Chapter 133

After COVID restrictions were lifted and the world started returning back to normal, post COVID vacations were all the rage. My fiance and I were not immune to the hype and so, we decided on a vacation. This was a big deal. 

We have never been on vacation for real before. The last time we went on anything like a vacation was a random trip to Vancouver when we went to visit my uncle and aunty in 2019. That visit was a very chill break from school but it was honestly so short I didn’t even dedicate a chapter to it. We went to Vancouver Island and drove around a whole bunch taking in the sites and…that’s it. That’s all there was to it. 

This time, it was different. We were going to go away for 3 weeks and it was specifically because we wanted to take a vacation. We weren’t visiting any family, we were just there to relax and see the sights. With this in mind, towards April of 2023, my fiance and I went to Japan and Korea.

Now, this blog, unfortunately, isn’t about travelling. It would be much happier if it were but it isn’t. I did vlog a bit on the vacation so if you go to the links page, you can check it out. Speaking honestly, it was all very amateur-ish and with no entertainment purposes in mind. I just did it because I thought it would be fun to do. 

Japan was as amazing as people told us. The sights, the cleanliness and the very polite society. All of that was true. Every place we went to from Kyoto, to Tokyo to Osaka were full of sights that I could not get enough of. The spirituality of shrines and temples can also be felt in various locations. It was just nice. 

In Korea, we had a slightly different experience. We stayed in Seoul and it was very…urban shall we say? It felt more like we were just roaming around department stores than anything else. Furthermore, google maps didn’t work there so we had to tediously figure things out ahead of time a lot. We had an objective while we were there. The fiance wanted to get our wedding photos done. She liked the Korean stylists and chose Seoul specifically for this reason. 

The studio we went to was a pretty well known one. It was called the one three one four wedding studio. You can pretty easily find them on Instagram or TikTok. They’re good at what they do. Or at least that’s what I’m told because the fiance pretty much did all the research on this one. My contribution? I paid. 

The schedule was we’d go in in the morning, meet up with our translator, then head to the studio. After a VERY long time in the makeup department, we got to shooting. It was fun and honestly, it was nice to just be told to stand at random places and watch as people tried to make you look as pretty or as handsome as possible. A good time all around. Not sure if it’s worth $8,000 CAD but hey, happy wife, happy life…I’ll just leave it at that. (If you want to know more, I also vlogged this)

When the vacation came to an end, I felt like my eyes had been opened. I had only known academia for my entire life before work and with work, it never took breaks. I worked at an optometry clinic that’s known as a side-by-side. This meant that I was working at a glasses optical store in a major mall. The main point here? Being in a major mall means that we’re open 7 days a week and even some holidays. 

Unlike in university, when I had summer break after an exam season, now everything was constant. It was just the same thing again and again until I die or retire. I didn’t mind it because the job was fulfilling to a degree but honestly, the constant nature of it made it very tiring. I didn’t know I needed to cut loose and I didn’t know what cutting loose even meant until this vacation came up. But now I know it. 

It’s not just the not-working-bit. While on vacation, you are also far away from your other responsibilities too. Things like family stuff. For me, I was still on vacation mode even when I got back home and started working again. It was only when I got my call from mom did I get woken back into reality. 

When she called me, the problems of my life peeped out again. My mom wanted me to do this or that around the house and all the while, she tried to tell me about something political. Okay, okay. Same old, same old. 

But then my mom said something weird to me. 

My mom asked me if I had any money to spare. I asked how urgent she needed it and how much? She told me that there was a book publishing company that was offering a time sensitive deal. If I gave her around $8,000, she could have her book out ASAP. I knew she had been working on a book in the background but never really thought it was this close until she asked me for money. This felt like a good opportunity. 

I had not only just come back from vacation but since we left before April, I had also very recently paid all my taxes. This is to say, I didn’t have a lot of liquid cash. I could have mustered around $8,000 if I really needed to but here’s the thing, when I started to ask more questions about the publishing company, my mom immediately cut the conversation short. This felt weird. Because of that, I called back and asked her for more details but in response, she said she figured out a way to take care of it. 

Being somewhat reassured, I thought nothing more about it and just left it alone. 

Then a few months passed by and my mom called again. This time with a bit more request for money though it was for a different reason. She said that mortgage rates in 2023 were suffering from the effects of COVID and were rising like crazy. Since I followed the news a bit, I knew this was a common trend. Hearing how this is a very reasonable reason for needing a bit more money, I told her I could pay her more than the usual rent for the condo I’m living in. She thanked me and that was pretty much that.

In hindsight, this should have sounded off alarm bells. 

If you recall, a few chapters ago I mentioned that we were doing okay because the house my mom lived in was almost completely paid off. This was because my mom used all of the profit from selling grandma’s property in China to pay it off. The mortgages for the two condo’s were also quite low. If I really thought about it, there should have never been any monetary help my mom needed even with the 2023 housing market.

Yet my mom needed money. 

Why would that be? 

Looking back, I really should have dug deeper. But I didn’t. My mom, at point blank, told me she was doing fine financially. Our conversations about mortgages and stuff were no different than they’ve ever been before my vacation. I didn’t think much more about it. 

Maybe it was because I didn’t want to know what was really going on. Maybe I was scared of the truth underneath the surface. Maybe I didn’t want to believe that my mom could lie. Because of how catastrophic things would turn out, it is impossible to look back into the past objectively. 

So here we are. We’ve finally arrived at the birth of this entire blog. This is where it all went wrong. All the chapters before this were leading up to this moment. The moment when it all went wrong. 

I mentioned in the “about” page that this blog has a reason and right now, it’s all about to come to light. There was a crime that was extremely detrimental, unprejudiced, and very uncaring to my family. The blog was meant to tackle the uncaring part. To the criminal, we were likely just numbers on a screen to them. Also, if you read the news and don’t know us, you’ll likely see us in the same light. We’re just statistics at some point. Tragedy just becomes meaningless numbers after a while. 

This is why I made this blog.

I am hoping to give my life story so that we wouldn’t be just that. 

A far cry for help, I know, and a very meaningless endeavor as well. But this is just about all that I can do about it. In the face of an adversity that you can’t amend, what can you really do? In truth, this is all I got. This is it. Just a large series of stories of my life where I complain on the internet. 

All of that for a website and a blog that no one really reads. 

I’ve seen the stats and dear reader, you don’t really exist. 

Though I’m hoping that in the future you will…

And I’m hoping that you can learn a thing or two from our catastrophe.