Come have a drink with me.

The Narrow World We Live In

2012-02-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

It's been a tiring few weeks. Applications, interviews, lots of highs and lows, expectations unmet, friendships struck and friendships waning...what else is going to happen?

It's 1am, I should go to sleep. I'm generally more upbeat than this.

When I think though, of the choices I have in life, it astounds me...just a few decades ago it's likely that at my age, with my background, I would be a mother. Maybe uneducated. In a low-wage job, or not having a job at all. With limited access to healthcare, to new opportunities, to travel, to achieve many of the current markers of success. Possibly lonely, if I moved away from my home to marry. Probably not having much freedom to socialize, particularly with the opposite gender.

Forget a few decades ago, women in many parts of the world still live like this today. Many women in Malaysia, too.

It is only by looking back and forth in time can I anchor myself in today and glimpse my role in it all. Women (and their families) before me have paved the road to make MY options possible, MY future as optimistic and impactful-on-a-large-scale as I dream now.

And so...maybe I need to relax a little. Just be grateful I am here, be thankful for these sisters and mothers who made it possible and are rooting for me from wherever they are.

And take up my load, willingly, and use what I have to make the way smooth for others.

White Space

2012-01-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

1/31/12

Change is unglamorous. Especially when you have to struggle really, really hard but pretend you've got it all together on the outside.

Recognizing that change is difficult, is a good first step. I'm reminding myself that while I must be my own worst critic, I have to be my own best lover and supporter too. Narcissistic as that sounds, no one else can get into your head and rub the spot where it hurts. That sounds a bit like an abusive relationship, actually -- the abuser and the comforter being one and the same. But that's how change feels like to me. All day I bang into mistakes, faux pas; get bitten by insecurities; worn down by weariness; slap myself awake again -- and at the end of the night, I let myself slow down and get angry and cry and get myself tissues and finally collapse in a puddle of placated, if not blissful, weariness. And the next morning I wake up and start over again.

When life is this open, this good, it seems almost disgusting to complain or to ever be unhappy in the slightest. But we all struggle, we struggle because there is no central cause to rally our lives around except narcissistic self-improvement. (Social justice? But how will you live on that?) In the end it circles around me, me, me. We are afraid to be our own masters. We need to be praised like children and given rewards for good behavior. FTS.

More reflections: in the developed world, we've confused what needs and wants are. We neglect needs like sleep, good nutrition, friends, family -- and satisfy unlimited wants that are often destructive. Truth be told, we need much less to live to our fullest potential, than we say we need. All the rest, it's just window dressing and higher heels.

(Note: Upon rereading, this post sounds like an angry, unfocused rant. Pardon the less-than-perfect writing. Hey, we all need to cut loose in our own way.)

Pent Up

2011-12-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

I am so full of emotion/wonder/desire for understanding right now.

I'm not sure whether its due to some weird hormonal imbalance, or prolonged social isolation (I haven't properly spoken to people in two days), but this feels weird.

Dreamscapes

2011-11-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

I don't know where I'm going, just know where I've been
It's been sweet, it's been bitter, everything in between

Oh to exist! In a place where time and space cease to matter. To crouch in a cool limestone cave with sunlight shining through only from the mouth of the cave, and hear fresh water drip drip drip onto the glistening brown surface. Someday, maybe, a stalagmite might form there. I will be dust by then.

Somehow this image comforts me. My generation has compressed time and space into capsules we swallow every morning, evening, night; we run and we run and we are afraid to venture off-track. Inundated by information; catching and dodging questions flung like arrows. Each byte of detail about the world around me is like a decibel, they are a torrent of sound, and my ears are ringing long after I leave the crowded dance floor of my peers' conversations and chat windows and newsfeeds.

Sleep is merely an empty hole patched between bright glaring days of conscious experience. No true rest. No grateful escape.

Where is truth? What should I seek? How do I get it?

I will not find the answers here, it's not a needle in the haystack, it's not the one lottery coupon among millions whose digits match those on the television screen. It is an undefined variable in an infinitely complex, unsolvable regression.

Drip, drip, drip.

Paradox

2011-05-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

If you were disposable, why does it hurt so much when you're gone?

Thinking about Strangler Trees

2011-04-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my tutee and I read a SAT piece about strangler trees, these interesting floral curiousities that grow on big, tall trees in the tropical rainforest by seeding high up in the crevices of those trees. They begin as epiphytes, with roots extending towards the ground and towards the sun, but not feeding off their host. When their roots reach the ground and take root in the soil, they start growing rapidly and eventually cover up the hosts' roots. They also wind around the trunk of the host, eventually squeezing it to death (hence the name strangler trees). I picture a sort of king kong like scenario, navy SEALs parachuting down on many lines to bind King Kong and subdue the mighty giant.

That is neither here nor there, but just one of those interesting facts - gobbets - that've been going through my mind lately.

I've become more and more aware (not quite in a linear fashion but more like in spurts, with stagnant periods and frequent regressions) how competition has a negative effect on me. Perhaps that's why economics makes so much sense to me, its first principles are grounded on competition for scarce resources. And while the optimal outcome is an increase in productive capacity to create a win-win situation, the default mode is actually fierce competition for market dominance.

With that kind of mindset, it's hard to override the mental belief that any gain for someone who may be even remotely considered my competition is a loss for me. A natural competitive urge that people have to be the best - that urge that manifests such ugly behavior as jealousy, envy and manipulation - justified and naturalized in the name of competitive efficiency which produces the social good, creates a very twisted mindset. One loses sight of the true goal.

I try hard to be happy for other's accomplishments, and for the most part I can be. I recognize that it does contribute to the greater good, and that their gain does not diminish my status. I just wonder what it will take to change these feelings, to go against a world system where one's gain is another's loss.

I think I have always tried to create and participate in non-zero sum systems, like promoting education, knowledge, community etc. But I keep encountering the hard fact that no matter what you try to do, there is always going to be a mindset and model of competition; whether through profits or through recognition.

So to sum up there are two questions on my mind right now: How do I reconstruct my mental/emotional/physical reality so that I can push myself to work harder and improve, without the negative reinforcement of competition? And a more personal question: How serious am I about this?

For those who love in doorways coming and going

2011-03-12T02:34:00.000-08:00

Title from an amazing poem called A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde.

In the wee hours of the night, bypassed by solitude or much conversation, curiously empty of obligations and deadlines, there is so much space to be filled in the consciousness, and therefore I start to think again.

Thinking is a curious activity, one day scientific man will progress beyond simple mind imaging in different colors and be able to create actual, rich, visual representations of mental activity - and find that no two people think in the same way. I am often frustrated by how circular my thought process is, I cannot explain to another why I feel a certain way or prevent recurring thoughts. I sometimes am unable even to explain what I'm thinking about, and realize then that I was thinking of nothing particular at all.

Spring break is here (it's Friday, my last class and midterm was yesterday), it's weird to have such an anticipated moment arrive (weeks and weeks of anticipation, I tell you. Other people say "WOW time went by so fast!" and I think, "Really? Are you kidding?"). I wonder if I will feel like this on my wedding day.

Body is running down, so I'll leave you all now...but I hope to update soon.

Trust

2011-02-27T23:01:00.001-08:00

What I have realized, (and many thoughts fly in my head when I exercise - somehow the creative fermentation process works as though in a dream, fitfully, without direction, with great emotional intensity), is that one's voice is unique and should never be compromised or sold. It is a tragedy that we must conform, shrink our natural burning brightness into halogen lamps that shut on and off on command, that produce tired thoughts and hackneyed arguments, that create efficiency but not understanding.

Lately/all my life/ I have been struggling, stuck in a lockhold where two strong and opposite passions collide. Sometimes out of necessity one triumphs over the other, as with time-sensitive decisions such as where to study, what opportunities to take, and so on. Other times the struggle is personal, and not institutional, and I have been stuck in the lockhold for years - important life decisions like what do I believe about making a living, who God is, what direction should I point my life in, and so on. For so long I have tried, have sweated for the answer, for the simple decision that flows naturally and rings with certainty of the truth. Only then, I reason, will I be able to walk decisively towards the goals I have set, assured of who I am.

Try as I might, it is hard to shake off the myth of linear progress, because there is some truth in it (and so much falsehood and simplification that leads to disappointment). Perhaps it is time for me to move beyond that, and reconcile myself to the possibility (I hesitate to say fact) that the patterns of life and meaning are much too dense for any one person to understand, their multi-dimensionality utterly incomprehensible when viewed through the limited prism that we operate in; but on the large scale, beautiful.

Wading through Days of Mud

2011-02-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

That's how it feels like, struggling against the tide of everything that's coming my way. Like it or not.

Slowly but surely it's been affecting my personal relationships as well. I don't know what I feel about that. Uneasy, for sure.

I'm telling myself that I can get through this, it's only a couple of weeks more until the semester is over. And there is a break in between.

But at what price does this achievement come (this slog seems much less grand)? Am I learning anything of use when my days are full of meetings and work and class, and when there is free time, long naps of oblivion? I live at the mercy of my moods. I keep grasping at branches that I hope can bring me up to the surface, but they turn out to be straw, or I decide that it's not worth the time.

White noise has become a fixture of my life rather than the exception. I don't want to deal with this anymore. I want peace, and quiet. Only in absence can I find my way to the present.

PS. I realized I broke my resolution to simplify my life and keep from doing too much. I have a habit of overestimating what I'm capable of doing and being happy.

PPS. Ah peace and quiet! It's 2am, but I have gotten it at last :)

Weightless

2011-02-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

Going to the gym and working out has become easier, after less than a week of going regularly.

There's a period after the monotonous drag of step after step on the treadmill or pedal of the bike, after the flashes of pain shooting up your arms as you lift weights, after a whole hour spent watching bad/boring tv with endless commercials (yes, I do have to agree, after repeated exposure, that contemporary television is mind-numbing and brings almost zero value to oneself), that you pack up, leave the gym with its sweat-saturated air, and fill your lungs with the fresh outdoor breeze...

And you begin to run; truly, full of life, with love and wonder, weightless like a dream.

Don't you know those times when...

2011-01-31T23:19:00.001-08:00

Even staying up feels like a great effort. You have to make a conscious effort not to feel, because feeling will remind you how miserable you are right now and how much you want to cry. Crying is good, but it attracts attention. Not good in a shared space.

Numb, so numb, and I don't even know how I got here.

This too shall pass.

More journeying

2011-01-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

I'm in a nostalgic mood today. Reading through old emails brings back such fond memories, memories of being loved and sticking through difficult times. I think one is better able to appreciate the storms one has weathered after the fact: musing on how despite everything, life goes on. It's almost overwhelmingly sobering to see path-dependency in action: how our small actions, repeated everyday; and thoughtless habits, create our whole person. We are what we do and we think. The choices we have made (and NOT made) in the past have decided who our friends are, what kind of things are important to us, and what constitutes our identity.

Right now, I feel so young despite my almost 22 years - my naivete, my desire for all the joys and insights of life right now, right here. But I remind myself that everything that is worthwhile is not easily gained, and the journey is important. Yes. Don't lose sight of the road, while one dreams of castles in the air.

In the dark I can be everything

2011-01-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

So it's night now, I'm at J's (hi J if you're reading this) and he's fast asleep while I am fast awake, which is unusual. Not many people can outpace me in sleeping.

It's been a good few weeks of holidays, been touching reality very much and fostering new friendships and being with the ones I love - except for family, always miss family at these times. In general, been much too busy to think, which in some ways is very good. When I have too much time to think my thoughts veer towards the negative. I don't look at the lustrous fabric of life, I look for it's frayed edges, it's loose threads. Sometimes it feels that those loose ends tug at my heart and I wish it weren't so. That most people can overlook them and walk on with life makes me wonder if those flaws are only in my head.

Yet I can sense that I've come some way - in choosing a metaphor that addresses these moments (deceiving phrase, this can last hours and days and even months) of disconnect I know that I have not completely abandoned myself to the melodramatic. The missing and the incomplete does not jeopardize the whole in a way that it once would have. I can see life as generally good, instead of an exquisite glass sculpture hanging by a thread and my realization of the fact being enough to snap the thread and let it hurtle to the floor and smash. (Incidentally I'm quite familiar with that split-second when you know something is going to fall and break but can't do anything about it, the breakage somehow always feels worse than if you didn't see it unfold.)

I've wanted to blog for quite a while, but I have profound thoughts at the most inconvenient times. Usually when I'm around people/outside and I want to write because I know I'll forget, but I can't. And I do forget. And now when I have all the time in the world to write I can't think of anything to say.

It's a New Year and I'll be transitioning out of my 21st year of life and becoming a boring 22 years old. I'm most most certainly going to be an adult soon. An adult still in an American college, with few responsibilities or direction, but an adult nevertheless. In the spirit of the newly-birthed year I'm in the mood for impossible resolutions. Life is not a direct or predictable journey from point A to point B, nevertheless it's useful to have a moral compass of sorts to look back on and compare with one's actual position.

What I hope from this year: a more diverse and interesting group of friends who will challenge and enrich me in all aspects: mental and emotional growth, adventures and exploration, forward-thinking, academic striving, facts and knowledge. I don't expect all of these from all friends, and I don't want it to be a one-way street either. I just want more of it than I have right now.

What I want from/for myself:
1) more creative pursuits and projects. It's all the rage (which is quite a turn-off), but I want something that I can branch out into and become skilled at.

2) Better time management is an important goal for the new year. A lot of the stress of the latter part of this year (and possibly the former too) has been as a result of this not being implemented well, mostly due to unrealistic expectations for myself and correspondingly not allotting enough time to self-care, laziness, interruptions, time with friends etc.
I have to learn to prioritize quality over quantity - at the same time, I'm quite amazed at how productive a year this has been. Friendships made, relationships embarked on, painful relationships resolved, personal projects blossoming, coming to a greater peace with myself about God.
There *are* still so many things that I want to try or get better at while still enjoying college life; things like dance, music, taking classes outside my chosen majors (courses in sociology, computer science, religious studies and perhaps English stand out), traveling, getting involved in activities (although that urge has lessened somewhat, getting more self-centered now and thinking about internships and grants where it used to be colleges and competitions and scholarships).
Time management goals, keeping it simple, would be to eat well, sleep enough, stay active and in tune with my inner feelings (which I realize can be less intuitive than I expect), and more often choose to be happy and see solutions instead of being crushed by problems.

3) I want to travel. Europe, here I come!

4) This is somewhat vague, but I want to establish stronger psychological boundaries between the world and myself. I feel like part of what makes me special is that thinness, that one-inch thick that separates me from my surrounding world, but I've let it get to me too much sometimes and for lack of an encouraging word or a different perspective, lapse into despondency. It's something that I can use better, this knack for feeling the pulse of people and situations, by learning how to ignore it and know that the negative aspects of it are sometimes just me being hard on myself.

5) Attending to my loved one's needs in a way that they want, not how I want it. Practical ways: skyping with friends more often and checking up, remembering birthdays and giving gifts, being there for important events, making time for conversations and being inquisitive about other's lives. Also, realizing that consistency, while not my strong trait, is important to many people and working on that (besides it also being helpful to me personally). Giving constructive feedback, and not taking criticism personally but being to view it objectively.

That's about all I can think of now. Here's to an amazing, mind-blowing 2011!

For future reference: MBTI profile

2010-12-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

According to my 2007 post, I was actually an INFJ.

but for future reference, sometime in the intervening years I became ENFJ:

Strength of the preferences %
Extraverted 22
Intuitive 88
Feeling 75
Judging 22

A trip into Rowland Heights

2010-12-12T12:55:00.001-08:00

This morning I went to dim sum with three other Asian American Sponsor Program sponsors. I'm a sponsor, even though I'm not AA. It doesn't matter really. There are new students who come from Asia, and our perspective is way different. I think being in a country for four years doesn't make you American, your home and roots lie elsewhere. Thus it's fine that things aren't perfect here, that you're not really represented in white mainstream America. A very different story if you're born here and have to come to terms with your racial identity.

That's all fine, not really the point of my story. We went to Rowland Heights for dim sum. It was good but not amazing. The general experience was great though, because while we're friends, we're not best best friends so there's no assumption of deep meaningful conversation, just a lot of mutual affirmation which is nice. Sometimes one is too brutal with people one knows well.

Bought green tea with honey at the milk tea store, it's very clean and pretty and even had a few good-looking men. (They had good skin and hair and regular bodies. That's probably all there is to it, really. One gets tired of the scruffy, skinny, college look.)

I get strange sensations whenever I enter an Asian enclave so far from home. It's almost like time travel, really. I am here, but am I, really? Familiar things are not where I expect them, not in California, not in English, not in such a large parking lot meant for big SUVs and not small Toyotas and Protons. The odd December heat adds to the sense of a mismatch, I'm used to it being much colder here.

Being there brings back reptilian memories, more recent memories of my last teen years in Hong Kong, feeling awash in the moving sea of Chinese faces. Further back, inhabiting the world and eyes of my girlhood in Malaysia. I may have gone to more places since then, but my world has not grown any larger. And it's times like these, here, when there is a crack in the day-to-day living in the outside world, a mini earthquake that cracks open and exposes the layers and layers of years of experience and sights and sounds underneath, that I remember who I am. It connects my past to my future in a way only I can understand, in a way only each of us can see authentically for ourselves.

On the way back, in the car, I reminisce about the past. Disjointedly, the way you don't organize a room that no one but yourself has to see. Or perhaps you have your own disorganized way of sorting things out, and you take pleasure in the private space. I realized how important it was for me to think, to be alone in my head - which also meant getting away from the foreign voices I hear within it. The voices of duty, and what others would think, and how so-and-so would see it. It is fine if my thoughts are untranslatable, it is good to have one's private space. I don't give that to myself enough. Even now, I share my most private thoughts to this blog, because even in my mind I speak to an audience.

But when I thought, in that car while we sped back to campus, I was far, far away, and I did not feel alone. Words cannot do it justice. Words will wreck it, somehow, aggrandize or injure that mindful silence. For while words must describe, feelings are just happy to be. Thoughts are just happy to be thought, in whatever language the heart speaks.

I am so glad I went for dim sum this morning.

On Nights Like These

2010-12-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

When I have taunted the dreary day of obligations and made it to the inviting, timeless, changeless hours of the night, I feel invincible. My mind is sharp, my body is ready, my feet are itching for an adventure. Bring it on, bring on the heedless mad calls, the topsy-turvy, the strangers turned friends, the mundane turned beautiful and mysterious when enveloped in dark shadows.

Join my ranks, join my army - I am a general of the night. I will lead you on fun, fun trips into the back of time and the back of your head. And you will not believe what we can do before morning.

The Rainy Californian Day Haiku

2010-12-05T20:12:00.001-08:00

It is rainy and cold
and dark outside.
My room is cold.
Darn air-conditioning.

Hot tea is so boring.
I want to swallow a lighted candle
feel its yellow warmth travel inside me
and look down at the glow in my belly.

Polio

2010-11-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

Your hyperbole stretches my mental muscles into positions they never wanted to assume, into conclusions they are reluctant to defend.

What this talk of -
originality
creativity
experience
opportunity
growth

What you teach ain't what you live.

It is a lovely Sunday afternoon

2010-10-24T14:47:00.001-07:00

Not bright-shiny like the inside of a mall, but sunny enough to see the leaves sway on branches, unaffected by autumn brown. It is a common complaint that in Southern California we do not have proper seasons. It is a balmy 21 degrees Celsius. After the unusual long periods of rain that we have been having the past week, along with the cold and gloom, this is a refreshing change.

