Bye Bye, Seattle

I'm back at Portland.

And it's dark, cloudy and chilly here. I have only light jackets, darn.

After nights of sleeplessness, I finally slept a good deal last night. Maybe because I had too much of red wine and champagne last night at the wedding. Well, you can't really fault me: I haven't had much to drink since I arrived Seattle, it was free flow of wine at the party, I'm not feeling too great these days, and I still had to deal with relatives (most of whom I've never met my entire life: Uncle Colin's sisters who knew my mom and my dad before they all emigrated to Canada; I felt like a 'lost' niece or something) who kept bombarding questions like "So when's it your turn?". Many a time, I had to run out of the party to catch some breath before I started tearing again. Good thing was, the view outside was great; I captured many pictures of it.

It is actually harder to talk to folks who actually knew of the man. More intimate questions like, "So is he back in Singapore?", "Is he flying now?", "When he flies to Vancouver, you can come along with him, right?", "Have you guys ever discussed marriage?" completely caught me off-guard, and I couldn't possibly talk about anything too upsetting, so I played along. "Oh, he's back.", "He's flying a lot now, flying to many places too.", "Yeah, I could join him but he'd stay in Vancouver only for a day, so it isn't much of a point for me.", and "No, we have not discussed anything."

Standard answer to the most popular question: "No, not getting married." Full stop.

On a pleasant recall of memory, both of us had once thought of a way of dealing with relatives who kept asking us The Question whenever we met them during any kind of family function. We decided we would say, "No, not getting married, we're just gonna have kids" and shock the sock outta them. But we never really managed to say that, someone might just start taking us seriously and start talking to our parents, which might mean more hell. Glad we never did.

Only once, for that one and only moment, I blurted out some slight truth, because I wanted to, to someone during the party amidst our third glass of red wine. Cousin Mark's girl, Jelita, is a sweet girl. I met her once or twice before during my first few trips to Seattle. And we kinda hit it off right then. She's of direct Fijian descent and she has some sound Hindu beliefs (well, mostly enforced by her father, anyway). She's a funny chatterbox, and she just makes me feel so at ease with her. When we got to talking about our men and marriage last night, I just couldn't refrain from telling her, "Actually, we're having some problems." but I just stopped at that as well. She has never met the man, but she knows of him and my devotion to the man (why is it that everyone who knows me thinks I'm one who's devoted to the man?). She could see emotions welling up in me, so she smiled quietly, and just said, "I just hope everything turns out for the better." No probe, no big fuss. I like her.

Then, I had to run out again.


I was so sleepy after the wine, I slept on the car ride back, and also slept through my shower and the rest of the night. I woke up a little late, had a quickie breakfast with uncle and auntie ("When are you getting married? We'll try to be there." Again?! I just smiled), and took a car ride from private Mark (he's a private person, he doesn't work in the military) to the train station, and I slept almost the entire train ride back to Portland.


I was very fortunate to have enjoyed nothing but sunshine during the past four days in Seattle. But the sky this morning as I left was dark, gloomy and threatening to rain. The temperature had dipped to a low, and I felt I could do with a thicker jacket. Is Seattle gonna cry for me as well?


I am supposed to be having my lunch now, and having to rush back to the hotel where the mad rush will start. I have not even started on my presentation slides.

I have many pictures to show of Seattle in the last couple of days, but I've also been very frustrated trying to load up pictures on my web site. Maybe, I'll have to go back in time a little in my next few journals - when I manage to get my pictures done right.


All I can say now is the sadness is still there, the tears still welled up in my heart, the words still stuck in my throat, but my head is getting a little clearer... or at least, I hope. Maybe it's because while I'm here faraway and alone, I feel like I have to make it on my own. I'm not sure of myself.