life is a very fragile thing

i was planning on enjoying my time exploring more of sydney and buying more things to bring home but, like all other plans, those plans were flushed down the toilet. i end up hopping on a plane back home 2 days before my actual flight date, in a daze. i was confused and my heart is filled with mixed feelings. i was delighted to go home to its comforts but knowing that i will also be coming back to a very sick grannie just makes me feel immensely uncomfortable because as long as i was miles away news of her condition is just news and it is very easy for me to remain very conveniently detached.

now that i am home, it breaks my heart to see someone who was still so strong the last i saw her no longer have the strength to hold a spoon with a steady hand. it scares me to know now how fast someone can dwindle away and all that is left to hold on to will be the spirit inside and all that you have to grip on to the world of the living is your spirit, knowing fully well that no matter how much you try and no matter how strong your spirit might be you will inevitably have to let go one day it's just a question of how soon it happens. so, i suggest that we live life to the fullest now when we have the chance. do what you want to do and try your best to fulfill your dreams while holding your close ones close to your heart. you never know when your last corner of life will be, neither will you know when is theirs. don't live life to regret it as regret is not a beautiful thing.

finals is over! yay!

i've try to post something this past month that is not remotely depressing (cos of my previous promise of a more cheerful post) but it seems i'm either too caught up with worrying about the inches of notes and text that i got to go through for finals or i'm not in too cheerful a mood to write about anything cheerful. so here i am, going into my first few hours of my long-awaited-and-long-delayed semester break if this isn't going to make me cheerful enough i don't know what will. however, since i am still not jumping up and down celebrating my new found freedom, i guess the fact hasn't really sunked in yet. apparently typing it out doesn't help much or maybe it's just that my brain feels so fuzzy, not to mention that it also feels like it weighs at least a tonne. playing card games and drinking coke+absolute vodka as penalty definitely does N O T help the headache. ouch. i think i'll continue another day when the feeling of freedom sunk in with me in the land of sunshine with butterflies and candy sticks. till then! =)

how i wish that i was a toddler again

you know how you just worked really hard (or hard enough) for something and after that all you want to do is to laze around and not do a single thing anymore, ever? join the club =) i think it's about time that i get down and dirty and start some serious mugging. but then again, i can think about doing that and procrastinate somemore. but on the other hand, i don't want to regret and beat myself up about it a month later. so, (sigh) it doesn't look like i have a choice, do i? i promise whoever who's reading this that i will start studying hard tomorrow (crossing my fingers).

well, since i was lazing around and not doing anything, i was hit by a sudden sense of nostalgia. how i wish that i was still that little cuddly toddler, learning how to ride a bike with 3 back wheels (and still managing to fall flat on my face), reading "peter and jane", building jigsaw puzzles with my mum, waking up early in the morning during the weekends to watch cartoon shows. the best thing of it all is that life was so carefree and everything was so beautiful. life was very much like a land filled with rainbows, lollies, and cotton candy. well, rainbows still bring smiles to my face but the sense of awe is gone or it has lessen in large degrees. you notice, the more you see of this (big bad) world, the more pessimistic you become. not only is the sense of awe gone, our sense of optimism is also lost. what is this thing that is sucking our essence out of us? i guess, there are too many different factors contributing to this sad fact.

notice how when you are young, you do and say whatever that's on your mind without second thoughts. if it was wrong to do so, then we and everyone else will just blame it on the fact that we are still young (we don't know any better apparently). the older you get, the older the excuse gets too, until a point where it is no longer usable. when we are all "grown-up", we have to watch our words and actions, as we obviously would not want to hurt others by being "unthoughtful". there's a certain propriety that we must follow, certain social expectations that we must live up to, certain hypocritical rules that we must live by. those of us who reach our toes out to feel and prob the line are viewed as being disrecpectful and scorned for being different. but, did anyone realise that all these boundaries that have been set up are just making us more guarded? everyone is hiding their own true feelings and thoughts behind mask after mask, fence after fence and wall after wall of "protection", so that we won't be hurt by the people around us and in turn we won't hurt them. i wonder if this is also a sad thing by itself, but who am i to say anything when this is the inevitable result of living itself? it's as if to build walls around ourselves to guard our fragile inner sensitivities is the code of survival.