We usher in the seasons differently here. Fall and winter are coming, dragged by the feet and sending us rainstorms, unusually hot days sandwiched between cold ones, and all other weather anomalies, but we are prepared. Rain boots make their cheery multicoloured appearance, while on some days I still come out unprepared in my flip flops.

It is a lovely Sunday afternoon, and I am puzzled that you are not online. I have work to do, but the edge of panic has been taken off by working through a Saturday night. I am content to stay in today, on this balmy beautiful day looking out the window, and work on my bed.

What would make this day thrice lovelier would be if you were here, working intensely on your laptop. Maybe once in a while we'd both break from our fixed sight on the screens, look up, and stare at each other -- disbelieving the fact that the 't' has been taken away from there, that we are both here, now. I know we would treasure each frame in the montage of our togetherness, beautiful and ridiculous alike, finding precious gems in activities others may find mundane.

When I screw up

2010-10-10T16:12:00.001-07:00

An emotional wrecking ball, that’s what my life has been like. Little things, little signs adding up and I don’t see it coming till it hits me in the face. Unanticipated, and yet once I know of it, the dread starts building up and it grows, grows and it does not make the fall any better.
More to come, more to come. Prescient awareness, one of the unique things about being human, is a double-edged sword.

I have decided

2010-10-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

as far as I can, as much as I can, as long as I can; to live without substitutes.

Without deadeners.

Without mind-altering, numbing substances.

Without caffeine.

We can live without life and we can smile without happiness. We can touch without feeling, we can speak without understanding, we can sit together and talk without ever once making a connection.

Part of the responsibility of living is to live truly, and boldly.

Otherwise, all of life is just palliative care. And that would truly be a tragedy no drug can ease, though it may take the edge off it.

We cannot afford

2010-09-28T00:54:00.001-07:00

to disconnect like this, to have long silences not looking at each other, to be immersed in our own mundane lives.

I cannot afford to live like this. Trenches. Trudging. Toiling. There's trouble in the air, turmoil in the soundwaves.

My cryptic messages shroud the confusion of my soul. Deep inside I know my subconscious, my soul, is thinking.

I'm just trying to unearth what it wants me to hear.

Push, pull, wind, unwind

2010-09-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

[Free write]

There's a tension, a balance in everything

Even this blog! I want to use this space to sort through, untangle my most inner thoughts and feelings, but I am afraid of what my readers will think

And yet, there is a motivation coming from a different part of me that just wants to be known, to be understood.

Tiredness and elation.

Just a drip of caffeine away.

Funny how something that is so simple can change my mood so dramatically

Make me instantly awake, open to possibilities and filled with the energy to take action on them

And yet leaves me feeling tired, drained, out-of-sorts, unable to focus and feeling generally unsatisfied. Centreless, that cuppa just knocked me out of my chalk-drawn circle, smudged the lines as I slid out of it and into the chaotic outside world.

I want to fall into the dark formless dreamless world of sleep, but my cares and concerns and hunger for connection won't let go easily.

I teeter on the edge of chaos, but the light over the edge is just so seductive, and if I step with the beat of my heart it looks like a dance to anyone who's watching...

Anchors

2010-08-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

On this great expansive journey of life, it feels sometimes that we are nothing but little boats set adrift, bobbing along the gentle waters with no land in sight. No navigation points. The stars are invisible during the bright light of day and taunting, meaningless harbingers in the black night. Most of the time life goes by without much rocking; each day you move forward, backward, left or right, not that you would know because direction are relative and the only point of reference you have is you.

But one day, we realize that we are all anchored. It doesn’t matter how deep the anchor is embedded into the seabed or how long the chain. Maybe you were almost flipped over in a storm and wrecked, and then you noticed a little weight in the hull that you’d never discerned before. The knowledge that an anchor exists, that you are attached to it, refocuses your existence. Suddenly it is not just you just struggling to stay above water, knowing that one day you too will be dashed to pieces by a tremendous wave. The anchor, the anchor -- who put it there? Why am I attached to it? How far can I stray before the anchor pulls me back? And perhaps even - how can I get away from this?

Anchors pull back when a boat drifts too far. Anchors strain. They hurt, sometimes. But anchors are there for a reason - to secure a boat. And anchors can be removed, can be shifted when the boat needs to move, although that takes deliberate effort. More than all that, though, anchors remind us that we exist for a purpose. Someone put that anchor down. We are not set adrift. We may not find out who, and our anchors’ positions may not obviously communicate why we are where we are, but it gives us boats a place to start.

Anchors give us dignity. Tiny fishing boats do not have anchors because they do not sail far enough into the sea or long enough to need them. Realizing that we are anchored triggers a re-evaluation of ourselves. Perhaps we are more than cheap bits of wood nailed together. Perhaps we are merchant ships. Perhaps we are luxury cruises. Perhaps we are anything in between. But we have value. We have purpose. We contribute to bettering others’ lives.

Find your anchor. Pull it a little, test it a tad. but don’t resent it. It’s more important to you than you think.

30/7/2010

Just to balance things out, you know. Not to brag or anything.

2010-07-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

I am so very happy right now. Content, and excited for the future, and exhausted at a job well done but in a good way.

But most of all, I feel inexpressibly grateful that out of the gut-wrenching mess of the past, good things can and do happen. I have been redeemed. And it makes me feel a little closer to God again.

On Good Writing

2010-07-11T01:16:00.000-07:00

The discipline of writing still eludes me. After over a decade of intermittent diary-writing, and some years of blog-updating, my words and ideas do not stack up neatly like well-designed, uniformed plastic chairs at the hawker store.

They say writing is good for oneself. Writing is an exercise in truth. It does not reflect truth but creates it. There is so much power in words wielded well, words that are not clumsily shoved into a sentence. Words that exceed their limitations so that it is not the words you hear, but the feelings and ideas expressed through them that are transmitted and embedded in your soul.

Really good writers have that effect, of being able to transport the reader into their consciousness, to see out of their own eyes and think not as one mind to another, but as one and the same mind.

Maybe it's not really about skill. Maybe it's also about heart. The burning desire to communicate something transforms itself into eloquence, the blue sparks glint off the page and creates flashes of light in the dark recesses of a reader's mind.

And I don't have it.

Homecoming

2010-07-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

A year. It has *only* been a year. It feels like a lifetime ago, once removed.

This is my bed, white sheets, two pillows. The shower with it's partial sliding glass doors, the collapsible partitions. My old, old clothes. The humidity, not as insufferable as Hong Kong's, but pressing close by like a debt collector or an old friend. The books of my childhood, a row of CS Lewis and L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott.

It's hard to categorize this particular feeling I have. The getting of something that one has longed, pined for for so long - what do you do next? What grand gesture can you do, besides running down the street crying "I'm home! I'm home!" (and even that might not work) that will relieve this feeling in your chest? This exultant jubilation, this bottomless contentment, this quiet relief, this surging sentimentality agitated by the tangible reminders of everything that has shaped you. With wonder you look at the marks you left on your surroundings, pinpoints in time past to a history you barely remember happening.

Success, the future, dreams are vague, but home is very, very tangible. I just want to bask in this for a while.

Let me be flexible

2010-06-20T00:37:00.001-07:00

The title comes from a Chinese proverb: the reed bends and sways in the wind, but remains standing; while the strong tree that neither bends nor sways crashes in the storm.

I realize that I often think of myself as grown-up, mature, able to make intelligent decisions. And I let little things go, bit by bit, excusing my behavior too easily, slacking off - and then I realize that I'm not all that grown-up. I have a-ways to go. I am not done. I am still making mistakes. I am still making excuses. I need forgiveness, and I need to forgive others too.

Why do we try to maintain balance in a world of flux? It's like looking for patterns within a lava lamp. The components are always the same, but the appearance is ever-moving, ever-changing. Except, perhaps, humans are even more complicated, because we change each other - we are interacting with our environment, adapting, discarding older models of thinking, moderating and analyzing all the time.

It's time to be flexible. It's time to trust. It's time to be...vulnerable. Because I need to, to retain and reclaim my sanity. To sway, to bend, and not to break.

When you walk, you think - and you blog after.

2010-05-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Walking quietly, next to you, both of us wrapped in thoughts so far away. It makes me think of the difference between physical space and mental space. That physical proximity can be so powerful. Although I may be millions of miles away mentally, I'm still aware of you. I think my own thoughts, but I wonder what you're thinking.

I think of so many things. I guess its because I can't talk to you, you need your space, but I can't do something rude like pull out a book or listen to some music either. I can't sleep because I'm walking. So I am forced, not unwillingly, to retreat into the cove in my mind where I think deep, spacey thoughts. I get high on observations about the world and human nature.

I think (not in order):

1. How harmonious the night is. The quietude, the smell, the dewy grass. I think about how everything is unique. How each person's footsteps reveal their personalities, their mood. Whether they're confident, poised, serene; or angry, impatient, distracted. I think of breathing and how no two people breathe the same way.

2. I think about how counter-intuitive life is. We expect to grow more complex the older and more mature we become, but in fact we get more simple. As children, we act on our impulses and are taught not to. As adults, we have to "find ourselves" - get in touch with our impulses and against all reasoning, act on them. We find that what we wanted to do is the right thing after all.

3. Now, I think about how rarely I think. How infrequently I actually take the time to be completely away from consumption (of ideas, of conversation, of visual movements) and just occupy my mind. Why? Is it because I am afraid of what I will find? Or because I feel that it wastes time? Sometimes it does feel like a waste of time, because I can't remember what destination my thought journey brought me to, and it follows that all that thought-time was a waste. But perhaps in the recording of this process, and in your consumption, it wasn't a waste at all.

4. I don't think its wrong to want things. It is not wrong to want love, it is not wrong to be forthright about what you need. It is wrong to snatch things away or to make others do what you want them to do if they are unwilling. But in being clear about our wants, our reasons, our lives, our reasons for life - it makes it so much easier to be helped, and to help others achieve their hopes.

So the elation!

2010-04-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

begins when you've finally finished a hectic week of school. Presentations, papers of various lengths to write and rewrite, meetings, reading for class, class debates, problem sets, doing favors for friends - all in a short five days! I felt like someone was knotting up my stomach all the time, my mind was strategizing every minute on what I was going to do next - and yet when I sat down in front of my computer I felt nothing but a paralyzing reluctance to begin anything useful and a compulsive urge to update Facebook every three seconds. And then there was the mind worm, the energy uselessly expended waiting and wishing all week for something that never came...

Yesterday night I slept at 4 am. Twice this week I've been up till the early morning. Yesterday wasn't quite as bad...the sleep debt will probably come knocking later. I'm hoping to cancel it out by sleeping well this afternoon and tonight.

When you're stressed out and strung out, every task seems like a major chore. Living seems to be an endless sludge, dragged on simply by the momentum of your organic fuel, never getting true rest till the day your heart stops beating.

I had so much time (because of the relative nature of time, as well) this week to think about why I'm here, and what I'm really learning. I realized that so much of what I do is extraneous. All this reading, writing, thinking...what do I have to show for it? My degree? My brain? I have stopped believing in my native intelligence. I don't think intelligence gets you very far here. Academia is full of the intelligent and perceptive, and I know without a doubt my professors can read through my uninspired bulls**t. What stands out as a good piece of writing in a curriculum based on memorization does not go far in an institution that prides itself on its interdisciplinary thinking and problem solving.

A crucial long-term lesson that I've learned from this (besides the one that I keep having to experience because I never internalize it, that doing work last-minute is not a good idea) is that its important to focus on a few things and do them well. I took five academic classes this term, one physical education class (Dance), work 8 hours a week, am involved in a very-active Asian American Student Union which organizes or co-organizes 5-6 events a month, am the treasurer of the Hall Council, the founder of the International Students club, and participate in a 2.5 hour weekly Bible Study. Along with the Saturday party nights which I am loath to give up, when all these commitments demand my time and energy at the same time, I cannot give it my best or even a decent effort. I feel like I'm fat-free milk. All the fat, the good stuff; has been skimmed off, all you're left with is mostly white, tasteless water. Or bak kut teh with only lean meat. Sometimes, a little sizzle, a little extra makes all the difference.

So next year, I'm going to make a conscious effort to keep the fat in. To not overload my schedule to the extent that I have to give up on friends, long walks, spontaneous conversations and new experiences just to maintain a good GPA and deliver on my commitments. I'm taking four classes, all different things and all promising to be pretty challenging. I'm taking one PE class, first aid, which is something I think I should know. Just in case. I'll still be really committed to SIS, AASU and (perhaps) Christian Fellowship, but I want to meet new people too. Being a mentor to new students is an important responsibility, and I need to make sure I do it well since my mentors have helped me so much along this often-difficult freshman year.

That's about it for now...I have a really packed summer schedule as well! Thankfully, the beginning and the end are mostly fat - 3 weeks in Claremont with no obligations besides cat-feeding and house-sitting, and a month of travel and exploration with beloved family and friends at the end. Perhaps then I will have more time to reflect on how this year has changed me, and what I should do/expect in the future. Or perhaps I will just laze, and rest knowing that I have gone through it well :)

Sometimes you feel like your own two legs are too weak to stand on

2010-04-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

That's when you know what you're made of.
You need a goal, something to look forward to.
Look up, look up, look up.
Your tired feet will bring you to rest one day, my child.
Go north, keep walking, do not stop.
You are your own best friend.

Death and swimming

2010-03-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

How is it possible to talk to 10 different people in a day, and yet still feel alone?

Is there something missing in online conversation, or am I just too self-absorbed? I think there is a bit of both (okay, perhaps a lot more of the latter).

I've been having a class on Death.
Death class --> makes me think about life, because all we know about death is from the perspective of the living -->makes me depressed about life but not want to die because now I have learnt that we ESSENTIALLY know NOTHING about what comes after. And that is scary. I don't even book a flight ticket without getting accommodation first. Who will accommodate me in the hereafter? That became a much more philosophical question that I intended it to.

Perhaps, in the end, we should not be left alone for these particular reasons - falling into moodiness and deep depths of thinking, when we should be paddling in the bright sunny waters. But then, how would we know what life truly is if we don't dare confront its edges?

There comes a time...

2010-03-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered why people, when writing autobiographies, seem to write in terms of months passing, years and of the changes that they face then. For me, it has always seemed that so much emotion can be lived in a day, so much drama and change and mood swings, that it is insufficient to only paint one's changes, particularly in moods (eg. he was depressed, she was jubilant, they were purposeful) only in months and years and not days and minutes and sun-hours. Because a life can be lived in a day, and months can follow on end of nothing.

A misty state of mind

2010-02-14T20:17:00.001-08:00

Makes me feel that all is possible, that all worlds are half-shadow and half-solid, that all emotions are multi-faceted, shining like sapphires.

I see in the past the paths that have brought me here and the ghosts of roads not taken. I look at the ground and see the vines that are strewn all over the way. This road, and every road I have walked whether deliberately or just as the result of the passage of time, have changed me.

It is a wonder that we can connect at all, human beings walking separate paths and brimming with destiny.

The irony...

2010-02-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

I traveled to a foreign country alone to begin a new chapter of life.

I have been riding on competitive academic scholarships for the last three years.

As a university freshman, I am applying for a research grant that's usually given to sophomores and juniors.

I dance in public spaces, I sing without embarrassment, I make lame jokes.

I speak up in class. I voice my opinions when I think they are intelligent. I voice them even when they're not.

I participate in clubs, and when there isn't one that caters to a need, I form one.

I can do so many things I never thought I was capable of.

~

But I can't muster the courage to ask you out.

The bitter pill of discontent...

2010-01-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

Rancours, bubbles to the surface when you least expect it.

The feeling that you aren't appreciated, that you could do so much better, that you are not achieving everything you are capable of. That you made wrong choices, you heedlessly stepped on a green path and you're not sure if you're ever going to reach the sunlight as you trudge beneath the monotonous canopy of expectations and unfulfilled dreams and the susurrus of time as it flows by - if you listen closely you can hear the grains falling in the hourglass that holds your earthly hours.

You tell assuring stories to yourself about individuality and different definitions of success until you can't be sure where reality ends and your dreams begin. Or were they intertwined from the very beginning?

But there is light, there is meaning, there is hope: lift your eyes from the crunching dead leaves you step on, and with filmy eyes envision the road to come. While your feet have strength, walk straight, walk upright, walk forward.

Maybe we are getting this lifeline thing wrong

2009-12-22T17:56:00.001-08:00

Maybe writing should not be so easy. A few dashes on the keyboard, a click of the keypad and instant publishing. Maybe writing should reflect the hard work of thinking and translating that complex inner landscape into a form that everyone can understand. Each word should shine like a diamond in an engagement ring, each phrase as perfectly formed and iridescent as a soap bubble. (I am writing like a thesaurus enthusiast right now, but I assure you I am thesaurus free. I must be unconsciously imitating some stream-of-consciousness author now in my word-drunk, thought-seeped state.)

Lately today I've been wondering about the conflict between our biological and our intellectual imperative. As a biological, evolutionary (or created, depending on your beliefs, I think that they are both true) being, I recognize that I don't have very many years on this planet and I am driven by my body to accomplish certain things: mate, raise children, age and die. So morose, but it is true! I am 20 years old. My body runs well, but from here on everything declines: organ function, sensory apparatus, coordination, memory, brain function, speed, parts of the body that beauty is measured by gradually decreases as cells die and don't regenerate, as hormones decrease, as bone density shrinks. For the rest of my life I will have to reconcile with the fact that I am no longer 20.

And all this knowledge (put into perspective by an excellent holiday-reading book titled "The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead" by David Shields) makes me react with wonderstruck panic: I need to get some living done! Why should I be sitting and studying and enriching my mind when I am at my physical peak of life? Can't sitting and studying and philosophic meditations be done when I'm 60?"

I realize then, how our current way of life in the more-developed parts of the world is so conflicted with our biological timeline. We spend ages 5-24 (for me, due to Malaysia's late-starting and long education system of which material I have retained little) studying up to a degree level, start working, maybe get married at 28-30 (don't want to jeopardize your career, need to get downpayment on house/car/etc) if you find the right person who has roughly the same life goals as you do. Childbirth after age 35 greatly increases the chance of birth defects. For most of history women had their first child by age 20. The anthropologist Suzanne Frayser found from studying 454 traditional cultures that the average age for brides was 12 to 15, and for grooms 18. Growing up I always found this fact (early marriage) terrifying and was so glad I lived in the modern enlightened age of equality. Now, I wonder if this is a lie. I wonder if by prolonging years through medicine and better healthcare and quality of life, by postponing the inevitable; I am just wasting more of my naturally-healthy years preparing for the rituals of adulthood and survival and find out later that either a) it didn't require all that much effort or b) that it wasn't worth it.

So what would I do if I chose to abandon my intellectual-fulfillment, career-ladder goals and seek happiness and a good life through biological means? I would start living a more balanced life, cook my own meals, run and exercise a lot, start looking for a mate to have children (10 more years till 30!), travel. Worry less about saving the world or solving our problems and be more focused on fulfilling evolutionary criteria. Immerse myself in small household tasks like cleaning. Get a cat. Drink and party more (not to the point of destruction, of course) since my liver still has amazing capabilities. Only old people tell you to be cautious, ever notice that? Keep staying in North America by any means, where making a living just seems so much easier. The middle-class enjoy a standard of living comparable to the upper-middle class at home, and with more security. Spend a lot more time with friends (while doing sports of course) - we can sit around and drink tea when we're 40 and have bad backs.

