LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHILE YOU’RE BUSY MAKING OTHER PLANS
It’s been almost two months since I posted anything here. Life has been going on, and go on it did in a hurly burly of events reeling by, almost in a haze. They demanded my time and attention, undivided. They didn’t leave much room to do much else. And now here we are, at the brink of another transition. Yet again, life as we know it is about to change.
I sincerely believe that we couldn’t have possibly orchestrated the circumstances in such magnificent precision if we concerted everything that we knew how to do, with all the prayers we could utter, abiding by all the bits of advice from experience and expertise, if we solely and primarily relied on ourselves. In the aftermath of things, what did we really know, after all?
And so we took the plunge and let faith be our pilot. From that point onwards, things just started to come together. Somehow, in my heart, I knew that when we have made our decision, everything was just a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if’… that much I believed.
It was after our California trip last year when I decided to give myself another shot at nursing and take the licensure examination there… this, after almost a decade of non-practice. I did so this year, in May, and bagged it. When we were toying with this idea, Papa and I surmised that in the event that I got my license, this was how things would have to work out… I would stay on after the exam, look for a job, get settled and stable, while he held on to his job in Singapore. There was no practical sense in both of us going to California unemployed. Once this is done, then he would leave his job in Singapore and follow me. But the buck doesn’t stop there. He would have to work too and with what he does, I couldn’t possibly restrict him to find employment where I did. And so in our minds, further changes were expected. Where he would find work, I would follow, even if that meant leaving the job I started out with. We both knew it was a bit complicated but it was the best way we knew how.
We arrived in California via San Francisco, stayed a day in Monterey and drove to LA to meet with friends and family before Papa brought me to Sacramento, where I was to live with my Aunt for the 3 months I planned to stay, in which time I hoped to have taken the exam, passed it, obtained my license and found a job. That would have given me enough time to review further and get acclimatized with the environment, all in the hope of reducing any stress I might have before I took the exam. Of course, the 3 months was extended because the ‘stress’ wasn’t at all reduced, no matter what. And even then, all I was able to do was take the exam. Amazing how after all these years and with everything I’ve been through in my life, this kind of things would still strike me in the very same manner that they did when I was in my formative school years, when examinations were a matter of life and death and failure simply was no option.
So anyway, when we were in LA, we met up with a couple of Papa’s colleagues… Ceci, herself a Filipina, and Tom. Both their jobs were involved in Marketing, where Papa has been assigned in the past year, and this gave them a whole lot of opportunities to work together and get to know one another, enough to have become friends. In time, I’ve come to be friends with them too, having joined them in a couple of conferences, both in Singapore and out.
When they learned that I was hoping to work as a nurse in the US, they asked us what the plan was, and proceeded to tell Papa about this job opening in their main office at Lake Forest. Looking back now, this was really a slipshod chance that fell into our hands. We were supposed to meet the previous night, the 4 of us, for dinner. But Tom was tied up with things and couldn’t make it. We were scheduled to leave for Modesto to visit Papa’s relatives the following day, but he was dead beat with all the driving so we opted to stay another day. This gave us time to meet for lunch, and that’s when Tom told us about the opening. If that wasn’t pure luck, I don’t know what is. By the time Papa left for Singapore, we were decided.
The following weeks were a slow and painful wait full of anticipation. Several emails were sent back and forth, sometimes coming to a stall for days on end, A series of interviews were set up but kept getting chucked on account of conflicting schedules. But every time something moved forward, every little bit made our prospects more and more promising afterwards. On a scheduled interview, I would give Papa a call at 3pm, 12 midnight his time, to wake him up… an overseas wakeup call as you would have it. And after each interview, we would chat and he would tell me how it went. He would send me copies of each email he exchanged with the bosses and the HR department, and with thousands of miles between us, we would try to make sense of it, where we stood, how we could push our luck further, when to stop bargaining.
