Insta Stories
I write to reflect: on day-to-day life having moved overseas, my background, work, creativity, neurodivergence, and past experiences. I publish these short pieces to instagram. Here are a few of my recent insta stories:
Strolling with Sushi Gran
Though I’m as much South Indian as I am Australian, I’ve been to South India just once. There, in Kerala, I met my Nana’s big sister. Sushi Gran. Just like Nana used to, Sushi Gran (a tiny and feisty retired professor) wore a crisp, white sari with gold trim, gold jewellery, and her waist-length hair twisted into an elegant bun.
We had a feast in the family compound, courtyard tiles lined with lush, green baby grass, and palm trees standing tall around the outside. I happily ate and ate and didn’t stop until the aunties allowed it.
After lunch, we wound our way through the mirror-like backwaters of Alleppey on the family houseboat. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. I felt sea sick and had to lie down.
It was a brand new year, but big, blow-up Christmas decorations shaped like Snoopy-dressed-as-Santa still lined the streets of Kochi. We counted paper lanterns hanging in trees, as the same two jazzed-up Christmas hymns played over and over on the radio in Sushi Gran’s car. She sang all the words all the way home.
That afternoon, we joined Sushi Gran on a meandering stroll, past a tiny pink chapel that she loved and visited often. It sat all by itself in a huge field of long grass, which made it seem even smaller.
The uncles had insisted at lunch that I’d be married in their courtyard one day.
I made note of the tiny pink chapel.
It was only my second time in India, but I felt at home with Sushi Gran, who held our hands tightly, and told us stories of hip young Nana.
I still didn’t understand the Malayalam spoken around me, but the sound was a familiar comfort from my mum’s side of the family. (At Nana and Papa’s house in Malaysia, the grown ups knew they could keep serious chats - and juicy gossip - from my sister and me by switching to Malayalam. Everything else was fair game, especially the curry puffs and the murukku.)
I still wonder how to carry that part of me into my everyday life more, and how to share it. I understand why food, cooking, and writing have been so important to my mum for as long as I can remember. These things feel like the surest way to stay connected.
Even though I see Nana’s twin when I look in the mirror, sometimes people don’t place me as Indian, and lots of times people think Gomes sounds more Portuguese.
But last week in London, I met a friend’s friend at a party, and worked with someone new at the shop. Both had South Indian heritage, and both knew the name Gomes well. A D’Silva, and a D’Souza. Both names I have in my own family. The guy said, We could be cousins! I laughed, but he was serious, so I imagined that we were.
Cool as a Cough Drop
A guy at work once told me I have a calming presence. And then, to back up his wild claim, he said if I were to be any item at the supermarket, I’d be a Soothers lozenge.
Now this was crazy to me. Not because I’d always pictured myself as more of a grape or something. But because after years of battling with my own head and never feeling particularly calm on the inside, when the guy compared me to a lozenge, I’d recently started meds.
And they seemed to be working.
I’d heard people say a lot that they didn’t like being on meds, or didn’t want to go on them, because of how little you feel on them. But it was everything I did feel, every day, that convinced me to finally try them.
I’d tried everything else. I kept routines and notes app lists, and became a regular at Fitzroy f45. I walked and talked with friends, and Ed, and family. Sometimes I talked to my therapist (Sharon sitting cross legged in an armchair).
For the most part, all of this helped. But even when I was loving life most, I couldn’t stop the little thoughts from falling, one on top of another like dominoes, leading me into a spin. And I couldn’t keep away the cold hand that would seize me by the insides and make my heart race for nothing.
So starting the meds was huge. It went quiet up there almost immediately, like someone had switched off the radio playing over the TV.
I could zone in on one thing at a time.
Which meant the icy grip I’d come to associate with can’t-focus-panic loosened. Which meant fewer weird avoidance blackouts spent scrolling the internet for a particular kind of shoe or laundry basket for hours, when what I was meant to be doing would have taken 10 minutes.
It baffles me now that I waited so long to treat what I was dealing with. Because that’s the crux of it - I was dealing with something every day that I didn’t need to be dealing with. I thought it was just me. It took so much energy.
And while the meds won’t solve everything (I will never not procrastinate refilling the script), I love the way I feel things that make sense in a situation now, instead of feeling things that really don’t. I love the clearer head, and I love being compared to a Soothers lozenge.
The Odds of Being Productive
The fun thing about the way I work
Is that sometimes, I need dead quiet,
An empty room, lights buzzing overhead,
No reason to move for the next nine hours,
To dig into something and finish it.
And if I can’t have that, game over.
And sometimes,
I need someone to take a phone call
Right across the desk from me,
Music on, foot traffic, street traffic, the lot,
To focus, lose track of time, get shit done.
And if I can’t have that, game over.
But half the time,
When I set myself up with quiet,
It doesn’t work. I need the noise.
And half the time,
When I set myself up with noise,
It doesn’t work. I need the quiet.
So it’s a bit like a game each day,
Adjusting my formula for success
Into a winning one.
December 1st
It’s dark outside by 4:30. Like pitch black midnight dark.
And while I never expected to, I love it. Because the dark highlights big glass apartment windows, lit from within, framing Christmas trees covered in blinking lights. Pubs pour mulled wine on quiet corners for cold hands, and snowman street lights line the market.