Things I would not worry/spend so much time laboring over: whether I will get a good job. World problems. Exams. Facebook. Wondering if I am intelligent. Trying to be intelligent. (I can be intelligent when I'm old. Old age=wisdom. Wisdom at young age = too much time sitting around on butt)

You may notice I am fusing traditional ways of living with the modern world to make a melange of what I consider the perfect young life. My earlier years should be about making experiences and making friends, my later years about reminiscing about said experiences with said friends. And enjoying this God-given body and capabilities, not overtaxing the mind at the expense of the body. Eating badly, sleeping spottily, not exercising enough, too much sitting around without enough action - that is the condition of college students. Where is the spirit of revolution, the passion that burns stronger than the urge to get wasted on a Saturday night, the joy of discovery and falling in love with ideas and people and ideas of people?

"Fight, fight, against the dying of the light..." but if noonday sun does not shine with life, what else is there to fight for at sunset?

The problem of learning

2009-11-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Through reading I gained the ability to immerse myself in a different world or see my own through different lenses. So much wisdom and wonder has been gained through this activity, and yet...

at times I wonder whether knowledge is all that worth it.

I've been reading Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse".

You can tell the mark of a great writer when, hours or days afterwards, her voice is still speaking to you and echoing in the chambers of your brain, affecting your moods, weaving its patterns into your dreams and waking time. That's how I feel about Woolf.

Her subject matter, human relationships and time and thwarted desires and ultimately, the purpose of life, cannot be ignored. The piercing clarity by which she indicts the very human, very flawed (yet beautiful) characters she creates nudges me uncomfortably. Yet by her speaking the truth, I begin to believe her. And when she writes, towards the end, about middle-age life - when Lily Briscoe (aged 44) is amazed at how even then, she cannot piece together a coherent philosophy of life and discern its meaning, but only see it as glimpses, still moments in time, the present - it filled me with despair. Like a vision shattered. Maybe, no one has found a satisfactory answer because there isn't one that stands up to close examination, that resonates with all of humanity.

I don't want to end on this morose note. I have a moral obligation to you, the reader. So now let me tell you how I feel: I feel like one thread in a large tapestry, a thread intricately connected to others that form patterns and weaves and bundles, but I am only one. I am only one and I am weak. I can be cut off easily from my path and obliterated by sickness, by loss, by mental impairment, by poor life decisions, by death - so many ways you can cut a thin thread. And yet - when I am connected to others, I am no longer just myself but am connected to all the rest. I will feel the pain when others for one reason or another are cut off. But I can support them as well. And they in tug and pull and stretch, will do the same for me. And when I fray, and eventually become dissolute...the pattern will go on. And it was not for nothing that I was there.

Word of the Moment : Melange

2009-10-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

All I feel now is...a swirly mess, a rainbow shake-down, knock-out blended mix of proteins and sugars and other good stuff and maybe some bad stuff and a little bit of the stuff that's about to blow.

Randomly, I realise that when we eat any processed food or even drink a milkshake, what we say in in it: say a banana and strawberry milkshake - isn't really bananas or strawberries anymore. They've been transformed into a shadow of their true fruitiness and mixed in with other things and you may get a hint of it, but its not, truly, a banana.

I also realised that being with people that I dislike/annoy me drains me of energy. Trying to ignore them, trying not to be visibly annoyed with them, being upset with myself for not liking them when they're not bad people (but annoying, which sometimes feels much worse - give me a charming rogue over an annoying goody-two-shoes prat for company any day) slowly saps me of any ability to treat the other people around me nicely as well. I guess this is part of growing up as well. As an adult everyone has to face people they dislike and hide it. Perhaps its their boss, or their co-worker, or their employees, or their other acquaintances - either way, there's no way to avoid them. I don't want to spend my time hating people. But it seems impossible to be neutral about it - some people annoy you just by inhabiting the same space as you.

Or maybe I'm just grouchy due to hormonal imbalances. But this makes me tired and unable to treat the people I love and respect the way I want to. I guess there is a flip side to being really emotionally affected by my interactions with people. They can give you lows as well as highs.

Clothes

2009-10-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Watching Yasmin Ahmad commercials always makes me nostalgic for a country and a people far away. One important aspect of me is how people dress - the old t-shirts, the hand-me-down shorts, the faded skirts...in all that there is an assumption that dress really isn't that important. The most beautiful, courageous, eloquent people in her movies are often sloppily dressed most of the time. They do dress up, but it is for an occasion, a special enough reason so that even the meticulous preparation is a joyous task. A first date. A performance. A wedding. A raya celebration. These are the milestones that call for the best representation of oneself, and one obligingly steps up to task.

Contrast to American private colleges. Every season requires a new wardrobe. People say "the most important thing to me is closet space! Thank God there's enough here to fit all my clothes!" My three suitcases of stuff, which to me seemed like too much already, only half-filled my expansive closet. My roommate's is bursting with cute dresses and shorts and jeans and pretty tops. There are so many "extra things" - make-up, lip gloss, hair bands, hats, tights, bags, shoes (don't even start)...that need to be diversified for different occassions - and those mornings when you wake up and you "feel" a certain way and need to dress how you feel.

Clothes become an extension of your personality, a declaration of yourself to the world in the commercial choices that you put on your body. It becomes a barometer of taste and standards, a discreet unspoken measure of economic position.

Oh these first-world consumers who buy and throw as if the price you paid in that shop means you have absolved all responsibility to the rest of us. I wish I could walk around in my faded t-shirts, my big unflattering shorts, my grey trackpants, my kind-of worn out pretty tops and my perennial 365-days-a-year slippers as I would at home. You have made me ashamed of what I wear because I am reduced only to that in your minds. I wish you would understand that 1 US dollar is 3.4 ringgit and a relatively cheap 16 dollar sweater that you'd buy in a second costs 55 ringgit which is what I used to earn working 14 hours in my more-than-minimum-wage job after high school. I know you have people struggling with economic problems too. But that is all swept away in the mania for new clothes and cuteness and fashion sensibilities.

I asked for this, in a way. I have intruded your modest upper-middle class enclaves with the rise of affirmative action and need-based scholarship. I do not belong here and maybe I show it. But look beyond that and see my struggle every day, in every outfit I pore long and hard over, balancing budget constraints and the desire to look as beautiful and put-together as everyone else. My ultimately-purposeless labor to fit in with the rest of you.

I'm not the only one.

Love

2009-10-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

Tears you apart, it really does. Maybe what I have isn't love, because how can love hurt you so much?
The main task now is not to think, not to think of what happened or how messy and horrible everything seems because we squish and squash our hearts together and didn't handle them gently. Like flowers here today and wilted tomorrow. That's what hearts are like, so handle gently, hold tenderly.

Grueling

2009-09-18T17:41:00.000-07:00

I remember when I first encountered that word. It was in a CD-ROM game where you sailed up the Amazon river and could choose to set your own pace - I choose mine to be "grueling", even though I didn't know what that meant at the time. It sounded like food - probably because of the "gruel" part.

I feel a bit like that ship sometimes, pressed on towards a goal which I can only dimly see, into deep and dark waters - mysterious, hinting of danger and wonders. Sometimes, the scenery is dull and energy-sapping: mosquitoes whining in my ear, a starless night, swampy trees overhanging in the still, moist air...

I wonder why I left my shallow bay where the sun shined always and I knew every path and clearing. Why I have this terrible faculty to be bored, to long for new things and new places, because new things only seem to bring loneliness and heartache.

And yet, there's a voice in me reminding me that my brain is active and alert, my hands and legs are strong to carry my burdens (and help others carry theirs) and walk this long path to someplace I don't know yet. I'll know when I get there.

And so, while the night is long, the light within me never dims nor fails, and I sail on.

Half and half

2009-08-31T01:33:00.000-07:00

It's interesting that the more grounded and self-confident you try to be, the less people go out of their way to help you when you're trying to settle in. Some assume that because you speak good English you can handle all your affairs, you probably have relatives around for emergencies or whatever, and you're left to settle everything on your own. It's true, I guess: you can cope. But wouldn't it be nice if someone worried that you couldn't.

And wouldn't it be nice if you were dried and clean-cut, or at least, a little more simple: that your life was not a identity patched with different nationalities or countries lived in, a melange of cultures, a melting pot of languages, an indecipherable patterned Impressionist painting when it comes to your preferences and lifestyle. Yes, perhaps if we were all the same life would be boring. But standing out gets my feet tired.

Random Thought I may use one day

2009-08-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

We say, "aim for the stars". But stars are actually huge masses of burning rock and gas that are slowly dying millions of miles away; remote and silent with atmospheric and ground conditions absolutely deadly to any human. What looks desirable at a distance is not always so at close-up.

Am in a mood to reminisce

2009-08-07T11:00:00.001-07:00

So I was cleaning out my room, and I found various gems that hinted at my growth over the years...

I hated Geography.

A very interesting essay. (In case you can't read it, it's about using different movie names to create a story.)
And there is a point in this essay entitled "How I spent my holidays" that my teacher took offense to. (Notice the underlined and question marked section.)

When my English teacher wanted us to reinterpret the famous nursery rhyme and make it a little more "adult".

And finally, the saga of "Three Young Eastern Souls", the work of a budding 8/9 year old scriptwriter.

Enjoy!

Farmer's Wisdom

2009-07-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

He who drives his spade into the ground but then looks up and is distracted by his neighbours' vast green fields, what benefit can he gain?

As he stares at the beauty of the unattainable, his determination fades away and his strong hands go slack. Resting his hands on the top of the spade, he places his head on it and begins to daydream. He wishes it was his, the beautiful cultivated fields, the rolling hills...he does not even bother to look down at his little square of red dust with weeds sticking out everywhere.

"Why do I work?" he says to himself in bitterness. "It would be better that I did not try. My neighbours' prosperity taunts me. His riches goad and irritate me more than gnats and thorns."

He knew, however, that if he did not sow his seeds, he would die of hunger that winter. So he did so all that planting season: breaking the hard ground, plowing it with a faraway mind, sowing with only one hand (why should he use both, it was pointless to work so hard for an outcome he had lost interest in) and wiping away the tears of injustice which fell to the ground.

When he was exhausted with his labours, he would sit outside in his plot of land and think about the neighbour whose ostentatious display he had to endure everyday. In his dreams, he owned the land next door, and someone else -someone unimportant and nameless- was plowing and cursing the little, barren ground he had.

He began to lose his interest in the little things of life that had once brought him joy. The eternal originality of the morning sun. The flowers opening their buds. The alert eyes of the sparrow, ever-scanning for danger, ready to take flight at the slightest rustle. The pride he had felt at finally earning enough to own land, the grand plans he had for expanding it; all withered into insignificance and mockery when he saw the size of his neighbour's estate.

~

It is harvesttime.

At first, he thinks its another bitter trick life has played on him, that his crop is sickly and frail rather than lush and green.

But one shoot sprouts up, and another, and another...

He does not connect the dots until one morning his sour countenance turns to astonishment and disbelief as his eyes take in the burst of golden rays before him. His plot, his little despised return to labour, was a waving, freeform field of gold.

Little did he know he had been planting wheat, the food of kings and princes, robust enough to feed a man for three days on one meal. He tried to remember where he had gotten the seeds from, but he couldn't remember. The early days of setting up were a blur. Was it from the seller in the market who gave him a special deal, seeing as he was a man of few means? Was it the stranger who had pressed the bag into his hand as a token of gratitude when he had saved him from a ditch? All he knew was that it was from years or decades ago, and that the little bag of seeds were what first inspired him to quit his profession and till the land.

With the sudden realisation of his good fortune, he experienced the agony of regret. Why had he not cultivated the land as he should have? Why did he let his eye and mind wander from task? Why did he...?

He stopped. Had he known he would have received a more bountiful harvest at the end of it, he would have sown more diligently. He would have laboured harder, slept less, envied not, hoped more. He knew that in his actions he deserved almost nothing, and yet he had received so much more than he deserved.

He looked up and thanked the Lord of the rains, the sparrows, the grass and the sky. Few farmers are atheists or nonreligious in one way or another - they know too well that in hard times, faith is the only thing you can cling to. And their beliefs have sustained them through so many rough seasons, growing stronger in each lean time.

He took a last glance at the neighbouring fields, but this time with different eyes. Yes, it was beautiful and perfect. But his harvest was his personal miracle, and he would not change it for the world. His neighbour had attained his lands by grace. And now, even when he sowed with envy, with his bitterness, with laziness and disappointment and failure and frustration - even so, he had received his reward. By grace alone his imperfect sowing was turned into a harvest of beauty and wholeness.

- I tell stories to unearth wisdom that I know is within me, somewhere. Beneath beauty is truth, and shining through all truth is God. That is not a story. -

Little Updates and a Wisp of Shame

2009-07-04T00:16:00.000-07:00

The little Updates:

1. For those who know and those who don't...I'm out of pre-u already. Finished in May. Getting IB results next Monday. *Teeth chattering (with fear, not cold)*

2. Subsequent to finishing school, which had been a martini and a tap dance away from complete pandemonium (that didn't make sense did it? It wasn't meant to. I don't.), I came back and spent time with father and mother and frequently with sister, in Singapore. I slept and ate and had irregular hours. I went to the Science Centre and marveled at Da Vinci. I ate Sushi Hi-Tea Buffet at Kui-shin Bo it was AMAZING I WANT MORE.

3. I got a new camera. It's quite pretty. I guess there are no more excuses not to put up pictures of my ho-hum life.

4. Against all expectations, I have gotten into university! I will be leaving in late August to California, United States; the land of beautiful people and expensive plastics. It rather scares me.

5. I hope to be tanned when I come home. Not like "WAH you spend too much time in the sun la don't look Chinese anymore" but hot and more importantly, intentional. I also hope to learn ballroom dancing.

6. I have attended UWC gatherings, old secondary friends gatherings, parents' friends gatherings, old primary friends gatherings and church friends gatherings since returning. I think attending and organising gatherings is all we oversea-ish back for holidays people do in Malaysia. I want to do something more important.

7. To that end, I am involved in a few (small) things now with another few upcoming :

a) planning trip with my closest friends whom I've known for 7 years now

b) trying to obtain a fly-on-the-wall invitation to watch my favorite filmmaker at work

c) attending the Malaysian Student Leaders Summit, where people of influence dispense their wisdom on stage while people of no influence at the present (people like me) dispense our foolishness in giggles and whispers among the audience. Kidding though. We actually pay a lot of attention, and ask insightful questions. Probably better questions than the often-pandering mass media does.

d) participating in a US colleges/universities application seminar in KL. Though I'd probably only be able to tell the attendees what not to do. Oh well, at least that's different:) Should I prepare for it? I feel like people who made it into the most famous places worked so hard to get there. Preparation by way of SAT books, reading up about admission statistics, internet resources, essay checkers, mother boil special ginseng on day of SAT...ok maybe not that much but yes, they have put in the due diligence.

While I put undue diligence into improving my Freecell statistics, using internet resources to find the perfect prom dress (the task is more difficult than choosing which unis to apply to I KID YOU NOT), flipping through my SAT books the night before the exam and choosing universities not based solely on their rankings (I admit I still have some kiasuness, I'm Malaysian) but on my biased, probably totally unfounded impressions of the place.

Yes, I totally deserve what I got.

Which is happiness, freedom from the menial slavery to public opinion, shock and awe (you're turning down X University for Y College?!?) and the exhilaration of embarking on a new adventure, to a place where I know absolutely no one.

I think my tendency to want to do things no one has ever done before, or at least do it differently from the people I know, is going to lead me down strange paths in the future. I don't fear hard. I fear boring and predictable.

So yes, its more likely that at 30 I will be a Tibetan school teacher teaching fourth grade geometry and drinking yak milk from my own herd, while being an underground spy for the Global Freedom Network, than it is for me to be a corporate sales executive.

At least I hope so, even if the final truth is less glamorous than my fantasies, I hope it will swing more kooky and less cubicle-y.

e) Holidaying with family in Sabah. It's my first time to East Malaysia, not counting the time I went on an ASEAN trip to Brunei.

f) Organising/facilitating a camp for Orang Asli youth to raise their awareness of opportunities for education and work beyond their immediate horizons. It's a UWC Malaysia initiative.

Anyway I think that's all for now. Sounds like a lot? Not really. I still find it hard to fill my day with activities.

And the wisp of shame? Well, that's about not updating for months. But then again, its only a wisp, because I know I've been living and that's more important:)

Questions

2009-04-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Why the emphasis to create? Everyday I am told by my society, my peers, that I need to speak out, to voice my opinions, to form meaning out of chaos or at least make someone laugh ironically. Facebook's "What's on your mind?". Blogger. MSN messenger status updates. Notes. Emails.

Even school. Essays, writing without generating original thoughts or language. Science lab reports. Activity evaluations. Graduation speeches. They credit us with too much thinking. All I want is to be entertained. I will pay for that entertainment with money I have not earned, and time I do not have.

Maybe, maybe this drugged lifestyle of consumption - physical wants like fashion and gourmet cuisine, tv series and movies and the latest fad - really isn't wrong. But what is wrong is the inequity in who gets to speak. Who gets heard.

Words unlock meaning but they also limit life. A construction worker may not write a novel but he may know more of suffering than a feeble intellectual would with all of his philosophical exercises. The desire to trap feelings or thoughts in inflexible words that join to phrases connected into sentences may distract us from the enjoyment of the event itself.

And yet, where would we be without abstract thought and reflection? How would we live with ourselves without justifications, explanations, rationalisations to make ourselves feel like there was a plan when all you did was set out in the wide unknown with an unreliable compass and an outdated map?

If I had the answers I'd give them to you. But I once learned that it was more important to ask the right questions than gain the answers to them. My only worry now is that the questions above aren't really the important questions, because they can't lead to anything. Maybe I should think more about questions like, "How can I make someone's life better?" and "How can I make my own life count for something?" and "What would be the best use of my time, right now?"

If I can answer those questions everyday, there isn't anything else to ask anymore.

Losing and Gaining

2009-03-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

As I strive more and more just to be, I realise that I've gradually lost touch with what I can do...Today I sang at the Delirious? concert and was surprised to hear my own voice. It didn't sound like my own, and it was breathy and high-pitched and weak. My singing voice has atrophied, like the muscles of a paralytic.

And I don't have the intense-planning-and-study drive anymore, even though my IB exam is not far away (month and a half) - probably because I'm already looking on to the next step, university, and if I get into American unis it doesn't matter what your final grade is as long as you pass. And all the necessary coursework I've completed already.

But...

In exchange, I stretched, I laughed, I loved passionately and smiled like an idiot. Struck up conversations with previously-intimidating people and found them so normal, so nice. Threw my planner to one side and went with the flow. Watched movies crammed four people to a bed. Spoke what was really on my mind. Waddled in the muddy waters of uncertainty. About myself, about people. But mostly about myself, because if your glasses are foggy the whole world looks misty to you, doesn't it?

Anyway, am sleepy, so will have to leave this post to another day...tata!

Dark Star

2009-02-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

It's quite lonesome out here, scattered far out in the galaxy without my companion Erithrea, the bright mininova. My light is dimming. It twinkles less and less, if you could call a huge fearsome glowing mass burning itself up through centuries, twinkling.

