2014 had been a ride.

I have not been back home (to Malaysia) this year, focusing most of my energy in work and recovering from a breakup.

In hindsight, perhaps it has been tough – the 60-hour work weeks and returning home feeling all on my own. But I asked myself to live through every moment of exhaustion and heartaches, of fear and panic attacks, of making decisions that I didn’t fully understand and mending mistakes that came shortly afterwards, of loneliness and building new relationships, of being confused and angry, and of doing them again, and again, and again.

Before this, I thought I knew myself well enough – and boy how much more that I’ve actually learnt! Or was it simply that I changed to become someone else through this process? Perhaps it was what they say, “still growing”?

Who knows, people, who knows? All we could do, is do it first, make sense later.

This year / particular period of my life, I call it: “Trying to be an entrepreneur”, because I was thrown into the deep end to be one.

My biography as an entrepreneur will never start with a story that goes like this: “When I was young, I bought sweets for 20p a bag and sold them for 50p each.” I was too optimistic and had too much gratitude for life to feel that I want to or can change the world; I was embedded in the beauty of art and rainbows enough to feel that money and politics were least of my concern. I thought, even till September 2014, that entrepreneurship was not in my bones.

Now we are three weeks away from 2015, and I began to wonder: maybe, just maybe, what needed to pull me through the past 49 weeks was exactly what would make me an entrepreneur. I’m far from being an instinctive one, but there was something in me that made me live through this journey with no regrets.

Sometimes I think about the only two times I learnt to surf. There were the unforgiving waves, the vastness of the ocean, and the disappointment of easily being washed onto the shore. I remember how small I felt and the fear when looking at the 2-3 metre high waves came crushing down; the glimpse of a mini rainbow right in front of me a second before the waves hit me and I went tumbling around; and how I just kept paddling out with only one thought in my head: “I will ride this wave.”

I truly loved that moment of purity – just all forces of nature, my physical self and my determination. Nothing else mattered.

2014 felt that same: amongst all the things that could engulf / had engulfed me, there was this little me with a stupid stubborness to keep paddling out, knowing that one day, through practice and experience, the fearful forces will become my best friend.

One day near future, I will be riding waves.

When I said I wanted to do this, only two people said go for it. Most were shocked, some asked why, some said “go ahead but I’m not helping”, and some tried to stop me just like when I wanted to cut my hair short about a year ago.

But it is only hair and all I wanted to do was to break a social and cultural construct – it wasn’t even going to be permanent.

What about those with terminal illness who fought or are fighting the battle, and their loved ones? What about those who lost their lives innocently in MH17 and the countless wars – old and new – that I do not fully understand? What about those who are not respected and treated as human beings just because of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity? Thinking about these things, I simply could not put conforming to social expectations ahead of any of them.

This was done during Shave or Style for Macmillan campaign,  so please donate.
Money is not everything, but it helps – help me help those who need it.
I have also donated my hair to Little Princess Trust.
(Thank you to all those who will donate or have donated money.)

And can I ask that when you look at me again, please also donate your thoughts to those who had no choice but to lose hair, to those who were victims of someone else’s war, and to those who had to suffer from inequality for just being themselves.

Humanity could really do with one less piece of judgement based on myths that no longer matter, and make “women with no hair” one of them.

Notes:

1. Thank you to Ki Lee, Creative Director of Hurwundeki (Hackney, London) for supporting the cause on the spot, provided professional shaving service to me in kind and said, “This was the best shave I’ve done in my entire career.”

2. I imagined the shave to be much shorter – near bald – but wavered because Ki suggested a longer length… This was already a notch shorter than he originally suggested, so I thought let’s just leave it as that for now. If I do not get enough donations, I will shave it all off myself.

3. I am more than just lucky because neither I nor my loved ones have experienced cancer, terminal illness, plane crashes, war or inequality. I have choices and friends with gold hearts and make miracles. Tango, Adam, Martin, Izzy, Filip & Tim: I am eternally grateful for your friendship.

4. Thank you, Tango, for all behind the scene materials:
– An unedited video of the head shaving process: http://youtu.be/RhULfW4Px2k.
– An edited video: http://youtu.be/c9uM-yhh-9U

Before and after of head shaving

I wrote this as a Facebook note on 16 February 2007, five months after I first arrived in the UK. It was for my university course mates and housemates who were just plain confused. The tone makes me cringe (I was 19!), but I thought I’d preserve this so it serves as a reminder that I was once, you know, young.

I sometimes get confusions about my name and my .. “origins”??? lol i know some of u know but i’m bored now so let me just explain these issues to u yea? 😛
………………………………………….
I’m pretty glad people are calling me Jia-Xuan. But don’t worry if you’re used to calling me Alexa, it’s my bad.

For those who don’t know, it’s pronounced as:
Jee-ya Shoo-anne (as written in profile)
Hon (as in “horn” not “honey”)

First name: Jia Xuan
Last name: Hon

1) In Chinese names, we honour/acknowledge our parents first. That is why in my passport, my name is “Hon Jia Xuan” (not Jia Xuan Hon).

Make sense? Good. 🙂

2) Jia Xuan is one word like “Fiona” “Alexandra”. It’s written with a space in between, purely due to the nature of Chinese language/words. To avoid confusion, I replaced the space with a “-“, but that seems to not be very effective… 😛

Still make sense? Ok…

3) Calling me Jia is like calling Alexandra “Dra” or Fiona “Ona”.
If you want to call me like calling Alexandra “Alex” or Fiona “Fi”, then call me “Xuan” like my best friends at home do (sounds best in Chinese pronunciation. I’ll teach u in person if you’re interested lol).

4) “Xuan” is not my middle name. I do not have a middle name. Although on my bank cards it’s written “Jia X Hon”. Oh well..

5) Can someone tell me why there are middle names? They seem unimportant. Anyway, the least important element in my name is “Jia”.
Just think of your English middle names.
Clare M Cody-Richardson: nobody calls her M.
So it’s the same,
Hon Jia Xuan: Call me “Hon” or “Xuan”, but nobody calls me “Jia”.
(Well, not in malaysia lol)

PS: Special thanks to fi alex and clare’s names. 😀

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So you think I’m Chinese, speak good English and I tell you it’s because I’m from Malaysia. (lol, the reason-cause is illogical)

Anyway, don’t panic, I AM chinese and I AM from Malaysia.

Why do I address myself as “Chinese” not “Malay” if I’m from “Malaysia”?

I’m not sure if in English language, “Chinese” is a nationality.
To me, “Chinese” is more like an ethnic group.

My grandparents are from China (proper Chinese they are) but they migrated to Malaysia and gave birth to my parents. But my parents can’t say that they are “Malays” because they are not indigenous ppl. So from that onwards, we are Malaysian Chinese.

We are still Chinese, not Malay. We eat like China Chinese, we speak languages from China, we follow customs and traditions originated from China. Hell, we even look like Chinese. lol.

So yea, next time I am not Malay ok? 😀