am that lazy and I'll deal with it.

I know myself well enough to know where laziness stops and character steps in to take control. The majority of people in my intellectual position (that is, a brain competent enough to get a 1st class degree with absolutely no work whatsoever over the course of three years, and a Masters from Oxford with a total of approximately four weeks of work, and that time incorporating a good deal of sun-tanning in University Parks) are busy charging around being lawyers and accountants, consultants and researchers. It sometimes frustrates me that I'm misunderstood by some people to the extent that they think it is my inherent laziness that stops me from approaching any of these careers (now there is a word that stops my heart cold for a beat). I've spoken to some recently about the possibility of my starting a PhD - or DPhil as Oxford would have them known - but am aware in my heart that come September 2009, I wont be ready to make that commitment. Four years spent peering into archives and the darker corners of my brain, in order to get an honour and a piece of paper that proves to the world I have the capability of staying in one place for a lengthy duration and the stubborness to pursue Knowledge to the ends of the earth. Just as I don't feel the need to spend hours scouring shops for the perfect figure-hugging dress and the shoes that will match and show off my legs to their best advantage, because I am aware in myself that I'm happy with what I look like whether the rest of the world knows it or not, I don't feel the need to prove my intellectual abilities to anybody.

I watched one of my favourite movies again the other day, 'Good Will Hunting'. There is the thought in there that Will should use his genius in order to do some good in the world, because it is an insult to all his friends who have brains with the intellectual content of a Dan Brown book, and he almost falls for their convictions. Ultimately, however, we see him heading in pursuit of life and love - the movie, I note, is dedicated to the memory of Allan Ginsberg and William S Burrough. The Beat Generation: they knew what they were on about. Life is there for living, not for observing from an elevated penthouse while clad solely in Gucci and sipping delicately on a flute of champagne.

Trust me, it isn't so easy constantly uprooting yourself and forcing a new experience down your own throat. It isn't so easy stepping away from yet another relationship because it would require some sort of commitment to being in a certain place for a certain time - even if it is just yet another relationship that I know will never work because there is the requirement for me to even be thinking about staying or leaving. It isn't so easy turning down possibilities to go study for a PhD or get what the world classifies as a 'good job', and there will always be people out there who subsequently think they are Better Than Me. It isn't laziness that sees me avoiding that version of reality. Laziness is the reason I'm still in my pyjamas at 11am, it is the reason I probably wont leave Lamma Island today, and it is probably due to laziness entirely that I wont head out for that run today that I've been promising myself to do all week.

There are so few good looking men in Hong Kong that I've been labouring under the belief for months now that I've actually become utterly immune to masculine charms. When a girl has to resort to eyeing up the plastic models in shop windows to see a decent figure on a guy, you know life has thrown you a pretty mocking hand... Yesterday, however, I was relieved to discover that I haven't become something of a frigid robot: ah, guy in the UCLA t-shirt, do you live in this Godforsaken city?! Why is it so hard to find a delectable guy who shares my philosophy on life? Hell, forget the word 'delectable', any guy will do the trick. I'm tired of finding myself lonely at times.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” (Nietzsche)