Things were alright for the first millenia or so. Stardom was looking good - prospects of life on a few planets were promising and some nitrogen-breathing primitive life forms were already thriving on Planet Tuvr. Erithrea and I laughed about reaching the pinnacle of superStardom, the legendary Sun, who had 2-legged creatures building temples and sacrificing some of their own kind for Him. I always thought that was stupid. Not like that egomaniac needed any more convincing that He was the greatest star of all time.

About 700 centuries in, Planet Greqq atmosphere's was created, and life sprung up in abundance. The sheer diversity - and their fragility - was gastaking. I basked in the cool feeling of having something dependent on my rays for their survival, and I nurtured that Planet like it was my own moon.

There is something you need to understand, mortal. We stars do not think or behave as you do. You, you get tired, need rest. We do not know either tiredness or rest. We are as we are, immutable; not weak, but never having known weakness, not strong either. We are not fickle, and we can keep doing the same task - warming the galaxy - for as long as our core is solid and keeps us burning. We do not deny it is a selfish task that happens to bring some good to others. We do not need morals to justify our existence. Indeed, the creation of morals by living creatures whose very existence is a mere accident is almost amusing. I would find it so if I had a sense of humour. And yet, through observing minute behaviorisms even a star can learn the ways of lifeforms.

Now, now it is all gone. Tuvr is ashes and black hole vortex; Greqq expired in ice a thousand years ago but only after a long, long age of war and chaos that descended upon them like doomed meteors. I felt it was best to let go, turn my cold side and withhold my warmth to them that they may meet their end. I still believe it was best.

Erithrea didn't think so. She whirled and shot sparks, told me I could not forsake my duty, do as these lifers may. That it was their choice, and who could judge them, much less a star that felt no pain? That was just it though. They had no choice anymore. The dark sucked them in, and they were only grappling with nightmares and had lost all sense of reality.

So I did it, I broke my own code and that of my kin to save them - by destroying them all equally. I know I did right - I heard sighs of relief from Greqq just before it extinguished. Its people, though - their screams still torment me. I often wonder, how could I hear them in space? It does not matter. Imagination is just as strong.

I was expelled for being a dark star. Now I lay here, in the furthest outposts of space, where not even black holes exist and there is nothing, not even darkness, nor light, nor love. And here I will stay till I burn out, shrivel. That is my punishment for meddling in the affairs of life. But I had a choice and I made it, and I will burn to my last inch knowing why.

Spaces

2009-01-05T10:24:00.001-08:00

Okay since it is 2.30 in the morning and I cannot go out for a massive shopping spree (don't have the funds for it anyway, nor the appropriately-sized megamall), I shall blog to relieve this emotional diarrhea instead.

Here it goes.

The Spaces Between

There are always spaces between one unit of something and another. Atoms and molecules all the way up to stars and galaxies and solar systems. The space between the best dancers that holds them together and keeps them in perfect, mirrored motion. The space between lovers that asserts its will so strongly that it pulls them apart, leaving each one jarred and jagged.

We fight against this space; mash our bodies, intertwine our minds and emotions, knit our souls together so that there can be wholeness at last. We see the space as unnecessary, an evil force that keeps us from a higher purpose, keeps us alone and frail. Apart. Not a part.

Mother, father, friend, brother, postman, teacher, char koay teow seller. What binds us together beyond a brief moment of eye contact, a transfer of knowledge, physical touch, a joke, even love? Nothing. That is all. That is all that we can share, that we can reach into another's life.

We are, essentially, alone. The spaces have defeated us since we were born. In being an individual, we have lost that community that would otherwise be part of us. Like bees.

The spaces do not always do harm. The repelling forces work to our good as well, keeping us sane, keeping us from leeching into one another. Bringing variety into the world as we each go separate ways, mental and emotional paths that others can emulate but not follow.

Oh, but how lonely it is sometimes, and how much I wish there would be a vacuum to suck up all these spaces. The space in your smile, the averted eyes, the pause before you address me. I wish it could all be sucked up in one magical moment, and things return to what I imagine in my deluded memory it once was.

But that's just wishful thinking, and the spaces float inexorably above and around, twinkling in the still air.

Going Home

2008-12-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

I will be home in *count them!* 5 days.

My family. Friends. Pet. Car. Dog. Home Computer. Shower. Old clothes. Tattered leather couch. Patio. Kitchen. I will see them, touch them again.

And all for too short a time.

Because this time it's going to be different. I'm going home with someone very close to me, but a stranger to everyone back home. How is he going to adjust? How am I going to please both sides and keep things perfect?

I shouldn't worry, should I? Things have a way of sorting themselves out. It's just quite a step; more than just visiting a friend's family for 2 hours - its two whole weeks. Of idiosyncrasies, a different accent, mindset, expectations and everything. To expose everything you love for its own sake to someone you love, knowing full well they may reject it - its a scary prospect.

Other than that, I'm really looking forward to it, as I'm expecting we'll have a great time:) Well we won't exactly be free and completely holiday-ing as there are still uni things to complete, but if planned well that shouldn't cause too much stress. Time to be organised Evelyn again!

Happy holidays everyone!

Kinds of Darkness

2008-12-09T03:39:00.001-08:00

There are so many thoughts in my head once again as I sit down here to write and I feel privileged - privileged to be the bearer of words; chalices that contain meaning that can be used for enlightening, teaching, joking, bonding, loving, twisting, hurting - or just locked safely away in one's sternum. (Yes, the ribs, keep it near your ribs, your heart needs more than words to feed it.)

I read what I wrote again. That was a long sentence. I have this tendency to write "pretzel" sentences - declarations so long that you forget at the end what was said at the beginning. Isn't that how our minds work, though? Sometimes we forget, at the end of the journey, what we started out for?

Today, as I was walking down to my room (a dorm room located kind-of underground, 2 floors below ground level but which makes sense, as my campus is built on hilly ground) I did not see the light at the middle of each flight of stairs where there is an unbricked view of the trees and the sea just beyond my school. We live by a bay, Tolo Bay. I know those trees and the shape of the sea instinctively now, though I am no artist, and while it does not sparkle like the Mediterranean, it has its beauty. I know that though the light is not there and all there is to it now is darkness and mystery, it is not an unfamiliar and menacing darkness - I know exactly what it hides, and love the variations of this natural scene.

Tomorrow, I will see the first glimpse of sunlight hit the water, if I wake up that early. And when I go to classes, the dense greenery encroaching the sand will wave in the gentle breeze.

And why did I think of this? Well, I've been thinking about light and darkness recently - not brooding - but in snatches, sometimes indirectly - like this.

In class, we've been doing Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. (Which explains it all, really.) Whatever reservations I have of him as a person (I have to keep reminding myself that he was stuck in the paradigms of the early 20th century, and all white men had some racist prejudices, as we do today), his writing does accomplish something. He makes you see "the horror! The horror!" and brings that darkness (the ever present "mysterious, brooding, inscrutable" darkness) smack into your eyes. Ultimately, he seems to suggest, there is no escape from the darkness from either outside or inside yourself. The world is a dark and unfriendly place, and even London, the "greatest town on earth", is described as leading into the heart of darkness.

Outside the classroom, I've lit candles twice in the last three weeks. Candles are for tragedy, you know that? They symbolise our opposition to a world so dark that we can't even see each other's faces, each other's joys and sorrows and rejoice that at least we are not alone in feeling.

The tragedies I've touched, with icy fingers setting hard wax alight, were different: one emotionally detached, one a blow to the guts. One vast and universal, proclaimed and fought against by world leaders and millions all over the world with stories harsher than I've ever heard. One private and unevitable, met only with tears of tough boys and distraught students and teachers. I did not cry on AIDS Day, though millions have succumbed to this uncurable disease that devastates a large part of our world. I did cry for Martin, our former Mathematics teacher who after retiring to South Africa to reunite with his wife as he had longed to for so many years, had passed away without even his sister having a clue until three weeks later. He used to throw calculators at his students, and offer them cookies. He was the caricature of a fat man - a natural joker and a gambler, an avid sports fan, a drinker, and so much fun to be around. That was the Martin I knew, but many people knew him more and admired his strength, that he had suffered the death of his only child and still continued to be the person he was.

And there has been all other sorts of darkness and light too, pervading my life like wayang kulit as it does to everyone. University applications and all that business are a mix of both; while it is exciting planning and having high hopes for my future, the possibility of rejection and no-way-forward is too scary to be considered. Loving someone comes with its risks as well - contemplating a bond that seems to have an expiry date that you don't venture to guess. But it's obvious enough. 5 months, only a short period of certainty. After that, who can tell?

I think my tone seems to have gotten darker and darker throughout this entry, but that isn't my intention. Perhaps what I really want to get across is that there are many kinds of darkness existing in the world; some as natural as night and day, some that will always remain a mystery as long as we live in a linear, one-directional time dimension, and some that must be fought for with every inch of our lives. It is up to each to decide what is which.

Sleepiness!

2008-11-19T02:25:00.000-08:00

"I'm dreaming my life away..."
that's how a song by an oldies band called "Dream, dream" goes. Sounds ludicrous, but I'm sleeping my life away. And guess what? I want to. When I sleep, there seems to be no worries and no anxiety, just a desire for more...
I've been told over and over by people that I love, both my family and friends, that I seriously need to cut down on sleep. That it's not good for me. That I will be able to achieve more if I didn't sleep the way I did (with reckless abandon, mostly).
...
After Christian Fellowship tonight, I'm not sleepy anymore and thus can't quite get into the "writing about sleepiness" mood. I admire writers so much. How are they able to discipline themselves to sit down and write something of value, something that people will actually read? Even now, deep in procrastination, I find it hard to churn out words that make sense.
I'll write another day, and hopefully with a better entry. Perhaps I should change to writing about my daily life. Boring as it may be, at least there's always something to say.

Long awaited update

2008-10-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Most patient and faithful readers,

I do apologise for going so long without an update. Life intrudes so rudely, disrupting my thoughts and stealing my time so that my well-intentioned plans of blog-updating are cast away on the sea of an endless 'things to do' list. (I am not kidding - in addition to the multiple meetings/classes/activities that I am involved in everyday, I have a to-do list on my computer that never seems to end.)

But enough of that. Really, the last few months (and the last month that I haven't updated you about in particular) have swallowed me whole. I have been through so many mood swings and teetered on the edge of despair so many times that its not even funny. There is much weariness of the body of course, as I certainly do not get as much sleep or rest as I would like (about 9 hours a day would do wonders) but also a certain soul fatigue - is this all there is to the UWC experience? Is that what I am going to remember about my two years here? Will I ever be happy and carefree again?

Melodrama does play a large role in it, but I think its because here we are so isolated from the 'real world' though we know a lot about it collectively. I hardly keep up with the news happening back home and know very little about what's happening around the world. Unless I'm told about something, I don't know it. Thus every small incidence is blown up to a huge event. I find it hard to regain perspective nowadays. There are so many things I want to do with my life now that I really don't have time for all of them. I guess the only way to tell is to give up what is less important, the temporal pleasures and focus on what is really important.

I would love to continue but I'm falling asleep. Till next time.

Word

2008-09-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

2 Timothy 2: 22Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

Galatians 5: 19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Search my heart O God. Your word is unchanging truth that stands firm even though the waves of life and confusion sweep over me. Although alternative doors are opening to me now, with them it brings shades of grey and dubious morality and a craving for temporary pleasures. If there is nothing I can cling onto now - not church which sometimes seems so far away and so removed from the immediate pressures of the real world and this confinement of thoughts in my mind; or people with their changing whims and fancies; or books which preach different doctrines - there is one thing I can hold onto now.

Your word. Your word.

_____________________

I said to someone recently, "I want to be someone who has lines, lines dividing right and wrong, truth and deceit, because now I am someone who has great big areas of uncertainty." Only the creator of the universe can be an authority on those lines, and I want to find out exactly where they are.

The Big Question

2008-09-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

"You've told me who your are not. So who are you?"

Look at the stars, the roof, the potted plants next to you and the boxy texture of the ground. Just don't look at his face. Then you will definitely not be able to find a single word to say.

Subject, verb, object. Remember the order of making sentences. Put one together.

Don't say "I don't know". That is a shortcut to not thinking. Pause.

It's not hard to divert the subject for a while, talk and laugh and joke about related things till we're on a topic far, far away. The connections hum just so. Another one of the things I love about this.

Sooner or later though, he'll say "But back to what we were talking about. You were saying...?"

Drats.

-~-~-

Run, run away from the questions you can't answer; the unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unprovable wishy-washy statements.

I pledge allegiance to a God whom I cannot see or touch but believe in through faith, and I will live my life each day for His glory."

Fancy enough. But how do you actually do that? And what about the shady areas? When you get down to specifics, there isn't much consensus. And then, I can't answer you because I don't know what is the right answer. I can't just give you my answer, surely? It might be the wrong one, the one I say to lie to myself about how I feel and think, the one that I change every minute.

"If you don't take anything else from this, at least I hope you find out who you are."

Whose life are you living for?

2008-08-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered, as you sit in front of the wide-screen television watching your favourite soap opera (martial arts, legal drama, forensic, the ever-popular police force or whichever it may be) what it actually does to your brain and emotions?

We've all had that experience of being deeply affected by a movie. Bambi's mother, Forrest Gump...the emotional effects of a touching film moment can be as real as our own experiences. Except that it's contrived so; to tweak your emotions, to squeeze your heart. Doesn't that feel rather manipulative to you?

I mean, don't we have enough from daily life to deal with already?

Perhaps we don't. The figures on the screen, the actors with their well-rehearsed lines, are everything and do everything that we wish we could. We live voraciously through them: how could she do that? That's so stupid! He's so evil....

A study showed that the number of hospital admissions for paracetamol overdose in Britain increased after a showing of television drama Casualty depicted a man trying to kill himself by swallowing 50 paracetamol tablets. Some patients did admit to the show influencing their choice of drug in attempting suicide. It's scary to think how vulnerable we are, how easily influenced not just by encounters with real people, but with stories dreamt up by Hollywood scriptwriters.

I wonder if we were meant to live like this. Anesthesized to the real world, glued to our tv screens and internet browsers and games, seeking the next exciting thing. Reminds me of the wife (Mildred Montag, SparkNotes informs me) in Fahrenheit 451, glued to the tv and only a shell of a human being.

I am glued to the computer most of my waking hours, but sometimes it does pay to remember that people lived perfectly happy lives before technology or instant entertainment, and in some parts of the world they still do. I want to breathe non air-conditioned air, to close an internet window and open a real one, to laugh with a friend, to play a board game. Sometimes. There are still things that technology cannot give us.

And if that does not make my life primetime TV, so be it. My life and fate and relationships are not in the hands of a talented scriptwriter or the fancy of the audience, but my own. And that is worth it.

Ungratefulness, or something more?

2008-08-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Many days now, I wake up and think about everything that isn't perfect about my life. How I still have so much homework unfinished and only a week of holidays left. How my body's insatiable desire for sleep and my lack of willpower to fight it robs me of so many productive hours each day. How life is unfair; that so many people are smarter, prettier, richer, more pulled-together than I am. It's like the goddess of Fortune gave them more things in the handout line, and I was left scrambling for the leftovers.

And then suddenly it washes over me inexorably with the ring of truth: I am so, so ungrateful.

While I complain and stress out over applying to universities abroad, about how much work it is, how difficult to get in; I completely overlook the fact that I am so, so privileged to have this opportunity. It's like being let out into the garden of Eden and complaining that it's boring because everything is perfect and good. How many people I know would never dream of this - because they were never exposed to it? If I were like one of my primary school friends, without the English-speaking background and the financial ability and the access to reading that widened my horizons - I would want different things. A steady job as a salesperson. A course at a local college. A car. Yet, having access to so much more, I only look to those who have more and bemoan my lack.

I know this thought isn't original, in fact I've read it on a lot of blogs, newspapers, books etc. before - to be thankful for the health, wealth, happiness and all the blessings that we have. And when I read it I agree with the author, that we have so much more than the kids in Africa (I use the generic term on purpose - I know not all kids in Africa are starving, and not all parts of Africa are in a mess). And that we should definitely stop complaining and just enjoy our good fortune. Help the poor and unfortunate in society. Live simply.

However, that wasn't the point I'm aiming for. Having stumbled on this epiphany, what ought I do? Surely there is some moral obligation that comes with all this good fortune. Surely a price to pay. Besides exploiting every advantage in hand, pushing myself to the top of the pile just to make it in the eyes of society. That is too meaningless, when others are fighting everyday; begging, stealing, pimping and doing anything to survive.

The obvious answer - to put myself forward as a bridge reconciling the horrendous gap in our world - be a modern-day Robin Hood, robbing the rich (politely and peacefully) to give to the poor, is too trite to be believable. Our instinct for self-preservation is too great; our selfishness too deeply ingrained in us. While there are some exalted mortals who are truly selfless, I am not yet one of them. Besides, no one acts against our base nature without some stronger motivation that overrides the former's commands - and the call to self-sacrifice is not strong enough yet for me to stop tapping to the beat of our materialistic, self-centred world.

Maybe once in a while I pause and look up, wondering if there is another song - a song to end all songs - one I can dance my whole life away for and not regret a single step. But the pull of the familiar is too strong, and I am lost in the cacophony again.

Alternate Futures

2008-08-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

1)

The lights are dimmed. A low hum of chatter comes from the few tables of diners in this small art-deco cafe, a laugh erupting now and then. No one pays attention to the change until a spotlight shines center-stage and a smooth baritone announces: "Ladies and gentlemen, the act for tonight. A mix of soul and jazz to soothe your tired mind, put a dance in your step. May I introduce to you...."

An average-looking brunette walks out from side stage, the checked shift-dress accentuated by a wide pleather belt and an attention-grabbing plumed hat. A few patrons giggle.

She grasps the microphone and keen observers note the slight trembling. A low A key thrums across the room and the audience is spellbound. Like an expert surgeon she slides between their ribs and slices out their hearts.

Just a human voice. She is not one of the Sirens bewitching sailors to her island; where they, helpless to resist are dashed to pieces on the rocks, their blood lapped up by hungry fish in an uncaring sea. But she holds the same key to a kingdom beyond words, where beggars are kings and mice are lions. She knows of no truths but one: the song must go on, to its very end. There is no pleasure or pain, joy or tragedy in music, though man give it such qualities. It just is, and the purest note speaks more than a million well-chosen words. Her vocal chords were merely a crude tool; the music she produced a fleeting glimpse of the ultimate Melody. But compared to the rest, what a tool it was!

The waiter. The bored bartender. The rouged women, the smirking men whose expressions seemed to say "I've seen it all". The person-shaped shadows in the corners. They die to the music with a smile on their faces.

To be continued...

Writing, and Malaysia

2008-08-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

There are so many things that I want to blog about that my mind is racing. In completely different directions. I am reminded once again of the maxim "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows not".

The heart- don't you sometimes wish you didn't have one? It scoffs at logic and common sense and discipline. It speaks its own language. It reminds you that all good and all evil ultimately springs from it. And how important it is to keep oneself pure.

Sometimes, I wish I could write as fast as I talk. Ideas pop into my head at the weirdest times. When I want to sleep. When I'm in the car or the bus. When I'm driving. And they don't come in proper structures like sentences, but in a rush - like a two-hour long movie shown at high speed. You catch snippets of it here and there, the beginning and the end are crystal clear and you KNOW for sure this is the one idea that will make it big. If only the soaring emotion, the words that would immortalise the day and you forever, would stick in your head long enough for you to get into a cyber cafe and start typing.