Today before it was dark, I saw a convertible, top down, with a Christmas tree propped up tall between the passenger and driver seats. Cruising home from the Christmas tree market set up in a driveway alley off my street. Most people cross London Fields with a tree over their shoulder or under their arm, so it was a sight.
It was a crisp, sunny afternoon, icy air invigorating thanks to the perfect combo of thermals + scarf + gloves + coat.
Looking at the cloudless blue sky, you’d never have guessed that this morning, on the first official day of winter, the first day of December, it snowed.
I walked out of a meeting into light raindrops that turned out to be surprise snowflakes. Some of them landed on my nose, and the rest of them swirled around quietly, as I surprised myself again with how much I love this season.
How to Stand Out in an Interview
Tuesday, October 31st. I guess it’s Halloween, but you wouldn’t know it from the corporate types on the tube. I’m dressed for success, heading into Central London to meet the UK Chief Executive Creative Director (!!) of the ad agency I worked for in Australia. No pressure, no pressure. I just really want to work for him.
I’d dropped into the London office once already. The week before, I’d had a promising (and fun) chat with a couple of global network colleagues there. We compared notes, and talked and talked. I felt welcome, and (added bonus) there were hints of some possible upcoming work.
They decided I should meet the Chief Executive Creative Director next. Not to get ahead of myself, but I’m already thinking this meeting could be the last hurdle standing between me and the start of my London career.
Luckily, he’s got time to see me the very next week.
So here I am, a week later, on a windy autumn afternoon, marching across Blackfriars Bridge and into their office, again. I know roughly what I want to say, what I’d like to ask, and what I hope we’ll discuss. I’m not nervous - I’m actually just looking forward to it.
No more than a minute after I step into the lobby, I’m being whisked up to the Chief Executive Creative Director’s office, where I sit down beside him on a couch, compliment his view of the Thames, and explain my connection to the company. He’s already got my portfolio open on his laptop, which he sets down next to his phone in front of us. He wants to see 3 pieces of my best work. So I take him through 3 campaigns, and after a little back and forth on each project, plus a quick rundown of my ambitions and my favourite work of his, he shakes my hand and thanks me for coming. We’ll be in touch, he says. I’m whisked down to the lobby again, and am back out by the Thames before I’ve had the chance to tie up my trench coat.
I swear I’m in and out of the building in under 20 minutes flat. I have whiplash. I blinked and it was over. It was good vibes and he was super cool, but we hardly broke the surface of what I’d imagined we’d discuss. I start walking toward the tube, but stop halfway across the bridge to call my sister in LA. I’m worried that if I don’t debrief RIGHT NOW, the details will escape me.
I’ve got my noise-cancelling over-ear headphones on talking to my sister, but I’m still waving my phone around in my hand so no one thinks I’m a crazy person, out here on a bridge, talking to myself. It’s okay, she says, he’s the highest-up head of Creative for the UK. Of course your meeting was short! It doesn’t mean anything. I know she’s right, but the tears well up anyway. I think I’m just exhausted. I’ve had so many positive meetings since I got to London that haven’t led anywhere yet, and I feel so much riding on each one. So even after this lovely chat with a top dog at a branch of my most recent company, I’m struggling to keep my chin up.
So I’m standing on the bridge, kind of laugh-crying with my sister about what a roller coaster this whole process has been. Still waving the phone around, pausing to take a couple photos of the view to send her. It’s okay. Short meeting does not equal bad meeting. I can’t hear the traffic, thanks to my (amazing, amazing) headphones, but I can feel the bridge vibrate with the double decker busses and black cabs that cross it.
As I’m telling my sister how apparently the bridges in London aren’t as sturdy as you’d think, I realise the vibrating is actually coming from my coat pocket (wtf). It’s not my phone - I’m holding my phone. I reach into my pocket, and pull out another phone. I GASP. It looks exactly like mine, and its Find My iPhone alarm is going OFF. I call the number on the screen, and the Chief Executive Creative Director’s Executive Assistant picks up.
I burst back into the lobby 30 seconds later, cheeks on fire from super-speed-walking and embarrassment, and hand over the phone that I’d accidentally picked up from the table I’d presented my work at. The Chief Executive Creative Director had put it down in front of us (mine was in my bag), and I’d grabbed it by habit when I left. I’d just robbed the busiest man in the company about 25 precious minutes with his precious iPHONE. The assistant is laughing as I profusely explain and apologise and say I hope we can all laugh about this one day.
As she heads back toward the security gate, she calls out to me:
This’ll go down in history as what not to do
in an interview!
True, but at least it will be memorable too.
I hope they laughed about it.
Thinking of You
Bad habit, toxic trait, adhd,
What do you call it when you constantly write messages to your friends that you never send? All night and day, sentences, questions, and texts pop fully formed into my mind, and against my best efforts, that’s where they stay. My biggest struggle is pinning down any one thought at any given time, for long enough to turn it into action. I’m doing too many things at once. I wish my friends knew how much I think about them.
Near or far, maybe we haven’t talked in a little while, or a long time. But every day, while I walk, sit in meetings, cook, talk to someone new, read, shower, write, and fall asleep, I tell you, in my head, about the thing I saw today that reminded me of you. And continue our conversation from last time. I’m dying to know how you are, and excited to hear what you’ve been up to. I try to explain, with dread, why I’ve been out of touch, and promise you I’ve been thinking of you often, with love.