As the weeks passed and my exam drew near though, my confidence in all the preparation I’ve done dwindled. Somehow I felt that everything I’ve been studying and reading for the past year or so wasn’t enough. I got to a point of such desperate frustration as my mock exams showed no progress… I still turned up no more than the pitiful 60% or so that I started out with. I wanted more. I didn’t want to go in knowing that I didn’t know 40% of what might be asked of me. So I rescheduled the exam, bought another review book and stayed an extra 2 weeks. Each time Papa and I would chat, I would tell him about how I was doing. And he would hold me up and help me believe in myself. He knew I could do it, even if I wasn’t so sure.
In those months, that was how most of our correspondences and conversations went. I’d encourage him through his waiting as he would encourage me through my review. Of course all of it was seasoned with sweet nothings and declarations of how much we loved and missed each other. In a sense, we were closer together in more ways than our circumstances warranted. We were together in our plans, in our efforts, in our hopes, in our dreams.
I went back to Singapore 2 days after the exam. There was no sense in staying on to wait for the results, let alone look for a job because at that point, all our plans have changed. That period saw us in a kind of limbo until we were 100% sure that Papa got the job. So the only practical thing for me to do was to go home and be with him. Funny though, I couldn’t quite get back to my old routine… looking after the flat, looking after Papa, doing every bit of domestic preoccupation that used to mark the hours of my day and constitute my most pressing concerns. Somehow I felt my going back was all temporary and pretty soon, whatever I was doing would stop, and we would have to start anew.
And then everything started to unfold.
2 weeks after my return, I received notification from the California Board of Nursing that I passed the licensure exam. At the same time, Papa and the people at Lake Forest came to a draw as far as his remuneration package was concerned and the terms met with approval from both sides.
The following week, we were told that Papa’s papers came through with approval from the INS and we were to await the papers that we would present to the American embassy in Singapore in order to get our visas stamped on our passports. In our minds, that was about 95% of the hurdle jumped. We still didn’t want to presume that we’ve reached home base scot free.
And then came the papers and hand in hand we walked to the embassy together, bracing ourselves for the final stretch. I had what seemed to be a hundred butterflies swirling about in my stomach. It’s not that I lacked faith in our fate but at this point, so much was already at stake that I, at least, couldn’t afford to be presumptuous. I’ve been down this road before and I’ve known how it feels for my dreams to be shattered when the person on the other side of the counter decides to shake his head, side to side. But yes, 5 minutes, no sweat, and we were told that our applications would be approved.
Indeed, the dye has been cast. By July 30, we would be bound for our new home, as home we hope it to be, just as Singapore was to us… Lake Forest, Orange County, California. For how long? Time will tell. Time will tell.
And how do all these fit in to my plans? There was a weekend while I was with my Aunt in Sacramento when a group of her friends came over to visit and spend 2 nights with her. They were good old friends from her Army days. A lot of them are now all over the US and Canada and every so often, they come together to visit each other and spend a weekend together. It so happens that one of these friends owns an agency providing nurses to facilities around California. And it just so happens that there is a rehab facility to which they provide nurses right smack in Lake Forest. Now all it takes is for me to give my Aunt a call and tell her I am ready for work
I am not at all surprised that so much change could happen in half a year. I am well aware of how much change could happen in a split second, in a moment’s decision, in a change of direction, in a hasty word. I am amazed though at how beautifully things can come together if we just let them take their own course. Having said that, of course nothing will come together for us if we do not as much as take our butts off the couch and see how far we can push back our boundaries. And yet, no matter how well we design our plans, or how precisely we plot our destinations, or how accurately we set our schedules, they are no more than an exercise in arrogance. But let me be a bit tolerant here for I know how difficult it is to learn that we are not masters of our fortune. Like I said, I’ve been here and done that, and I have learned my lessons. All in all, I can only be grateful that life has been gentle in its instruction… so far.
Someone once told me that ‘in the end, the world comes together to bring us not to where we want to be, but to where we were meant to be.’