well, i think i have been more than cynical and i should stop before i can't control the urge to whack myself hard on the head =) hope you enjoy what i hope is one of my rare moments of being an utter cynic and skeptic. smile people life really isn't that bad, really! i shall elaborate more next time around =)

ever noticed how when there's a pile of work stacked up right in front of you that needs to be done as soon as possible, you will be so tempted to look anywhere and do anything but that? that's exactly how i am feeling now. my work is weighing heavily on my shoulders and my conscience and yet here i am "blogging". anything in the world would seem more appealing than to bury my head in work right now, well almost everything. somehow, my evil twin convinced me that "blogging" is just as constructive as going through the endless pages of lecture notes that awaits me. well, i was in dire need of a break =) (yups, excuse after excuse, i know, so please don't make me feel anymore guilty than i already am)

are you someone who has restless sleep filled with dreams or do you have peaceful dreamless nights? i only dream once in a blue moon. the interesting thing (or rather the very unfortunate thing) is that for every single dream i had or rather that i could remember, i woke up with either a tear-stained faced from crying or with my body covered in cold sweat and my heart beating like i just ran a marathon. they are all either really scary like some horror movie or very wierd and unpleasant like some real-life-scenario that i really hope will never ever come true. in fact, there was a period of time where i kept on dreaming about how i slipped and fell down flight after flight of stairs (ouch). however, there are also those rare times where i wake up and have no memory of ever dreaming the night before, but everything that happens seems so familiar as though i know what was going to happen next or that when something happen, i feel like it has happened before. sometimes, i even feel like i've met some of the people that i am sure i just met. i guess this is what people mean by dejavu.

apparently dreams are telling a story of their own. sometimes, they are making decisions for us (or rather making clear to us decisions that we have subconciously made). in other times, they might be telling us something that might happen in the future like some premonition. but i believe that most of the times it's just our minds overloading: like how you might dream about running for your life from some zombie because you watched some horror movie before that or how you might have a dream about something that was floating persistently on your mind before you fell asleep. i wonder if we tend to play out possible scenarios in our minds when we dream? It's as if we are giving these scenarios that we either really wish would happen in real life or that we really wish will never happen, test runs to see how it would be like, how it would feel like. wouldn't it be immensely interesting to find out the meaning hidden behind our dreams?

well, that's it for now. i should stop day-dreaming and get on with mugging :( hope you are nothing like me in terms of your luck in dreams. may your dreams bring smiles to your faces =) have fun dreaming, that's more than i can say for the pile of lecture notes that is awaiting me.

everyone at some point of time has definitely felt that they have been taken for granted. i've definitely felt my fair share, although if i were to be perfectly honest, i more often than not feel that i got more than i deserved, which in my opinion is of course immensely unfair =)

i do not think that there is a single person out there who does not like to be treasured, cherished and appreciated. we love the feeling of being needed. it adds meaning to our lives, bring smiles to our faces. anyone at all around us can provide us with this feeling, be it from those closest to us to some random person that is just passing through our lives. but the irony of it all is that although all of us know what we all want so well, we are still feeling neglected and taken for granted by those very same people who doesn't want to feel that way. i wonder if i should laugh at the stupity or the neglicence of us all or to cry tears of frustration.

do you notice that the people that you tend to hurt deepest and most often are those that you hold closest to your heart? that in itself is another irony of life. i wonder is it because they are that very close to you and that they mean so very much to you and you to them that even small tiny unimportant things can cause bruises and cuts. if it is not that, then maybe it's because we know that these people will always be there for us no matter what we do or don't do. if the second reason is true, then we are all terrible people that deserve a slap so that we can wake up from the dream to look around at what we have to treasure. unless of course, if we want to try out whether or not the cliche "we will never know what we have lost until it is gone" is true. i sure do not want to know if it is or not.

managing time and effort among the few people that has a place in our heart is hard. we don't want to rank them up on a ladder of preference but somehow whether we want to or not in the back of our minds in some hidden closet is the list that we refuse to acknowledge. is it because of this miserable list that we tend to take those whom we believe are lower on the list for granted? i do believe that it is so. but i must make it clear that these people are stil people held close to the heart even if such a thing did happen. with that, i shall take a deep breath and admit to my wrongs. i apologise profusely to those whom i have neglected and taken for granted this past few weeks. i promise that i will make up for it =) sorry jia mei, sorry seet yan, sorry my two baby sisters, sorry daddy mummy. hugs.. love you all..

smile people. this is the season where smiles are rare to come by and wrinkles and dead brain cells are in abundance. yes, finals is right around that horrible corner that i wish i am never going to have to go around. too bad i can't control time, too too bad that i will never be able to. sob.

i guess it's time for me to go all "philosophical" again. it's a wonder how my brain comes up with this stuff. i should be running out of things to dwell upon soon. it's only natural. well, at least i know some people read this and hey it's good enough that i got my recognition and sense of achievement.

anyone watched "lost in translation"? my boyfriend thinks it's most probably the best movie there is. well, me, i hate endings like that, sad hanging endings that i am not satisfied with. it's bad enough that in real life we hardly ever get nice fairy-tale happy endings anymore, the least the movies can do is to leave a smile on our faces at the end while giving us a thin string of hope that things like that are not lost to us. please don't argue that sad hanging endings can also leave smiles on faces =)

this lead me to think about why happy endings are so rare. even if there was a happy ending (whenever an ending is, when is an ending? at death? it definitely wouldn't be a happy ending when two people part, would it?), the journey to the said happy ending would also be filled with the occasional scars and pitfalls. i guess that's life. it's only fair that everyone gets their fair share of ups and downs. i hate it though.