Also, I realised over the weekend at a conference how smart Malaysians are. We have so many smart people here that if they all stayed and did their most in the field they were passionate about, Malaysia could have a turnaround. I just hope they'll come back. They will benefit anywhere, but Malaysia needs them most. Maybe their hearts will tell them what their logical brains refuse to accept:)

Yes, I have to admit it. There is hope for this country. There is even hope for SOME of our politicians, if what I and 500-odd participants at this years Malaysian Student Leaders Summit heard. And when there's so much fun happening, and true hope of rebuilding a better nation for all, who can resist the challenge?

Essay

2008-07-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is an essay I sent to a competition a while ago. Warning: it's really long, might take you some time to read, it took me whooping HOURS to write. And because of that, for this one you must comment.

Thanks!;)

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Why Decorate?

Worn out by the long journey on a rickety bus with sweaty old women carrying children sucking their thumbs, I walked towards my room – my world, my refuge, the place where I would spend most of my resting hours in the next two years in – in the fifth hut, the second last one. I had come so far, halfway across the globe to experience this. Difference. Jumping into this melting pot of exotic Asian beliefs, food, festivals and people. As the sweat spouted from my head and neck and dripped into most uncomfortable places, I pondered on how the oppressive sun ferments and brings out the warmth and colour out of the people. How different from my Scandinavian country mates, frigid in their bearing and bland in their speech!

My thoughts came to a train-wreck stop when I unlocked the bamboo door and entered the room. It was completely bare except for a sheet-covered mattress on a single wooden bed, a study table and chair and a narrow standing wardrobe.

I had to sit on the bed to stop my head from spinning. This was all I was given? Granted, I could go out and buy furniture, comforting reminders of home – no, necessities- the wardrobe certainly would not hold all the clothes in my suitcase! But it took me 10 hours to get here from the nearest city. What with orientation, in-college weekend activities and getting accustomed to the college, I might not be able to go shopping for weeks.

Now, the four bare brick walls face me blankly. Absently, I notice several spots where the paint has peeled off in narrow strips, and where it has been painted over in a reddish-brown hue darker than the original one. I uttered a silent prayer that this would not be a portent of my life here: dull, functional and utterly devoid of personality.

It’s been two weeks since I arrived in India, and the weather has not improved, only perhaps my tolerance to it. My room has improved a little; there are a few Hibiscuses in a vase which is a plastic water bottle cut in half. I admit, it doesn’t sound that much better but to have a living thing besides myself in the room gives me some comfort. A few of my international classmates and I have been exchanging trinkets, and now I have in my room an Egyptian papyrus sheet with hieroglyphs, a poster of The Bahamas’ gorgeous beaches, a Chinese paper fan and an Indian cushion embroidered in bright colours and beads.

However, my greatest acquisition so far is the set of drawers that I haggled for and bought at a very decent price today at the flea market in Pune, about two hours away by bus. With 3 large drawers and lovely bronze handles, it will definitely make my room look less like a whirlwind had come and gone, sweeping clothes all over the place.

In its own meagre way, my room is beginning to feel like my own, and at least there are hints of beauty here and there. The uneven paint which used to irk my aesthetic senses is now a familiar and comforting sight. Perhaps beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. Even that which is ugly can be appreciated in time, nostalgia dimming objective judgment.

Could the reverse be said, though? Could that which is lovely fade in beauty over time? Wasn’t it Keats who said “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever”? Could a beautiful room be appreciated forever, then? I suppose it could. The numerous castles and chateaux in Czech Republic preserved till this day are a testament to that.

Perhaps aesthetic beauty was measured by different standards then, but I can’t imagine living in such a lavish setting where even the bookshelves are a work of art and everything has been passed down for generations. However to a scion of one of those old privileged families, the décor of their family mansion may be a source of pride and identity. For me, a child of the post-modern era, I tend to lean towards expressions of personal beliefs and individuality more than traditional styles. Either way, the importance people place on furnishing tells a great deal about them.

As I rush out the door with five minutes to spare till College Meeting starts, I wonder if everything can be interpreted as beautiful, even things like graffiti, if we consider the motivations of the creator. Decoration is a form of art, after all, and “art is what you can get away with”¹. In a way, that’s true: art can be more about glamour and prestige than actual artistic quality. Perhaps if I became absurdly famous in 20 years, a picture of my room as it is now would be captioned as “obviously, the refuge of a brilliant mind too busy to bother with aesthetic decoration, spurning common furnishings for a simple lifestyle but incorporating eye-catching elements such as the cushion, poster and drawers.”

Pretension, that’s what it all is.

It’s three more days till school ends, and I leave the humid air of India behind to go home, with my International Baccalaureate programme completed. I look around at my room, furnished – if that’s the right word – in the most eclectic way, nothing matching but a riot of colours, styles and precious junk. However, I’m also proud of it in a certain way; proud of the fact that each part of it was selected and placed with care and no part of it comes from a mass-produced Ikea catalogue. My room reflects my uniqueness, my life – and whose life can be entirely orderly and fitting? Our oddities only add to our beauty, not detract from it. The most valuable thing I have in this room is not the expensive turquoise earrings I bought in Mumbai or the large storage chest, treasure-chest style that takes up one corner of the room; but the poster that my friends made for my birthday with lots of pictures, quotes and messages for me.

I remember how much I hated this room when I first came. Now I can’t imagine leaving it. It has become an organic personality; it’s an extension of me. Where else do I head to after a long day of school and activities but my plushy bed covered with soft blankets and cushions in bright clashing colours? What better place could my friends and I stay to chat for hours but on the hand woven carpet that I bought from the market, from the seller who kept grabbing my hand and insisting that the fabric was “of the highest quality, yes ma’am”? I take the time to say goodbye to my room, memorising every detail in my mind before I was to take it apart, strip it of any connection to me till the next owner would come and bring life to it again.

On one wall there are photographs pasted everywhere, black and white, colour, large and small – each one of them marking and immortalising an important moment in my life. My birthday, thousands of miles away from home but surrounded with love from my friends. Sasha, my confidante and every-weather best bud², is hugging me, smiling and laughing in one photograph. Some of the pictures are of home, with familiar figures that are a source of strength and inspiration for me in my most trying times. Taking them down will take hours, I know - not because of the physical task which is easy enough, just removing the Blu-tack from the walls- but the emotional step of packing all these memories away and storing them for another time, another wall, another place.

My friends’ rooms also show the gradual accumulation of “stuff” – trinkets, souvenirs, things that you have to buy just because it’s a steal – of the past two years. Interestingly, each one reflects the personality and character of the owner. Natalia’s is pristinely clean and tidy, not a speck of dirt to be found anywhere. The décor is tasteful, with framed photographs and watercolour paintings of the Mediterranean Sea and Greek countryside on her wall. It hints at her love affair with nature and her close ties to her homeland, Corfu in Greece. She loves blue and white, so entering her room is like entering an oasis of peace and tranquillity. On the other hand, Jenny, the queen of all things dark, weird and twisted; has a voodoo mask on her wall. Everything that she owns is black, even her chair, table and her notebooks. She would have painted her walls black too if only the school had allowed it. Contrary to what you’d expect, she’s not a mournful soul and laughs just as much as anyone else. All the same, the more time you spend in her room the more claustrophobic you get, like being in a rabbit burrow. Jenny chooses to see it differently, she says that black is the best colour because it doesn’t reflect it but absorb it, and there were so many possibilities within. She quoted from a book she had read, “The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong-Kingston³, which talked about the black “curtains swinging open, flying up, one after another, sunlight underneath, mighty operas”.

I didn’t consciously set out to decorate my room in such a way, and it feels vastly different from the candy-frosted, pink-and-white interior-designed room that I go back to when I’m home for the holidays in Norway. I could say that this change represents the process of growing up and making my own decisions. I used to think that decorations were only about prettiness, to make one’s life more pleasing by surrounding oneself with pleasing things. Now, I know that it goes deeper than that – that by decorating to fulfill our need to create something original and individual and to express our personality, we is marking out our own little space in this vast and incomprehensible universe we live in.

I pack my room up. I pack my world up.

1677 words

Footnotes:

¹Quote attributed to Andy Warhol.

² Best bud, a shorter way of saying best buddy or best friend.

3 Kingston, Maxine Hong. “Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts” London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1981

Itch

2008-07-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

The eternal restless chafing. The "Oh god, why me?!" The "Oh god, why NOT me?!" Like a baby birds extending its mouth as wide as they can for that succulent worm, I am never satisfied.

No matter what milestone we've reached, it only takes a glimpse of someone who's doing better than us (especially those who are similar to us but somehow achieve more) to make us unsatisfied. Apparently, tests show that the negative emotional impact of an event is 2.5 times more than the positive emotional impact for a good event. If I lose 10 ringgit, I feel 2.5 times more unhappy than the level of happiness I would get from finding 10 ringgit. Why are we rigged this way?

Maybe that is the most compelling reason we strive to achieve success on our terms - thinking that when we get there, the itch will stop. We will no longer be driven to gain more, be the best, shove anyone in our way. Why do we presume that, though? From the smugly contented faces of mercedes chauffeur-driven businessmen? They just don't scratch in public, that's all.

And therein lies the conundrum - we all want others not to have it too bad. We feel pity for starving people on the television screen, though that doesn't always translate into giving a dollar to the crippled man who begs in the night market. They ought to do well, in a fair and balanced world - as long as they don't do better than us. If they're the same, maybe slightly inferior like servants, it's alright. The best outcome is if we should all be the same! A pleasing notion, the centre of communism (communal property, remember?) but doomed to failure when it ignores man's first instinct to dominate. Even democracy, because it assumes all citizens who vote are equal, have perfect information regarding their choices and act in a rational manner, is laughable in it's lofty goals. In the end, the same people will get to the top through ambition, money, connections, charisma or some other potent POWER cocktail, no matter the political ideology in fashion at that period. And we kid ourselves into thinking that if we had the chance to drink it, we'd be a better leader than them.

If we were really honest, the lure of power is almost impossible to refuse. The itch - the belief that we are the best person for the task - wants to be scratched.

I wish I had my new body now, one free from sores and itchy spots. To be gloriously free of worry, envy, competition and frustration! However, if this body so earth-bound, screaming to be satisfied by desires that grow more demanding the more you succumb to them (the way scratching an itch makes it even more itchy), can by its refusal bring any glory to the One who promises a better one than I could ever imagine...

Then I will plunge my hand into a hornet's nest before I scratch. not. even. one. gentle. sweep of the hand.

Freedom is just a breath away.

Happy

2008-07-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

Happiness is ephemeral. Like rainbows and summer breezes and sunrises, it steals into your heart and you can only gasp at its beauty and the lifting of your heavy soul. When you've gone a long time without being Happy, you forget what it feels like. How your ordinary life is illuminated; everything seems perfectly fitted together; disasters, earthquakes and uncertainty fade into the back of your mind as though they were part of a faintly remembered dream, ridiculous to recall in the bright sunlight.

If we always lived Happy, nothing would ever get done. We would stay children in a perpetual wonderland, never learning that hardship, brokenness and wandering is essential to molding strong and noble hearts to fight the good fight. That the rainbow is beautiful because we have sat through the storm. That the sunrise brings joy because we waited, despairing-desperate in darkness. That the battle victory is so much more exhilarating because it was so nearly lost.

Still, simple Happiness unearned, encountered unexpectedly reminds us why living is such a precious gift. And hopefully, memories of Happiness will envelop the finer qualities of love, patience and wisdom in our souls when we finally depart this world with a smile on our faces.

Mission Shallow Waters Day 1 (and 2)

2008-07-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

So it began rather disastrously, but just as one sinks and then learns to swim really quickly, not all bad beginnings are portentous.

My ambitious 7am wake-up-and-jog plan turned into a 12pm wake-up-and-eat-takeout-char-koay-teow plan. But then it started to get better. Sent emails, surfed the net and got to talk to someone that I've been missing for a while. Had a firm plan to take a walk/jog in the evening and actually did do it...but it was more of a leisurely stroll as I got to talk with my best friend whom I haven't caught up with for weeks...which means we talked for an hour and a half and still did not get through all we wanted to say!

Then, I went to church for youth. It was pretty refreshing to have a guest speaker who didn't remind us of all the turmoil that had gone before, and encouraging each person to be truly passionate for God. I realised that He truly is a consuming fire - more than an emblem we carry or a group we identify with, our God will do wonders if we allow Him control over all aspects of our life. Exciting. I can't wait to see what He's going to do next in my life, and in the youth.

Ok next day screwed up my biological clock again by sleeping at 6am. Fortunately I had a badminton date so I didn't completely slush the day away. Badminton is fun and not hard to pick up, if you don't expect to be awesome immediately. Was nice talking to my old buddies. I realise how much I've missed them. Your friends remind you who you are.

And then it comes to tonight! Going to watch a movie with parents in our home cinema (ie tv and stereo) and then probably bed. What a lovely simple day.

I'd also like to clarify what I meant by shallowness as some readers have said to me directly that they don't get it. Perhaps it's better to use the word simpleness (or simplicity) which has a certain clean, purposeful appeal to it. But I've already started with shallow, so I'll keep it for as long as this spell carries on.

A new beginning

2008-07-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

Starting today (this very morning!) I am going to be shallow.

The rules are: No angst. (some people will be glad to hear this). No deep thought. No philosophising. Earnest discussions only allowed if started by good friends.

And most importantly: No telling myself that what's on the inside counts. THIS WHOLE WEEK, ONLY WHAT'S ON THE OUTSIDE COUNTS.

I have been using that excuse to hide the flab for too long. Yes, I know that I am unique, but then so is every cold you get in your lifetime. That is not a valid excuse not to improve myself, especially when I CAN.

I saw myself in the mirror today. And I didn't like what I saw. I looked sallow and unhappy. Like a kid fed too much candy. (Pretty accurate actually.) I didn't like the clothes I tried on; they didn't make me look better. You can only be content with yourself when you know you are the best you can be, now. I am not that.

I will do my homework as efficiently as is humanly possible. I will exercise every day. I will indulge in fluff like Gossip Girls entire Season One on pirated DVD to reinforce the mantra "You will never be as beautiful, as pretty or as thin as you are now." If that's true, I'm upping my standards while I can. When I do age and go over the hill, it's not going to be over some Bukit Kledang, old-people-hike-up-every-morning, cosy little antmound. It's going to be an Everest, because that's how high I want to reach. While I'm young and healthy enough to do it.

Do comment, but positive ones only. I am hyping myself up for this, so if you've ever enjoyed an inspirational movie this is the part where you say, "You go, girl!" to the cheerfully determined protagonist. Be utterly shallow, and may you enjoy this next (hopefully short and successful) loop in my loopy life. Look out for further updates.

Just a few things

2008-07-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

1)
"All night
Hearing voices telling me
that I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something"
-Unwell, Coldplay

That's whats been plaguing me for the last few days. I think Singapore just doesn't resonate with me. I don't sleep as well and wake up disorientated there. I feel lethargic and fat and very provincial. I have nasty thoughts. For a looong while (over an hour, which is long for me) I thought hard why I just can't like Singapore. And I still can't figure out why. I have no problem with individual people, with the system even, restrictive and rule-based it may be, but I just can't take it as a package. The thought of ever living there scares me. Of slowly becoming accustomed to the place, making friends, having favorite hangouts, growing roots...glargh. I should never take the risk.

It might be a case of very deep bigotry due to a warped sense of patriotism and "somebody done somebody wrong". Or it might just be a dislike the way I like yellow and dislike say...magenta.

2)

Romans 7:22-23 (New International Version) 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

This is deeper than I can comprehend intellectually, the same way a child draws stickmen and stickwomen to show his Happy Family. It is a pale and inadequate representation. But how I know of what he speaks about! If we are continually saved by grace, and right thinking leads to right living as preachers of grace teach, then why do I still struggle?

If the law is null, then what is right? If God does not speak audibly to us, then who sets the standards? Pastors and elders? But they differ in their opinions too, sometimes directly contradicting each other. Authors? Our Christian friends? What guarantee do we have that they are right? And in the case of my youth split, I'd be seriously confused if that was all we had to stand on...

So what does that leave us with? Our own judgment; subject to all its foolishness and self-deception, the wiles of sin, self-righteousness, pride, false humility; the roaring din that throws our minds into confusion?

Lead me Lord I pray.

And finally, item...
3)

1 Corinthians 1:10

10I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.

That is my prayer for the church.

Treshing it out

2008-07-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

The biggest time-waster for young people and adults is definitely the internet.

I sit here planning to take 10 minutes to check my email, listen to a few songs and that's it. Instead, I find myself flipping from blog to blog, shuffling iTunes, checking MSN every few minutes to see if someone's there...and before I know it, my night is gone.

Oh yeah, and sometimes I try to blog but invariably there's nothing in my mind that's worth sharing.

My attention span becomes that of a technologically literate 5 year old. And sometimes it can be relaxing to put your brain cells in "sleep" mode, but it doesn't get much done. Depth is exchanged for enjoyment.

The only time I can really do work on the computer is without music and without internet. And to truly eliminate any distractions, without the games menu either.

But this was not really what I started out to say. What I wanted to talk about what this:

Can we still serve together under Christ if we don't agree with each other?

Those who know me might know what I'm referring to. It truly saddens me when friendships are severed and people become confused and disillusion because of theological disagreements. I know there are certain things that the church stands on and must never compromise on. The question is, which?

I've heard so much already, from people on both sides of the divide and also the fence-sitters. The one thing I'd want to do is to break that fence and bring all the sheep together, for aren't we all under the same shepherd? But that's not right for me to do when I'm new to the argument, so much has happened in the 6 months that I've been away. When everything was developing I was still in Hong Kong living a separate life and thinking that things were all okay, growing in the same direction as when I left. I suppose I should take a lesson from this: we all have our own struggles and everything looks better from a distance (including photos...the fewer the pixels, the better you appear.) Look closer up and you'll see the strain in the smile, the worry lines around the eyes, the dark eye-bags, the tightly-gripped hands.

We sing praises to God proclaiming that He is all we ever need. That we love Him. We give him our lives. We humble ourselves at His feet. But when the music draws to a close and the lights go up and people turn and see each other for the first time, what happens? Does a mask come on then, and we try to act cool and top one another, trading jokes and insults? Look around to see if the "happening people" are around and try to mix with them? Make as much noise as possible and push each other around, huddle in a tight circle sharing celebrity news until the youth leaders holler for quiet...

This is a usual scene at youth meetings. Maybe not all, but many of them. I don't blame the youth. I'm guilty of it too. We are not taught how to behave in church. But is it any better if we act all proper and chaste in the church sanctuary, then leave the church and act like we've never been in it? That's probably worse, and seeing younger youth acting like that should be a challenge to the leaders. Unconsciously, their behaviour mimics yours. By your actions you are showing them what's acceptable and what's not. The new talk is about "mentoring" and I'm all for that. I was never formally mentored by anyone but all the basics of spirituality and Christianity I learned from dedicated kid's pastors in the church and through kids camps, and later on as a teen with another church that adopted me as one of their own.

What matters to teenagers, though, is honesty. Can leaders truly be effective if they are not honest with themselves, with God and with others? This situation in church where the newly-elected leaders want to move forward and expand the youth with different programmes and commitments while not dealing with hurts left behind from disagreements and unresolved differences confuses me. Especially as we're all still in the same boat. Keep praying for unity, but until God touches our hearts to humble ourselves before each other and ask for forgiveness that we've hurt each other by each taking a moral high ground, I don't think that will happen. At some level it doesn't matter that we don't agree on everything. Unless you want to split up, you've got to make up somehow. And when congregations split, differences between leaders confuse and weaken the followers. Or make them more narrow-minded, sometimes.

