2 things happened today. Both of them mean a lot to me. In the morning we went to the Australian citizenship interview. And in the afternoon, I was formally offered the position that I had applied for 3 weeks ago. I will completely finish my transition from my old job to this new one in 2 weeks of time.

The citizenship interview went pretty well and quite a pleasant experience. We were separated and receipted by different two DIMA ladies sat desk by desk, and were asked the same questions and requested to repeat Responsibilities and Privileges orally, which we did spend a bit time memorizing them in the bed last night to conclude a long long day

Generally, there was no worry at all about this interview. For people who have already got to this stage, the hardest time has been long gone passed. It was really a struggling to get the PR, or to say, to become eligible to apply for PR. But for Citizenship, it’s just a very small step of my life, even though it looks quite big from the surface.

I still remember 4 years ago how I spent the time in the uni and there were so many assignments that I need to complete. There was one semester which was the busiest period of time. I finished my 40 translating articles for one portfolio in one semester and it was just for one subject, probably one tenth of all the homework during that semester. I also had to work part time about 20 hours a week in the Nursing home (which means I had to get up at 5:30am in the early morning and started to grab people out of their beds and clean their asses from 6:30 am). I also had to do the household choirs at home, as a housewife, I suppose. But it is really nothing worth mentioning. Probably lots of people (like my classmates in the uni or other Chinese overseas students in here) had such experience as well, in this way or that way, in their life. In the December of 2004, I was really excited when I got the letter telling me that I got the scores of the final tests meets the requirement for a professional translator. At that moment, suddenly everything that I’ve experienced in the past, sore back from the lifting in the nursing home, worries before the tests, lot of hard work during the studies, etc., became so meaningful.

But for now, for the moment to sit for the interview for the citizenship, I kind of felt nothing, no excitement at all. The memory in relation to the emotional part is always the hard part of our life, the tears, the pains, the anxieties, the struggles, the efforts, the sacrifices, and the thing you gave away. The happy part? The gains, the happiness, the relief and the things you obtain and take? You forget them easily and quickly.

So quite often, I sat there and began to understand what the “pursuit of happiness” means. Freud told us that human being’s drive to live in this world is to seek happiness. In another word, we want to be happy. But if you do a math, you find out that happiness only occupies 1% of your life, and the rest of 99% is your effort that you’ve made to achieve your goal of being happy, which could be quite painful. Therefore, if there is any bits of idea called being rational in you, you should be able to figure out that being happy really shouldn’t be considered as the meaning of your life. The life, itself, asks the more profound question to us and requires the bigger answer. You respond to your life by tasting the different parts of what it offers. It’s not always happy. It’s what it’s supposed to be, and it’s something that nobody else can tell you. You have to taste it yourself, with your heart, and with a mind that is open and strong enough to accept whatever it’s gonna be.