i didn't make it in time when my grandfather passed away five years ago - he died during my final exams and although i left immediately after my last exam by the time i got home the funeral was over. and last summer i'd only managed to see our family friend twice when i got back before he passed away. and i'm leaving for home tomorrow with unfinished work but that's not important now and i really can't think about this stupid exam tomorrow i've been crying half the night. i'm afraid i would step off the plane to find something terrible has happened. every day of last week i was thinking: if i could go home today i would, but of course i had to wait out the week while working on papers (late papers, i might say. i don't know why i'm so slow this year.)

i'm so surrounded by old people - i'm 26 today, and that makes nearly all the relatives that matter to me in their 60s and up, quite a few in their 70s. and - good lord - i just realised - quite one or two people that really matter who are approaching their 50th year. even chinese new year - we're having fewer and fewer houses to visit. while i was at school last year, two of my grand-aunts have passed on. one of them couldn't recognise me when i was home for the new year before that - she was that ill. when my grandfather was alive of course people came to our house, but i think i was too young to really remember that time. he moved away to hatyai in the last years - so most of my adult life we paid calls. i remember visiting so many houses - or was that because i was little and they seemed many? - but they dwindle every year. there were definitely at least 8 places when i was young - we paid calls into the second or third day. i worked out we only have four places to call on this year, my dad's eldest and second eldest cousins, one of his elder cousins-in-law, and my grandmother - my mother's mother. i'm certainly not acquiring relatives through marriage.

people say why are you unhappy if you're unhappy it means it's not worth it. and it's not the work even if that is going badly it's still worth it - this is what i am meant to do even if i can't find my voice now - it's the people i can't bear being away from. last night i called home and they said to me, happy birthday! and i started crying because i'm old, and everyone else has a job - and this has nothing to do with the opp cost of grad school being career advancement i don't care about that one bit it's that everyone is at home with their parents like filial children are meant to and having an income and giving housekeeping money to their mothers and i'm still a student and not only am i not taking over the housekeeping money i'm still having to draw a small allowance to get by. and my parents are not getting any younger although that is a damn silly expression no one gets any younger where's the logic in that? i want them to be able to kiao kah but at this rate i should have been better off just becoming a secondary school english teacher and come back to grad school when i'm forty-five. except i expect if i did that i'd have the six grubby children and a black-eye and putting up with some man's boozing and womanising (or what was it granny said to ridcully?) and being all wrinkly and my brain would be more of a mush than it is now. and really, one can't actually say, well i'll take a leave and go home and come back only when everyone is dead can one? i should stop crying and go and study for this exam. i don't remember the last thing about anything i read three months ago.