I love these people, and individually I see that each of them burn with a passion to serve God especially with the youth. It is a conundrum to me why we can't all pull together. Perhaps I oversimplify things because I want to believe it is still mendable, and in doing so I do all parties an injustice. It isn't that simple.

All I know is that when I praise God, it is simple. When I read His word, my heart agrees and is at peace (okay most of the time, unless I go to the Old Testament, but that's another story), and it is simple. When I think of all He's done for me, it is simple.

It is only when I look at the people around me, at the complex messes we tangle ourselves into, at my own doubts and confusions...that I think that it isn't simple. At all.

Inspiring female bloggers and A quasi-creation

2008-06-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

When I feel like I'm losing my voice, my personal thoughts or my sanity (or all of the mentioned!) - I blog.

More often than not, I sign in to the user account window and then wonder what to write. Compared to the dazzling, witty, interesting, hilarious, profound, just-plain-kepo-fun of other blogs I visit, mine seems so dull in comparison. Hardly ever any photos. If so, none of the author. Goodness, the author doesn't even reveal herself. How neurotic can one person be?

However! Today, I have found not one, but TWO, great blogs. Ta-daa: Joyce Tagal and Hannah Yeoh. Blogs that inspire me that one day, I may not only be a better writer, but that I might be a better person. And also to have more interesting, worthy thoughts to blog about than what I have now. And both are women and committed Christians. And very much patriotic Malaysians, though educated abroad. (One is still studying in the US). It reminds me that no matter how far in the world I roam, God's calling will always bring me to where he wants me to be, for His purpose. For now, I believe it is Malaysia He is ultimately calling me to.

And because I am feeling extra-creative today, I have a little creation for you guys:

He looked at the aluminium (or was it stainless steel? Don't know, don't care) trays before him bearing heavy loads of fish curry, chicken, steamed egg, boiled vegetables in sauce and other typical Malaysian dishes. Deng was troubled. Today had not been a good day. The boss was upset because a contractor was giving him trouble, and the was lots of tension in the office. The air-conditioner breaking down after dripping water for a week, did not help to improve the general mood. Hot and sweaty, stressed and tense; Deng was relieved when it was finally 12 o' clock and he could shuffle out of the narrow doorway for his lunch break.

"Which one you want?" The middle-aged serving woman standing before him with a metal ladle and a plate of white rice barked. Deng realised he had lost his focus and held up his palm, pretending he had been perusing the choices the whole time. "I want this.....this....and that vegetable." "That's 3.50." He paid and took his plate to the smallest table; only fit for one, two if you were sharing a plate.

He paused to say grace, out of habit. "ThankyouLordforthisfoodblessittoourbody'suseinJesus'nameAmen." Still the plural pronoun, after two years, with Jing and the kids gone? In the back of his mind, he knew that altering it, or dropping the habit completely, would mean that he had given up on them ever coming back and for things to return to the times when they were happy. When he was happy.

Digging into his food took total concentration. Deng was the type who did not like to have conversation over food, which was good considering he had no one to converse with. It required undivided attention to ensure that there was a proportionate mixture of rice, meat and vegetables in each spoonful; so that no one taste was dominant to his taste buds. And of course, to carefully separate the fish bits so that there would be no stray fish bones in his mixture.

Despite this, Deng took no pleasure in eating. It was just a habit, and without it he would not have the energy to work, and gnawing pains or gastric would kick in around 4.30pm. The serving ladies noticed that he always picked the same dishes whenever he came, which was a few times a week. Strapped down in the monotony of their lives, they would speculate about him: that he was a loner who repaired computers and hardware for a living; that he used to be a rich man whose wife had divorced him and left him poor and destitute. The truth was less grand than that, but they were content believing their own concoctions about him, content to let him point out the same dishes again and again, pretending to wait for him to ask when they already knew what he would pick. It wasn't nice to pry, not with a decent guy like that who minds his own business and brings us steady income.

Deng finished his task, the bones and debris were neatly pushed to one side of the plate. He looked around and for a moment someone who was looking closely would have been surprised at the look of desperation in his eyes. It said, "Help! You see this man in a pressed shirt and clean brown pants, but this is not me. I pick the same food to eat everyday, but that's the only choice I make. I did not pick this life, I did not pick this loneliness. And I don't know how to get out. Help me." The expression was gone the next instant.

He got up, and walked back slowly to the office. 12.45 pm. He would be back early. Maybe the boss will be pleased. Then again, he probably wouldn't notice.

Soundtrack: Moby - Natural Blues

I am self-help guru of the day

2008-06-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

A very precious piece of advice that I can give you which I never follow myself is: don't compare. It never satisfies. If you compare yourself to someone who performs beneath you, you feel smug and get an inflated opinion of yourself. On the other hand, compare yourself with someone who is superior and you feel about the size of an ant. A very jealous, furious ant about to explode from pent-up frustration.

How do you save yourself from this petty situation? Why, inflate your self-opinion even further. Think, "What would Gandhi do?" (for the religious-minded, "What would Jesus do?" would work as well, and if it instantly makes you feel ashamed that you are not loving your neighbour at all, so much the better) and feel the irritation seep away from your mind and the clenching envy gurgle out of your heart into the darkness where it belongs. Great people know their purpose and don't waste their time setting their sights on what others have accomplished. They make their own heights and reach them. They don't look around at others, but into themselves - they are their own best motivator. Keep it up, and if your goal is not ruthlessly Machiavellian and self-serving, you might even become outrageously successful one day.

And if your goal is, you definitely will be. For however long it takes for the masses to bring you down, that is.

Another coping mechanism to defuse the stress of comparisons with other people is laughter. Talk to a close friend, vent if you have to, but don't dwell on the topic. Move on to other things and see the humourous side in everything, especially yourself. It's not hard. You are weirder than you think. And when a friend genuinely laughs with you, and not just because they're stalling till the police arrive, it is truly soul-connecting. At the very least you know that there is someone in the world who shares your sense of humour, and that can be a very precious thing (especially if you ever have the misfortune of working or studying in an environment that has been humour-sterilised).

One last thing: get that temper, that energy out somehow. Singing works for me; but for others it may be exercising, doing office work, writing, folding laundry...but make sure it is constructive. Sleeping, eating, and any form of violence towards living creatures and humans is not going to help the situation.

Remember, you heard it at the tea stall first.

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On other frequencies:

Have you heard Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"? (I don't put the youtube link because from personal experience, no one clicks on them anyway, and putting up lyrics is just plain waste of space. If you are interested, look it up yourself.) Perfect surgeon's song, my dad would probably say. (Yes, that is his brand of humour.)

"You cut me open and I...keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love...keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding love..."

I will be sure to sing that if I ever get dumped by a surgeon. But even if you're not, the song is so angsty in that "strong but hurt woman...BUT STILL STANDING STRONG" way that it's a pleasure to blast at the top of your lungs. Especially if you ARE bleeding love, in a strictly metaphorical sense. Hmm.

One Thing I Miss From Home

2008-06-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

One thing, O Ye vision of well-preserved 19-year-old gorgeousness, focus on one thing; or the nostalgia and homesickness will overwhelm you and your unstable self will topple and your precious head will hit the hard steps up the airplane bound for Kuala Lumpur.

Alright then, one thing. I will just think of one thing that I miss from home, which I will be able to see and grasp tangibly (and not just caress in my thoughts, as I have for the past 6 months) in another 9 hours.

----------

The yellow 3-seater leather couch in the living room. I remember it being there ever since we moved into that house, more than 9 years ago. Scratched on its base and having slowly evolved from a cheery canary yellow to a matronly off-yellow over time. So many memories of lazy Sunday afternoons, convivial Saturday nights, looooong year-end holidays; are sealed in those plushy, inviting, butt-swallowing cushions!

Now that I reflect on it, so many things have gone down on that couch. The time I frightened my sister half-to-death by lying flat on the top before rolling down onto her un suspecting self. Primary school friends sitting awkwardly as we made a tape for our class teacher's birthday. Later, my true friends sprawling over them as we whispered secrets to each other and laughed like we had no cares in the world (in the larger scheme of things, we really didn't. We knew we had something precious and we were happy.) Family reunions and talk about cameras and printers and jobs and weddings and government and all the miscellanous chitchat you have with your extended family.

Not to mention my personal horizontal bonding time with that couch; studying History, Biology, Physics, Add Math and subsequently The Practical Applications of Human Nocturnal Behaviour, otherwise known as sleeping. (My college friends call it my coma periods due to its fully-focused, almost-unwakeable quality. I prefer to think of it as aggresive sleeping.) Not to mention the piles of Terry Pratchett, The Star, Readers Digest and other reading material that I've read there with my chin on the armrest and the book on the floor.

Good times indeed. I may have changed in many ways (hopefully for the better) but that couch will always hold a part of me. In psychoanalytic terms, I suppose that couch is the part of me that loves to relax, to think about life and my place in it, to enjoy conversations with friends, and to take a lovely afternoon nap:) People who know me will probably say that that last item is a significantly large aspect of me:)

I hope you all have a "yellow couch" in your heart, if not in your living room. Adios! The next time you hear from me, I'll be back in the land of Nasi Lemak (its Malaysian not Singaporean, foreign ignoramuses), Char Koay Teow and murderous sunshine.

Goodbyes make me quiet

2008-05-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, both known and those I don't know (though you should drop me a line sometime),

I am sorry if you have checked this blog lately and seen a screen with the same old post still at the top. I personally know the "Arghhhh" feeling that you get for 0.05 seconds before you navigate to a different screen.

Truth is, I have been living. And living vicariously. This past week and a bit more has been so full of events, feelings, changes that I cannot make sense of it all yet. Like an amateur painting with many layers of acrylic paint that at first overwhelms with its intensity and chaos, but only draws you deeper to explore the myriad meanings within. Only so much more.

I wonder how many times I've closed my eyes (or just thought in my head) how blessed I am and whispered a prayer of thanks to God that right now my life is, for lack of a better word, perfect. And I don't mean perfect in the sense of having lots of money, unparalleled beauty and brains or glory or millions of friends. Perfection by my standards. Contentment. Success that I never dared to wish for because I know I don't deserve it.

And something else has developed in my life that I can't explain here but which amazes me each time I think of it. I thought my life was full and whole as it was. And it is, definitely, because of the beautiful people who surround me in Hong Kong, and those whose voices ring in my mind even if they are over the sea somewhere a quarter across the world.

Only now, my life is illuminated. I wouldn't say transformed. I am still the same person. But there is a sweeter, more painful edge to everything. There is a timeline, though I do not know its length. I hope, I dread, I dive into an unfamiliar world where time stands still and surface pleasures ripple deep into the marrow and spine.

And then there is the pain of parting. Tears of the eyes are nothing compared with that bit of your heart someone tears away when they let go of your embrace. Knowing you may not see them again in this lifetime. The sweetness and lightness of your memories and laughter bite you in the back, bringing stinging drops to your eyes when you realise how short life is and how ephemeral all our friendships are.

There is hope still. That one will meet again. And faith. That they will not change but for the better when you see them again. That one's heart is steadfast and true. And love. Which binds all things together, and cannot be broken.

And the sun will shine again to warm your cold heart.

And so it goes

2008-05-21T10:33:00.000-07:00

Nearly the end of the year now. School year I mean. Funny how this place can subtly take over your whole life. It is self-sufficient. You have everything you need to survive; food, drinks, sleep, work, friends...

You almost feel like no other place exists for you outside these few square kilometers. I don't even know if we occupy a few square kilometers.

But very soon, in a few days, the gates will be unlocked and you will not be asked to come back before 9pm. Half the people you know know you may never see again in your life. The imprints on your heart and memories in your mind are all you have of them. And then you wish things could go back to what they were, yes, those hectic crazy times. Because life was normal then, all was well in the bubble.

I feel the tension as the college draws its breath in anticipation for the bubble's bursting.

------

A tightrope. Maybe that's one way to describe it. Walking on a tightrope blindfolded. Or parachuting above a canyon. A little bit of uncertainty and a little bit of curiousity and a lot of excitement, visible or otherwise.

And who knows enough to tell you what's truly right? Free from bias, prejudice, personal experience - just the truth, uncompromising and ultimately freeing?

Here In My Home

2008-05-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Serendipity. This is what I found, right after reading Jo's post. (May 5) lamenting that there are no patriotic songs for Malaysians.

I actually like this quite a lot. The song itself is ok, but the music video concept of letting the artistes do whatever comes naturally, and the concept of malaysianartistesforunity.info is cool.

Before we can move forward, we need to know who we are, as a country. Never underestimate the power of public opinion and mass media to change mindsets and send waves of change sweeping the people.

In Uganda, when they realised how big a problem AIDS was in the 1990s (prevalence rate, which is the rate that the disease was found among the total population was 15%), "the government adopted a policy of openness about the disease in efforts to cut it down. President Museveni made AIDS an issue of national importance,and toured the country speaking openly about HIV/AIDS. Civil society responded and many individual people, community groups, religious organisations and NGOs took action. The issue was discussed on radio programme, humourous but factually accurate magazines were written for young people and pop stars sang songs about the infection." (Geofile Online, January 2006-Jane Davies)

The result? "By 2001, HIV prevalence appeared to have decreased to 5%."

Of course I'm not equating Malaysia's social problems with AIDs. But don't you think that the disease of racism, and to a larger extent religious intolerance and corruption, should be considered morally repugnant "diseases" and the decimation of such be made a national priority? You may think I'm talking about utopia here, but I believe that when individuals come together to act, we can make a difference. There have been decades of slow change, some setbacks, in our road toward unity. Still there are powerful forces that threaten to squash us now, most of them coming from those who claim they love this country.

But there's indications that a new phase is here for Malaysia. What with the benchmark victory of Pakatan Rakyat in the general elections, new levels of political and social enthusiasm as well as nation-building patriotism in our young people, change will come. It must.

I'm excited for this country. I'm excited to see what God is going to do here. Christians have a responsibility to the state as well, as God has put us here for a reason and told us to respect the leaders of our nations. Don't get me wrong, we should not be emphasising secular politics in church (goodness knows there's usually enough politics in it already). But the church is not just a religious institution. It is the living, pulsing, fiery and undefeatable family of God on this earth, and we have power. Through God's favour and grace, we have power as the church to impact our country.

Who wants to emigrate now? Our country -Malaysia,; the place where all young, reasonably intelligent and resourceful young people used to be desperate to leave - is where things are going to happen. And we will be there to make it and witness it.

Kepada Pencuci Kaki Saya

2008-05-07T09:59:00.001-07:00

This afternoon, I dreamt that three mischievous imps were in Hong Kong with me and we had a wonderful birthday bash together.

When I woke up I wondered why I had dreamt that. Was it because I missed my infernal persecutors so much? (Stockholm syndrome!!) Was it because I missed home? Was I wishing that the two parts of my life, both very dear to me (Ipoh, Hong Kong) could meld together as one?

It was only later that I realised why:

it's LEE AI LING'S birthday! (By the way, I really did dream that...)

Dear Linggi, happy 19th! Finally, you've caught up with the rest of us (except Limp)! Here's a tribute to you:

19 Things that are quintessentially Ai Ling

19. Keen spotter of absurdities-->especially human--> especially mine.
18. Responsible in work and relationships, but sooo hard to catch when she's back home!
17. Connects with people easily and accepts them as they are.
16. Non-sports person (like me!)
15. Very slanted large handwriting.
14. Weirdly always get multiple-choice questions right in exams, when everyone else gets them wrong.
13. Sloppy dressing but still looks good, dammit! (Used to, but dresses very fashionably now)
12. Her sixth finger (also known as her cellphone).
11. Really tasty desserts:) which are either completely decadent (chocolatebrowniescakesdrool) or very healthy with bran and fruits and nuts and all that good stuff.
10. Having loooong conversations on the phone which are usually brought to a sudden stop with "Hey, I gotta go my Chinese drama is starting bye...beep".
9. Making incredibly accurate predictions about people's actions and motivations.
8. Acting unsentimental and tyrannical when actually her heart is a marshmallow:).
7. An ability to talk to almost anyone (except a very few people who drive her up the wall).
6. Not succumbing to petty meanness, even when others around her do it. (This is very very Ai Ling)
5. Needs A LOT of sleep. Even more than me. Sleeping at 11 during the SPM period?!!
4. Honesty, with keen insight into what people really mean and not just what they say; and at the same time uses a lot of tact.
3. Sunshine and green and earth-loving and cute drawings:)
2. The ability to watch the same movie over and over again (how can she stand it?!).
1. A wonderful, unique, simply irreplaceable friend.

Ling, thank you for these 5 great years through thick and thin, good and bad, euphoria and depression, glory and humiliation and standing with us all that time. You form part of my brightest memories of MGS and of my adolescent years and in many ways made me the person I am today (feel really ancient now sighsighsigh). On this special day I just want to remind you that though we are thousands of miles apart now, you are still very close to my heart and only a call or an email away. Yes, that was a gentle reminder to keep in touch:P Which is of course what we all have to work hard to achieve. And though I (and the other 2) don't know every single detail about your daily life as we used to, I know the essence of you - the Ailingness - will not change: except to become more beautiful, radiant and closer to God as time goes by.

Turn my something normal into something beautiful

2008-05-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

The title is part of the lyrics in Jars of Clay's "Something Beautiful". And I hope what I have to share with you guys will resonate, for it is what I believe and hope for always -that my something normal can be transformed by Him into something beautiful.

What Is Love?

What is love if not sacrifice,

Not some measure of unselfishness-

And yet we feel that love is exclusive

guard our affections and the affections

we think to have -

a child with it's teddy bear.

What does it take to give up

that mindset of sparingness

of stinginess

of always having to be the only beloved?

Is it not enough to see hands and feet, drilled for you-

a head, thorn-stabbed for you;

a side, pierced for you?

What does it feel like

to kneel at the foot of the cross and weep?

Amazed at the boundless love

That did the impossible

for you

and at the same time,

for everyone who has ever lived.

The wonder!

His grace is by no means divided, apportioned

to each follower, like birthday cake

But is offered fresh, whole, unlimited

to all who believe.

What would it mean for us to grasp the truth,

(the essential truth)

that we love not to receive.

It is love

to throw away the accounts book,

to stop keeping tabs on kindnesses,

to willingly forget that hurtful remark.

That only by loving without conditions,

loving when it hurts,

loving when ignored,

loving when less favoured,

loving when it goes unseen and unappreciated-

Can we come close to reflecting His love

to a broken person

to a broken world

that needs

to know Him.

-T. P.

Paradox of Choice

2008-05-06T04:33:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wondered why with all the choice and innovations we have today, we are still unhappy....
Watch this.

Definitely something good to think about, unless you should be studying for your exams, like me.

Tata!

What I can never tell

2008-05-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Do you have a friend who's really nice to you, is extremely intelligent but always declares him/herself the opposite, often talks about the myriad difficulties in his life but doesn't neglect to mention how everyone is being so supportive, offers you help with your work when you're struggling...

But somehow, you always feel inferior and anxious beside him? Somehow, their flawed brilliance makes you uncomfortable even as you try to be a good friend. Even through all their ups and downs, the soap opera that is their life and the amount of time they spend on leisure activities: they still end up doing better than you in the things that matter. Things that are seen, that determine your position in the community and affect your future: like grades. And positions of leadership. Like it or not, these things matter, though the extent of their importance can be argued.