Wise, wise… friend.
It’s been almost two months since I posted anything here. Life has been going on, and go on it did in a hurly burly of events reeling by, almost in a haze. They demanded my time and attention, undivided. They didn’t leave much room to do much else. And now here we are, at the brink of another transition. Yet again, life as we know it is about to change.
I sincerely believe that we couldn’t have possibly orchestrated the circumstances in such magnificent precision if we concerted everything that we knew how to do, with all the prayers we could utter, abiding by all the bits of advice from experience and expertise, if we solely and primarily relied on ourselves. In the aftermath of things, what did we really know, after all?
And so we took the plunge and let faith be our pilot. From that point onwards, things just started to come together. Somehow, in my heart, I knew that when we have made our decision, everything was just a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if’… that much I believed.
It was after our California trip last year when I decided to give myself another shot at nursing and take the licensure examination there… this, after almost a decade of non-practice. I did so this year, in May, and bagged it. When we were toying with this idea, Papa and I surmised that in the event that I got my license, this was how things would have to work out… I would stay on after the exam, look for a job, get settled and stable, while he held on to his job in Singapore. There was no practical sense in both of us going to California unemployed. Once this is done, then he would leave his job in Singapore and follow me. But the buck doesn’t stop there. He would have to work too and with what he does, I couldn’t possibly restrict him to find employment where I did. And so in our minds, further changes were expected. Where he would find work, I would follow, even if that meant leaving the job I started out with. We both knew it was a bit complicated but it was the best way we knew how.
We arrived in California via San Francisco, stayed a day in Monterey and drove to LA to meet with friends and family before Papa brought me to Sacramento, where I was to live with my Aunt for the 3 months I planned to stay, in which time I hoped to have taken the exam, passed it, obtained my license and found a job. That would have given me enough time to review further and get acclimatized with the environment, all in the hope of reducing any stress I might have before I took the exam. Of course, the 3 months was extended because the ‘stress’ wasn’t at all reduced, no matter what. And even then, all I was able to do was take the exam. Amazing how after all these years and with everything I’ve been through in my life, this kind of things would still strike me in the very same manner that they did when I was in my formative school years, when examinations were a matter of life and death and failure simply was no option.
So anyway, when we were in LA, we met up with a couple of Papa’s colleagues… Ceci, herself a Filipina, and Tom. Both their jobs were involved in Marketing, where Papa has been assigned in the past year, and this gave them a whole lot of opportunities to work together and get to know one another, enough to have become friends. In time, I’ve come to be friends with them too, having joined them in a couple of conferences, both in Singapore and out.
When they learned that I was hoping to work as a nurse in the US, they asked us what the plan was, and proceeded to tell Papa about this job opening in their main office at Lake Forest. Looking back now, this was really a slipshod chance that fell into our hands. We were supposed to meet the previous night, the 4 of us, for dinner. But Tom was tied up with things and couldn’t make it. We were scheduled to leave for Modesto to visit Papa’s relatives the following day, but he was dead beat with all the driving so we opted to stay another day. This gave us time to meet for lunch, and that’s when Tom told us about the opening. If that wasn’t pure luck, I don’t know what is. By the time Papa left for Singapore, we were decided.
The following weeks were a slow and painful wait full of anticipation. Several emails were sent back and forth, sometimes coming to a stall for days on end, A series of interviews were set up but kept getting chucked on account of conflicting schedules. But every time something moved forward, every little bit made our prospects more and more promising afterwards. On a scheduled interview, I would give Papa a call at 3pm, 12 midnight his time, to wake him up… an overseas wakeup call as you would have it. And after each interview, we would chat and he would tell me how it went. He would send me copies of each email he exchanged with the bosses and the HR department, and with thousands of miles between us, we would try to make sense of it, where we stood, how we could push our luck further, when to stop bargaining.