call me naive (and i might just readily agree) but i have always put marriage on the pedestal. marriage should be beautiful and full of butterflies and honey and everything nice right? wrong apparently. you watch movies and they tell you how a couple on cloud nine will fall out of the relationship 10, 20 and if they are incredibly lucky 30 years down the road. apparently the more time you spend with someone, even with love that can conquer the universe (so to speak), you will eventually get sick of one another and fall out of love. at that point of time, all that is left is a sense of responsibility to their children and a legal vow made to the marriage certificate. the situation is so tragic that life in itself has lost its meaning. i wonder if it is because people change with time or that it wasn't meant to be, that we humans are ultimately meant to spend our lives alone exactly like how we came to this world. i do not like the thought of any of those. whatever it is, i still believe that doesn't mean that it would happen to two-thirds of the world it will happen to me and the people around me =) frown all you want, raise your eyebrows but i refuse to be pessimistic =)

The start to my new addiction

i think i finally comprehend why there are that many "bloggers" (urgh) around, this thing is pretty addictive after you gotten through the mental block of writing the very first one. but knowing me, i might just lose interest in this in a couple of days. we'll see.

i was musing about recognition the other day and about how everyone of us do all sort of things (be it small miniscule things to huge life altering things) just to get some sort of recognition from others. we feel on top of the world when people shower us with praises after we worked our butts off, it feels like we have achieved something and that is the aim of our lives, to have achieved something (anything in fact) at some point or other. on the other end of the spectrum are the small things that only seem too insignificant but are in actuality a huge part of our lives. why is it that when we see someone, we smile, say hi, even exchange hugs? that in itself is a form of recognition, we are recognising that the other person exist, that we care. our actions vary based on how much we care. if you are not prepared to recognise the importance of someone in your life, is that indirectly implying that you don't care or at least you don't care enough? that's a rhetorical question, don't bother answering =)

my not so very first blog

you know how you got so many things on your mind for so long and everything starts rolling together becoming one? well, my mind feels like a huge cloud now, a dark bright stormy puffy one.

that said, i am now wondering if we humans, the supposingly smartest species in the world, know what's best for ourselves. but one thing that i know for sure is that we always assume to know what is best for others. i guess it has something to do with how everyone likes to feel that they are one better than everyone around them. well, you can try to justify yourself and deny it. but i know better. see what did i just do? point proven =)

i have nothing against "bloggers" but the word is definitely not pretty and it sounds absolutely terrible. anyway, i noticed that people have the tendency to beat around the bush and write in deep, insightful ways. it's like we are all trying to make the reader guess what's the subtle meaning hidden not so underneath every single thing we write. the only thing that i can come up with to justify that is that we "blog" cos we want people to read it, otherwise we could have just write in a diary and hide it in some hide-able place instead (no offense to those who keep a diary of course). however, even if we do want people to read it, we don't want the people reading it to know exactly what's on our minds, cos that's too easy and way too "desperate", for lack of a better word. so, being the "smart" humans that we are, we decided to put our thoughts right out there but yet play around with our words and in doing that we intiatied a guessing game with our "readers". i would say that that's sarcasm at it's highest level but then again i'll take it back since i don't want to die too young =)

since i am officially a "blogger" (urgh) now, i shall kick off my first blog in full "blogger" style. i believe that life is full of crossroads and full of "what-if"s. i still remember the poem that i had to read in secondary in english literature, it was by robert frost. i loved it. how many of us are courageous enough to go on the road less taken where we can't see anything beyond the next bend? i know i would be the one standing at the crossroads till all the seasons came and passed being the terrible decision-maker that i am. almost everyone i know have (at some point of time) yelled at me in frustration to just buy the darn top that i have been trying on just so we can get out of the shop. i'm sorry, i would just have to blame in on my fickle mind. however, i realised the irony of it all. once the decison is made, no matter how important it is, i'll stick to it and cling to it, almost as if my whole entire life depended on it and that it would crumble before me if i were to let go. call me stubborn but i hate second guessing myself (not because i think so highly of myself or that i believe i can do no wrong, it's more because once i start thinking it over i will most definitely change my very fickle mind) and i loathe regretting. why regret when i have the future to look forward to? right? so once i made a choice, i will sit back, relax and enjoy the ride as much as i can. =) and just for the record, i'm happy with the road that i took most recently even if i can't see a thing after the next bend. the suspense scares me but i shall take one step at a time, braving the bumps on the road and the occasional tree branch which is out to scar me. after all, life isn't all that gloomy, i'm sure the sun has to come out some time. i am determined to believe that life consists of more happy packages than sad duffel bags. =)

smile more. it brightens your day and the people around you =)