People really have no problem with helping others when they see it as a valid case. When you get the feeling that someone really wants to get out of the problem they're entangled in. And somehow they change the situation or survive it, the crisis passes and the world is (more or less) right again. But others...I don't know, maybe it comes with living in an internal landscape of intense passions. Colours are sharper, more defined...things are more likely to be taken to extremes. I, on the other hand, am a good friend of the middle line, never moving more than 0.5 to the right or the left. An advocate of balance. I'd be a great Taoist if God hadn't called me first.

But to get back to the subject...the cards are all in their hands. They understand their own situation the best, as they've analysed it thoroughly. And they're also incredibly self-aware: almost as if they were a creature they had invented themselves. And I don't even know what I feel about things sometimes! Yet I bumble on, pretty happily. So what is keeping them from thinking of solutions to their problem and moving on?

I know you're going through a tough time, and whenever you need a listening ear, I'll be here. But in a way I know it doesn't really matter. My ear, her ear, stranger's ear...doesn't make a difference, does it? I listen to the monologue of the director and actor in a one-man show.

The curtain draws up again, and I wonder how much joy is really in that smile of yours. Keep talking, keep acting, and maybe you'll find the script actually represents reality. And when you get that Academy Award, don't forget to credit me in your cast of extras.

Doobee doodah

2008-04-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

If you tell me that life is not a struggle, I either:
1) seriously doubt your sanity
2) wonder why your life goes so smoothly and wish I had it
3) would love to shadow you for a week and see how you deal with it.

Because it really is. I know I sound as though I've got it all under control, but I feel like I'm teetering from one day to another, the Sleepmonster catching a nap whenever she can, even if it is (unfortunately) in a very complicated Chemistry lesson where I need all my focus and attention to understand the work.

_____________

Frustration just builds up inside, so welling and strong that you need someplace to just let go...and scream and yell and run and do everything you know you shouldn't.

I thought I was immune to this. I thought I'd grown. But maybe sometimes, if it makes a point, frustration isn't such a bad thing after all.

Little Altars

2008-04-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Random note: Blogger.com was in Chinese for me for a while till I changed it back to English. That's strange...

Little Altars

My children, beware of the little idols, the small allowances and compromises that you make each day for the sake of normality. Do not let your temple be a marketplace, do not let your heart be sold to the highest bidder. You are so much more worthy. You are so much more precious. You are much more beautiful than anyone can tell you or that you can even see yourself.

Child, why are you unhappy? You have replaced the love I give you freely and endlessly with love from your friends. You are so hungry, begging for their approval. Without them you'd lose the will to live. I cannot force you to return to me. But I will keep entreating you. I will not stop calling your name.

My love, the world is hungry and desperate for those who will love unconditionally. I know that you don't know yourself, but I know you. I know your struggles and the pain you cannot express and the sorrow that surprises you in its intensity and vagueness. I know you cry easily when no one's looking.

You have so much to do, so many roles to play: faithful friend, obedient daughter, hardworking student, responsible leader, inwardly-beautiful person...and sometimes you just can't juggle it all. But when you are overwhelmed with your inadequacy, look to me. Look below you, and see who holds your feet. Look above you, and see who's supporting the sky. Look around you and see how all things are made very, very good.

Though you battle with time, realise that time can be your friend if you use it well. It is hard, my love, but learn to say no to your impulses. Remember that you cannot give of what you do not have. And those who always need to be around others are afraid of what they'd see in themselves if they were left alone.

Lastly, my child, remember that I am always with you, forever. Think of me whenever you see a green leaf, breathe fresh air, open your eyes. I am in you, around you and my arms will hold you tightly. You are never left on your own.

Take that one step towards me, child. And I will scoop you into my arms, place you on my shoulders, and carry you on in this journey.

Math minded

2008-04-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

Math portfolio.

If you have the patience and the time to waste in order to decipher this, I applaud you.

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understandpowermyselfirrationalorunreal
whatIdomainwantfunctionorequationevenproof
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matrixlasttrigonometryoutgradientthe
hemispheredoor, radiuslastrectangle
oncalculatetheexpressionshelf.
Lastdiagramtonegativeadmitsemicirclethattriangle
maybenormalthosecoordinaterulescurve
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Iaxesimposedsumondecimalmyselftablewere
arithmeticjustratiounnecessaryintegralsand
concaverestrictivepyramindandquadratic
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Andchartyouvefrequencyallquartilesrun
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Wishes

2008-04-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

"All they knew was that they fitted together like stacked spoons..."

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

All she knew for sure was that life was like the sea. Eternally in motion, ever changing but always of the same essence.

The blueness would ebb away eventually, she knew, like the tides that lapped on stone and wore them smooth. The rough edges that she cut herself on would be pared down.

All the inadequacies and failures and humiliation and petty disappointment and envy, she poured into a song. Not a beautiful song. A broken song, with a defeated melody. The song of a slave dying under the oppressive sun. But hers all the same.

Slowly, detachedly; she detached herself from her clothing. From the world. Like a baboon picking lice from its fur.

As she plunged freefall tumbling into the ocean; she wondered if it was painful to die. Whether one just melted away like mousse on the tongue, or if there was a brief struggle with the Hooded Reaper before one surrendered with a sigh.

The water did not slap her like a cement floor but parted and received her like a turquoise down blanket. She knew she was dreaming, then.

Life would never be this perfect. Never this simple. Just her, and the sky, the sea.

Thoughts of a 19 year old

2008-04-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

Just sitting at my computer, writing, typing, surfing Facebook while reading news on the US election while trying to study Chemistry for a test the next day. Typical night, except maybe my heart is pounding a little harder than usual due to anticipation...

Just then, I hear a rustling of my (duck-themed) curtains and a DUCK card pokes through. My roommates dash in, wishing me Happy Birthday, giving me the card and a gift. I am surprised and delighted, because it's only 11.50pm and people usually do this after 12. Then, I am blindfolded so that everything is blackness and my roommates lead me outside, to don't know where...

After an interminably long of stumbling up and down staircases, along corridors and the open air, my roommates guiding me by hand, I ask where we are going. Of course, I don't get a straight reply. Someone periodically pokes me and knocks me on the head.

We finally seem to be going somewhere, and as we enter a room I can hear the low whine of an air-conditioner. We're in the common room, I know as much from the numerous birthday parties that we've had here before, all at midnight, of varying numbers and rowdiness.

They shush each other, and suddenly the familiar melody of "Happy Birthday..." begins. Sounds like a lot of people. At the end my blindfold is removed, and I see that there WAS a lot of people. The room was pretty full (unlike in some parties where so few people came, I felt embarrassed for the birthday boy/girl) Much more than what I expected who would care.

So self-conscious, standing there with all these people smiling at me...yet I understood then, what it is to be valued, to be loved and cherished and feeling appreciated by the company. I took time to recognise and thank everyone who came to hug me personally, and heard so many kind words that I probably can't remember. I remember the general sentiments.

There was a beautiful chocolate cake (and tasty too!), a huge homemade card with people's messages in it, some individual cards and presents...I think I was just overwhelmed. I knew people had tests, quizzes the next day; and it was not a weekend. They had so many other things to finish, but they came, even if only to give a hug and a smile and a "Happy Birthday". And my friends went to so much trouble to organise it. Perhaps it's not that grand, that extravagant...but I have only known these people since last September, yet they would do this for my sake? Friendship is a wonderful thing which I will never truly understand, but will always marvel at and try to be good at.

And then there were others, who couldn't be there but sent their wishes, their gifts, even their precious time for a conversation which is a gift in itself (Shiny! Tsuey! Wei who wanted to talk but I was out...sorry) ...because I love talking and listening to friends almost as much as eating and sleeping. Speaking of which, we (me and close friends) went for a dinner tonight at a great Thai restaurant not far from my school, and they wouldn't let me pay.

I realise that I do these friends, these schoolmates injustice if I do not take them at their word. If when they say, "You're such a great friend," I downplay their statement to a conventional phrase, while I take criticisms to heart. There must be balance, and slowly I'm reaching that point of equilibrium, going closer every day. Especially now that I'm 19 years old.

And also I realised once again that there is no end to giving. That through my self-conscious, awkward, sometimes inappropriate manner of showing concern and love for others; people have gained comfort. That my confused ramblings about their problems were perceived as guidance. That my instant noodles which I forgot that I lent them, were still on their minds. What I'm trying to say is, don't despair if you aren't perfect in the way you treat others. So long as you try, people will see your good intentions and they will love you for it. And what I thought I was giving away though I didn't mind it at all; was returned into my hands doubled, wrapped up, with interest.

Maybe we should stop comparing ourselves to others, looking at what they have and we don't, but look around at others. I mean, truly. Instead of glancing enviously at the other table where everyone is laughing uproariously, talking to the quiet person next to you.

And if we saw how much God loves us, so much more than friends or family or lovers or even soulmates...we'd live like we have nothing to lose, only everything to gain. And that is the true reality when we live in step with Him.

Mumblings + NS Nostalgia

2008-04-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

There are days when you feel like you're swimming in soup, and that's still ok, because you know you're going to be dredged up sooner or later and you'll be thrown into a gumbo bowl with spicy enchiladas, and that's when life will get interesting.

I think one of the best pieces of advice that I've been given is that no matter what happens, I'll be ok. Sounds rather bland and not profound at all, but it definitely gives comfort at times when I think my life has made no difference. That people may like me in a vague, dorky way; but forget me if I'm not there. That I'm not truly living the way I should live. That I do only what is required of me and nothing else.

Sometimes, there are so many ideas one has but so few of them actually come to fruition. Right now I believe the answer to that is focus, focus, focus. Tend to the glowing embers of your passion and stoke them up to a fearsome fire, and then narrow it into single flame jet and then....

unleash it.

-----------------------------

And another part, written last Friday (4 April, 2008):

How strange, to have a flashback in the HK airport on a windy, slightly chilly day while waiting for the A22 bus back to Lam Tin MTR station after sending my mum off on a plane back home. One simple song, unheard for months, playing on my MP4 player - "Pencinta Wanita" by Irwansyah and I am transported in my mind's eye to where I was slightly over a year ago...

Hot sun pan-frying us a delicious dark brown. Special of the day:toasted homo sapiens (fine yougn specimens of only 18 years old), stewed in their own sweat and oil. Ewwwww.

Sunging 'Pencinta Wanita' in the bathroom with the cold showers running, laughing in our separate cubicles. Scrubbing clothes on the smooth stone surface next to the giant water tank/tub. The one you weren't allowed to bathe in. The same one that I stepped into and soaked in like a queen on the last day of camp. Reading out loud the notes some of us received from infatuated comrades, declaring everlasting love - and ridiculing them mercilessly, secure in the boy-free zone of our dorm room. Celebrating birthdays with cake and snacks brought from the only convenience shop a.k.a our lifeline operating there. Dressing up in Baju Melayu complete with sampin and performing Dikir Barat.

Food memories alone deserve their own paragraph. Eating mandarin oranges, Chinese New Year's biscuits, fried meehoon and other goodies spread out like a king's banquet on old newspaper in the common area. Baby's moms' irresistable chicken curry, mutton kurma, coconut candy and a host of Deepavali treats. My malay friend's whole family who came on a visiting day and treated me to home-cooked Perak laksa. In the canteen food where there was chilli on EVERYTHING. Even noodles at breakfast. Pimples sprouted on even the clearest faces. Stockpiling and sharing biscuits for a 6 am pre-exercise morning snack.

Beneath the glittering highlights that stand out in my mind, I remember the dull background of daily life. Missing friends, family. Resentful that I was wasting 3 months of my life in a programme I didn't sign up for. Looking forward to weekends when I had my hp back and could call home, my best friends and my sister. Feeling that I didn't belong anywhere. Not with the Cantonese-speaking Chinese, with their casual racism, anti-government sentiments and in-depth knowledge of Oriental celebrities and HK TV dramas (ironic, that the 1 Chinese girl who was unable to appreciate HK drama series' is the one who goes to study there for 2 years). Not with the Perak Malays, although they were really nice people on the whole; or with Kelantanese Malays with their completely different local dialect and for some of them, their kelantanese flirtiness (we speculated that it was because they were usually deprived of interactions with the opposite sex in the conservative PAS-led state). Certainly not with the Tamil-speaking Indian girls, just because they stuck to themselves and I couldn't understand what they were saying.

All these come to mind when I think back on NS. And though I thought I knew about life, NS humbled me. I lived, worked and played with prison's guards' children, doctors' children, teachers' children, farmers' children. People who scored 10As for their SPM result (which was announced the day after we left) and people who scored 3.

And I realised that all my book knowledge, my academic achievements, my English proficiency did not count for all that much. When I couldn't shine my boots even after spending tons of energy and time, it was my dormmates who helped me and realised that my brush was contaminated with too much shoe polish ("Kiwi"). The trick is to have only a little bit or else the boots will look matte. And when I had to dress formally at night, they helped iron the silk baju kurung. And my friends would always adjust my cap for me, because I jsut couldn't get the angle right. Another friend taught me a Kelantanese song. And I will never forget the night when my next-bed mate told me about how the prisoners escaped from the jail and set the building on fire, and her father the prison guard locked their family in the house, huddled together, armed with a parang. They were so along until police reinforcements came. How that was the scariest experience of her life.

I believe this experience, those 3 months, taught me to see people in a different light. To love them despite the differences and sometimes arguments, and to understand where they're coming from. That in the end, barring colour, race, sex, background - we are not so different after all.

I get onto the bus, knowing that without being in Gopeng baking for 3 months, I probably wouldn't be here at all.

Randomly

2008-04-01T05:12:00.000-07:00

Since when have I been hurtable.

Since when can a sentimental thought turn my stomach and make my eyes swim dangerously in tears.

Must be approaching that time of the month.

But the good news is...

I am not that terrible a people judge after all.

And why do all my friends ALREADY know about my (almost addictive) sleeping habit??! It's not THATTT obvious, is it?

Argh. It probably is.

Grateful

2008-03-26T04:02:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like

Family
Friends
Laughter
Long-distance phone calls
Chats over cheesecake and coffee

to fill up this deflated float and help it get back in line, bobbing on its way to the sea.

Thank you, everyone. For everything, large or small, that you have given to me. Even for reading this. Your love is never forgotten.

Eden and the Cross

2008-03-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

What I miss most about Eden is the feeling of certainty. Everything He made was perfect, everything He did was right. There was no doubt and no fear. We had not learned what those words meant, then.

The moment I bit into the sweet flesh of the forbidden fruit, I knew. I knew with awful certainty that my God was mighty beyond understanding and that I should be afraid of His greatness. I knew then my terrible power, that I could destroy what I had built; I could kill what had suckled at my breast.

And the sweetness of the fruit turned into bitterness on my tongue. It was wrong, all wrong, like eyes where ears should be or three mouths. And where did I learn the meaning of wrong?

I spit out the fruit with as much force as I can muster - it dribbles out of my mouth in a wavery trail of drool. I learn the meaning of weakness.

_________

I do not know my right from wrong, my front from back, truth from lies. The newspapers tell me what to think. The internet tells me who to support for the elections. The magazines tell me what I should be wearing this season. Sunday School tells me that I am unique and that Jesus loves me. Church tells me the times are evil and the world is coming to an end. They do not teach me how to love homosexuals, prostitutes, rapists, murderers without condoning their actions and morals. They cannot explain the difference between "us" and "them". Is the any difference, if all are flawed and all bleed when cut?

The fruit, that damn blasted fruit; that brought all men to their knees, that made us pitifully confused creatures perpetually floating in a mist of confusion and duality. But it wasn't the fruit, was it really? It was our desire. And all that was supposed to bring us closer to His status - our knowledge, our labour, our piety - have failed to bring us peace. Failed to restore Eden.

We stack our accomplishments like building blocks to make a pathway to heaven. They fall, each and every attempt, dangling uselessly like a trail of drool.

_________

And with knees bent, head bowed; my God takes away the fruit that poisons and chains me to desperation and hopelessness. He clothes me in righteousness and He lays upon my back two pieces of wood, fastened together -a cross. He tells me to walk with it, the rest of my days.

I speak from beneath that weight now; exhausted but triumphant, hurt but stubbornly pushing forward, doubting my faith but trusting in what I cannot see. Fully aware of my mortality and my fragility. But even as these cloudy eyes fill with tears, I know that one day they will shine radiantly with joy. And what is broken will be made whole, and this feeble life of mine transformed into something masterful, something beautiful.

A Birthday Post with a trip down MGS memory lane

2008-03-18T01:40:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I'm doing this, so be honoured.

__________

You were the smart kid with round glasses in Form 1, a year younger than to the rest of us. Always sticking with Tsuey Xin and people you knew from primary school. I don't remember it all so well now, but I'll always remember that you stuck a "No Parking" sign on the chair when Ms. Chong (am I right?) came into class, and she sat on it without looking. You couldn't restrain your giggles.

In Form 2 you suddenly sprouted and I found myself having to look up at you (oh the shame...). As time went by, we continued being friends though not very very close. And in Form 3, we were all part of the big gang (the cool one, at least we thought so) that had so much fun in 3 Hornbill, that strangely-named class.

I seem to recall us getting closer in Form 4, what with having so many activities in common (prefects, CF, GB, Celcom...) and your leadership qualities started to bloom. We had a lot of fun that year. Frustration too. I have fond memories of going to your place, your mother's excellent sandwiches, laughing, watching Veggietales (or was that Form 5)? Good times.

Form 5 was a great year: less stressful in many ways than Form 4, and we became much closer then. You always provided a unique perspective to whatever issue we talked about, and was always so practical and matter-of-fact. I liked that I could discuss just about anything with you, and you spoke with windows and doors open - nothing to hide.

I hope you know, and anyway I'm telling you now, how great a help you were with CF and all the other stuff we had to do. And I enjoyed those discussions we had about God, His nature, our struggles and everything under the sun.

Since we left school, I'm really glad that this friendship hasn't withered; that though we rarely ever see each other we still can talk as frankly to each other and share each other's joys and worries. Though I don't know every little detail thats happening in your life and you, mine; I trust that when there's something big, there is a friend I have that I can share with and be sure that she will do anything she can to help and support me.

I appreciate you as a friend so much, Jobo (and JLoh and Joanna and all the weirder names we've called you over the years). I appreciate your intelligence and how more and more, its being accompanied with wisdom (James 3:13, v 17). I appreciate the fact that though you're forthright by nature (which is quite rare in our education system anyways), you've learned that tact can get better results sometimes. I appreciate that you stand up for what you believe in, that you have fears but are honest enough to admit them. That you wrestle with doubts instead of stuffing them into a corner. That you have an incredible sense of humour, albeit with cutting sarcasm sometimes (but so much less now, but not so little that it's too politically-correct).

Most of all, I appreciate how much you've grown as a person, how much you've matured (cliched word for growing up but quite appropriate) and how your rougher edges have been smoothened, your words become gentler and more thoughtful. I can see how God has worked in your life in the past year or so and I hope it's an encouragement to you, that though you may fail sometimes, you are being transformed into His image more and more.

Have a wonderful (belated) birthday and may this year be one of great joy and discovery, of boundless love, of peace, of fulfilling friendship, of all-consuming passion and purpose to live each day like you may never get one again.

Happy birthday, Joanna Loh Bao-Ern.

P.S. Should have been posted on 19/3, but I just crossed the deadline by 59 minutes!

About stuff

2008-03-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

So many thoughts, and so little time to blog them.