As the weeks passed and my exam drew near though, my confidence in all the preparation I’ve done dwindled. Somehow I felt that everything I’ve been studying and reading for the past year or so wasn’t enough. I got to a point of such desperate frustration as my mock exams showed no progress… I still turned up no more than the pitiful 60% or so that I started out with. I wanted more. I didn’t want to go in knowing that I didn’t know 40% of what might be asked of me. So I rescheduled the exam, bought another review book and stayed an extra 2 weeks. Each time Papa and I would chat, I would tell him about how I was doing. And he would hold me up and help me believe in myself. He knew I could do it, even if I wasn’t so sure.
In those months, that was how most of our correspondences and conversations went. I’d encourage him through his waiting as he would encourage me through my review. Of course all of it was seasoned with sweet nothings and declarations of how much we loved and missed each other. In a sense, we were closer together in more ways than our circumstances warranted. We were together in our plans, in our efforts, in our hopes, in our dreams.
I went back to Singapore 2 days after the exam. There was no sense in staying on to wait for the results, let alone look for a job because at that point, all our plans have changed. That period saw us in a kind of limbo until we were 100% sure that Papa got the job. So the only practical thing for me to do was to go home and be with him. Funny though, I couldn’t quite get back to my old routine… looking after the flat, looking after Papa, doing every bit of domestic preoccupation that used to mark the hours of my day and constitute my most pressing concerns. Somehow I felt my going back was all temporary and pretty soon, whatever I was doing would stop, and we would have to start anew.
And then everything started to unfold.
2 weeks after my return, I received notification from the California Board of Nursing that I passed the licensure exam. At the same time, Papa and the people at Lake Forest came to a draw as far as his remuneration package was concerned and the terms met with approval from both sides.
The following week, we were told that Papa’s papers came through with approval from the INS and we were to await the papers that we would present to the American embassy in Singapore in order to get our visas stamped on our passports. In our minds, that was about 95% of the hurdle jumped. We still didn’t want to presume that we’ve reached home base scot free.
And then came the papers and hand in hand we walked to the embassy together, bracing ourselves for the final stretch. I had what seemed to be a hundred butterflies swirling about in my stomach. It’s not that I lacked faith in our fate but at this point, so much was already at stake that I, at least, couldn’t afford to be presumptuous. I’ve been down this road before and I’ve known how it feels for my dreams to be shattered when the person on the other side of the counter decides to shake his head, side to side. But yes, 5 minutes, no sweat, and we were told that our applications would be approved.
Indeed, the dye has been cast. By July 30, we would be bound for our new home, as home we hope it to be, just as Singapore was to us… Lake Forest, Orange County, California. For how long? Time will tell. Time will tell.
And how do all these fit in to my plans? There was a weekend while I was with my Aunt in Sacramento when a group of her friends came over to visit and spend 2 nights with her. They were good old friends from her Army days. A lot of them are now all over the US and Canada and every so often, they come together to visit each other and spend a weekend together. It so happens that one of these friends owns an agency providing nurses to facilities around California. And it just so happens that there is a rehab facility to which they provide nurses right smack in Lake Forest. Now all it takes is for me to give my Aunt a call and tell her I am ready for work
I am not at all surprised that so much change could happen in half a year. I am well aware of how much change could happen in a split second, in a moment’s decision, in a change of direction, in a hasty word. I am amazed though at how beautifully things can come together if we just let them take their own course. Having said that, of course nothing will come together for us if we do not as much as take our butts off the couch and see how far we can push back our boundaries. And yet, no matter how well we design our plans, or how precisely we plot our destinations, or how accurately we set our schedules, they are no more than an exercise in arrogance. But let me be a bit tolerant here for I know how difficult it is to learn that we are not masters of our fortune. Like I said, I’ve been here and done that, and I have learned my lessons. All in all, I can only be grateful that life has been gentle in its instruction… so far.
Someone once told me that ‘in the end, the world comes together to bring us not to where we want to be, but to where we were meant to be.’
Wise, wise… friend.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home