Just:
about beauty.
Be a connoisseur. Be as intrepid and determined as a treasure seeker. And like a leaf unfolding, it will appear before your eyes, startling and perfect. It doesn't have to be typical, like a sunset or a flower. It's there in your friend's welcoming eyes. It's in the private joke that no one else thinks is funny. It's in an unexpected smile from a stranger.

Learn to accept it, not mindlessly turn to your soulless machines and forget the living, breathing world around you. Like default. And may you find that one perfect bud in the midst of the raging storm.

About friends:
Maybe the reason why I love people so much, why I generally like to observe others around me and find the best I can in them, is because I don't know them very well. People, who as a whole; are faulty with misconceptions and half-truths and agendas and biases and identity confusion. And complexes. And Issues.

And the way they surprise you sometimes, telling you things about yourself that you never knew, or just never examined closely enough to realise. Then you realise that while you were watching others, they were just as closely, as perceptively - or maybe even more - watching you.

About Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things:
She can write. She doesn't write steamy novels about scandalous liaisons between people of different castes and how a pair of twins rediscover each other. She unfolds the story, first arranging the cutlery, then putting each dish on the table with its covers on and then slowly, with all eyes watching, removes each one. The tension coils around your stomach, and you know it's going to be awful but you can't stop reading now, you have to know. It's like modern Greek tragedy, which is actually timeless tragedy. It's just so good. It's not just her sentences, of which there are some pretty picturesque ones, but her descriptions which have true power. When she describes a place in a few lines I have an image of it in my mind. Not just an image, but the out-of-body-but-still-in-body feeling of actually being there, amid the sweat and dirt and grime.

Lyd, I know the difference between her and those other "once upon a time in a steamy Asian village" novel writers now. It's not the story but the way you tell it.

What song means to me

2008-03-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

One of the things I miss about having a room and lots of space all to myself is the freedom to sing (and pray) out loud.

I remember back at home, when I was in that singing mood or there were too many feelings contained within me that I could not sort out, I would open up my mouth and let loose. It had a very soothing effect on me - as though all the energies and emotion bottled up within me were being channeled into tones of words that formed a melody and vibrated in the air.

I truly felt the music...like anything done for pleasure, I did not need anyone to make the experience complete. I was both the actor and the audience; and there was perfect feedback between both sides throughout the process of warming up the vocal chords, singing, listening and experimenting with different pitchs and tones.

Here, I have to rein in my voice when it wants to soar (when I sing, it can be LOUD...way louder than my speaking voice), muting it into a hum or whisper. To not disturb others. There's no place on campus that is deserted enough for me to sing as boldly and loudly as I want.

The only time when I really go for it is in Christian Fellowship. Recently we've been doing mostly praise and worship in CF and it's great (though we should also do some bible study soon). When everyone else is singing I am free to join the chorus of praise. Though sometimes I admit I'm more into the music than Him, and that's something I'm asking Him to help me with. When the song is one we've played during Infuse (my youth group back home) a feeling of nostalgia and longing and familiar warmth sweeps over me.

I'm not one who's obsessed with music or wishes to pursue it as a career. I do believe that God has given us tongues and voices for two reasons - one, because He is very, very good and His creation is marvellous and grand and perfect in its every detail. Also, when we sing, we don't use our intelligence but our heart and spirit. There must be a link between what Jesus commanded his disciples to "worship God in spirit and in truth", and the multitude of angels praising God and singing in heaven.

I open my mouth, and pour forth everything that is in me.

Pry Me Open

2008-02-25T09:34:00.001-08:00

Long time no blog...actually, there's a Valentine's Day draft that isn't out yet because I wanted to attach a picture and my Internet Explorer keeps rebooting when I try to. I can't use Mozilla because I don't already have it, and when I try to download it Internet Explorer reboots too. So I'm kinda stuck until I visit the computer guy in college again.

But anyway, to the topic...

How much can you disclose of yourself to people? To friends who haven't been your friends for very long, not those that you've weathered countless storms together, seen through highs and lows and nastiness and grumpiness?

I don't know, but what I know is that it needs to come slowly...and naturally. For some people their lives are an open book, they'll tell people they barely know the history of their lives and loves. I think that I'm a partially open book - I'm generally pretty open about the small stuff, with things that may help the other person, my weaknesses, things like that - but not about things that might potentially harm/embarrass me if they get out. I guess most people are like that.

There's that line, and when you cross the line, I'll probably spill everything. More than you want to hear, even. But if you've told me your stuff, does that obligate me to tell you my stuff as well? What if I'm not ready to trust you with my baggage, my secrets?

Playground politics, but we take to a greater level as we grow older...

Wistfulness

2008-02-13T22:56:00.000-08:00

I remember a time when I thought flowers were the most beautiful things in all of God’s creation. I remember the rapture of being given a deep red rose, sniffing deeply into it and capturing the fragrance of happiness, romance and a youthful timelessness. I remembered its perfection, a microcosm of everything that was worth living for in the world.

How small my world was then! And yet how perfect, when it only consisted of the two of us.

I remember lazy walks to nowhere even in the deep of winter when everyone was hiding in their dorm cubbyholes. I remember chocolates that melted in my mouth. I remembered laughing for no reason, feeling more alive than ever before in my life. Colours burned brighter, every pop jingle called forth emotion like the Hallelujah Chorus.

I think often about that golden, slightly ephemeral time; wishing, wondering why it didn’t last. I found the fitting metaphor for this design in the tapestry of our lives…it was a song, sung by the finest choir. A clarion call to spring, to hope. Ancient civilizations used to dance and sing to welcome a new year, the turn of frost to warmth. When we created technology and replaced Bacchus and Persephone, we lost a crucial part of our natural knowledge of the world. We lost the living rhythm of the seasons. That every song has a rising, a climax, a falling, and an end that lingers long in our awed ears.

The duet we made sang of joys that could satisfy forever, but the notes had no place in a larger reality. I am still glad that there was no discordant tune in that song; that we finished it marvellously, a wistful note towards the end that hovered in the air – who could blame us if we shed a few tears as the music stopped?

I grew up, grew out, expanded myself, my world and experienced many deep joys and heartbreaks after. But once in a while – when my glories clang like brass, when my loved ones have more important things to attend to – I wish I could sing that song with you again. The tune, every pitch and pause, remains in my memory still.

Chinese New Year Fireworks

2008-02-09T05:46:00.000-08:00

Four precious days of freedom from school, and it's nearly over!:S

Weird that I should have a longer holiday back home in Malaysia for Chinese New Year than in Hong Kong, where perhaps 99% of the population is Chinese. And CNY is a BIG THING. Everywhere there are discounts, people give angpaus a lot more freely (like to doormen and waitresses and serving people) than back home. Maybe because they don't have as many occasions to be generous as we do.

Last night, I watched the New Year fireworks from my aunt's condo's window. It was in the distance in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) over the sea by the harbour, but the colours were bright and beautiful and sparkly. The display was long, about 20 minutes in total with musical accompaniment which I heard through the TV which was also on at the same time. Good idea actually, they used many soaring operas that highlighted the waves of fireworks building up to a crescendo-upon which they explode magnificently like a glittery mini-supernova and shower sparks onto the hapless crowd (I think. They might just fall into the sea, frying some poor aquatic creature). Well, it's fireworks, how many designs can they come up with? The ones that expanded in the air to form the letters "2008" were quite impressive though.

It made me wish that when I die, my ashes (after organ donation) could be mixed in with gunpowder and shot into the sky, illuminating the dark sky for a few seconds, shattering the monotony of a weary weeknight. "What's the occasion?" People will ask. And others will shrug. Who knows? But those who did it will remember that this is exactly how I wanted to live my life, and the perfect metaphor for death.

"Better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

A Grumpy Poem

2008-02-05T00:20:00.000-08:00

I'm mean and sick and maladjusted,
I'm tortured, angsty, dark and twisted;
I leech your happiness with my heavy-lidded eyes,
my black attire reflects the tormented soul inside.

I need more sleep. My back is pain.
If I don't weep...I'll go insane.
My smiley past self can't recognise
this hideous monster it can't exorcize.

Give me no lies, no platitudes,
no comforting pats-just a box of tissues.
The snot oozes like the polluted Kinta rivers,
as I curl in my bed with this blasted cold
and shiver and sniffle.

Ish. I can't believe I wrote this.

With all my dark twisted love,
The angstry one who has taken over the Tea-Puller's body

The build up

2008-02-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Swearing. Every possible curse word that you do not speak comes into your mind, screaming at full mental volume. Not a word escapes from your lips.

Anger, irritation, repressed. Because you know it's not her fault. It's not anyone else's fault. You've made a mess of best-laid plans, and you don't feel in control of your own life. Because you know it's not fair, and you will regret it later. Because your pride and self-dignity won't let you. Because somewhere in that mindbodysoul ownership that you call "me", you know that that's not the kind of thing "I" do.

Maybe pride is a good thing sometimes. Without it, we would be crawling, snivelling. But have you seen a man at the end of his strength, yet still faltering to make the next step, and the next step, and the next? That's determination, that's pride.

I don't know what you think of me, the fact that I don't explode. Never, not here, not now. If I do, I shatter much more than your ideas of me. I shatter my own identity.

Lists!

2008-01-29T04:57:00.000-08:00

Because I'm usually in such a somber reflective mood when I write my entries, I've decided to do something different today: behold, I declare that it is FLUFF day, when everybody can write as much fluff as they want!

Things that make me smile:

1. The lyrics of My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade"
Have you ever googled the lyrics? See how in the second verse, the lyrics are all in CAPS eg.
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BOY
MY FATHER TOOK ME INTO THE CITY
TO SEE A MARCHING BAND
HE SAID SON WHEN YOU GROW UP
WILL YOU BE THE SAVIOUR OF THE BROKEN
THE BEATEN AND THE DAMNED?????!!!!!!!!!!
Angry angry angst angst set in rhyme. It's got a beat you can shake your dreadlocks to. I like it.

2. Meatloaf the singer. Need I say more?

3. Infusers (my home youth group) Because I love them so much, and sometimes they're so lame you can't help but smile. Or else, you'd cry.

4. Prospect of breakfast in the middle of morning block (our 7.30am class BEFORE breakfast).

5. Better yet, FREE morning blocks.

6. Letters! By letters I don't mean bills and advertisements, but real letters written by people and full of news and updates. Though I rarely ever get them now, probably because I don't send any...

7. Kittens.

8. Chocolate cake.

9. Remembering something funny you did or said a month or year or 3 years ago. Time only makes good memories better.

10. A warm bed. (especially since I'm experiencing my first winter and my fingers are never warm)

You may notice in this list I didn't include the perpetual "God, family, friends" list. That's because those are so much more important to me that it doesn't just make me smile, it is the foundation of my security and identity. It makes me smile deep inside though.

The Ball

2008-01-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

God, if You're allowing this pain to persist for a reason, that it may be turned into something good, then let it continue, every single moment of it. But if it's not, will You please stop it!!!!!!!

~~~

Let me tell you a story. It's not my story - not specifically - but a story you could hear from anyone, in tones of defeat and regret. It's not a nice story. But its all I have to give.

~~~

There was once a little girl who went to a park. She saw a ball that some little boys were playing with and instantly, she knew that the ball was meant to be hers. Sure, they were playing with it at that time and someone might protest if she took it away, but those were minor details. The main thing was that it was hers, and she was going to go forward and get -

A hand stopped her.

She looked up, and Daddy was shaking his head at her, sadly.

She wouldn't give up - she tried to stride forward but His hand was gentle but firm. Not one inch more. The ball so tantalisingly near yet so far. She started to weep in anger while His arms covered her and soothed her...

...but all she saw was the ball, slipping away as the boys, oblivious, moved to another corner to play. Her vision blurred with tears as she saw one boy picking up the ball and cradling it under his arm before walking away.

"Why, Daddy, why? You never gave me a ball! I want a ball to play with just like that boy! Everyone else has a ball, why not me?! Don't you love me???!!!"

"I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH TO LET YOU HAVE SECOND BEST."

"Daddy, I don't care about getting second best! THAT'S my best already! Just let me choose what I want!!"

"YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE, MY LOVE. BUT JUST THINK, HAS DADDY EVER FAILED YOU BEFORE? HAVE I EVER BROKEN MY PROMISES TO YOU?"

"No...."

"THEN TRUST ME WHEN I SAY, I HAVE SOMETHING BETTER IN MIND FOR YOU. AND WHEN I GIVE IT TO YOU, IT WILL BE PERFECT FOR YOU. MORE PERFECT THAN ANYTHING YOU CAN GET BY GRABBING OR SCHEMING."

So the girl's eyes dried and as she hugged her Father, she realised that the giver of all things good will never withhold any good thing for us. But He brings it in His own time and in His own ways. Even something as small as a ball.

~~~

OK, maybe I was lying, but I didn't mean that to become a saccharine story, one you've heard a million times before and which I've probably drawn from the mountain of cliches in my memory bank.

Sometimes, it's not just a ball that He asks you to give up, it's the attachment to it, the wanting and needing. And that can be the hardest part when you feel it would make all the difference in your life.

And that's where the problem lies, because He is the only One who can make all the difference in our lives.

For G

2008-01-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

A schoolmate, my co-year from Vietnam, left school yesterday.

Apparently it was for family reasons and she had to leave quickly. We didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. Most people didn't notice she wasn't there and the news only spread after she left.

She had been the "background" person, the one who stands at the side, not participating, never speaking unless you engaged her in conversation directly. And even so, it was tough-going for she didn't give an answer of more than a few words.

I don't think anyone really knew her well. We all just assumed this is the way she wants to live her life, and let her alone. We were on the same China Week trip (a week when all 1st years go to China for service and cultural exposure) but I don't think I ever had a conversation with her that was more than superficial.

In this past year alone two other students have left the college, for disciplinary reasons, never to come back as a student. They both have to construct a new life for themselves back in their home countries after spending more than a year here, where they had made their home; and try to sort out their future after being booted out from school. In both cases, they were tearful farewells on the part of other students in the canteen - well-wishes, keep-in-touches...assurances that they would be missed, that they mattered to the community.

As far as I know, nothing of the sort was done for my friend. No one even knew. And the other two left in disgrace, their sins finally catching up with them till it was too late to make amends. That was not the case for her.

Which brings me to wonder, what do we do with the living shadows amongst us? People to whom no one really relates to because it's hard to, people who keep to themselves? In an environment like my college, it's often a case of the survival of the fittest, socially. If you keep to yourself a lot, are not bubbly, outspoken, active, bold...you lose out on social opportunities. Your reputation and standing in the (highly insular) community is affected. And to a teenager, that can be a lot of pressure.

I hope life was not very hard for her here, but I believe it must have been. To a certain degree, you are disadvantaged if you are naturally quiet. You are disadvantaged if English is not your native language and you have dificulty understanding/speaking it. You are disadvantaged if you had less exposure back in your home country - to things like student exchanges, camps, private schools, enlightened teachers.

I hope life will continue smoothly with her and whatever brought her back to Vietnam will become less and less of a problem, and that it does not hurt her so much. I hope she will know that she did not fail here; that it was not solely her problem that she could not fit into our community, but ours that we never seriously took the trouble to understand her.

What is your name?

2008-01-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

I accidentally pressed Enter after just writing the blog title the last time, and had no chance to edit the entry till now...sorry to those who checked in the last 2 days and then saw a blog title with no entry!

The reason of the title is: I saw a Nooma video entitled "What is your name?" - which is what the angel asked Jacob after struggling with him all night. During those times, your name meant everything - it was your identity and destiny. And by acknowledging that he was Jacob (meaning to grasp the foot, which was something like being deceitful) and not flinching from his past (when he pretended to be Esau), Jacob was blessed to be the father of the nations.

What is your name?

Everything you are, everything you are not...accepting our past, our mistakes, our achievements. Our weaknesses, our faults, our embarrassments. What we would gladly display. What we would rather hide.

But if we cannot accept ourselves, if we cannot stop comparing ourselves to others, if we do not stop envying others....

what will we say when others ask, "who are you?"

---------------------------------
Chinese? Malaysian?

Tonight was Chinese Cultural Evening.It it was pretty good except for a fire which was a bit toooo strong and needed to be extinguished with a fire extinguisher. Pretty exciting, that, but the organisers are going to have to answer for it.

Throughout the whole CCE process which began last November after the last cultural evening, people have been confused about my identity.

"But you're Malaysian! How can you be involved in CCE?"

"You mean YOU'RE Chinese?"

"So did your parents come from China? Are both your parents Chinese, then?"

"You're 100% Malaysian, and 100% Chinese as well? That can't be right."

The most idiotic:

"You're Chi-laysian."

And some people become quite adamant about it:

"But you're MALAYSIAN! So you can't be Chinese!"

Who says I can't? Does a 4th generation emigrant have no right to identify herself with the country that her ancestors originated from? Just because my great-great grandparents moved to a faraway land, risking their lives in order to seek a better life; means we have divorced our roots entirely?

I contradict myself.

Back home, I hate it when people (Chinese people) say, "I'm not Malaysian. I don't feel like I belong in this country. I'm just Chinese, and that's it." I strongly believe that you may not be able to control where you were born or who you were born to, but all of that fit into a larger plan, a bigger picture than what we can see. There is a reason I was born and raised in Malaysia and not Hong Kong, or China, or Indonesia or any of the other 173 countries Chinese people live in.

And here, I get tired of people denying I'm Chinese just because I have a Malaysian passport; just because I represent that country in this college (and there are only 3 of us). Of course, those who do make a fuss, do it jokingly; and most people get the concept after 2 or 3 explanations.

If I hadn't come to UWC, I would never have guessed people would have such a hard time getting the idea - Malaysian by nationality, Chinese by race.

Or is it me, and all of us who define ourselves this way, who have it wrong?

As my teacher was arguing, you don't call a South African of European descent a white South African. You don't call someone an Italian American. It's just American. So why do we feel the need to categorise ourselves by race? Why do we say "I'm Indian" or "I'm Chinese", when all that matters is that we're Malaysian?

Then...

I remember the countless, numerous forms that I've filled in ever since primary school. The race boxes where you mark "Melayu", "Cina", "India" or vague "lain-lain". That our identity cards either have Warganegara Islam or not.

And then I remember why in my mind it matters that I'm both Malaysian, and Chinese. Because the people who rule my country are not secure enough to let go off their power, of their bigotry, of their herd mentality and their selfishness; and are afraid of any change to the status quo.

Being both is not a crime - the crime is only when we let that second descriptor of ethnicity separate us instead of having the first descriptor of nationality unite us.

Without Vision, the people Perish

2008-01-13T06:22:00.000-08:00

I understand the meaning of that sentence a little bit better now...

I have an infection in my right eye, it started yesterday when I wore my contact lens even though my right eye felt kind of uncomfotable, then I went out and throughout the day I felt quite uncomfortable on and off. At night, when I removed my contact lens, my right eye was a bit red and uncomfortable. Later on, it become more uncomfortable and it was hard to keep both eyes open.

To cut a long story short, the next day it became worse and the eyesight in my right eye is cloudy. I can hardly see anything, just blurs of colour. For example, the laptop screen is a blur of whiteness. I went to a doctor today, he prescribed antibacterial eye drops and it should get better in a few days at the most.

It's quite scary to not be able to see. Sight is something very important to all of us and we rely on it every waking moment to orientate our life, but we hardly ever appreciate it until it becomes threatened.

So, treasure your eyesight, and remember to take care of yourself! I'm going to sleep, better not strain it anymore.